THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD

"Watch the skies, everywhere! Keep looking.

Keep watching the skies!"

Based on the novella, "Who Goes There?", by Don A. Stuart (a pseudonym for John W. Campbell), RKO's THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD released on April 7, 1951, is recognized as one of the great science fiction films of the 1950s. It grossed $1,950,000 and out-performed two other scifi classics released that year, THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL and WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE. Cited by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant", in 2001 it was selected for preservation by the United States National Film Registry.

The crew get their first look at The Thing.

The film was shot at Glacier Nation Park in Montana, the Ice & Cold Storage Company in Los Angeles and RKO's Encino Ranch. It has the distinction of being one of the earliest stunts where the stuntman was engulfed in flames. The familiar last line of dialogue in the film, "Keep watching the skies!" has since entered into the lexicon of UFO and extraterrestrial enthusiasts.

The Thing is destroyed by electrocution.

The six-foot-five James Arness had yet to become famous as Dodge City's Marshall Matt Dillon in TV's GUNSMOKE when he played the role of The Thing. It took makeup artist Lee Greenway two hours to turn the actor into a menacing alien. This was after two months of experimentation (see photos in article below).

This widely-reproduced publicity photo was not released until the 1980s.

And one more thing: it scared the stuffing out of a certain young monster kid. I mean, come on, that giant, lumbering thing turned out to be a plant! How creepy is that?

This exceptional article by the late cinephile George Turner from CINEFANTASTIQUE July-August 1982 provides a detailed background of the picture in a retrospective published over three decades later.

THE MAKING OF BLADE RUNNER

Novelist, short story writer and essayist Philip K. Dick authored the book, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" from which the movie BLADE RUNNER was based. First published in 1968 by Doubleday, it has made the rounds in many editions since. Admittedly, I haven't quite "grokked" the full philosophy that lies behind his work, but there's no denying that he is one of a handful of true visionary science fiction writers.

Philip Kindred Dick (December 16, 1928 – March 2, 1982).

As with any adaptation to film, the book does vary in a number ways. For instance, besides the title itself, the setting in the book is San Francisco and in the film it's moved to Los Angeles where the Tech Noir elements of the story are closer tied to Hollywood film noir.

Cover of the first Doubleday hardcover edition, 1968.

In a speech he gave in 1972 at the Vancouver Science Fiction Convention at the University of British Columbia, Dick said regarding his essay "The Android and the Human":

Machines are becoming more human, so to speak -- at least in the sense that . . . some meaningful comparison exists between human and mechanical behavior. But is it not ourselves that we know first and foremost? Rather than learning about ourselves by studying our constructs, perhaps we should make the attempt to comprehend what our constructs are up to by looking into what we ourselves are up to.

If you enjoyed yesterday's post, you should like this one even better, as a deeper dive is taken into the making of this remarkable film in CINEFANTASTIQUE (July/August 1982).

CINEFANTASTIQUE FALL 1990 (PART 2)