The Thing from Another World (1951)
Directed by Christian Nyby
Scientists and US Air Force officials fend off a blood-thirsty alien organism while investigating at a remote arctic outpost.
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What critics compared The Thing from Another World to
Whenever director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. isn't blurring the line between referencing and replicating John Carpenter's 1982 version of The Thing (itself a remake of Howard Hawks' 1951 film The Thing from Another World), he's borrowing liberally from Ridley Scott's claustrophobic Alien.
I seriously doubt it was on screenwriter Bill Lancaster’s mind, but he wrote the perfect set-up for a prequel-cum-remake when he penned the script for John Carpenter’s The Thing, a chilly, fantastically grotesque, and nerve-rattling adaptation of John W. Campbell’s 1938 novella “Who Goes There?” (which had previously served as the source material for Christian Nyby and Howard Hawks’s 1951 classic The Thing From Another World).
There was Hawks’ production “The Thing from Another World” (1951), a Cold War-era science-fiction-horror hybrid, and Carpenter’s 1982 “The Thing,” which hewed more closely to the source material, the 1938 John W. Campbell Jr. short story “Who Goes There?”
That's not to say it can hold a candle to the superb 1951 "The Thing From Another World," directed by Christian Nyby with contributions from producer Howard Hawks , featuring James Arness as the clawed, hulking, carrot-headed enemy from out there.
That’s right, van Heijningen’s “The Thing” is not a tired reimagining or reboot, but rather a pleasing prelude to the events that took place in Carpenter’s horrifying classic, which is a loose remake of 1951’s “The Thing from Another World.”
And while the script, by "Lost" co-creator Damon Lindelhof and Jon Spaihts, abounds in classic sci-fi references -- everything from " When Worlds Collide " to " The Thing From Another World " gets a nod -- and purposeful narrative intricacies, there are, I must admit, times when it alternates between a certain evident slackness and overkill.
Everything happened in the present to a bunch of working stiffs on a perilous mission — as it had in Alien’s obvious antecedent, the 1951 The Thing from Another World, with a vengeful space creature attacking soldiers and scientists at an isolated outpost.
Nope creates a familiar, but memorable vision through nods to Jaws , The Thing From Another World , Akira, The Blob , and more.
And so while evil still lurks within, as it often does in Peele’s movies, here it also swoops and soars overhead in a cheekily outlandish story that the writer-director seems to have cooked up during an epic binge of “War of the Worlds” (both versions), “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” “The Thing From Another World” (and its better-known remake, “The Thing”), “Signs,” “Arrival” and especially “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”
You will find that as opposed to the mantra of the original The Thing from Another World, the reaction is not “Watch the Skies!” but instead is a determined desire to just turn and look away.
(There’s even a bit derived from “The Thing From Another World” in which one ill-advised character contemplates Calvin’s scientific awesomeness.)
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Carpenter’s film stays truer to its source material, John W. Campbell, Jr.’s 1938 novella Who Goes There?, than the 1951 Howard Hawks-Christian Nyby feature The Thing from Another World.
It's insoluble (though not quite as much so as the Tobe Hooper/Steven Spielberg film Poltergeist ), but the general consensus is that Nyby was learning by doing on the set of The Thing from Another World, practicing the craft of directing by mimicking Hawks, and constantly checking in with Hawks to make sure he was doing things right, and occasionally handing his producer the reins when things got too difficult.
There are a few amusing bits along the way—one featuring Denis Akiyama as the creator of Pac-Man who tries to reason with his monsterized “son” will appeal to creature-feature fans as a nod to those innumerable scenes in which sensitive scientists attempt to communicate with malevolent being, always with unfortunate result (“The Thing from Another World” provides a perfect example).
And with The Thing, he went so far as to explicitly remake the Hawks production of The Thing from Another World of 1951, a film whose authorship is much, much, much too complicated to say something as blunt as "it was directed by Howard Hawks" or the opposite.
In 1982, he released a direct remake of a Hawks film, The Thing from Another World , although there's some dispute over whether Hawks directed that 1951 film (it bears all of his signature touches, but the credited director is Christian Nyby, Hawks' editor).
When it was released in 1982, John Carpenter's remake of Howard Hawks' 1951 science fiction classic The Thing from Another World spurred much debate about not only which film was more effective but whether Carpenter's version fit better into the science fiction or horror genre.
Anyway, the late 1970s and early 80s saw two excellent remakes of iconic 1950s' horror films: Philip Kaufman's 1978 "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" and Carpenter's 1982 revision of the old Howard Hawks production, "The Thing From Another World."
Well, John Carpenter is an immensely talented film director who took a very good science fiction film called “The Thing from Another World” and turned it in to an amazing horror film called “The Thing.”
In re-adapting the John W Campbell story (Who Goes There?) already filmed so superbly in 1951 as The Thing from Another World, Carpenter provides a punchy enough action thriller as the men of a lonely Antarctic research team are menaced by a shape-changing alien from outer space.
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Tampering with a classic is rarely, if ever, a wise idea, and when it comes to genre films such as this, only John Carpenterâs 1982 remake of Christian Nybyâs beloved-yet-cheesy The Thing From Another World springs to mind as an example of things going right for once.
In its air of snowbound apocalypse, however, Tarantino’s movie is closest to Carpenter’s The Thing (1982)—itself a remake of The Thing from Another World (1951) by Howard Hawks, who directed some of Wayne’s persona-defining westerns.
As we transition from a stagecoach to a stage-like milieu, the haberdashery serves as a Hawksian hangout zone, similar to the compound and living quarters in Hatari! or the Arctic research station in The Thing from Another World .