The Thing from Another World
Screening on Film
Directed by Christian Nyby and Howard Hawks.
With Kenneth Tobey, Margaret Sheridan, Robert Cornthwaite.
US, 1951, 35mm, black & white, 87 min.
With Kenneth Tobey, Margaret Sheridan, Robert Cornthwaite.
US, 1951, 35mm, black & white, 87 min.
The “Monster Movie” decade generated some well-made classics like this one, famously co-directed by an uncredited Howard Hawks (the film’s producer). A taut sci-fi thriller, The Thing—based on a story by John W. Campbell Jr., who published the first stories of Robert A. Heinlein, Alfred Elton van Vogt, and others—follows Captain Patrick Hendry (Tobey) to the North Pole, where his team discovers a flying saucer and its extraterrestrial vegetable-man pilot. Like other sci-fi films of its time, The Thing demonstrates the creeping Cold War paranoia in post-WWII America; its closing line warns us to "Watch the skies, everywhere, keep looking - keep watching the skies!"
