The Duck Speaks

Lyzard of And You Call Yourself a Scientist, and Chad of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, have invited me to join them in their “That Was Then, This is Now” series of reviews looking at movies and their remakes; the subject being John Campbell’s story “Who Goes There?” and it’s various cinematic interpretations. I’ve done my usual, looking at both films separately, then comparing them with the original story; at the end of each section, you will find a link to my compatriots more in-depth comments. Plus, for your reading pleasure, we’ve got a three-way conversation where we let our thoughts bounce around just to see what happens. Enjoy!

Oh, and we before we go any further, if you haven’t already, you will surely benefit from through explorations of both Chad and Lyz’s sites. I’m a big fan, have been for a while, and this roundtable was a terrific chance to acquire a bit of credibility by association.

SCREEN:

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The Thing From Another World, directed by Christian Nyby and Howard Hawks
Something strange is happening in the Arctic. Last night, a strange sort of meteor crashed nearby a science outpost, sending radio equipment in a tizzy and Geiger counters through the roof. Capt. Pat Hendry (Kenneth Tobey) has arrived to aid investigations, along with Scotty (Douglas Spencer), wise-cracking news-reporter desperate for a story. Dr. Carrington (Robert Cornthwaite) informs them that they may have the discovery of the century on their hands- an honest to goodness flying saucer. Everyone is understandably excited; but when they take a frozen alien from the now-defunct ship back to base, they might have more on their hands than they can handle…

Things change. (Ha!) To a modern viewer, The Thing From Another World is a far different experience than it must have been for a fifties audience. To call the picture dated would be both harsh and unfair; it still succeeds, and most likely will continue to succeed, on the level it shoots for, offering up chills and entertainment regardless of the decade. There are, however, certain points that stand out to those of us living in the mythical present- and those points work both for and against the movie as a whole.

To the positive, it’s refreshing to watch a story where the military is made up of unabashedly honest and heroic men and women. I’m no army booster, and I think it’s probably for the best that we’ve grown to distrust any large group of individuals with automatic weapons; but on the screen, it’s nifty to see somebody salute and not think, “Ah, a tool!” There are no conspiracies, no attempts to capture the creature for use as the “ultimate weapon.” Sure, a superior officer (who presence is mostly felt through thinly dispensed radio messages) does prevent Scotty from broadcasting about the alien- but this is more stodgy prudence than murky cover-up. Besides, once the danger is past, the reporter is allowed to tell what happened without any qualm from anyone- imagine that happening in a film today!

There is, unsurprisingly, a lack of computer generated effects; and has been said countless times (hell, I think I’ve said it a few times myself), this is immeasurably to the movie’s benefit. What can’t be shown is suggested, and what can be shown is done in shadows or in brief glimpses. James Arness as the Thing- or Intellectual Carrot, which would be a damn cool punk band- has limited screen time, and to be honest, it’s not his acting that really shines on those few moments he’s around, but his sheer physical presence. The alien is said to be over seven feet tall, and while I doubt Arness is quite that big, you never question it during the movie. The Thing’s accomplished by make-up and a neat sort of localized blur, like an aura of woodsmoke. It’s “children” are easier to see through, being little more than planted balloons, but effective. Also, there’s no self-referntialism, no sex thrown in for its own sake, and no inane wisecracking- Scotty’s the comic relief, and while he verges on annoying once or twice, he gets a few good zingers out and never becomes a pest. I liked him, anyway.

Actually, there is a bit of sex thrown in, although not of the sort we’re accustomed to. Our Hero, Hendry, is contractually obligated to have a love interest, and he does- and here’s where the refreshing stops and the awkwardness begins. Because while Nikki Nicholson (Marageret Sheridan) is clearly able to hold her own against Hendry (when they met during the back story, she drank him under the table), she doesn’t serve much more purpose on the expedition than typing up Professor Carrington’s notes and offering people coffee. The one plot point she contributes is listing the various ways to cook a vegetable; helpful, but not exactly empowering.

But it could be worse. Much, much worse; like I said, she’s capable, and she never screams or faints (that’s Scotty’s job). Even the coffee serving is done as a gag. Her character is not incredibly useful, but I’ve seen worse tacked on subplots. This one never becomes forced.

TTFAW is a very well put together movie, so now that we get into the less pleasant aspects, I can’t help but be guilty. After all, I’m about to criticize a character who was formed entirely around the conventions of his time; and while that might be valid for an essay of some sort, it’s not nice to pick on somebody because of when they were filmed.

Hell, I’m going to do it anyway.

Dr. Carrington is the head scientist at the base, and from the moment we meet him, we know he’s going to be trouble. He’s distracted, abrupt, demanding; he clearly has no time for “human” niceties. He even looks malevolent, with his goatee and ermine winter coat. You could imagine him trading clipped witticisms with Dr. Jekyll at a conference in Hell.

Or rather, you couldn’t; because while Jekyll was obsessed with bringing out the buried, undesirable parts of humanity, Carrington is all about repression and the elimination of emotion. Over and over he makes it clear that humans are inferior because they cannot think “purely”; and when the opportunity to make contact with a creature of pure intellect presents itself, he goes to every length imaginable to make that contact possible, endangering himself and everyone else in camp.

Carrington isn’t evil, although he is the closest thing to a human villain the movie has. Someone says early on that he’s “different” from most people, but they needn’t have bothered- you can tell how different he is by the way he talks and the way everyone treats him. There’s a definitive moment, when Carrington is surrounded by a group of men and pleads with Hendry not to kill the Thing. He begins to list all the things science has achieved for mankind, which leads to the following:

Carrington: “We split the atom-“
Solider: “Oh, and the world was sure better for it.”

Once you hear that, everyone might as well go home, because Carrington is a human face on the social perception of science, and that perception was defined by the newly released horrors of the atom bomb. You couldn’t have a sympathetic scientist in your story- scientists were responsible for unleashing on this earth the greatest destructive force the world has ever known. Clearly, fellas like that weren’t quite right in the head.

As Carrington himself proves to be, over and over, despite his alleged brilliance. That’s my biggest problem with the character right there, and one of the two main difficulties for me in enjoying this movie (the other, we’ll get too later)- I don’t buy it. I understand the reasons for him being who he is, I get the context, but as an audience member, I simply don’t believe that anyone as brilliant as Carrington is supposed to be wouldn’t realize that the Thing, which kills, lives on human blood, and has a very disagreeable personality, is a hostile force. That he didn’t took me out of the movie.

Maybe it worked for audiences of the time; I know it works for others now. Me, not so much. So I can recognize the movie as a classic, and I can respect it, but I simply find it impossible to really enjoy it. If I have to watch a ‘50’s sci-fi pic, I’d rather see a bunch of radioactive ants. Apparently, I prefer my mad scientists to be simply eccentric.

For a closer look at this one, and a better examination of the Whys and Wherefores of Carrington, go to Lyz’s review.

SCREEN:

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The Thing, directed by John Carpenter
When a pair of Norwegians blow themselves up trying to kill a sled-dog, MacReady (Kurt Russel) and the rest of the men don’t know what to make of it. He and Dr. Cooper (Richard Dysart) fly out to the Norwegians’ base, and find the place destroyed- with a frozen suicide in the radio room, and a hideous burnt mess in the snow out behind the camp. They bring the mess back with them, and while Blair, the resident scientist, starts an autopsy, the still alive sled dog has joined the rest of the dogs at camp- and something weird is happening…

This is the first John Carpenter movie I’ve been able to do for my site. Thankfully, it’s one of his best, so I don’t have to beat on a personal hero. (It’ll be a sad day if I ever get around to Vampires.)

The Thing was not a financial success when it open in 1982, and critical reaction was mixed, leaning towards the negative. It’s still mixed; most reviewers say the movie is overwhelmed by its special effects, that the story is too confusing and that the characters don’t stick together. An inevitable line in any Thing review is something to the effect of “Forget this tepid remake, and stick with the original classic.”

Phooey on them, I say. I love this movie, loved it since the first time I saw it on television with my father, and I love it still. I’ve watched it eight, maybe nine times by now, listened to the director’s commentary track on the DVD twice, and watching it again for this review I wasn’t bored in the slightest. I even found myself getting spooked a few times. Pretty remarkable in a genre where usually, once you’ve found the surprises, you’re not likely to jump.

Part of it is undoubtedly the critically bemoaned Rob Bottin effects. Carpenter gave the designer free rein, and it shows; I can’t think of a movie that manages to be this startingly original with it’s creatures. Even more importantly, the aliens all look alien- there’s nothing familiar unless it’s supposed to be there, and things open and twist and unfold in ways you wouldn’t expect. It’s like a series of biological Goldberg machines, each more vicious than the last; they give a very clear sense of what’s at stake here, and just how dangerous this Thing is.

As for the human part of the cast, there’s no strong attempt made to develop characters, at least not script wise. We’re never told why these men are out here, what their relationships are with each other; we never get a big monologue from MacReady about the love he left behind. While in most movies this would’ve been a drawback, here it works beautifully. The actors are a talented bunch, and even with very little exposition, one still gets a sense of who is who.

There’s a strong tension in the air even before the nastiness starts in truth. Everyone’s snappish and mistrustful, and our “hero,” MacReady, is a distant, irritable loner. Kurt Russel does a very nice job in keeping our sympathies without ever obviously working at it- he’s only the main character of the movie because he’s slightly more competent than those around him, and it’s not a job he wanted.

What better environment for a shape-shifting alien to slide into? These folks are already ready to tear each other apart, for playing the music too loud or saying something the wrong way; when they get an honest to god reason to be paranoid, the situation rapidly deteriorates.

Then there’s the ending. Carpenter had already shown his fondness for unresolving resolutions in Halloween, and here he takes it to the nth degree. We do get what could be construed as an “action climax,” but even when it happens you know it’s not going to be good for much; and what follows after may or may not confirm that. I’m being purposefully oblique here, as to avoid spoilers; you need to see this one for yourself to understand. Let’s just say, stinger endings normally bug the snot out of me; but here’s one that not only works, it’s not even a stinger- it doesn’t twist our expectations, it confirms those expectations without being overt.

Damn, that’s vague. Well, go rent the movie.

Now go take a visit to Chad’s review for a far more lucid account of things.

COMPARE/CONTRAST:
John W. Campbell’s story “Who Goes There?” is pure pulp- and I mean that in a good way. The prose is exaggerated and rife with purple adjectives, the characters are larger than life, the situation out of this world. But while there are a few action sequences, far more time is given over in the narrative to scientific philosophy; and in the end, the men (and the world) are saved less by quick reflexes and more by plain old logic and deduction.

The story proper opens after the alien has been discovered; Second-In-Command McReady relates to the men how a spaceship was discovered in the ice, and promptly destroyed when they attempted to release it with explosives. Near the ship, they found a frozen creature, which they cut free and brought back to the lab.

A debate ensues, between the two main men of science at the camp, Norris and Blair. Norris wants to leave the thing as is, wait for someone else higher-up to deal with it, while Blair is all for thawing it out now. Norris argues that some dangerous biological parasite could still be alive on the alien’s body, but Blair says this is ridiculous: the creature has been in the ice for thousands, if not millions, of years, anything on it would be long dead. Blair wins out in the end, but Norris is not convinced, and Kinner, the cook, is driven to near hysteria but the horribleness of the Thing’s appearance.

The Thing thaws, and turns out to be much more of a threat than anyone suspected. The men destroy it with electricity, and all seems all right; but Blair soon goes half-mad, destroying all the radio equipment and transport devices in the camp. After sedating Blair, the men go through his notebooks, and discover what was disturbing him; the Thing consumes other living entities and duplicates them perfectly. Only a few cells of it are needed to take over a human body- and in the time between it thawing and being found again, it had more than enough time to take over just about anybody.

Everyone starts living in the common room, taking already cramped quarters to a ludicrous extent. Dr. Copper comes up with a blood test, one generally used in forensics to determine if blood is human or not, to determine who’s who. The test requires the gradual indoctrination of a sled dog with human blood- unfortunately, when the test is made, Copper finds that the dog has already been indoctrinated with Thing blood, making the animal they’d spent weeks preparing useless. Worse, the Thing managed to kill the remaining dogs. Now they know either Copper or Commander Garry is lost, but they don’t know which, and without the means to make another test, they’re stuck.

Tensions rise, as the general paranoia takes its toll on everyone; Kinner cracks, and spends his day locked in a room shouting prayers. Finally, McReady figures out another way to test- if each cell of the Thing is a living organism, then they could take blood samples from everyone and “attack” the blood with a heated wire. A normal human’s blood is dead tissue, and won’t respond; but a Thing’s blood will try and defend itself.

The test is a success, and the enemies are quickly discovered. The remaining men make a final trip out to Blair’s shack and burn him as he tries to escape; inside, they find a number of strange gadgets, all designed for a small ship that Blair- or whatever Blair had become- was planning on flying to the mainland. Humanity is saved, by bare inches.

I’ve summarized so fully here to give you a clear sense of how each film version stacks up against its source material. The Thing From Another World takes only a few important elements: an Arctic outpost, an alien ship, and a creature frozen in the ice that must be thawed out. From here it goes entirely in its own direction. There are no comparative characters between the story and TTFAW. “Who Goes There?” has no Carrington to keep getting in the way, and no Scotty to serve as audience surrogate when things start getting weird.

Plot wise, Carpenter’s The Thing is far closer. The most important retention is of the creature’s modus operandi- the “Are you real?” element is a defining factor in both versions. The major characters are all represented, and while there are fewer men in the movie than in the story, all the names are taken directly from the source material. Plus, the characters act similarly; McReady is the man everyone turns to in a crisis, even if it’s hard to figure out why. (Well, he is a pilot. When you’re out in the middle of a frozen wasteland, it’d probably make sense to look up to the only guy who can get you out.) Blair goes nuts, courtesy of Wilford Brimley’s seriously committed performance. Dr. Cooper comes up with the first test.

However, the men don’t find the Thing in Carpenter’s version; it comes to them, being chased by a helicopter of desperate Norwegians. There are a number of clever references to both the Campbell story and the Hawks’ film when McReady and Dr. Cooper go to investigate the Swede’s (“Norwegians, Mac.”) camp; there’s the big hunk of thawed ice, and even a video of a group of men standing around a spaceship. It’s almost possible to view The Thing as a sequel to “Who Goes There?”- a sequel in a world where the first story had a far grimmer conclusion.

It is important to note that while TTFAW doesn’t have as much in common with it’s source as its later brethren, it does manage to be much more in keeping with the source’s spirit. “Who Goes There?” is about Man coming up against a well nigh impossible challenge and winning out through ingenuity and superior intelligence. Twenty years passed between its publication and TTFAW’s release, and a lot happened in those twenty years; enough to make it very difficult to show Man’s Intelligence succeeding at just about anything. However, in the pre-Night of the Living Dead era, horror films were still expected to return to the status quo at their conclusion, and TTFAW returns there with remarkable ease. When the enigmatic and foolish Dr. Carrington is unable to reason with the creature, good old fashioned American know-how takes over, eliminating the Thing in much the same way the original alien was killed in the Campbell story. So, in the story, smarts wins out; in the first movie, heart wins.

In the The Thing, nobody wins, at least nobody on this earth. There is a positive emphasis on intelligence; while no real victories are made by the men, those few successes they experience come from deductive leaps like the final blood test. However, there is a strong implication that no matter how smart they are, the situation McReady and the others are in is an impossible one. There’s no companionship here, no brotherly love, an element strongly present in both previous versions of the tale. To wax philosophical, post-NOTLD, it was suddenly possible for the bad guys to win, and for the good guys to not be so perfect after all.

Which is the main reason for me that Carpenter’s version compares so favorably with TTFAW in my eyes. I said there were two things that bothered me about the Hawks’ version. The second is that, a few moments aside, there’s never any real fear to the movie. I find it difficult as an audience member to be frightened by something when no one on screen is frightened; and nervous joking doesn’t really count. Not matter how bad and bizarre it gets, everyone behaves as if this was not unusual in the slightest, just another day at the office. Even if things end up okay in “WGT,” at least the men are terrified of the situation- there’s a sense of bravery in the face of adversity. In TTFAW, it’s more level-headedness in a traffic-jam.

So, despite all the critical evidence against me, I prefer the remake to the original. Both are worth seeing- and the story worth reading- but for me, The Thing will always have the edge. It’s pessimism seems realer to me than Hendry’s low-key competence, and while that may say something unpleasant about my character, I’ll stand by it.

SOURCE: QQQ
SCREEN (Original): QQQ
SCREEN (Remake): QQQ.5
“You gotta be f–king kidding me!”

Exhausted yet? Why not visit the three way conversation over at Chad’s site that Lyz, Chad and I had about these monstrosities. I won’t say I don’t repeat myself, but their thoughts in the least are worth reading.