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Speaker 1 (00:03):
This episode of the Stuff to Blow Your Mind Radio
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Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is
(00:46):
Rob Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's finally time
on the Weird House Cinema podcast to cover the Thing. No,
not that the Thing, not the one you're thinking of,
the horror classic, the other the Thing, the Thing from
another world. Yes, uh this Uh. This is a film
(01:06):
that I had never seen prior to this week, and
I think part of it was because John carpenter two film.
The Thing is just this, this masterpiece of science fiction
and horror for so many of us. It's it's visceral
but intelligent. It's it's well acted, it's effectively scored, it
makes great use of sets and locations, and of course
just features a bounty of legendary and grotesque practical effects, totally,
(01:32):
without a doubt, an absolute masterpiece, one of the best
horror movies ever made. Can't say enough good stuff about
Carpenter's The Thing. Yeah, from from the effects to the
acting to the music, it's just it's pretty much pitch perfect.
But of course, one of the things we always have
to remind ourselves, especially perhaps if we're becoming getting a
little too judgmental about remakes and reboots and so forth,
(01:54):
is because I have to remind myself of this is
that John Carpenter's The Thing is also essentially a remake
or a reboot, if you will, based on the story
Who Goes There by John W. Campbell Jr. Um an
author from like the sci fi so called you know,
Pulp Golden Age, and Carpenter's film is the second official
(02:16):
adaptation of this story, but the first is the film
we're talking about here today, n The Thing from Another World.
I had also never seen this movie in full before,
though I had seen some scenes from it, and I
had seen it because it is briefly featured on a
television in John Carpenter's Halloween. Oh that's right, I forgot
(02:37):
about that. Yeah, one of the kids who's being babysat
is is watching it. I think he's I think maybe
he's not quite old enough for this movie. So this
is a film I've always known this was around. I
you know, at some point, after being exposed to Carpenter's
The Thing, I learned about this older version and maybe
I would even occasionally see it in the schedule or
(02:57):
catch part of it on like Turner Classic Movie vis
or something. But I never sat down and watched it. Uh.
And we'll get into some of the reasons why. But
basically they all rolled down to me thinking, oh, this this,
this film is a modern film. I don't want to
see this earlier like proto Thing vision. I'm gonna stick
with perfection. But then I was looking through Michael Weldon's
(03:21):
in the author of the Psychotronic Video and Film Guides.
I was looking at his right up on first on
John Carpenter's The Thing, which was glowing and you know,
and says, oh, you know, this is this is a
wonderful grotesque monsters film. Not surprised that he would he
would love that one. But of course Weldon is also
a fan of older genre films as well, and I
was reading this really high praise for this nineteen fifty
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one film, talking about it having intelligent dialogue and a
strong female lead, and so that that really got me thinking, well,
maybe I should give this a look. You know, the
strong female lead being sort of doubly interesting because on
one hand, it's nineteen fifty one, You don't you know
that you don't necessarily think of this being the of
this being the era of strong female leads. And then
(04:06):
also you think about John Carpenter's adaptation, and there are
no women in it at all. It's an entirely male cast. Yeah,
and Carpenter's version, the all male cast of characters somehow
fits the miserable bleakness of the Antarctic base in the movie.
But I would say that having watched it now, I
know what Michael Weldon is talking about, though um, I don't.
(04:27):
I think it might be slightly overselling Margaret Sheridan's role
in the movie, though she is fantastic and I really
like her character. She does a great job with it.
But I was expecting her to be the main character
of the movie based on this, which she is not.
But in her scenes she is great. Yeah, and we'll
we'll get into this a bit later. It basically comes
down to this idea of the Hawksian woman, and we'll
(04:48):
you'll find out what that means. But in terms of
differences between the Thing and the Thing from Another World,
I think we're sort of burying the lead because the
one major way in which the Thing from Another World
ninety one differs from Carpenter's movie is that the original
film does not involve impersonation. People who are familiar with
(05:11):
Carpenter's movie will remember the main thing about it is
that the alien can assume the forms of the humans
or the animals that it kills. So it is this uh,
this polymorphous being that can that can sort of uh
sample the tissue of an organism it comes into contact with,
and then make its own body into a copy of
(05:33):
that being, which is a wonderful plot device. The central
mechanic of of Carpenter's movie gives rise to the paranoia
that doesn't really exist in the original or maybe there
is a kind of sense of paranoia, but it's powered
by different factors that I want to discuss in more
detail as we go on. But in this movie, the
Thing is simply a big, hulking alien that thaws out
(05:55):
of a block of ice and then attacks the base
where where all the characters are stationed. It doesn't assume
the form of anyone if you're actually able to get
a good look at it, which you're not really in
the movie, And in fact, that's a really good thing
about the movie. The movie obscures the form of the
monster for for most of the runtime in a highly
effective way. But if you were able to get a
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really good, well lit, uh gander at it, it just
looks kind of like James r. Ness in a big
creepy Frankenstein makeup and space suit. Yeah. And this was
a huge reason why I had never checked out the
film before, because I'd see that that famous publicity shot
of James Arnez in the Thing costume, and I would think, well,
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that that looks kind of lame. I don't really want
to see a movie about that, especially when John Carpenter's
version of it is this amorphous, ultimately formless thing that
takes on just a number of just grotesque and shifting forms. Yeah.
And in fact, I mean I've said this on the
show before. I think one big mistake a lot of
horror movies make is letting you get two of a
(07:00):
look at the monster. I mean, horror movies should be
sparing in in letting you see the monster. Is it's good,
it's good to heighten the tension and make it more
mysterious by usually keeping the monster off screen. I'd say
Carpenters the Thing is a movie that breaks that rule
to great effect. You get tons of great shots of
the monster and it looks fantastic. So you know, if
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you're the kind of the thing about rules with artistic
media is is you have to obey the rule unless
it's just really good anyway. Um, but but yeah, I
know what you're talking about. With the way the monster
looks in this movie. This is a major thing I
wanted to talk about. I was shocked how scary the
creature was in this movie. H And I really mean that,
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like movies of this era are I I really appreciate them,
but they're rarely viscerally disturbing on a visual level to
modern audiences. And that's not a knock on them. And
in fact, like at the time, they might have had
people fainting in the aisles, are falling out of their
cars that drive in, but makeup effects from before roughly
(08:05):
the I don't know. The seventies or so, I think
rarely pack a strong punch with audiences today, we've just
sort of standards have been updated, and so even if
the way Boris Karloff looked in his Frankenstein makeup was
was terrifying to people at the time, I think it
looks beautiful. I think it looks amazing. I love to
look at it, but I don't find it really really terrifying.
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And I would say that the baseline monster in this
movie is no exception to that rule that if you
just look at the makeup effects of the time, they're
usually not going to pack a very strong punch. If
you look at well lit still photographs of of James Arness,
the the actor who plays the monster in the Thing,
in his alien makeup and costume for the movie, I
(08:48):
think he looks goobery. He just looks kind of like
a like an EGA guy. He looks like Frankenstein, sort
of in a in a in a space, in a jumpsuit,
and yet somehow on the screen, within the narrative, he
is so much more than that. This is a movie
monster that benefits immensely from really strong staging, lighting and
(09:08):
camera work. More so than makeup effects. So most of
the time you see the monster in the movie, his
appearances sudden or brief or obscured in some way. So
maybe the characters are looking out at him through frosted
glass on a snow field, or he or somebody opens
a door and he suddenly reaches out through it as
they try to slam it shut, or he's just a
(09:30):
menacing silhouette at the end of the corridor, you know,
and his features are covered in shadow. So really hats
off to the team that came up with the staging
for all these scenes and the lighting and the framing
and all that, because even though the makeup effects kind
of fall short, the monster on screen within the narrative
looks wonderful. He's really frightening. Absolutely, Like, for instance, in
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the movie, you never get a sense that this character
is wearing partially ragged space pajamas, but if you look
at the still, you're like, those are space pajamas, clearly. Yeah. Yeah,
So they took a kind of goober Frankenstein and turned
him into this truly menacing being really excellent excellent filmmaking technique. Well,
I'd like to get into this more. Let's go ahead
(10:13):
and just give give the basic elevator pitch of the plot,
especially for people who you know, did they just know
the Carpenter version. They maybe don't know how much in
common this one has with that film, aside from the
details of the monster. Okay, well, maybe I'll do the
straight elevator pitch first, and then we'll see if we
have any variations on it. The straight plot description, I
(10:34):
would say is a mysterious object from space crashes near
a remote Arctic research base. When a team of scientists
and military men go to investigate, they find a humanoid
body frozen in the ice, and they have to bring
it back to the base with them, And I guess
you just better hope it doesn't throw out. I like that.
(10:55):
Let's let's go ahead and listen to a little bit
of that trailer audio. M the thing from another world.
This is the spot where it was first seen. And
these are the first people who saw the thing. How
did it get here? Where did it come from? What
(11:19):
is it that people that I saw it? I shot
it and and I hit it. I know it. Nothing happened
to a clear, immediate noise like I can't hear. Captain.
It was awful. You could see those hands and those eyes,
and you've got it to tell me about it? You can't.
Is it human or inhuman? Earthly or unearthly? Baffling questions,
(11:39):
astounding questions that not even the world's greatest scientific minds
can answer. Gentlemen, do you realize what we've found being
from another world is different from us, is one pole
from the other if we can only communicate with it?
All right? So I want to come back to something
you were just talking about, and that was the idea
(12:00):
of doors opening. So yes, the the research base in
this movie feels it's more or less in keeping with
the spirit that Carpenter had in his version of the film.
You know, there are these a lot of these long corridors,
their doorways, separating different sections of it. Everything feel it
doesn't feel supermodern. It feels very very rough in places.
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There's this idea that outside of this compound there's just
frozen death awaiting any creature, and it's inside that we
have this slim, artificial version of of life, sustaining temperatures.
And that makes actually for a killer twist later in
the movie where you haven't even really been thinking about
this while they're coming up all these different ways of
(12:44):
battling the thing. The thing is sort of laying siege
to the humans in the base, and then at a
certain point they're like, oh no, somebody turned off the heaters. Yeah.
So it's a wonderful set piece in which to engage
with this monster. But one of the things that it's
I was really taken by watching it it's just how
scary all the doors are. There's a lot of characters
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going in and out of doors in this film, often
very quickly, and even before a monster the monster jumped
out from behind a door, I was feeling anxious whenever
a door would open like it was it was really effective. Uh.
And then eventually a monster is coming out from behind
the door, and there's worry about things jumping out from
behind doors. I don't think doors have ever been quite
(13:28):
this scary. Percent agree, Yeah, this movie does something really
special with like portals, openings, doors, windows. It's it's really good. Also,
lots of scenes where like the door to the outside
has been opened, and you know there's a sense of
all that that crushing cold coming in. So it works
on several levels. I think since we're not going to
do a scene by scene breakdown, on this one, I
(13:48):
guess to make more sense for people who haven't seen
especially either movie, it it might make sense to do
a quick, fuller rundown on the plot. So the basic
cast of characters is that you have a journalist and
then a group of of military commanders who fly by
plane up to a remote Arctic research base where there
is some scientific research going on. And then, like I
(14:11):
said in the elevator pitch earlier, there is a crash
of some kind of object near the base, and the
scientists and the soldiers go out to investigate it and
it looks like what they have encountered as a crashed
flying saucery crash daily and spacecraft, and then they're frozen
in the ice on the ice field is a humanoid figure.
So they chip that they dig that out of the
(14:32):
ice with with ice axes and with thermite. This movie
as a big fan of thermite, of course, and the
the thermite thing kind of goes wrong. I think they
end up sort of melting the ship by accident while
they're trying to get it up out of the ice.
But they do get this body out of the ice
and they bring it back to the base and then
through a series of mishaps, this body and a chunk
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of ice is accidentally thought out, and what they come
to discover is that this is a being from another
planet that is not an animal, but is in fact
an animated vegetable. They they sort of explore the alternative
evolutionary history of this creature and say, what if plant
life on Earth had evolved the ability to move quickly
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and have intelligence and and uh and and have a
have a mobile body instead of animal life and and
so uh and so that's sort of what we're dealing with.
And there's a lot of discussion about the creatures mindset
toward humans. It apparently needs to consume us, it wants
to drink our blood, but it doesn't have any uh,
it doesn't really have any remorse for us or understanding
(15:37):
of us as fellow creatures. Instead, as as one character
so eloquently puts it, he regards us the same way
we would regard a field of cabbages. Yeah. Yeah, this
idea that the dog is just like the short, furry
blood container, and then the humans are just the larger,
hairless blood containers and it just needs the blood. It's
(15:59):
just calories. Yeah. Yeah. But so within this plot, a
number of interesting themes emerge, and and maybe we can
talk more about those as we go on. But I
guess here's where we typically get into some of the
people involved in this and talk about some connections. Now, Rob,
(16:21):
you might have read more about the production of this
film than I did. I'm to understand. I think there's
some uh disagreement or confusion about what the level of control,
like who who basically was in charge of making this movie?
Who was the director, and what was their relative level
of control. Yeah, there's there's there's kind of it's kind
(16:42):
of an open question or in a matter of debate
that will probably never be fully settled, especially since I
think everybody involved with this film or most of them
have have passed on um. But the basic situation, I'm
going to talk about who is the credited director first?
So the credited director on this is Christian Nibe, who
(17:03):
lived nineteen thirteen through nineteen He is a TV and
film director who served as editor on such films as
Howard Hawks nineteen forty six adaptation of The Big Sleep. Uh.
This had Humphrey Bogart in it, and William Faulkner actually
co scripted this adaptation of the Raymond Chandler Philip Marlow novel,
(17:25):
which is a really good novel by the way. Interesting
I've actually never read it. However, this film, The Thing
from Another World is nibies. It was his first directorial credit.
It's easily the biggest film, or at least biggest you know,
the most well remembered film, uh, that he did, although
he worked an entire career afterwards as a TV director
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up until the mid nineteen seventies. Okay, so Nibe is
credited as the director of the film, but for some reason,
I've always heard this described as having been directed by
Howard Hawks, who, of course is an acclaimed filmmaker of
the time. So what's the with that? Okay, So Howard Hawks,
who we just alluded to, had had worked with Nibe
ninety was his his editor. Um So, Hawks was also
(18:09):
known as the Silver Fox, and if you look at
pictures of you can see why, you know, dashing sort
of silver looking here, I guess, directs like somebody who
would be in like a whiskey Scotch commercial on TV
in the fifties or something. Absolutely and the dashing character
and director of such films as Red River, Rio Bravo two, Scarface,
(18:30):
El Dorado, and Hatari, as well as the aforementioned The
Big Sleep. He was nominated for an Academy Award for
nineteen forty two Sergeant York, and he receives an Honorary
Academy Award in nineteen seventy four. He's considered a legend
of the classic Hollywood era. And while he was not
the credited director or the credited co writer on The
(18:52):
Thing from Another World, UM, you'll often see look like,
for instance, you'll see him listed on IMDb is uncredited director,
uncredited writer. Um. Basically, various accounts indicate that he was
the director, and he, for some reason or another, let
Christian Nibe take the directing credit, which again would be
(19:13):
his first. John Carpenter, among others, have echoed this view. However,
various other folks, including some people involved with the actual
production of the film, have said otherwise. And they say, no,
Nibe was the director. So ultimately, you know, how can
you say one way or the other. It does seem
like Hawks greatly valued Nibe, and and it said that
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Nibe was an instrumental editor in many of his films.
So it's been argued that perhaps Hawks thought that sci
fi was beneath him and didn't want his name on it,
and or he gave the credit to Nive so that
he could get into the director's guild, you know, like like,
let's you go ahead and put your name on this
film and this will help your career. Um, It's it's
(19:55):
hard to say what exactly was going on here, but
I doubt we're going to get a a a definite
answer on it ever. But it does not say, I
want to stress though, I've seen no accounts that indicate
that this was some sort of this was a situation
of animosity or like one director being replaced. We often
see that in this in production stories where this guy,
(20:16):
this guy's on the outs bringing this guy no. It
seems like something else was going on here. Um, and uh,
you know, if anything, it was probably Hawks helping out Nybe.
Or it's just been a situation where Hawks was involved
in the production and Nybee was still the director, and
maybe people were were more inclined to give Hawks more
credit than than he perhaps deserved for it. I mean,
(20:39):
I don't know, I don't know what the answer is here. Sure,
I guess we'll have to leave that one sort of unanswered.
That being said, folks that are familiar with Hawks, they
do point to various things about this film that have
his fingerprints on it. So and you you can of
course explain that, explain. You can explain that away a
bit by saying, well, Hawks and Ibi worked together so much.
(21:00):
You know, they had similar interests, they worked together to
make these previous films. So who knows. We're not going
to reach an answer today. Well, I will emphasize yet
again that I think, pretty much across the board in
terms of technical filmmaking, this is an excellently made movie,
especially for science fiction films at the time. I mean,
they're there are definitely things that you can criticize about it,
(21:22):
and we will as kind of kind of like quaint
or products of their era, But a lot of that's
in the actual sort of story content. In terms of
a technical exercise and filmmaking, I think the Thing from
Another World just is awesome for nineteen fifty one. Absolutely. Yeah.
If you're hesitant to watch this just because it is
an early nineteen fifties film, um, just know that it
(21:43):
is in many ways ahead of its time. Alright, So
we mentioned already that this was based on a short
story based on a short story by John W. Campbell Jr.
Who lived nineteen nineteen through nineteen seventy one. Pulp era
sci fi writer and editor of Astounding Science Fiction, and
he wrote numerous short stories and several novels, though Who
Goes There? The story that this is based on is
(22:06):
perhaps his best remembered, and I believe it was recently
re released in an expanded form, like they went back
to an old manuscript, and there's there's stuff in that
original manuscript that in some cases is actually president in
the film version, but not in the original story, if
if I'm correct on that. Now, having read only a
little bit about Campbell, it seems to me that his
life sort of breaks into a couple of different parts.
(22:28):
That like, early on, it seems like most of what
you read about him is that he's just sort of
like an output machine, like he's just writing tons and
tons of very influential science fiction and editing tons of
people and like cultivating the early careers of a lot
of people who would become later science fiction writers. And
then it seems like the other half is that he
(22:49):
descends into increasingly bizarre interest in pseudoscience and right wing politics. Yeah, Yeah,
that's that seems to be the case of you know,
some in accounts ink that he could always be a
bit of a blowhard and would was prone to just
talk a lot, like if you were going to go
in and chat with him about anything he was, you
were going to get a monologue. But yeah, in life,
(23:11):
he apparently increasingly aspounded ideas that did not set well
with more progressive sci fi authors of his time, such
as Isaac asm Of. Yeah, the main things I've seen
picked out are increasing interest in hard right politics and
then like belief in like psychic powers and stuff, and
being uh into sort of the dionetics nexus of of
(23:32):
alternative psychiatry. Yeah. Plus, I was reading about him in
a two thousand nineteen piece in The New York Times
by Peter Libby about the renaming of a science fiction
writing award that had been named for Campbell and how
they changed it because for and the reason was it
like Campbell supported racial segregation during his life, and he
(23:55):
aspounded numerous racist and inflammatory viewpoints like the a kind
of guy who would not only hold the whole hold
like it was a racist viewpoints but also would like
seemed to go the extra step and just trying to
rile people up and shock people with his opinions. So um,
so yeah, that's that. That is John W. Campbell Jr.
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Now do you know if Campbell does he have any
involvement with the film or was it just that he
wrote the story and then it was adapted to a
screenplay with without his involvement. I don't know the details
of his his involvement, but I know that he's He's
not credited with any screenwriting credits on this um. Instead,
we have the credited screenwriter is Charles Letterer, who lived
(24:38):
nineteen eleven through nineteen seventy six. This is a This
is somebody who's a screenwriter on Hawks as Gentleman preferred
Blond's as well as the original Oceans eleven in nineteen
sixty That was that was not a Hawks film, but
just another credit for Letterer here. Uh. There's also an
uncredited writer listed on IMDb, Ben Hesched, who lives lived
(25:00):
through nineteen sixty four. And this is a guy who
also worked with Hawks writer on Scarface as well as
Alfred Hitchcock's film Notorious. Now, I guess we're about to
talk about the cast a little bit, and uh, again,
I will say, as great as this movie is, one
of the top criticisms I would lodge about it is
it has way way too many characters, way too many characters.
(25:24):
This movie could have had seven or eight characters at
the base, I think, and achieve the same factional dynamics. Instead,
it has like thirty seven characters as way too many.
I could not keep track of who was who among
the minor characters, you know, I could recognize like like
three or four people, and then everybody else. I was
just getting mixed up. Oh yeah, Like you're immediately just
(25:45):
thrown into a cast of a very interchangeable looking like
clean cut white military guys, and and you're just scrambling
to figure out for a little bit, because again the
writing is really tight on this thing. You've pretty quickly
figure out who you're main character is, and you can
sort of tell who matters and who doesn't. But there
are a lot of they are a fair number of
characters on the screen who ultimately don't matter, and they're
(26:07):
they're not even there to be cannon fodder for the
monster or anything. Right, Like, most everybody survives this thing.
I think the monster only kills like two or three people, right, yeah. Yeah.
So if you you see this many people and you're like, oh,
it's gonna be a blood bath. No, no, it's it's
not even the smaller teams like Team Science. We'll get
get into that in a bit. But they were like
(26:28):
three characters that stood out. Well, there were two that
were important characters, one who stood out and two that
we're just interchangeably in the background. Yeah, so maybe we
should talk about the actor playing our hero. All right,
this is Kenneth Toby playing Captain Patrick Hendry. Patrick Hendry. Uh,
this is our hero. This is the all American lug.
(26:50):
He is a handsome, blonde man of action who holds
his liquor. He thinks fast, and he brooks. No sympathy
for blood sucking aliens or any such an nonsense. Yeah, yeah,
he's Uh. It doesn't take long to realize this guy's
our lead. Um, he's an interesting actor. The two twenty
three acting credits on IMDb. Um. I'm not sure if
(27:12):
I gave his dates yet, nineteen seventeen through two thousand
and two. Uh he he. In his later career, oh,
he played air controller new Bauer in nineteen eighties Airplane
the the parody film, but back in the day. He
was in nineteen fifty five. It came from Beneath the Sea.
And he has quite a few interesting cameos and uncredited bits,
(27:34):
especially from later in his life, including playing a hologram
priest and hell Raiser Bloodline. He was a projectionist in
Grimlins too. He had another cameo in Gremlins playing a
different character. He was in Big Top Peewee, he was
in The Howling, he was in Inner Space. You know,
I'll say, I think he very much fits the mold
of a leading man character of these nineteen fifties sci
(27:57):
fi movies, where the leading character is often just the
this kind of lug this uh you know, macho cigarette
ad man. But but you know what, he's good. He's
good with this role. Yeah. Yeah, And it seems to
be the like he was in a lot of stuff
before these, uh, these more recent films I'm naming here.
But what seems to be the case is that he
(28:18):
had a long career, so he was still active by
the nineteen eighties. But also he was he was in
the Thing from Another World. He was part of this, uh,
this era of TV that this new generation of directors
had grown up on. So you see folks like Joe
Dante using him a lot. John Carpenter used him in Um,
I want to say star man. Uh So you know
(28:40):
they look back and they're like, this is the star
of the thing from another world. If if he if
he's looking for work, I want to I want to
put him in my film. Have him. I'll just give
him a cameo something. Let's get him on the screen.
I just want to be in his presence. Now we
mentioned that in this movie he's a ruggedly handsome lug.
He is also the love interest of Margaret Sheridan and
this movie playing a character named Nicki Nicholson. Is that right? Yep? Yeah.
(29:05):
So Sheridan's interesting. She lived through two Hawks apparently discovered
her while she was still in college, and Hawks was
just convinced that this that this was going to be
the next big start, that she was like a once
in a generation talent. So he wanted to cast her
in ninety eight Red River, that's the Hawks film, but
apparently she was pregnant at the time. She passed on it,
(29:27):
and she she ended up being in this film, which
you know, depending on you know, whether Hawks directed it
or not. It's it's still very much a Hawks film,
you know. Um, but her career ultimately didn't take off
quite like Hawks had imagined it. She was in uh
five more films, and she did some TV, but this
is the one she's best remembered for. Um. Other credits
(29:51):
include nineteen fifty three's I've a Jury in nineteen fifty
four's The Diamond Wizard. I like that name. It's a
cool name. I think I looked at it. I think
maybe it's a diamond heist kind of a film. So
nothing that stands out to modern viewers perhaps so much. Well,
Margaret Sheridan is wonderful in this movie. She she has
such a rye jolly energy. I love the way that
(30:13):
she so when Kenneth Toby's uh talking and she's got
scenes with him, I love the way she's constantly either
kind of laughing at him or visibly trying to hold
back laughter while he's speaking. There's something kind of powerful
and almost kind of threatening about the way she just
laughs at him. But and I love it. But then
also it's very clear that she does like him. Uh So, Yeah,
(30:35):
she's got a wonderful screen presence. Yeah, you can see
what Hawk saw in her. She she has this great
energy and and the role is is really good for
a really well written for n one. Uh. You know,
she's not a damsel in distress. Um, she's not a
film fatale. Uh you know, she is this this strong,
capable professional woman in this you know, outrageous scenario. Um
(31:00):
and uh and she you know, stands toe to toe
with with her male counterparts in the film. And this
is where we get to to something that was apparently
one of hawks trademarks. And I have to admit I
haven't seen any other Howard Hawks film, so I can't
really speak to this personally, but apparently in film theory
this is known as the Hawksian woman, an archetype of sort.
Uh you know, a tough talking or fast talking woman
(31:23):
that converbally spar with male counterparts. And that's certainly something
we see in this in this role his girl Friday. Yeah, yeah,
I guess so. Um. You know. It's not to say,
I want to be clear, it's not like there are
no nineteen fifty sensibilities uh, in the in this character
or in the film entirely, but I feel like it's
(31:43):
it's a shockingly strong role for a film from this
time period. Certainly a genre film. Yeah, so far we've
spoken about two characters in depth here uh and uh,
and Nikki is very much on team science and and
(32:05):
Toby is is one of the military men you off
Mike here, you have talked about this film essentially being
about jocks versus nerds. Oh, totally. Yeah, this is a
jocks versus nerds movie, though there's some crossover because ultimately,
I would I would say that while Margaret Sheridan is
playing a scientist, she her real loyalties are more on
(32:26):
the jock side. She's with the military military guys in
the end. But yeah, this is a this is a
movie in which the jocks the military represent tough common
sense and the nerds the scientists represent an unhealthy and
ill advised curiosity, you know, a mind that is a
(32:46):
little too open for its own good. And this brings
us to the next character that that we wanted to
talk about in the actor who plays him, and that's
if this movie has a human villain, this is the
human villain. This is doctor Carrington. I would say he
is the main figure in the movie representing the villainous
potential of the nerds among us. He's so curious to
(33:10):
know more about the life forms from other worlds that
he forgets his loyalty to this one. And I think
this is a good jumping off point to talk about
some of the historical political context of the film. Uh So,
I want to be clear, I do not know if
it was intended this way by the filmmakers. This could
be something that is just an artifact of interpretation. But
(33:32):
it's easy to see how this has been interpreted as
a Cold war paranoia movie. You know, it was released
early during the Second Red Scare, and it involves sort
of comy coded intellectuals who betray their loyalty to the
home team in a spirit of suicidal interplanetary cosmopolitanism. So
(33:55):
Dr Carrington there's something kind of off about him in
his aesthetics. He dresses in these strange slacks that look
I don't I'm not sure what they were. They look
kind of like pajama pants with a strange pattern on them.
And he wears a turtleneck sweater and a double breasted jacket,
and he has a pointy beard, so he looks almost
like the classic Looney Tunes caricature of the Freudian psychiatrist.
(34:18):
You know, what I'm talking about. He looks like the
the archetype of an untrustworthy, godless intellectual, like somebody that
John Wayne would slug in the mouth and big Jim McClain,
Yeah like almost like like a stereotypical communist sympathizer intellectual
of the day. Yeah. Yeah. There are a number of
(34:39):
sci fi movies of this time interpreted as Cold War
paranoia movies, and they tend to feature plot devices of
either one of two mechanisms, either mind control or body snatching.
And what this means is that you end up with
enemies who look like your friends and neighbors, but secretly
they're working for the other side. And you can see
(35:01):
examples of this in the nineteen fifty six Invasion of
the Body Snatchers, the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
There was a remake in uh in seventy eight that
I think is absolutely fantastic. If you've never seen the
seventy eight version, that that's another remake from I guess
a few years before, but around the same time as
as Carpenter's Thing remake. That is a remake that is
(35:21):
at least as good as the original, and probably better.
I've never seen the seventies remake. I've only seen the
nineteen fifty six version, which as a child like scared
the crap out of me at bet. It's something about
just the black and white nature of it and just
how just frenzied Kevin McCarthy's character is towards the end,
like he's just completely losing it with Uh, it's not
(35:44):
even paranoia in the context of the film, because people
are being replaced by pod people and he's the like,
the only sane man left trying to warn us. Well,
you really should see the seventy eight Body Snatchers because
it's also just fantastic. It's it's got a great cast,
Donald Sutherland, Brooke, Adam Veronica Cartwright, Jeff Goldblum, Leonard Nimoy,
there are Yeah, it's a wonderful cast and and excellently scripted,
(36:07):
like really good. So. But anyway, in those cases, especially
the original fifty six invasion of the Body Snatchers, because
it's in this sort of red scare period of the
fifties after World War Two. Um, it's it fits into
this mold. You've got people who look like your friends,
but actually they work for the enemy, and on the
Hammy or b movie side of things, You've also got
movies like it Conquered the World, which I think you
(36:29):
could say the same thing about also came out in
nineteen fifty six, a Corman special Roger Corman, And how
would you describe it Conquered the World. It's a movie
where like a giant communist mind control artichoke from Venus
conquers a military base in a nearby town by like
making a brain thrawl out of Levan Cleef. Yeah, it's
an interesting film. It has has a ridiculous monster in it,
(36:52):
but a lot of it revolves around um, around Peter
graves is character having these conversations with Levan Cliff's character,
kind of like it just a philosophical arguments about how
we should be treating the aliens that are invading the world,
you know with Lee Van Cliffe, Uh, you know, since
he tends to play the more villainous roles though he's
(37:12):
not really an outright villain and not an unsympathetic villain
in this um he comes through in the end. Yeah,
he comes through in the end, but he also seems
to be he has a very logic based approach to everything,
uh into why he is essentially siding with the aliens
um And that's kind of the heart of it, Like
the the the alien threat exists, and it's about how
are we as a as a as a as a
(37:34):
culture responding to it, and are we engaging in dangerous
um sensibilities and dangerous ideas regarding the treatment of alien beings.
Will we learn only too late that man is a
feeling creature, right, And that's a big that's a big
theme in all of these, right, the idea that this
this dangerous ideology or you know, or alien presence, whatever
(37:57):
the infection happens to be, it will rob you of
your individuality. You're just going to be made into You'll
be a pod person, You'll be uh, you know, or
whatever the thing is. You're going to be robbed of
your individuality and your personality. And that this alien persuasion,
this alien frame of mind, or the sympathies to the
enemy are not visible from the outside, right, that the enemy,
(38:18):
whether it's mind control or body snatching, either way, the
effect is the same, which is that the enemy is
among us, blending in, you know. And and this is
very much in the political spirit of the age. It's like,
you know, McCarthy speech when he stood up in nineteen
fifty and he said he had a list of Communist
spies who were secretly working in the State Department, as
(38:39):
they're just blending in with everybody else. And and so
the main mood or theme of these movies, a little
bit less than outright terror, is instead paranoia. Right. It's
this thing of like who can I trust? Who is
not what they seem? And there's an irony here because
I think Carpenter's adaptation of the Thing accomplishes this theme
(39:00):
of paranoia much more powerfully than the original Thing from
Another World, even though I don't think Carpenter's version has
any of that red scare political DNA, I don't. I
don't think that's it's concerned with that at all. It's
just sort of like more free floating paranoia. And I
think it accomplishes that because specifically it involves an alien
who impersonates people who can look like your coworkers, and
(39:23):
you wouldn't know it was actually an alien until you
test their blood. Unlike this movie, instead of having somebody
who's an alien body snatcher or someone under alien mind control,
it has just the suspect loyalties of the scientists and
the intellectual because they're hungry for knowledge and they're open
minded to a fault, and because and because of that,
(39:45):
they will flirt with dangerous forces from outside the zone
of safety. And that's who that's the role that Dr Carrington,
this character plays in the movie. And for the record,
the actor Robert Corinthwaite is great in this role. I
love him as the god less, untrustworthy nerd. Yeah, he's
pretty great, even even though at times, yeah, it feels
like they're laying out a bit thick with him. But
(40:07):
oh yeah, yeah, it's a little cheesy. Yeah, because he said,
he's like, everyone else is like this, this thing is
murdering people in his drinking blood. And he's like, yes,
but I think we should reason with it. There's so
much we could learn from this murderous carrot u And
even right up there at the end, you know, they're
they're trying to lure it into a high tech trap
to shock it to death, and he's like, wait, let
(40:27):
me speak to the creature. It must not be heard,
you know, And we get to see the nerd get
punished for his foolishness. You know, he's so naive that
he thinks he can, he can form a relationship with
the alien, you know, unlike he doesn't have the rough
common sense of the of the captain in the army
who's like, well, you just gotta kill this thing. Um.
So he gets smacked down. I think they say that
(40:51):
he survives. I think they say that he just ends
up with some broken bones, broken bones, in a wounded spirit.
But perhaps he'll he'll Now he knows that he shouldn't,
he shouldn't put science first. So this actor Um karnth Waite.
He was born in nineteen seventeen died in two thousand
and six. He did a lot of TV and film
(41:13):
work throughout his long career, including Future World, that was
the one of the sequels to West World. He was
in nineteen fifty threes, War of the World's nineteen sixty
two is whatever Happened to Baby Jane. He was in
The Ghost and Mr Chicken and that we don't know
the ghost of Mr Chicken. I do not know the
Ghost just like it was a Don Nots comedy, Okay,
(41:34):
I think I I saw it a lot as a
kid for some reason. But anyway, this actor was on.
It was on tons of famous TV shows, from the
old day stuff like Andy Griffith, Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Um.
This was his first credited film or TV acting gig, though,
and he he often played lawyers and scientists because he
had that kind of like intellectual air, you know, that
intellectual delivery that that lent itself well to those roles.
(41:57):
Maybe a nasal voice and a point he eard and
you just look at that guy and you're like, I
don't I don't know if I can trust him now.
We also have a very amusing journalist character who has
a lot of screen time. It's our character Ned Scott,
and I enjoyed this character a lot because he's he's
very stereotypical in many ways, but is so well written,
(42:19):
has a lot of snappy dialogue, fast talking journalist, has
some extremely cheesy lines. He he gives the final the
final speech at the end of the movie. So this
movie's version of the he learned too late that man
is a feeling creature is instead him like talking over
the military radio to I don't know, some command post
and like dictating a news story off the top of
(42:42):
his head. It starts off with some line like, uh, well,
thousands of years ago a man named Noah save the
Earth with an arc made of wood. Today with a
man named Captain Whatever saved the Earth with an arc
of electricity. Yeah, yeah, greatly great lead, ned really really good. Uh.
The interesting thing about that ending with the keep watching
(43:03):
the skies is I sometimes having never seen it before,
but but being familiar with that ending line. I kind
of combined that knowledge with the ending to um Invasion
of the Body Snatchers, where there's like a crazed urgency
to it, and there's no crazed urgency here. He's not like,
for God's sake, keep watching the skies because this is
(43:24):
gonna happen again and again. He's just kind of like
in generally saying, keep watching the skies just in case,
I don't know, there might be who knows, Just keep
watching the sky. Watch those guys, keep watching them. Anyway, This,
this character though very amusing Ned Scott um Uh. He
was played by Douglas Spencer, who of nineteen ten through
nineteen sixties, so you know, ultimately didn't it didn't have
(43:47):
his long career as um as he could have given it.
His His life was a bit cut short there. But
he was in, among other things, this Island Earth, The
Diary of Anne Frank, and the classic Western Shane And
speaking of what Western's, let's talk about Team Monster here.
Oh boy, now you mentioned already the James Arnez plays
the Monster, and it is indeed James Arnez lived through
(44:09):
two thousand and eleven. This is the guy that's mostly
mostly well known and well remembered for for one or
two things. First of all, he played the lead character
Matt Dillon on the long running gun Smoke Western TV show.
That show aired nineteen fifty five through nine seventy five
and then was just always uh in syndication afterwards. It
(44:30):
seems like I remember my grandpa would watch it like
every day on TV. I've never seen gun Smoke. I
really don't know anything about it. I mean, I know,
I don't think I ever actively watched it, because I
mean I was a kid. I wasn't interested in in
gun Smoke so much. But it was on and he
was like a you know, cowboy sheriff or whatnot. And
he's like, let me guess, is he the new sheriff
who's comes into a lawless town and has to fix everything?
(44:53):
I guess, But it's I mean, the show ran for
like twenty years, so you think he'd get into a
pattern there after watch that. People would be like, you've
had fifteen years to fix this town and it's still lawless. Yeah,
Like does he have to run for re election? How
does it work? I don't know, gunsmoke fans let us know. Um.
But it wasn't just Western's for James Arnaz. He was
also a nineteen fifty four Is Them a Giant Bug movie?
(45:16):
Have you seen this one? Actually? Shame to say no,
I have not. I know it's a classic. The other
interesting thing about James ar Nez is that he was
born James king our Nest and he was the older
brother of a guy by the name of Peter Doosler
ar Ness who acted under the name Peter Graves. I
(45:37):
just mentioned, Yeah, so this is Peter graves brother. So
you could have literally had a brother to brother conversation
about how you learned too late that man is a
feeling creature. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting though, I mean this
is often the case with siblings, right, I mean, this
is nothing remarkable, But you don't think of James r
Ness and Peter Graves as being is playing the same
(45:57):
source of characters there's like a there's a ruggedness to
James Arnez, like he's just always going to be that cowboy.
And Peter Graves, on the other hand, often played these
more you know, these thoughtful characters that sometimes villainous, but
there's like a sternness to that is just sternness of
both actors. But I don't know Peter Graves different type
of roles. I can't imagine them ever, like competing for
(46:19):
the same character and in being like the same character.
If if either of them played it, well, if it
had been Peter Graves as the thing from another world,
I don't know, you know, I wonder. I don't know
if Peter Graves ever played a monster. He might have
early in his career, and I'd have to I'd have
to go through his filmography. Now another going back to
(46:46):
Team Science, there's one guy that stood out to me.
I was just gonna, you know, skip over all the
rest of them. But there's a character by the name
of doctor Stern. Did he stand out to you, Joe,
I don't remember which one he was. Wait, was he
one of the scientists who had black hair? He was, no,
he well, he might have had black hair. He was
tallish and and was I had kind of like a
(47:07):
subdued but seemed like thoughtful delivery and had some good
lines here and there. Um played by this actor by
the name of Edward Franz. He lived through three again,
not a main character, but his screen presence impressed me,
so I thought i'd include him here. A stern faced
character actor whose mini credits include The Ten Commandments. Um.
(47:29):
He was in Hatari Johnny got his Gun and also
he was in Twilight Zone the movie. So the sequence
with the you know about the monster and the wing
of the plane was John lithcow Uh. Edward Franz plays
the old man on the flight. Okay, now I just
looked him up. I do remember him, but I don't
remember what he did in the movie. In just in
(47:54):
some of the science conversations, he kind of was a
voice of reason in and skepticism. I kind of I
liked his presence there Again, the dialogue is is pretty
tight and in in this uh, in this movie and
uh and and even like bit characters like like him,
he has a chance to shine. Okay, one more actor
I want to include, and that's Uh. The character the
(48:16):
character Dr Vorhes was played by this guy Paul Free
who lived nineteen twenty through nineteen eighty six. And I'm
including him because he had a long career as a
voice actor, so he played a radio reporter in the
World of the Worlds. He did several voices and the
animated The Last Unicorn. Other credits include The Wind and
the Willows, Uh, the animated version of The Return of
(48:37):
the King and the Hobbit. Then also just various ranking
and bass holiday specials. And then finally we'll get to
the music here. The music was provided by Dmitri Tiomkin,
who lived eight four through nineteen seventy nine. The music
in this film is largely what you'd expect from the
time period, but um, this Russian born composer, it was
(49:00):
a major name during this era. Here in twenty two
Academy Award nominations and won four oscars um and most
notably for this film. Again it's it's very standard and
a lot of brass in it, but you do hear
the theoreman from time to time to provide a little
bit of sci fi intrigue. Um. And I've seen this
(49:20):
score singled out as one of the works that helped
cement the electronic musical instruments place in sci fi cinema.
The other big one was The Day the Earth Stood Still,
scored by Bernard Herman. Oh that so that's interesting. I
didn't realize that these two movies came out the same year,
The Thing from Another World and The Day the Earth
Stood Still, And I think it would also be interesting
(49:41):
to kind of compare them. I haven't seen The Day
the Earth Stood Still nearly as recently, but I would
say that The Thing from Another World is probably a
much better movie, just on a technical level in terms
of like how how effective and scary, like the shots
and the horror and everything is in it. But it
I think The Day the Earth Stood Still is probably
(50:02):
a more thematically interesting movie. Yeah. Yeah, I think they're
both examples of sort of you know, the high minded
early nineteen fifties sci fi film um and this was
in an era where, I the genre films of this
caliber were not generally elevated at that level. They certainly
weren't getting nominated for Academy Awards and so forth. But
(50:24):
you know what should have been nominated for an Academy
Award is the opening title of The Thing from God,
absolutely ballistic. Best Opening title I've ever seen. Probably of
course it inspired I think some things that came afterward,
But it's the one where it starts with, you know,
the black screen and then you just see the word
(50:45):
thing lettered in a large, jagged script that burns through
a black sheet like it's been like like spelled in kerosene,
and then set ablaze. Absolutely amazing. I love it, and
I imagine Carpenter loved it as well, because they didn't
they basically recreate the same title card for that decision
(51:06):
where burning through the screen. It's it's beautiful. I have
no idea how they did it. It's beautiful. Though. There's
another thing before we wrap up that I wanted to
talk about with this movie, which is that it has
uh interesting dialogue. So this film has what you might
call naturalistic dialogue or overlapping dialogue. So maybe there are
(51:26):
other examples of of movies like this from the time,
but if so, I'm not really aware of them. I
think filmmaking conventions of the early fifties would have overwhelmingly
favored the clear, crisp delivery of stage drama conventions, where
you know, one character speaks at a time and you
can hear every word they say, because the lines are important.
(51:48):
They're meant to develop the character or move the plot along.
But this movie is trending toward a more and more
naturalistic and atmospheric approach to dialogue, where characters sometimes mumble,
sometimes talk over each other at the same time, more
like you'd get in a later movies like Robert Altman movies,
where a lot of the dialogue is it's clear that
(52:09):
you're not supposed to hear and take in every single word,
but get a mood or get an atmosphere from the
chatter of the characters as they go about their business. Yeah,
like sometimes they are just incomplete thoughts, like one character
is talking about something they're interrupted, or yeah, there's cross
talk and you don't you don't always make out what
some of the characters are saying it, so it feels, yeah,
(52:31):
it has this very natural feel to it and also
just moves right along. It's like it's snappy. It's snappy dialogue,
you know it uh uh. It keeps you engaged and
it feels relatively real. Though of course, at the same time,
it's nine one reel, so you know there's gonna be
a bit of like Dames and Cigarettes you know, that's
sort of thing going on. Another aspect of the dialogue
(52:53):
that instantly reminded me, there's one shot in particular of this. Uh,
there's a there's a nice walk and talk sequence A
and we have these long hallways between these rooms and
this and this snowy bass, and we got some scenes
where like scientists or military men walking down the hallway
and the cameras in front of them filming them talk
to each other. And of course this would this just
(53:14):
becomes a staple, especially of like police procedurals and uh
it shows like the West Wing and here it is
president and thing from another world? What's that guy who
does the Aaron Sorkin loves to walk and talk, which
I I frankly personally often find irritating. Imagine if Aaron
Sorkin did a remake of the Thing, I think I
(53:34):
would hate that all walk and talk, I never even
see the monster. I bet it would have a great cast. Though. Yeah, okay, Robert,
I know we can't finish without talking about the number
of scenes in this They're so good. But one that
just had my jaw on the floor was the fire
attack scene. Oh my god, this scene is so solid
(53:56):
and and terrifying. Uh. Like afterwards, I'm just I was
just like, like, I think I audibly said something like,
oh crap, like that that sequence was it was literally
on fire because it's a scene where the thing busts
into a room and they what they throw some kerosene
at it, and then they throw some fire at him.
They figured out that it's invulnerable to bullets. Yeah, yeah,
(54:18):
that shooting it didn't work earlier, so they're using fire
against it, and it's just it's rampaging and it's on fire. There,
like from an effect standpoint, terrifying, you know, because it's
like there's all this visible, real fire on the set.
There are multiple shots of somebody doing a man on
fire stunt. Uh. And then within the context of the film, Yeah,
(54:39):
it's just this intense feeling of of danger, both the
environmental danger of of their of of where they are
in the world, but also the fact that now things
are increasingly on fire and there's a rampaging, you know,
blood drinking alien that's also on fire. Tremendous. Yeah, and
the fact that it something about that scene and the
(55:01):
way that it's scary heightens something that's a sort of
progressive tension throughout the plot, which is that the characters
are having to make strategic decisions really fast that you know,
they're not given time to like compile everything they know
and and try and figure out what's going on. I
recalled that the set up to that scene is just like,
(55:22):
we think he's attacking the door. Okay, what are we
gonna do? You know, the bullets don't work, what if
we try fire? And so they just like arranged this
fire trap for it in real time pretty much. It
happens really fast, and then it all goes to hell,
and it becomes clear that you can't kill this thing
with fire, or at least maybe you hurt it with fire.
But it's like, it's not like us. Each of it
(55:43):
sells as kind of independent, so you might be able
to burn its outer layer, but it's ultimately going to
be okay, yeah. Yeah. And and then afterwards they've lost
an entire room of the facility and they have they
have finite resources there, which I thought was also a
great touch. You know, it's an old standby, but I
gotta admit I'm really a sucker for setting a trap
(56:04):
for the monster. That's just a kind of set piece
that I always enjoy. Yeah, and that's where we wind
up towards the end. Here they develop a trap, they
explain how it's gonna work, and so you know, you
know that this is always the case if if a
trap is fully explained, something is going to go wrong,
or if a plan is fully explained, something is going
(56:25):
to go wrong. So, yeah, it doesn't quite go off
as there is they're they're planning it to, but it
also is not doesn't go off the rails disastrously. I
don't think that would have been allowed in No, I
guess not. No, you couldn't. I don't know at the time.
Could you have an ending like you having Carpenters thing?
I don't know, Yeah, I don't know how would How
(56:47):
would audiences have reacted to that? I don't know the
answer to this question, listeners right in are are there
examples you can think of of sci fi or genre
movies from say the fifties with utterly blieke ending just
ending where the alien winds and earth loses. I mean,
the main example that comes to mind instantly, and perhaps
(57:07):
part of it because we already talked about it, is
the fifty six Body Snatchers film, Like at the end
of that film, it's like, we have one sane man
left and everyone thinks he is insane. And I guess
you could also look to various like short form Twilight
Zone Twilight Zone type stuff where yeah, you'll definitely have
the downer ending and and and and all. But yeah,
(57:28):
this one, this one does not. This one leaves things
on a positive note. Humans were tested, and they were
they were up to the test. It's easier to end
on a downer note. I think after like a sub
thirty minute story than it is to end on a
downer note after a ninety minute story. You know you've
got more investment on a feature length and so people
are going to feel really mad. If if you get
(57:51):
a downer ending at the end of a movie, yeah,
you gotta gotta send him home happy. Yeah, and if
what this film does, I was. I was happy with
the film after after we were on here. It has
some terrific sequences. Uh, you know, great dialogue, a lot
of interesting things about it. So you know, older films
like this are not everybody's cup of tea, But I
wouldn't if you're it all attempted, I encourage you to
(58:12):
give the thing from another world a chance, I'm still
thinking about this thing I just talked about. Wait a minute,
this might be developing into a broader theory, Rob, would
you generally agree then, when it comes to horror literature,
it's way more common to have horror short stories where
the monster or the the evil entity wins in the end,
(58:33):
but horror novels where the hero wins in the end. Yeah. Yeah,
I would say, by and large that's the case. Um.
You know, and I've seen, I've certainly seen examples where
longer works that have dark endings, those dark endings are
not always that well received, even if the audience tends
(58:53):
to be into darker, grittier stuff. You know, I've I've seen,
I've seen that time and again. So I think that
probably holds true. Um And I don't know how much
of that is yet investment uh in a longer work,
or sort of expectations of a longer work or um
or also just like effective storytelling, if you stick with
it that long, like you you're rooting for the good
(59:16):
guys or what or whoever is you know, the protagonists
happened to be like you want them to overcome the
the adversary. UM And generally, I guess in those longer
works you tend to have a protagonist that that you
you're genuinely rooting for and and not like in short fiction,
you sometimes have, you know, very problematic characters and you
know something terrible is going to happen to them. Basically,
(59:37):
the Tales from the Crypt model short stories, bad people,
bad endings. Yeah. Yeah, Tales from the Crypt exactly is
short enough that you don't need to like anybody. Yeah,
like I hate everybody in this. I know something bad
is going to happen. I'm probably gonna celebrate it when
it does. Uh. And it's and it's a short ride
to get there. Well, I guess we got kind of
(59:58):
sidetracked there, But I'll come back to my my original recommendation.
I say, Thing from Another World. Yeah, this one's This
one's really really good horror filmmaking, especially for absolutely And
if you would like to see this film, you're in
luck because it, like I think our last one that
we covered, is widely available. You can you can easily
pick up a DVD or Blu ray of it. You
(01:00:21):
can also digitally rent or buy it pretty much any
place you you digitally buy or rent films. Watch the guys.
I know that there was also a colorized version of
this film. I can't imagine watching it colorized. Uh. I
feel like the black and white is essential. Yeah, yeah,
(01:00:42):
all right, we're gonna go ahead and wrap it up there.
But hey, if you would like to listen to other
episodes of Weird House Cinema, you'll find it every Friday
in the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed. We
have core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We have a
listener mail on Monday's artifact on winds D and a
rerun on the weekends. And and hey, keep watching the
(01:01:04):
skies out there. If you've got a sky, keep watching it.
But what would that have done if you've seen it?
You just said, you'd be like, I see something crash landing.
Then you learn lear decided, so I guess you're like, oh,
we gotta get all the thermite really quick. Uh. That
is one more thing. It's this terrible time in the
episode to remember it. But we have some great sequences
(01:01:26):
too of plotting where the character is trying to track
it with like a Geiger counter. Oh yes, closed space.
Very reminiscent of films to come much later, like like
Alien and Aliens. Yeah, yeah, totally so. Yeah, this film
feels ahead of its time in a number of ways. Okay,
we gotta stop gushing about the thing, Okay, okay, uh yeah,
(01:01:47):
so what were we saying? Oh yeah, we're ending the
episode all right. Well anyway, thanks as always to our
wonderful audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like
to get in touch with us with feedback on this
episode or any other, to suggest topic for the future,
just to say hello, you can email us at contact
at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to
(01:02:13):
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