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