By the time this famed , fright - make full flick cease , you may be tempted to pile all of your houseplants on the front lawn , douse them with petrol and institutionalize them to the horticultural hereafter . It might be the only way to regain your sense ofpeace . Otherwise , those ferns and orchids might essay to attack you when you’resleeping .
What moving picture could possibly inspire a fear of vegetation ? It ’s " The Thing from Another World , " a science - fiction story blend in with cinematic component of high drama and horror into one of the most celebrated films of the twentieth century . Often referred to as only " The matter " ( after the title character ) , this 1951 pic was based on the short story " Who Goes There ? " , which was written by John W. Campbell , Jr. , who wrote the novelette under the pen name Don A. Stuart . Campbell was one of sci - fi lit ’s most famous forerunners , and his success helped fuel the careers of great skill fabrication writer such as Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clark , among others .
If you have n’t seen " The Thing,“here ’s your despoiler alert . Our precis below highlight the plot ( and ending ) .
The film ’s story begin as a modest group of military men , scientist and an intrepid reporter investigate the crash landing of an nameless aircraft near the North Pole . Near the wreckage of the strange - see , circular ship , they find an equally weird body encased in ice .
They take the body , still preserved in a block of ice , back to their Arctic frontier settlement as a blizzard closes in on them . Then , ominously , the body is accidentally thawed , allowing the mysterious creature to escape .
Slowly , the scientists run some of the beast ’s closed book . Although it walks on two stage like a human , the being is actually a type of plant life that ’s evolved to useblood– any type of blood – for generative intent . In his fascination with the creature , Dr. Carrington settle to save " The Thing " from harm for research purposes .
Then , bunch members ominously start disappearing , and the infrastructure ’s blood plasma supplies are bust . In a bustle of action mechanism , armed men shoot the animate being , but it escape once again , apparently unharmed by the hail of smoke .
In the climactic final scene , the men get by to electrocute the fauna successfully . At the end of the film , thehorrible stormoutside has plagiarise and the newsperson is call up back to Anchorage via radio to tell other diary keeper about the fantastic events that have unfolded .
Though its plot is , well , a little on the eccentric side , " The Thing " was received as one of the creepiest moving-picture show of the fifties and is now hailed by picture lovers as an all - time great . Keep reading to learn more about why The matter resonated spookily with consultation – and bring along some herbicide , just in case .
The Many Faces of The Thing
" The matter " star Kenneth Tobey , Douglas Spencer , Robert Cornthwaite and Margaret Sheridan . It also boast James Arness , who play the title role monster . Arness is most famous for his two - decade stint as U.S. Marshal Matt Dillon in the television set serial " Gunsmoke . " Famed director Howard Hawks ( list as the motion picture ’s producer ) reportedly permit Christian Nyby take direction course credit on this film as a favor to Nyby , although Hawks allegedly did much of the directing body of work .
As an adaptation of Campbell ’s book , the film only follows some of the game ’s approximate outline . Perhaps the most notable deviation is that in the book , thealienisn’t based on any kind of plant life life . Instead , the entity is a form - shifter that can take on the physical appearance and personality of its victims .
gird with that person ’s memories and knowledge , the creature gravel a threat to all of mankind . The alien takes mastery of one of the man and begins plotting its escape . But just before it gets away , the human survivor find it and toss off the imposter before it can unleash its mayhem upon the rest of the world .
That the picture show featured a more vegetativeantagonistthan the book did n’t nark audiences . In fact , the flick had a psychological impact strong enough to engender two more films .
A 1982 edition , called simply " The Thing , " was directed by John Carpenter and starred Kurt Russell . This remaking was filled with groundbreaking special effects and redundant helpings of gruesome , bloodyscenes . Though gory , this adjustment remained truer to the book , interchange any sort of malicious plant life with the shape - shifter that Campbell had originally guess .
Unkind reviews put up to the motion picture ’s bankruptcy at the box office ; it only made around $ 3 million on its opening weekend . Eventually , however , thanks to cable and home TV , it gather a cult following and pull ahead a reputation as a classic , underappreciated work for its effects and chilling news report . That ’s why in October 2011 , another version of " The Thing " will off theaters .
This time around , the movie is being bill as a prequel to the Carpenter adaptation . Directed by Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. and written by Eric Heisserer , the story is supposed to take place just days before the timeline of the 1982 film and is plot so that it tally right on into Carpenter ’s telling .
In this rendering of the tale , an American fossilist ( Mary Elizabeth Winstead ) accompany a chemical group of Norse scientists ( admit Joel Edgerton ) who , by chance , find a spacecraft that ostensibly crash - land in Antarctica long ago . They also discover the rooted body of a creature that they deduce died during impingement .
The scientists unknowingly thaw out a bloodthirsty lusus naturae , which can simulate the appearance and personality of its target . To prevent the ruin of human civilization , the scientists try ( and , we hope , succeed ) to stop their alien opposer .
Whether you prefer the 1950s matter or its former avatar , there ’s a thread of law of similarity run through the plot and character of each moving-picture show . On the next page , you ’ll read more about why this matter wo n’t go away , and what these skittish story really mean to us .
The Thing’s Enduring Appeal
Contemporary audiences might discover " The affair from Another populace " to be a campy , sci - fi romp deserving of a vitamin B complex - movie label , but film aficionados disagree , and so does the Library of Congress . As part of the National Film Preservation Act , which created the National Film Registry , in 2001 , TFAW was forever enshrined in the register because it was " culturally , historically , or aesthetically significant . "
Out of linguistic context , it may be a slight difficult to understand why the film warrants this level of serious aid . But when you peer through the lens of history to 1950s American life , the appeal and cultural significance of " The affair " begins to make more mother wit .
The motion-picture show was unblock at the height of the post - World War II Red Scare , when the American people fearedcommunismcould infiltrate and affect political sympathies and life-time in the United States . A horse sense of paranoia pervaded much of the medium and fellowship , create prolific psychological dirt for a sinister being that made little mother wit intellectually but was still whole terrific .
fuddle in the ideological clash between a military mind-set Inferno - bent on directly destroy every possible threat and a more objective , scientific perspective ( events that were also mirror in society at the time ) . Then entrap all of these conflicting viewpoints in a claustrophobic and alien , barren North Pole landscape painting , and you had a recipe for interpersonal drama that symbolized conflicts on a much large social scale . Add in the fact that " The matter " debut only four years after the RoswellUFOincident in New Mexico , and you have a better savvy of why this pic made a lasting impression on its viewers .
The movie also arrived as a innovator for the sci - fi pic genre . Its winner spawned many other role player science - based , shivery fabrication films that captured the attention of the film - going public for much of the 1950s . Its dismission occurred in the same yr as " The twenty-four hours the Earth Stood Still , " which contrasted precipitously with " The Thing From Another World . " It portrayed a benevolentalienthat arrive on Earth and is kill by justificatory , anxious human too close - minded to empathize a greater picture of their place in the universe .
As for the new affair feature film , it ’s arriving at a meter of act of terrorism , state of war and economical and political turmoil . Just like in the 1950s and the commencement of the Cold War era , there ’s a pervasive sense of gloom in some stern and a look of cosmopolitan uneasiness .
Some might even go so far as to say that even in an old age where there ’s never been more freely approachable information , no one really hump who to trust . It ’s not hard to see how a vague , indefinable opposition emerging from some rough landscape might appeal to the psyches of modern moviegoers .
The “Science” Behind The Thing
" A news report of modern scientific discipline that challenge imagination ! " That phrase is splash across the screen of the trailer for the original version of " The matter , " but including the word skill in any serious way with gaze to a human / plant hybrid is a reaching . Or , as one character famously proclaims during a in particular tense scene , " An cerebral carrot … the mind boggles . "
" Is it human , or inhuman , earthly , or unearthly ? regulate questions , astounding questions , that not even the world ’s greatest scientific mind can do . " Maybe , as " The Thing " trailer dramatically suggests , there really is no manner to be sure whether a smart form of plant life could exist .
You might recall that with all of the genetic engineering happening throughout the earth , there would be all sorts of ways to cross a human with some character of plant living . Or maybe it could fall out simply by accident . It was n’t long ago , in fact , that a Russian girl was purportedly pricked by a cactus and subsequently began growing thorns in her limb as a result . It was anInternet put-on , of course of study [ source : Bioephemera ] .
But could a plant / human hybrid ever hap ? Well , there ’s no account statement for weird , reasoning and bloodsucking tomato arriving from the far reaches of thegalaxy , of class , but current scientific technology here on Earth has its limit .
Jennifer Bartlett , a postdoctoral research scholar at the University of Iowa , says that on a underlying level , plants and mammals are just too different . " They have unlike types of prison cell walls , and they develop and salt away energy differently , which means that they make extremely different sort of enzymes , and they have dissimilar organelles . " She adds that plants make whole classes of corpuscle that mammalian cells do not .
In nub , the primary pieces of the being just would n’t match together . The industrial plant speck would be essay to do one thing , while the animal molecule would be doing something else solely .
Even with some extraordinarily forward-looking genetic technology , fuse mammal and plant cellular phone would be difficult , if not impossible . Bartlett says , " To do something like that , you would have to introduce a whole suite of cistron into the genome and make indisputable they get expressed at the right time during evolution and in the veracious sort of cells , and all without creating other problems in thehuman genome , like inadvertently make some variety of cancer , which would be extremely hard to do . "
Ultimately , it will be a retentive metre before we have the technical know - how to manipulate the human genome that skillfully . So we ’ll likely be forever wait for insidious corn field to arise up and take over our cities and our bodies , and for epenthetic - plant stranger to descend from the heavens and wreak havoc .
In the meantime , though , it never hurt to be cautious and observant . As the diligent reporter in the original Thing movie tell to his confrere as he reported news of the Alaskan chlorophyll catastrophe , " Watch the skies everywhere . Keep look , keep watching the skies . "
Ca n’t get enough of The Thing ? On the next page , see out more matter - related trivium .
