The Thing From Another World

Screening with The Thing as part of our Great Remakes double feature series!

In this classic early sci-fi hit, an Arctic research team discovers a spaceship buried in the ice and accidentally thaws out the frozen monster inside it. Produced and co-written by the legendary filmmaker Howard Hawks, The Thing from Another World substitutes the shape-shifting alien of John W. Campbell, Jr.’s source novella “Who Goes There?” with the 6’ 7” actor James Arness as a hulking advanced form of plant life. Though most of the “man-in-a-rubber-suit” monster movies of the 1950s are difficult for contemporary audiences to accept as scary—or credible—this film was nightmare fuel for 1950s kids and beyond.

Modern viewers may find the “horror “elements of this film, as well as its old-fashioned gender stereotypes and portrayal of scientists as simpering eggheads whose desire to learn can only lead to disaster, far too campy to take seriously. But, this is a critically important picture in the history of science fiction. The rapid conclusion to WWII, the first use of Atomic weapons followed by the first Hydrogen Bomb tests, and American fears of a nuclear war with our former allies in the Soviet Union ushered in the new genre. The anxiety surrounding what was “out there,” coupled with uncertainty about whether national leaders and scientific experts fully understood the ramifications of the new weapons they were developing, led directly to the explosion of sci-fi thrillers like this one in the 1950s. The film’s Red Scare subtext is the inverse of 1951’s other big sci-fi hit, the contemplative, pacifist, Christian allegory The Day the Earth Stood Still.

You may also like the following events from Somerville Theatre:

• This Tuesday, 8th July, 11:30 pm, Stealing Pulp Fiction
• This Wednesday, 9th July, 11:30 pm, Ash Wednesday (1973)
• This Thursday, 10th July, 11:30 pm, Shall We Dance - 4K Restoration

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