The Thing from Another World

At an Arctic outpost comprised of scientists and Air Force officials, a large spacecraft is discovered in the frost at a nearby location. A team goes to check it out and realizes that it is a flying saucer that has been there for a long time. Their efforts to extract the craft result in its destruction but inside they find a giant still preserved spaceman. Taking him back to base, he is accidentally thawed and begins to wreak havoc on the members of the base who must quickly devise a way to destroy the seemingly indestructible being. "The Thing from Another World" is one of the foremost monster movies of the 1950s. From the often adapted story Who Goes There? by  John W. Campbell, which was the basis for Alien and the John Carpenter/Kurt Russell remake of this film, the film which is credited to director Christian Nyby, is often thought to be the work of producer Howard Hawks, whose reputation was too high to have his name on a B picture. Blending science fiction with horror, the movie contains cheesy effects (with the monster being nothing more than a man in high heels dressed in a plastic suit) and character types (the doctor who spews vegetable metaphors and insists on reasoning with the creature for science's sake as well as the know-it-all wisecracking reporter are both particularly annoying) but ends up being pretty entertaining fare. I think the secret to this film as well as the Carpenter's and Ridley Scott's film is the location and atmosphere. The coldness and remoteness are played particularly well here and the result is a highly entertaining popcorn flick.