Category Archives: Howard Hawks movies

IN THE SHADOWS: ELISHA COOK, JR.

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Welcome back to IN THE SHADOWS, the column where we look at character actors in the movies, especially horror movies.

Up today, it’s Elisha Cook, Jr., one of the most recognizable character actors of all time. Small in stature, he often portrayed intense oftentimes frightened characters, especially in his horror movies. One of my favorite Cook performances in a genre film was in HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL (1959), in which he co-starred with Vincent Price as the terrified Watson Pritchard, the one man in the movie who believed ghosts were haunting the house. Cook also enjoyed a memorable moment in THE NIGHT STALKER (1972) when he falls asleep in the back of Kolchak’s car, scaring the living daylight out of the reporter (Darren McGavin) when he bolts upright in the back seat!

Here now is a partial look at some of Elisha Cook, Jr.’s impressive 220 screen credits:

HER UNBORN CHILD (1930)- Stewart Kennedy – Cook’s first screen credit is in this 1930 love story drama.

STRANGER ON THE THIRD FLOOR (1940) – Joe Briggs – co-stars in this film noir with Peter Lorre. Often cited as the first film noir movie ever.

THE MALTESE FALCON (1941) – Wilmer Cook – one of my favorite Elisha Cook Jr. roles is in this classic film noir by John Huston starring Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade. Cook plays the enforcer for Mr. Gutman (Sydney Greenstreet), who Bogart’s Sam Spade torments throughout, at one point slapping him around and eventually turning Gutman against him. Cook is wound up and intense throughout. Also starring Peter Lorre and Mary Astor. One of my favorite movies of all time.

A-HAUNTING WE WILL GO (1942) – Frank Lucas- supporting role in this Laurel and Hardy spooky comedy.

THE BIG SLEEP (1946) – Harry Jones – reunited with Humphrey Bogart, with Bogart this time playing Philip Marlowe. Directed by Howard Hawks and written by William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett, and Jules Furthman, this one is so complex that even after subsequent viewings it’s still difficult to figure out who did what to whom, and why! Bogart famously married co-star Lauren Bacall shortly after this movie.

SHANE (1953) – Stonewall Torrey – supporting role in this classic Alan Ladd western. His character is dramatically slain by the villainous gunslinger played by Jack Palance.

ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN (1954)- “Semi-Private Eye” – Homer Garrity – plays private detective Homer Garrity hired by Lois Lane to prove that Clark Kent is really Superman in this episode of the George Reeves Superman TV series.

THE KILLING (1956)- George Peatty – supporting role in this film noir thriller directed by a young Stanley Kubrick.

VOODOO ISLAND (1957) – Martin Schuyler – zombie horror movie starring Boris Karloff, notable for featuring the screen debut of Adam West. Holy horror movie, Batman!

HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL (1959) – Watson Pritchard – one of my favorite Elisha Cook, Jr. roles is in this William Castle horror movie starring Vincent Price as a cold, calculating husband who along with his equally manipulative wife plan a party in a haunted house where the guests are each paid a large sum of money if they remain in the house all night. And they have no choice once they agree, because they are all locked inside until dawn. Cook plays the one man there who believes in ghosts, and spends most of his time drinking and warning the others that they are all doomed. One of the earlier horror movies to employ jump scares, and the scene with the old woman who appears out of nowhere in the basement is a classic.

BLACK ZOO (1963) – Joe – horror movie starring the Hammer ham himself, Michael Gough, playing a character who uses his zoo animals to kill his enemies. Of course!

THE HAUNTED PALACE (1963) – Peter Smith – reunited with Vincent Price in this horror movie directed by Roger Corman based on a story by H.P. Lovecraft. Cook plays a frightened townsperson who is a yes-man to a tougher townsperson played by Leo Gordon, and they lead the villagers in attempts to oust Vincent Price’s Charles Dexter Ward from their community fearing that he is a menace to their community. And they’re right! Also stars Lon Chaney Jr., in a rare paring with Vincent Price. One of my favorite Roger Corman/Vincent Price movies.

ROSEMARY’S BABY (1968) – Mr. Nicklas – part of the terrific cast in Roman Polanski’s classic horror movie which also stars Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon, Maurice Evans, and Ralph Bellamy.

THE NIGHT STALKER (1972) – Mickey Crawford – plays an informant for Darren McGavin’s Carl Kolchak in this groundbreaking vampire movie written by Richard Matheson. Cook provides one of the better jump scares in the movie as noted above.

BLACULA (1972) – Sam – Cook appears in back-to-back vampire movies, this one featuring a commanding performance by William Marshall in the lead role in this underrated horror movie which is actually very good.

THE BLACK BIRD (1975) – Wilmer Cook – Cook reprises his role from THE MALTESE FALCON (1941) in this comedy about the son of Sam Spade, played by George Segal.

SALEM’S LOT (1979) – Gordon ‘Weasel’ Phillips – this TV movie adaptation of Stephen King’s vampire novel starring David Soul and James Mason is considered by many fans and critics as one of the two greatest vampire TV movies ever made, along with THE NIGHT STALKER. Elisha Cook Jr. appeared in both these movies!

MAGNUM, P.I. (1980-1988) – Francis “Ice Pick” Hofstetler – Cook’s final screen appearances were on the popular TV series, MAGNUM, P.I., in which he appeared in 13 episodes.

Elisha Cook Jr. appeared in tons of TV shows over the years, including GUNSMOKE, THE WILD WILD WEST, STAR TREK, BATMAN, THE ODD COUPLE, and STARSKY AND HUTCH, to name just a few.

I hope you enjoyed this partial list of Elisha Cook Jr.’s career. He was a character actor who starred in many genre films, some, like ROSEMARY’S BABY and THE NIGHT STALKER, are some of the more important ones ever made.

Join me again next time for another edition of IN THE SHADOWS, where we look at the careers of character actors in the movies, especially horror movies.

As always, thanks for reading!

—Michael


MEMORABLE MOVIE QUOTES: HIS GIRL FRIDAY (1940)

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Ralph Bellamy, Cary Grant, and Rosalind Russell in HIS GIRL FRIDAY (1940).

In the day and age where classic black and white movies are getting more and more difficult to view, and if you don’t believe me, check out your favorite streaming services and see how many classic movies made before 1960 they offer, it’s becoming more and more important to celebrate these gems of yesteryear.

With that in mind, on today’s MEMORABLE MOVIE QUOTES column, we look at the hilarious dialogue in Howard Hawks’ classic comedy HIS GIRL FRIDAY (1940), starring Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell. For my money, HIS GIRL FRIDAY has the funniest rapid-fire script this side of the Marx Brothers!

HIS GIRL FRIDAY is the remake of THE FRONT PAGE (1931), but in this Howard Hawks version the character of Hildy Johnson was changed from a male reporter to a female one, which changed the whole dynamic of the story for the better. THE FRONT PAGE was remade again in 1974 by Billy Wilder with Hildy once again cast as a man in a vehicle for Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. It’s been remade other times as well. HIS GIRL FRIDAY is my favorite version.

In HIS GIRL FRIDAY, which pokes fun at the ruthless newspaper business and the even more ruthless but completely incompetent political leaders of the day, newspaper reporter Hildy Johnson (Rosalind Russell) is about to get married to the easy going and honest Bruce Baldwin (Ralph Bellamy), but her wise-cracking and impossibly dedicated editor and former husband Walter Burns (Cary Grant) will have none of it and will stop at nothing to keep Hildy at the paper while they work on the explosive happening-in-real-time story of a massive manhunt for a fugitive wanted for murder.

The script by Charles Lederer, based on the play by Charles MacArthur and Ben Hecht is nonstop hilarious, with the key word being nonstop. The dialogue is fast and relentless, the actors speak at a rapid-fire pace and if you’re not ready, you’ll be caught off guard. But the pace is ripe for humor, and without further hesitation, let’s have a listen:

A lot of the humor comes from the banter between Cary Grant’s Walter Burns and Rosalind Russell’s Hildy Johnson.

For example:

WALTER: Look, Hildy, I only acted like any husband that didn’t want to see his home broken up.

HILDY: What home?

WALTER: “What home”? Don’t you remember the home I promised you?

And:

WALTER: What were you when you came here five years ago – a little college girl from a school of journalism. I took a doll-faced hick…

HILDY: Well, you wouldn’t take me if I hadn’t been doll-faced.

WALTER: Well, why should I? I thought it would be a novelty to have a face around here a man could look at without shuddering.

It’s also a very playful script with in-jokes and moments that break the fourth wall, like this one where Walter is trying to describe what Bruce, who’s played by Ralph Bellamy, looks like:

WALTER: He looks like that fellow in the movies – Ralph Bellamy.

There are parts which play on misunderstandings, like the exchange between Hildy and newspaper heavy Louis:

LOUIS: What’s the matter, Hildy?

HILDY: Don’t give me that innocent stuff! What did you pull on Mr. Baldwin this time?

LOUIS: Who, me?

HILDY: Yes, you and that albino of yours!

LOUIS: You talkin’ about Evangeline?

HILDY: None other!

LOUIS: She ain’t no albino.

HILDY: She’ll do till one comes along!

LOUIS; She was born right here in this country!

Then there are moments which highlight Walters’ ruthlessness to get the job done, like in this moment where he’s talking to his copy editor:

WALTER: Hey, Duffy, listen. Is there any way we can stop the 4:00 train to Albany from leaving town?

DUFFY: We might dynamite it.

WALTER: Could we?

The dialogue between Walter and Bruce, where Walter consistently leaves the slow-witted and well-meaning Bruce in the dust is energetic and funny:

WALTER: Well, Bruce, you see, I thought… You don’t mind if I call you Bruce, do you? After all, we’re practically related.

BRUCE: Oh, not at all.

WALTER; You see, my wife, that is, your wife, I mean, Hildy, oh Hildy, you led me to expect you were marrying a much older man.

BRUCE: Oh, really? What did I say that led you to expect that…

WALTER: Oh, don’t worry about it. I realize that you didn’t mean old in years.

The local politcians are corrupt and inept. In this scene, the mayor tries to convince a messenger, Joe Pettibone, that he didn’t deliver the message, but Pettibone is a wide-eyed innocent and quite clueless citizen who won’t hear of it:

MAYOR: Now, remember, you never delivered this.

JOE: Yes, I did.

MAYOR: No, you didn’t. You got caught in the traffic or something.

JOE: No, I came around the…

MAYOR: Well, pretend you did. Now, get out of here and don’t let anybody see you.

And we finish with one of my favorite lines of the movie, and it comes near the film’s climax, where Walter finds himself surrounded by the authorities, and the fugitive they’re all looking for who Walter desperately wants to interview, is hiding inside the oversized desk. As the authorities enter the office and Walter struggles to come up with a plan of escape, the sheriff announces that if Walter doesn’t cooperate, they’ll start impounding his belongings, and he starts pointing to some of them, like the desk.

A light bulb goes off inside Walter’s head:

WALTER: This desk? I dare you to move this desk out of here!

To which the sheriff responds, “Come on, boys!”

Hilarious moment in a hilarious movie.

Check out HIS GIRL FRIDAY. It’s directed by one of my favorite movie directors, Howard Hawks, and stars Cary Grant at the top of his game, and Rosalind Russell who is equally as good, with a screenplay that is one of classic comedy’s best.’

Hope you enjoyed today’s MEMORABLE MOVIE QUOTES column and that you will join me again next time when we’ll look at more quotes from other classic movies!

As always, thanks for reading!

—Michael

THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (2016) Not So Magnificent

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magnificent-seven

A bully takes over a town, and the frustrated townspeople hire gunslingers to protect them.  It’s the story told in the classic western THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (1960), itself a remake of an even better movie, Akira Kurosawa’s THE SEVEN SAMURAI (1954).

So, you’d hope that the folks behind this latest remake would offer audiences something new.  After all, if you’re going to remake a movie, wouldn’t you want to put your own stamp on it, to make it stand out as your own?  And that’s the biggest problem I had with this new version of THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (2016):  it doesn’t give us anything new or stand on its own.

The biggest culprit?  A screenplay that never really gets to the heart of the matter.  In spite of the solid acting and crisp clear directing, the story never really moves beyond the superficial.

THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN opens with a baddie named Bartholomew Bogue (Peter Sarsgaard) terrorizing a small town in the old west.  He’s buying off the people’s land at ridiculously low prices, and if they won’t sell, well, his army of bandits will simply kill them.  And when some of the townsfolk object, that’s exactly what they do.

One of the men killed is the husband of Emma Cullen (Haley Bennett), a feisty woman who then sets out to hire gunslingers to free their town from Bogue’s clutches.  She meets a hired gun named Chisolm (Denzel Washington) and he turns her down until he hears the name of the man she wants stopped, Bogue, and then he changes his mind.  Chisolm and Bogue obviously share some history, which we learn about later in the story.

Chisolm rounds up a team of men to join him, with the total number eventually reaching seven.  They then spend the rest of the movie preparing to defend the town, setting things up for the obligatory climactic confrontation.

As you can see, THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN tells a very simple story, and for a movie like this to work, it needs to be carried by strong characters and a lively script, neither of which are in this movie.

The characters are okay and the actors are all solid in their roles,  but they’re all very plain and straightforward.  None of them are particularly memorable. Only Vincent D’Onofrio stands out as the high-pitched soft spoken trapper Jack Horne.  D’Onofrio gives Horne something the other characters all lack:  a personality.  He’s the one memorable character in the whole lot.

I’m a big Denzel Washington fan, going back to his early years with films like CRY FREEDOM (1987) all the way through to today, although some of his recent films have been lukewarm.  Washington is fine here, but there’s just not a lot to Chisolm.  He’s a cool customer, not saying a whole lot, but unlike Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name, we don’t really see Chisolm back up his persona with action, and what little he has to say is flat out dull.

Chris Pratt plays the lively gambler Josh Faraday, and it looks like Pratt is having a good time, but the problem with Faraday is nearly every line he spews is a cliche.  It’s the type of role James Garner would have played, but Garner would have anchored the charm with some realism, and Pratt doesn’t give Faraday anything that is even resembling real.

Ethan Hawke is Goodnight Robicheaux, and the most memorable thing about him is his name.  Hawke is another actor I usually enjoy, but the role he’s playing here is shallow and underdeveloped.  The same can be said for Robicheaux’s buddy Billy Rocks, played by Byung-hun Lee.

As I said, Vincent D’Onofrio is the one guy who stands out from the rest here, as the burly trapper Jack Horne.  He also gives Chris Pratt’s Faraday one of the better lines in the movie when he says of Jack, “I do believe that bear was wearing people clothes.”

And the seven are rounded out by a Mexican gunman named Vasquez (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) and a Native American named Red Harvest (Martin Sensmeier).  Both of these characters are like the other five:  solid but unremarkable.

I also wasn’t overly impressed by Haley Bennett as Emma Cullen.  She sure looks feisty with her heated stares at the camera, but again I’ll blame the script.  We know very little about Emma, and she remains largely in the background while the seven do their thing, rather than being in the middle of the action.

The one other actor who does make an impression is Peter Sarsgaard as the dastardly villain Bartholomew Bogue, but that all happens in the opening sequence of the movie. Sarsgaard struts his stuff in the opening scene, making for a very dark character, giving the film a rather chilling start.  But then he disappears for the remainder of the movie, and when he returns for the climactic battle, he remains in the background,reduced to reaction shots as his army goes toe to toe with the seven.  So, unfortunately, Sarsgaard is hardly a major factor in this movie, since his best scene is the first one.

Director Antoine Fuqua , who also directed Denzel Washington in THE EQUALIZER (2014) and the film which won Washington as Oscar, TRAINING DAY (2001), does a serviceable job here.  I mean, the action scenes are clear and crisp, but they don’t wow.  The cinematography is adequate, but it didn’t blow me away.  This wild west is nowhere near as grand or picturesque as the west captured by the likes of John Ford and Howard Hawks.

Fuqua also glosses over one of the more interesting parts of the story:  the training of the townspeople to defend themselves.  There are a few fleeting scenes of our magnificent seven teaching these folks the art of self-defense, but there was so much more that could have been done.  It’s a missed opportunity in a movie that was begging for some captivating sequences.

And while the shoot-outs and fights are professionally shot— heh heh— they are way too sanitizied and neat.  First off, the film is rated PG-13, and so for the countless unfortunates who are shot, stabbed, blown up, what have you, there’s not a drop of blood anywhere.  Not that I want to see a gory bloodbath, but when things are as neat and tidy as they are in this movie, it takes away from the strength of the story.

The bigger drawback with the action scenes is that they are all so orderly.  There’s no sense of panic or pandemonium.  Take the climactic battle between the seven and the townsfolk and the army of villains.  There are people running everywhere, and yet everyone knows exactly who to shoot, without question.  It’s so precise you’d think they were wearing sports jerseys with their names on them, like having “Team Bogue” printed on their backs.  This is an all out war, people are being shot and blown up, and yet there’s no horror whatsoever associated with it, which really limits the story.

The best action sequence is when Chisolm and company first arrive in the town and put a big hurt on the thugs stationed there.  This dramatic sequence works well.  By contrast, the movie’s ending is nowhere near as riveting.

Again, the biggest culprit to this one being mediocre is its screenplay by Richard Wenk and Nic Pizzolatto, which surprised me because Wenk has written screenplays for films I’ve really enjoyed, movies like the remake of THE MECHANIC (2011) with Jason Statham, and the Sylvester Stallone all-star actioner THE EXPENDABLES 2 (2012), which I thought was the best of that series.

The screenplay to THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN tells a straightforward story without many surprises.  There are the occasional witty lines, but I’d hardly call it a lively script.  Plus it’s all so predictable, with the ending to this one never being in doubt.

THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN is a by the numbers western that never rises above its material or puts a distinctive stamp on the genre.

It’s not bad, but for a movie called THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, there’s nothing all that magnficent about it. Perhaps it should have been called THE STRAIGHTFORWARD SEVEN.

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PICTURE OF THE DAY: THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD (1951)

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The Thing (James Arness) moments away from getting set on fire in a desperate attempt to kill the blood drinking alien in this classic scene from THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD (1951).

The Thing (James Arness) about to be set on fire in a desperate attempt to kill the blood-drinking alien in this classic scene from THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD (1951).

PICTURE OF THE DAY:  THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD (1951)

 

In this scene from THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD (1951) – which happens to be one of my favorite science fiction horror movies from the 1950s- the Thing (James Arness) is moments away from being doused with kerosene and set on fire by the men fighting for their lives at the North Pole base.

This is one of the most suspenseful scenes in the movie.

The Thing, that alien being which slits its victims’ throats and uses their blood to “grow” new baby aliens, as played by James Arness is one of the scariest monsters to emerge from 1950s science fiction horror cinema.  He’s frightening to look at, to be sure, but this is another classic case in a horror movie where less is more.  The Thing is seen only fleetingly in this movie, appearing here, darting out there, and it only adds to the suspense effect.  Truth be told, the Thing wasn’t shown a whole lot because the filmmakers, Howard Hawks to be specific, weren’t pleased with the way he looked on film, and so the close-ups of the Thing were not used in the final print.

The scene pictured here is memorable for a couple of reasons.  It’s famous because it was a very dangerous stunt.  It was one of the first times that a stunt man was actually set on fire, and this was done in a room full of actors.  Supposedly there were so many things that could have gone wrong with this scene, it’s said that the stunt man and the actors involved were lucky to have escaped serious injury.

It’s also an incredibly potent scene, and the build-up where the men use a Geiger counter to track the Thing’s movements as it closes in on them calls to mind similar scenes in both ALIEN (1979) and ALIENS (1986).  When you see this scene in THE THING, it’s easy to recognize the influence it had on the later scenes in the ALIEN movies.

THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD was directed by Christian Nyby, or at least he received credit.  It’s widely believed and has been pretty much substantiated that the man who really directed it was the man who produced it, Howard Hawks, one of the most talented American film directors of all time.  This is the only horror movie ever done by Hawks, who gave us such gems as HIS GIRL FRIDAY (1940) starring Cary Grant, THE BIG SLEEP (1946), starring Humphrey Bogart, and RIO BRAVO (1959) starring John Wayne and Dean Martin, to name just a few.

It’s no wonder then that THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD is as good as it is.  It ranks as one of the best, if not the best, horror science fiction films from the 1950s, grouped with a handful of other titles, like THEM! (1954), INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1956) and THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (1953).

In the mood to be terrified this winter?  Check out THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD.   It’ll scare you right out of your snow pants!

Who goes there?  The Thing!

Thanks for reading.

—Michael

IN THE SPOOKLIGHT: THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD (1951)

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The-Thing-from-Another-World-PosterHere’s my latest IN THE SPOOKLIGHT column on the science fiction classic THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD (1951), up now in the January 2014 edition of the HWA Newsletter.

And remember, my book IN THE SPOOKLIGHT, a collection of 115 horror movie columns, is available from NECON EBooks as an EBook at www.neconebooks.com, and as a print edition at https://www.createspace.com/4293038.

Thanks for reading!

—Michael

IN THE SPOOKLIGHT

BY

MICHAEL ARRUDA

 

THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD (1951) is one of my favorite horror science fiction films from the 1950s.  This one and THEM! (1954) are pretty much even in my book.

And while there are other classic horror science fiction movies from the 1950s, THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD— which I grew up calling THE THING, because that’s how we referred to it back then— is certainly the creepiest.

I love this movie.

 

Of course, today the debate rages over which one is better, this original film version or John Carpenter’s graphic 1982 remake starring Kurt Russell. That’s a debate for another day, and another column.  They’re both great movies.

 

One of the main reasons why THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD is superior to so many other genre films from the 1950s is the quality of the acting.  There’s no wooden or stilted acting here.  The cast features an enormous ensemble of actors, led by Kenneth Tobey as Captain Patrick Hendry, and they’re all excellent. 

 

And there’s a flow to the dialogue that is unmatched by other films of the time.  Characters talk quickly and at the same time. 

 

Of course, the famous story about THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD is that producer Howard Hawks, one of the most talented directors in American film history, actually directed most of this film rather than the credited director, Christian Nyby.

 

Christian who?  Actually, in spite of the fact that nearly everyone who talks about THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD refers to it as a Howard Hawks film, Nyby went on to have a very successful career in television, directing episodes from TWILIGHT ZONE (1962), GILLIGAN’S ISLAND (1965), EMERGENCY! (1972-73), and ADAM-12 (1970-75), to name just a few.

 

So, getting back to my point about the acting and the dialogue, if you’ve seen other Howard Hawks movies, you’ve seen this rapid fire style of dialogue before, and so it validates that Hawks had his hand in the production.

 

And it’s a great script too, by Charles Lederer, based on the story “Who Goes There?” by John W. Campbell, Jr.  Lederer had a ton of writing credits, including the classic Cary Grant comedy HIS GIRL FRIDAY (1940), an early Howard Hawks film that contains some of the fastest, snappiest, and funniest dialogue in a movie this side of the Marx Brothers.

 

The story is simple.  A group of soldiers are sent from their station in Anchorage, Alaska to the North Pole to investigate what the scientists there say was a plane crash of some kind.  Captain Patrick Hendry (Kenneth Tobey) is only too happy to lead this mission up north because his girlfriend Nikki (Margaret Sheridan) is stationed there, where she assists the famous Dr. Arthur Carrington (Robert Cornthwaite).

 

Accompanying Captain Hendry and his men is reporter Ned “Scotty” Scott (Douglas Spencer, in a terrific performance), who gets most of the humorous lines in the movie.  Sure enough, they discover the wreckage of an aircraft now underneath the ice, and when they fan out to determine the shape of the thing, in a now famous scene, they discover that the craft is round— it’s a flying saucer. 

 

They attempt to melt the ice so they can examine their find, but the thermite charges prove to be too hot, and the entire ship goes up in flames and is destroyed.  However, they do discover the body of an alien being frozen in ice, apparently frozen after he had attempted to leave his ship.  They bring back the chunk of ice containing the frozen alien.

 

This being a horror movie, the ice melts, and the alien awakes, and lo and behold, we meet The Thing (James Arness) an eight foot walking vegetable who possesses superior intelligence as well as incredible strength.  He also has regenerative powers, and so when he loses a hand early on, he grows it back.  He needs blood to survive, and he quickly kills two of the scientists, hangs them upside down in the base’s greenhouse, and slits their throats, using their blood to feed seedlings so he can grow others like him to, in effect, take over the world.

 

The rest of the movie pits Captain Hendry and his men against this seemingly unstoppable and very brutal creature.  It’s all very exciting and suspenseful.  You won’t have many fingernails left.

 

THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD includes some really neat and scary scenes.  The Thing itself isn’t in the movie very much, but the film makes the most of his brief screen time.

 

The scene where Captain Hendry and his men, while searching for the Thing, open the door and he’s standing right there on the other side of the door, is scary as hell and provides a nice jolt, the kind of scene absent from most 1950s movies.

 

This scene also has one of the funnier moments in the movie, when Captain Hendry asks Scotty if he took a picture of the Thing.  Scotty answers that the door wasn’t open wide enough and so Hendry asks if he’d like him to open the door again.  Scotty quickly says, “NO!”

 

The scene where the Thing runs into the snow and fights off the dogs is another creepy one, and you can’t see THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD without mentioning the sequence where the soldiers try to kill it by setting it on fire.  This scene is famous because supposedly Hawks used real fire and shot it in one take, so it’s about as authentic a scene using fire as you’re ever going to see.  The stunt doubles earned their money in this scene.  It’s a violent, raw, and intense.

 

Just before this flame sequence, as the Thing approaches the door, off-camera, and the soldiers track him with their Geiger counters, counting down the distance between him and them, is reminiscent of similar scenes used years later in ALIEN (1979) and its sequel ALIENS (1986).

 

The Thing itself has a great look, and it helps that we usually see him in shadow or with a strange eerie glow around his head.  It’s one of James Arness’ first movies, and he does a nice job acting scary.  He got to play the good guy in the other classic science fiction horror movie from the 1950s, THEM! (1954) as he plays FBI man Robert Graham in that one, who has to save the world from an invasion of giant ants.

 

THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD  has a great cast.  It’s one of Kenneth Tobey’s best performances.  Toby also appeared in the Ray Harryhausen movies THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS (1953), and IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA (1955), but he’s so much better here in THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD.  Tobey enjoyed a long acting career, appearing in movies all the way up to the late 1990s.  He passed away in 2002.

 

Other than Tobey, my favorite performance belongs to Douglas Spencer as “Scotty” the reporter. He certainly gets some of the best lines in the movie, and his performance here is a nice foreshadowing of Darren McGavin’s performance as reporter Carl Kolchak in THE NIGHT STALKER (1972).

 

Margaret Sheridan is also very good as Nikki, and Robert Cornthwaite makes a very effective Dr. Arthur Carrington, who’s constantly at odds with Captain Hendry, as he wants to keep the Thing alive at all costs, in the interests of science.  Cornthwaite also played a scientist in THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (1953).  Like Kenneth Tobey, Cornthwaite also enjoyed a long acting career, acting all the way up to the 2000s, and he passed away in 2006.

 

Everyone in the cast seems so relaxed.  Now, this isn’t a bad thing. In fact, it’s incredibly refreshing not to have people running around screaming and overacting.  They’re constantly trying not to attract the Thing, and so they’re frequently whispering.  There’s lot of soft spoken crisp dialogue, and it’s full of humor throughout.

 

You also can’t talk about THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD without mentioning the powerful music score by Dimitri Tiomkin.  It’s an amazing score, and it captures the strength and brutality of the Thing itself.

 

Howard Hawks only made one horror movie, THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD. After seeing it, you can’t help but wish he had made many more.

 

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