The Pulpit #4: The Thing From Another World / The Thing

The first and foremost change made when updating Christian Nyby's sci-fi classic The Thing from Another World (1951) was an elision of the title. John Carpenter's update takes the otherness of the intruder for granted, instead focusing on the thingness. In doing so, The Thing elevates the terror from physical to existential. With a third iteration on the way, being called a prequel (thought still titled The Thing), the franchise will now span some 60 years of film history. Each one says something of its historical context, as well as the status of science fiction.

One of the most famous scenes in B-movie history happens at the end of the first act of The Thing from Another World. A rescue team, comprised of scientists, soldiers and one constitution-thumping reporter (Douglas Spencer) fan out over a sheet of ice, trying to define the boundaries of an unidentified object under the surface. When they stop, forming a circle, and the newsman shouts they've found a flying saucer, everyone in that 1951 audience must have nodded knowingly. Of course The Thing of 1951 had landed on earth in a saucer - everyone knew at that time this was the most logical mode of transportation for an extraterrestrial. There is little shock value here, and even less in the Thing itself - its played by an actor with a bit of makeup augmenting the shape of his skull. The alien is simply a form from outer space, and the quibbling between the factions of science, warfare, and  (represented by the journalist) make up the conflict. It's a bit like The Russians Are Coming - everyone knows what an alien is, its just a matter of the course of action once they arrive.

This is appropriate for a peace of Cold-War pulp that close with a warning to "Watch the skies". The message is not to think about the complexity of the enemy, or the subtleties of their motives - rather, whether to welcome him with love, hate, or headlines. Aimed at a larger audience and with a more nuanced view of human psychology, Carpenter breaks down these simple debates. First off, none of the men in the Antarctic research station seem too strong in their convictions. Some might be scientists, some might be ex-soldiers. MacCready (Kurt Russell) is a professional drunk. This makes them all the more susceptible to Carpenter's monster, a deadly virus that can replicate any organism whose blood it comes in contact with. Inexplicably, sled dogs start sprouting tentacles and imitating the dwindling crew as it picks them off one by one.

The Thing from Another World was never meant to scare - it was really just another setting for the fraternal comedy of its producer, Howard Hawks, who explored similar themes of teamwork and male-female relationships in movies like Rio Bravo and Only Angels Have Wings. Carpenter strips away all of these elements, first by using an all-male cast, and second by planting the Thing directly into their blood. In Hawks' universe, everyone can be trusted to work together - in Carpenter's, no one can be taken for their word. When MacCready shoots an innocent man in the head, this is simply the price of doing business. By the early eighties, it was rare to have an ideal protagonist.

If anything, The Thing (1982) does more to capture the McCarthyist paranoia of the 50s than its predecessor. There is no reasoning with a virus, let alone even dialogue. In The Thing From Another World, a character blurts "It wants to eat us!" - this line was replaced with "It wants to be us!" In the former, we are simply livestock, but in the latter, our form, if not our essence, is the ideal shape, at least for life on Earth. And in this very appearance hides the enemy. The moments where the Thing is exposed in the 1982 version are some of the most chilling in the history of film. A man's chest opens like a mouth, complete with teeth - a head opens to swallow another head. These images are pure nightmare, pushing the limits of our imagination, only possible for a being that was less form than force. Each time Carpenter's Thing seems destroyed, a piece of it has cropped up in another organism. Is this a commentary on Reagan's War on Drugs? Will the new version somehow link the body-shifting version of The Thing to terrorism?

It was typical of Eisenhower-Era sci-fi to declare some sort of victory (think The Blob) - The Thing from Another World is no different, with the famous for Spencer's "Keep watching the skies" coda. The original Thing is defeated, but if there are more in the universe, man is certainly their match. Carpenter's Thing, which seems more and more like an metaphor for fear itself, is never fully vanquished. Sure, there is a fiery confrontation that was typical of big-budget sci-fi of the period (The Terminator, Aliens), but given the Thing's ability to regenerate, this cannot be much solace. Russell collapses in the embers of the station, with a compatriot, both preparing to freeze to death. The imperative to "wait here for a little while" is passed from one to the other as much as it is transmitted to us in the theater. The next monster will be along any minute, within or without.