Happy Anniversary, You Things from Another World, You!

This review is part of the 50's Monster Mash Blogathon hosted by Forgotten Classics of Yesteryear. The blogathon runs from July 28th through August 2nd. Join our Fearless Leader Nathanael Hood and thrill to the astounding monster blog posts—and don't forget to leave comments for one and all! :-)

Dorian's Pick: The Thing from Another World (1951)

Happy 60th Anniversary, You Thing from Another World, You!

Director/producer Howard Hawks was a deft genre chameleon with 47 films to his credit, including the uncredited The Outlaw, Corvette K-225, Viva Villa!, The Prizefighter and the Lady, The Criminal Code, and my half of Team Bartilucci’s 1950s Monster Mash double-feature, The Thing from Another World (1951). Since we’re only discussing the original film here and not John Carpenter’s 1982 remake (which is equally superb and follows source author John W. Campbell Jr.’s tale more closely), let’s just call it The Thing…. from here on in, shall we? The director’s credit is given to Hawks’ editor Christian Nyby, but the action and banter is pure Hawks. As noted by Jon C. Hopwood in the IMDb and Lang Thompson and Jeff Stafford's TCM article, Hawks was reportedly on the set everyday as the producer, and the film bears his “auteurist” stamp. Still, talk about versatility; Hawks could do it all! His films ranged from comedies (Twentieth Century, Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday), adventure (Only Angels Have Wings, To Have and Have Not), westerns (Red River, Rio Bravo), mysteries (The Big Sleep) and even musicals (A Song is Born, the 1948 Danny Kaye/Virginia Mayo musical remake of Hawks’ 1941 comedy classic, Ball of Fire).

To arms, to arms! Uh, make that one arm….|

Over the strains of composer Dimitri Tiomkin’s beautifully eerie combo of brass and Theremin, our story begins at the Officers’ Club in Anchorage, Alaska, where Air Force Captain Pat Hendry (Kenneth Tobey), Lt. Eddie Dykes (James Young), and Lt. Ken “Mac” MacPherson (Robert Nichols, best known and loved by Team Bartilucci as Joe Wilson in This Island Earth. Read fellow blogger Caftan Woman's blog about it at http://caftanwoman.blogspot.com/) get wind of a big brouhaha going down at the North Pole. “Botanists, physicists, electronics,” Mac says. “Including a pin-up girl,” Eddie adds mischievously, “a very interesting type.” That would be Pat’s ex, the swift, smart, beautiful “Nikki” Nicholson, played by one of my favorite Hawks women, Margaret Sheridan. Raven-haired Nikki is the secretary to Dr. Arthur Carrington (Robert Cornthwaite from Colossus: The Forbin Project, among other films and TV shows), the leader of the aforementioned scientific brouhaha.

Those cute plants live on human blood? You bet your life!

General Fogerty (David McMahon) wants Pat, Mac, and Eddie to investigate a discovery at the North Pole at the request of Dr. Carrington and his scientific team. You’ll know the voices of the uncredited actors playing Doctors Vorhees, Chapman, and Redding, even if you don’t know their names: they are, in the above order, voiceover artist Paul Frees; John Dierkes, whose roles include the preacher in X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes; and George Fenneman of You Bet Your Life fame!
Newspaper reporter Ned “Scotty” Scott has been looking for a story to cover. In fact, he’s ready, willing, and able to fly all the way to the North Pole in hopes of getting an exclusive. Pat, Mac, and Eddie are fine with bringing Scotty along for the ride. Ever the newshound, he’s eager for a scoop: “I gotta get a story someplace!” Well, Scotty, be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it! Douglas Spencer, one of Team Bartilucci’s favorite—and all too often uncredited—character actors, steals his scenes as Scotty with his sharp wit and gangling presence. His many film and TV roles included parts in Double Indemnity, The Dark Corner, This Island Earth, and most notably, The Lost Weekend (in fact, Spencer was Ray Milland’s stunt double in many films). Thinning hair notwithstanding, Spencer was kinda like the Jeff Goldblum of his day, presence-wise. (As a Jeff Goldblum fan, I assure you I think that’s a good thing.) Poor Scotty may not always get a break or a picture, but he’s wonderful wiseass comedy relief, and he ends up redeeming himself nicely with his classic “Keep watching the skies” broadcast, not to get ahead of myself!

When the men reach the North Pole, they’re greeted not by Santa Claus, but a humungous all-but-submerged crashed aircraft that looks an awful lot like a flying saucer. Our intrepid heroes figure on using a thermite bomb to haul that spaceship outta there, but to their astonishment, the ship actually burns beneath the ice, then explodes. So much for subtlety! But our boys won’t be leaving empty-handed: there’s a great big humanoid creature (James Arness, before Them! and Gunsmoke made him a star) for them to take back as a souvenir to their base camp, Polar Expedition Six.

When it comes to Nikki, Pat’s hands are tied!

We soon find out the romance between Nikki and Pat had hit a speed bump after Pat had a few drinks too many. As Nikki says, chuckling, he’d “had moments of kind of making like an octopus.” This revelation eventually results in one of the film’s funniest, sexiest bits of comedy relief when they agree on “starting over again.” See, screen couples don’t always have to get naked to be sexy—just as well, considering The Thing’s North Pole location! What I love about the romance between Pat and Nikki is that their relationship is grownup yet playful, in the classic Hawks way. No soap-opera nonsense stops the story or mood in their tracks; instead, they flow into the scene offhandedly, making Nikki and Pat’s relationship feel more natural.

Ah, but our movie is called The Thing from Another World and not, say, Baby, It’s Cold Outside, so romance goes on the back burner when the rough Arctic weather cuts the base off from communication with the outside world, though our heroes keep trying to send messages, hoping others get through. Meanwhile, Mac and other poor schlubs who have to stand watch over their Swanson Frozen Alien are feeling progressively more spooked, swearing it looks like the creature’s eyes are moving. Soon our heroes learn the hard way that if you’re standing guard over a thawing alien who’s bigger and scarier than you are, don’t make the mistake Corporal Barnes (William Self) made, getting too caught up reading a book while the evil alien was defrosting. “A gun’s no good” is probably one of the scariest phrases to hear when a monster is on the loose! By the way, in real life, William Self went on to be a big TV producer for CBS, including The Twilight Zone, appropriately enough.

“I’m sorry, you Thing from another world you, the lady of the house ain’t home, and besides, we mailed you people a check last week!”

Whether the filmmakers want to credit Hawks or Nyby, I love Hawks’ signature naturalistic overlapping dialogue for all the characters; I wonder if that’s where Robert Altman got the idea for his own movies? For that matter, I like the joshing camaraderie among the actors playing the pilots and other personnel of Polar Expedition Six; they felt very authentic. In particular, the smart, snappy repartee between Nikki and Pat is irresistible; Tobey and Sheridan have great chemistry. On top of that, it's Nikki who figures out how to kill The Thing by essentially cooking it to death! How's that for Girl Power? You know, Hawks had wanted Sheridan to play the female lead in his 1948 western Red River, but pregnancy put the kibosh on that, and Sheridan recommended her friend Joanne Dru for the role instead. Sheridan’s career didn’t go much farther, even though she was wonderful in The Thing…. as well as the 1953 movie version of Mickey Spillane’s I, The Jury (as Mike Hammer’s sexy assistant Velda!).

Baked Alaska coming right up!

As Dr. Carrington, Robert Cornthwaite is one of cinema’s most memorably well-meaning yet misguided  scientists as he takes the concept of a vegetable-based alien one step further: those plants he’s been cultivating in the greenhouse actually live on human blood. If that doesn’t freak out the world’s vegans, I don’t know what will! Like certain H.P. Lovecraft characters, Dr. Carrington mistakenly thinks The Thing will become his best buddy, the poor fool. Isn’t that just like an increasingly mad scientist (see what happens when you get too little sleep?) to put their discoveries ahead of others’ safety? But then, what do you expect from a man who thinks that a creature with “No pleasure, no pain…no emotion, no heart” is “our superior in every way”? That guy has serious issues. I bet Paul Reiser’s character in Aliens was Dr. Carrington’s grandson or something!

The Thing…. is another film you could easily turn into a drinking game—drinking coffee, that is! I lost count of all the times someone came in with or asked for a cup of coffee. Speaking of unwittingly goofy things, why does everyone in The Thing…. say “Holy cat” instead of “Holy cats”? Was the “S” in “cats” added into that old expression later, or did Hawks and Nyby and company try to trim the Thing budget by lopping the "S" off ? As long as we're joking around, here's one of my favorite Thing/Hawks in-jokes:

Scotty: “You know how to shoot that?”
Mac: "I saw Gary Cooper in Sergeant York.” (Howard Hawks also directed and produced the Oscar-winning Sergeant York!)

Vinnie knows a thing or two about a Thing or two as well — Aside from a solid plot and cast of characters (if a bit of a sausage-fest), the film features two of the most quotable lines in silver-age science fiction: the final "Watch the skies" and Scotty's other wry summary, "An intellectual carrot — the mind boggles!" But the film loses the most impressive facet of Campbell's original story "Who Goes There?", that of the alien being a shapeshifter. As The Wife mentions, Carpenter's adaptation is far more adherent to Campbell's story, right down to the bit with testing blood with a hot wire. With the Hawks version, they took the structure of the story and pasted in a more generic monster, and it worked perfectly, because they realized that the tension comes not from the occasional moments of the monster popping out, but the suspense as we watch the characters worry that the monster MIGHT pop out. The best scare (and nervous laugh afterwards) in the film is when the scientists spend about five minutes preparing to go outside, strapping on the flamethrowers, stuffing sandwiches in their pockets, unbolting the door, and the Thing is just standing RIGHT THERE! Perfect surprise - You're expecting a big long search scene, and they hit you right away.

Vinnie's Pick:
Mothra  (1961) - "We're gonna need a bigger net!"

My love for daikaiju films is well known, so it's no shock that if I was going to talk about a monster picture, I was going to go big. Mothra is unique in the Godzilla pantheon in two ways. First, she's a female—the only female monster, save for the mate to Rodan, appearing and dying in his eponymous first film. And secondly, she's the only monster to start as a face, or good guy. Godzilla and the others started as bad guys, or at least uncaring forces of nature, only turning face when bigger threats came along. In many cases, the hope was the two warring beasts would kill each other off and good riddance. But Mothra was a protector from day one, first of the inhabitants of Infant Island in this first film, and later of the entire world. Also, Mothra is the only multi-generational monster; we see her die in her second film, Godzilla vs. The Thing (an ironic title for this pairing), replaced by a new pair of Mothra larvae from another egg. New generations have appeared in later films as well. This is different from how Rodan and his mate died in their solo film; that was sort of forgotten in later movies, much in the way that Godzilla's death in his first film is sort of swept under the canonical rug.

Shoubijin/Peanuts—allergy-free, & they sing nice, too!

In this film, a storm capsizes a cargo ship in an area of the ocean formerly used for atomic testing. When the crew are found on a nearby island, they are not only alive, but radiation-free. They explain that the natives of the island fed them juice that apparently kept them safe from the radiation in the area. An expedition is sent to the island, funded by Mr. Nelson, an entrepreneur from "Rolisica", a non-existent but real-sounding country, an amalgam of both the US and Russia, a generic "Big foreign country" that prizes money over common sense. The island is covered with huge mutated vegetation, stereotypical tropical island-dwelling denizens with little clothing and spectacular talent for choreography, and a pair of foot-tall "Fairies" known as the Shoubijin (played by the world-famous-in-Japan singing duo The Peanuts—think of Pink Lady, but with talent). Nelson abducts the Shoubijin and brings them back to Japan, presenting them in a theater show. I guess he figured unlike that guy with the monkey in New York, two little singing fairies can't do too much damage.

Oh, Nelson, you poor stupid foreign bastard.

The lovely song the fairies sing on stage, and almost constantly in their spare time, is a psychic call for help to their island's deity and protector, Mothra. They're basically guiding Mothra to them with these secret messages (Mosura code, if you will). Back on the island, the natives get a production number going that would put those Indonesian prisoners to shame, and awaken their god, who hatches from a huge egg as what looks like a gigantic silkworm. Following the Shoubijin's melodic GPS, she makes a bee-line (possibly the only insect pun I will use in this column) to Japan to save them. She goes through Tokyo like a house afire, finally resting against Tokyo Tower and building a cocoon.

One attempt to burn down the cocoon later (an elated news reporter, believing they have succeeded in defeating the monster, declares it "a great day for the Atomic Ray Gun"), Mothra breaks free as an adult winged creature, and starts raging all over the city, finally heading for the major Rolisican metropolis New Kirk City. Carrying through the differences between Mothra and the earlier Kaiju eiga Mothra is not killed or defeated at the end, she wins. The fairies are liberated from Nelson's captivity and are returned to Mothra, who leaves in peace and returns them all to Infant Island.

Mosura ya Mosura Dongan kasakuyan Indo muu Rusuto uiraadoa Hanba hanbamuyan Randa banunradan Tounjukanraa Kasaku yaanmu

Mothra O Mothra If we were to call for help Over time Over sea Like a wave you'd come Our guardian angel

Mothra is well known not only for her colorful plumage, but her various lovely songs, usually sung by the Shoubijin / Peanuts. Mothra's Song is likely the one most recognized, written in Malaysian to give it a foreign feel to the Japanese audience, the harmonies of The Peanuts transform it into a lovely ditty that you can't help humming. Introduced in Godzilla vs. The Thing, Mahara Mosura is equally lovely, having a slight more hymn-like tone, befitting a song for a god.

Mothra has proven as successful a character as Godzilla himself. She's appeared in all three eras of eiga film, the original Showa series, the more recent Heisei era, starting in 1984, and the current "Millennium". She's also gotten her own spinoff series of films, known in the US as the "Rebirth" series. In them, Mothra is the sole protector of the Earth, and no other of the Toho monsters appear. She fights two different versions of monsters based on the popular villain King Ghidorah, but new monsters nevertheless. Mothra gets various forms in the films, more armored designs, one that can travel underwater, and even a male incarnation.

Glad she's on our side, but keep her away from your clothes!

Considering how fragile real moths and butterflies are, it's all the more surprising that a monster based on one would prove so resilient, appearing in more films than any other; in fact, Mothra just celebrated its 50th anniversary!