Moviedrome Presents

Tonight's film is The Thing from Another World, directed in 1951 by Christian Nieby and remade recently as The Thing by John Carpenter. It's a story of strange events at the North Pole. In typical 1950s science fiction style, all professors, sexy secretaries in the US military battle, well, a thing from Another World. The film has a long slow build up with a lot of dialogue.

The script is based on a short story by John Campbell, who was editor of Analogue, the Science Fiction Magazine. The fact that the dialogue often overlaps has led various authorities to believe that the film was in fact directed by Howard Hawks, its nominal producer. Hawks was famous for his fast-talking overlapping dialogue and had apparently employed Nabi as an assistant director on previous

films. In the original thing, unlike the remake, the monster is rarely seen. Most of its mayhem takes place off screen like the battles in Shakespearean tragedy. Its name, like the name of the man with x-ray eyes, is X. Flying saucer enthusiasts should note that the story, which includes a crashed UFO and a giant plant which drinks blood, is not dissimilar to the

notorious Roswell incident of 1946, in which a US Air Force base issued a press release that a flying disc could crash in southern New Mexico with the remains of four dead aliens on board. Watch the sky.