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In a scene right out of Campbell’s original, the group uses Thermite to try to break the craft out of ice, but it catches fire. Exploring the site, they find a humanoid encased in the ice not far from the craft and take it back to camp. Twenty-five minutes into the film, we have an adaptation.

The film wastes little time in getting to the debate which opens Who Goes There? Nearly a quarter of the story is distilled into a few lines that are spoken over the course of roughly three minutes on screen. The argument is cut short in kind of an anti-intellectual conclusion by a simple question of rank. It’s a military scientific outpost and they have to wait for orders as to whether or not to break the Thing out of the ice.

The wait for orders allows the film to stray from its source material a bit and get back to a romantic subplot involving a rather appealingly attractive Margaret Sheridan in the role of a secretary of some sort. Real nice and everything, but it’s pretty indistinguishable from most other screen romances of the era.

Rather than having the creature pulled out of the ice due to conscious decision, the block melts, evidently thanks to someone’s decision to put a blanket over the ice so that he doesn’t have to look at the beast inside. The ice melts and the creature escapes. I’m sorry, I don’t buy this for a second. Not only does it stretch scientific credibility, it robs the characters of their role in the story’s central conflict. The Thing doesn’t escape hibernation due to genuine scientific interest. It’s a product of red tape and bad luck.

On the trail of The Thing, they run into a tissue sample and find out that it’s an intelligent plant-based life form that feeds on blood. Kind of ridiculous and nowhere near as compelling as a creature that is an aggregate of independent cells that seek to survive through taking over organisms by becoming them.

The idea of a race of highly evolved plants that could take over the planet and use humans as a food supply is kind of cute, but it lacks the inventiveness of the novella that inspired it.

The Thing From Another World ended up being the most successful science fiction film of 1951, edging out The Day The Earth Stood Still for that honor. It’s quaint to note that that made it only the 46th highest-grossing film of the year. It was a different era of Hollywood films. Sci-fi wouldn’t make big money at the box office until 1954 and 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. To find a huge sci-fi box office success prior to that, you’d have to go all the way back to Chaplin’s then-futuristic comedy Modern Times from 1936.

The Thing (Universal Pictures, 1982)

The 1982 Universal Pictures film wasn’t a straight re-make of the 1951 RKO Pictures movie. John Carpenter directed the film based on a script by actor/screenwriter Bill Lancaster. Aside from this, the only other things Lancaster had ever written were Bad News Bears films and TV episodes in the ‘70s. Lancaster based the script more closely off of Campbell’s original story.

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