The Thing from Another World

DC's free, outdoor movie festival Screen on the Green started last week. Tonight's movie was "The Thing from Another World," a 1951 science-fiction flick about an alien that crashes at the North Pole and terrorizes a small army outpost there.

The movies at Screen on the Green are older flicks and they vary in quality, but all of them have surprised me in some way. Last year, I was watching a ho-hum musical with decent songs and a typical presentation, when out of nowhere three of the main characters dress as baby triplets and then sing a song about how they want to kill each other. It was like watching a 2048 future episode of Jerry Springer.

SPRINGER: "Ton-Ton, why do you want to kill your siblings, Ixy and Granger?"
TON-TON: "Cause they be taking all my neural implants, Jerry! Mmm, hmm."

"The Thing from Another World" was interesting for a few reasons. It was the first alien to appear in a movie, starting a long and continuing chain of movies that use aliens as metaphors for foreign threats. And this blood-thirsty plant-based monster that wears a belt and lumberjack pants is definitely a threat.

When the military in the base take a "It looks scary, kill it" policy, the dispassionate, head scientist argues that their lives mean nothing in comparison to the knowledge they could gain from the alien, and they need to address the alien as a friend, not an enemy. At which point the scientist might have well rolled himself in butter and breadcrumbs, because that whiny, out-of-touchy pencil neck just put himself on the Monster Menu, under Main Course.

Also, I suspect several of the movie's stylistic techniques inspired "Alien" and other future sci-fi action movies.

The dialog was surprisingly snappy and fast-paced, similar to an Aaron Sorkin-written show. The military characters, who drove the action in the movie, talked in clipped sentences and overlapped the beginnings and ends of each other sentences. It held up well and must have been innovative 55 years ago.

They track the monster is a Geiger counter, which beeps faster the closer the monster is. That trick is still being used in movies to heighten tension. Finally, the movie tries to portray the alien as having some intelligence, like when the alien shuts off the station's oil supply so they freeze to death.

It's not believable though. The alien looks really stupid. He's not even wearing a smoking jacket. Then he walks very, very slowly into an obvious trap. That must have felt good: travel millions of miles to conquer the Earth, and then get outwitted by a group of high school graduates who are squatting down ten feet in front of him and waiting for the monster to walk into an electrical fence.

I first assumed the alien was a metaphor for a looming foreign threat, but now I wonder if it's more of a retelling of World War II. The characters are unaware of the threat at first. The scientists argue strongly that they should try to reason and engage the alien first. The military adopts a more practical approach, deciding early that it is an enemy and trying to kill it before it can cause more damage.

In the end, the scientists are proven wrong, but it is science that allows them to destroy the alien.