The Thing From Another World (Film Review)

1951 RKO Radio Pictures
Directed by: Christian Nyby; Written by: Charles Lederer (Uncredited: Howard Hawks and Ben Hecht)
Based Upon the 1938 Novella "Who Goes There?" by John W Campbell Jr.
Starring: Margaret Sheridan, Kenneth Tobey, Douglas Spencer, Robert O. Cornthwaite, and James Arness
MPAA Rating: N/A; Running Time: 87 Minutes
The Nicsperiment Score: 7/10

A bunch of military folks and a reporter convene at an Arctic base. Something has crash landed there, and it appears to be a UFO. Closer inspection proves that this craft is indeed from another world, and even better, its alien pilot has been frozen in ice several feet away. The fellas cut out a block of ice containing the alien, and drag it back to base. Turns out, this thing is vaguely human...but also a plant. After the alien busts out of the ice, and starts running around the base, one other thing becomes clear: This is a plant-based alien humanoid...who feasts upon human blood.
Of the three major films adapted from John W Campbell Jr.'s fun novella, "Who Goes There?" 1951's The Thing From Another World follows its source material most loosely. There's very little suspense or terror to be had here. The alien can't shapeshift into different forms, or imitate humans, as it does in the novella, and its other adaptations. The creature here is just, as one character puts it, "a super carrot."

The idea is fun, and executed in a fairly fun way, but not in anyway that's scary, or even threatening. The many protagonists never seem to be in even the slightest amount of danger. We hear from one character that two other characters have been strung up from the rafters by their feet in another room, and their throats slit. Obviously, this is 1951, and Hollywood wouldn't allow such onscreen violence, but there's little onscreen menace here to speak of, outside of a few of the monster's appearances, which generally consist of him either running away, or trying to force his way through a door, as the military crew (always) successfully push it shut.
What is here is pretty entertaining, though, as the film contains elements of screwball comedy in the rapid-fire exchanges between characters, with lots of ball-busting, particularly toward the captain that's attempting to woo a female assistant. Yes, there's a romance here, though it's nothing too lovey-dovey.

The acting is hit and miss, with about half of the actors doing a solid job, and the others sounding like they're just reciting lines as fast as they can. There are a lot of characters in The Thing From Another World, and they all talk a lot!

This is a Howard Hawks production, so everything looks pretty great, particularly, as expected, all of the aviation footage. There's not really any depth to speak of--a reference to a piece by Roger Ebert on the ever unreliable Wikipedia talks about McCarthyism allusions due to the military crew not knowing who to trust when the alien can be any of them, but that is literally impossible in this film, where the one alien is something everyone (other than a mad scientist character) is immediately unified together to fight against, and also just looks like a giant vegetable man, and only a giant vegetable man. A bunch of patriotic, God-fearing military folk are united against an other, and if you want that other to be communism, fine, than this film is just an early version of John Wayne's 1968 pro-Vietnam War flick, The Green Berets. Really, The Thing From Another World's most lasting legacy, outside of being forgettable fun, is that 31 years later, someone made a legendary adaptation out of its source material.