The Thing from Another World

Another old sci-fi film last night: 'The Thing from Another World'. It's the original Base-Under-Siege-by-Monster movie. Its imagery and ideas are so familiar to us from so many iterations and homages and rip-offs down the years that it's another film you think you know better than you do. I thought it was wonderful: all the revelations about how this was a sentient and rather brutal vegetable stalking them inside the arctic base. It was unexpectedly horrible - the husky drained of blood in the greenhouse, and the sudden violence of the monster's attacks, when he breaks down the doors and brings in the swirling snow, smashes the lamps and the coffee mugs.

The characters under siege had a pretty hard time of it - being picked off one by one by this bloodsucking demon... but on the whole they're a cheery lot. They dash about in a group, sipping coffee and coshing the treacherous scientist on the head when need be. They try things like setting whole rooms on fire with kerosene or electrifying the floor and they seem very pleased with themselves and their wherewithal with malevolent extraterrestrials. I love the scene where they pace out the shape of his spacecraft under the ice and, standing in a perfect circle, realise all together that it's a saucer. They've got an actual flying saucer! And then they blow it up by accident. So again, although there's paranoia and fright and that marvellously doomy 'Watch the Skies!!' ending... there is still here a great sense of delight. Of excitement about being in a great adventure story. Of wary but joyous expectation of doing battle with monsters...

I'm thoroughly enjoying my impromptu 50s sci-fi marathon. I think it all came about because last week I had to rewatch Roger Corman's superlative, neglected B picture 'The Wasp Woman.' I had promised an essay all about it for a book on sf film history that Mark Morris is editing for PS publishing, coming out later this year. That Wasp Woman has sent me off on a little research detour, I think. Let's see where it takes me.