The August of 1938 edition of Astounding Science-Fiction, Volume 21, No. 6, included a genre shaping short story titled "Who goes there?" by author Don A. Stuart, which is a pen name used by John W. Campbell, Jr. Three movies were based on this story - all with titles that included the theme of "Thing".
Some versions were based more closely upon the story, but the first film version (1951) was quite different. Not only did it massage the data, it tended to put out an agenda that was appropriate for this time period just after the 1947 Roswell incident. Probably the easiest way to express this is by a simple comparison.
The short story speaks of an alien craft that crashed in the Antarctic, very near the Southern magnetic pole, but based upon the level of ice it probably hit sometime around 20 Million years previously. One quote speaks much: "We saw it there in the blue ice, a thing like a submarine without a conning tower or directive vanes, 280 feet long and 45 feet in diameter at its thickest." Notice that this is very much like the cigar shaped craft reported a great many times and not like what the Media was feeding America in those days - saucer shaped craft.
Now, you are probably thinking that the Antarctic reminds you of the version you are familiar with, the second film version - directed by John Carpenter in 1981 and called "The Thing". But the first version of the movie, from 1951, it takes place near the "North" pole - the Arctic and not the Antarctic of the book version. So already they are redirecting us to not look at the South Pole, don't think about cigar-shaped craft, don't think about alien craft that is at the very least 20 million years more advance than our own, emitting magnetic rays, and perhaps crafted of magnesium. In 1951, so soon after Roswell, they could not afford these ideas circulating. By 1981, with many other movies produced, it was easier to steer back towards the version from the book.
The craft is also described, which is different from the movie versions: "We reached the side and found the metal was something we didn't know. Our beryllium-bronze, non-magnetic tools wouldn't touch it. Barclay had some tool-steel on the tractor, and that wouldn't scratch it either. We made reasonable tests, even tried some acid from the batteries with no results." "They must have had a passivating process to make magnesium metal resist acid that way, and the alloy must have been at least ninety-five percent magnesium. But we had no way of guessing that, so when we spotted the barely opened lock door, we cut around it. There was clear, hard ice inside the lock, where we couldn't reach it. Through the little crack we could look in and see that only metal and tools were in there, so we decided to loosen the ice with a thermite bomb."
Here we see that the material is not known on earth, the hull is possibly of magnesium at a high percentage of purity. And those are some other factors that tend to be wiped out from stories during that period just after Roswell.
The alien or monster was also described differently. In this original version it was "The monster changed as they looked. Three blinded eyes bubbled and crawled hideously in feral hate—growing—seeking sight again—— " And also: "They haven't seen those three red eyes and that blue hair like crawling worms. Crawling? damn, it's crawling there in the ice right now!"
How they found the craft is also interesting. "The more delicate instruments of the physicists, instruments especially designed for this expedition and its study of the magnetic pole, detected a secondary effect, a secondary, less powerful magnetic influence about 80 miles southwest of here. The Secondary Magnetic Expedition went out to investigate it. There is no need for details. We found it, but it was not the huge meteorite or magnetic mountain Norris had expected to find. Iron ore is magnetic, of course; iron more so—and certain special steels even more magnetic from the surface indications, the secondary pole we found was small, so small that the magnetic effect it had was preposterous. No magnetic material conceivable could have that effect. Soundings through the ice indicated it was within one hundred feet of the glacier surface." And again we see a craft that throws off a very strong magnetic field.
Inside the craft they observed three body shapes, although it was an additional one who had managed to escape the craft only to freeze to death about 20 feet outside that they brought back to their camp for testing. So, not the "un-manned" saucers that they sold us for so long, and not the crushed alien bodies but rather four crew members that perished from the cold.
From their observations while it was thawing out, and the bits of tissue they cut and then hardened, they thought that it was native to a hotter planet than Earth Not colder, like Mars or the Moon, nor like Venus was thought to be - cold until proven otherwise by later science. This is not the typical men from Mars theme that we were sold beginning in those days.
In the 1951 movie, the first one made from this story, called "The Thing from Another World", the scientific team that was checking the magnetism of the South Pole, and who were basically peaceful civilians, is now changed to a mix of scientists and Air Force officials, and the scene shifts to the Arctic. As a way to tell us that "the Air Force should handle aliens and their crashed vehicles?" And, "don't study the Antarctic too closely, folks".
This first movie was directed by Howard W. Hawks, a well-known film director from the classic Hollywood era.
None of his other films involved science fiction, and many wondered at the time why he shifted just this once from Casablanca type movies and westerns to sci-fi.
Hawks himself joined the United States Army Air Service early in WWI. Unfortunately,. Hawks's military records were destroyed in the 1973 Military Archive Fire, so the only account of his military service is his own. I've seen this theme used previously when they wanted to hide connections with the intelligence groups, but perhaps it was simply an "accident".
Everyone, and I mean everyone, was very clear that Hawks directed the film. But he let his editor, Christian Nyby take credit, and he also omitted listing any of the actors in the credits. Strange, but not so much if you had been "encouraged" to make this version of the movie. In the movie the creature was a super human alien veggie-type monster. No three eyes in this one.
One of the people present in his version of the story was a newspaperman named Scotty. He uttered the last lines of the film, in fact, when he advised us to "Watch the skies, everywhere! Keep looking. Keep watching the skies!" Mixed signals, or just a psyop in which they wished us to watch the skies so they did not need to? People did watch the skies, but when reporting what they observed they were called nut jobs by the Military and government. So right after Roswell they are telling us to watch the skies, but you don't want to report it based on their reactions to sightings and their habit of claiming everything as swamp gas and weather balloons.
The short story alien who could imitate other life forms was jettisoned - in this first movie we have something like a Frankenstein monster - in the form of a super vegetable that feeds on blood. They seemed to want to down-play the shape-shifting idea, which makes me believe there might be something to that idea after all.
In 1982 the John Carpenter version, (second movie) called The Thing, revives the idea of an alien that is able to mimic other living forms - a true shape shifter again. Carpenter brings the action back to the Antarctic, like the short story. A group of explorers in the Antarctic region have encountered a vicious alien organism that can consume a person and make itself a perfect copy. This is a classic horror film that is loaded with brilliant special effects and graphic violence that is a perfect way to spend a cold evening. Kurt Russel stars as a troubled alcoholic who takes charge and tries to find which person is really the alien creature. One of the most brilliant things about the movie is that it plays with the idea of not knowing who you can trust. Or, subliminally speaking, you can not get to close to an alien because he is likely to kill you and assume your identity - a very scary thought at that.
Set on an isolated base in Antarctica, this version seems almost to pick up where the original movie version (The Thing From Another World) left off. The American scientists discover a decimated Norwegian base some miles distant. Everyone is dead, and only the half charred remains of some unidentifiable thing left to smolder outside the compound might offer any answers to what may have happened. The Thing is brought back to the American base and, too late, the scientists realize that it is alive and lethal. The Thing thaws out and is off, not only killing anyone and anything that crosses Its path, but also absorbing them, making Itself into whoever and whatever it wants.
In the first movie version we find a lot of changes that seem designed to push us towards one version and away from another. True disinformation at its finest - since most of the changes were not needed in order to bring the story along. But I will leave that conclusion up to you - any comments?
Some versions were based more closely upon the story, but the first film version (1951) was quite different. Not only did it massage the data, it tended to put out an agenda that was appropriate for this time period just after the 1947 Roswell incident. Probably the easiest way to express this is by a simple comparison.
The short story speaks of an alien craft that crashed in the Antarctic, very near the Southern magnetic pole, but based upon the level of ice it probably hit sometime around 20 Million years previously. One quote speaks much: "We saw it there in the blue ice, a thing like a submarine without a conning tower or directive vanes, 280 feet long and 45 feet in diameter at its thickest." Notice that this is very much like the cigar shaped craft reported a great many times and not like what the Media was feeding America in those days - saucer shaped craft.
Now, you are probably thinking that the Antarctic reminds you of the version you are familiar with, the second film version - directed by John Carpenter in 1981 and called "The Thing". But the first version of the movie, from 1951, it takes place near the "North" pole - the Arctic and not the Antarctic of the book version. So already they are redirecting us to not look at the South Pole, don't think about cigar-shaped craft, don't think about alien craft that is at the very least 20 million years more advance than our own, emitting magnetic rays, and perhaps crafted of magnesium. In 1951, so soon after Roswell, they could not afford these ideas circulating. By 1981, with many other movies produced, it was easier to steer back towards the version from the book.
The craft is also described, which is different from the movie versions: "We reached the side and found the metal was something we didn't know. Our beryllium-bronze, non-magnetic tools wouldn't touch it. Barclay had some tool-steel on the tractor, and that wouldn't scratch it either. We made reasonable tests, even tried some acid from the batteries with no results." "They must have had a passivating process to make magnesium metal resist acid that way, and the alloy must have been at least ninety-five percent magnesium. But we had no way of guessing that, so when we spotted the barely opened lock door, we cut around it. There was clear, hard ice inside the lock, where we couldn't reach it. Through the little crack we could look in and see that only metal and tools were in there, so we decided to loosen the ice with a thermite bomb."
Here we see that the material is not known on earth, the hull is possibly of magnesium at a high percentage of purity. And those are some other factors that tend to be wiped out from stories during that period just after Roswell.
The alien or monster was also described differently. In this original version it was "The monster changed as they looked. Three blinded eyes bubbled and crawled hideously in feral hate—growing—seeking sight again—— " And also: "They haven't seen those three red eyes and that blue hair like crawling worms. Crawling? damn, it's crawling there in the ice right now!"
How they found the craft is also interesting. "The more delicate instruments of the physicists, instruments especially designed for this expedition and its study of the magnetic pole, detected a secondary effect, a secondary, less powerful magnetic influence about 80 miles southwest of here. The Secondary Magnetic Expedition went out to investigate it. There is no need for details. We found it, but it was not the huge meteorite or magnetic mountain Norris had expected to find. Iron ore is magnetic, of course; iron more so—and certain special steels even more magnetic from the surface indications, the secondary pole we found was small, so small that the magnetic effect it had was preposterous. No magnetic material conceivable could have that effect. Soundings through the ice indicated it was within one hundred feet of the glacier surface." And again we see a craft that throws off a very strong magnetic field.
Inside the craft they observed three body shapes, although it was an additional one who had managed to escape the craft only to freeze to death about 20 feet outside that they brought back to their camp for testing. So, not the "un-manned" saucers that they sold us for so long, and not the crushed alien bodies but rather four crew members that perished from the cold.
From their observations while it was thawing out, and the bits of tissue they cut and then hardened, they thought that it was native to a hotter planet than Earth Not colder, like Mars or the Moon, nor like Venus was thought to be - cold until proven otherwise by later science. This is not the typical men from Mars theme that we were sold beginning in those days.
In the 1951 movie, the first one made from this story, called "The Thing from Another World", the scientific team that was checking the magnetism of the South Pole, and who were basically peaceful civilians, is now changed to a mix of scientists and Air Force officials, and the scene shifts to the Arctic. As a way to tell us that "the Air Force should handle aliens and their crashed vehicles?" And, "don't study the Antarctic too closely, folks".
This first movie was directed by Howard W. Hawks, a well-known film director from the classic Hollywood era.
None of his other films involved science fiction, and many wondered at the time why he shifted just this once from Casablanca type movies and westerns to sci-fi.
Hawks himself joined the United States Army Air Service early in WWI. Unfortunately,. Hawks's military records were destroyed in the 1973 Military Archive Fire, so the only account of his military service is his own. I've seen this theme used previously when they wanted to hide connections with the intelligence groups, but perhaps it was simply an "accident".
Everyone, and I mean everyone, was very clear that Hawks directed the film. But he let his editor, Christian Nyby take credit, and he also omitted listing any of the actors in the credits. Strange, but not so much if you had been "encouraged" to make this version of the movie. In the movie the creature was a super human alien veggie-type monster. No three eyes in this one.
One of the people present in his version of the story was a newspaperman named Scotty. He uttered the last lines of the film, in fact, when he advised us to "Watch the skies, everywhere! Keep looking. Keep watching the skies!" Mixed signals, or just a psyop in which they wished us to watch the skies so they did not need to? People did watch the skies, but when reporting what they observed they were called nut jobs by the Military and government. So right after Roswell they are telling us to watch the skies, but you don't want to report it based on their reactions to sightings and their habit of claiming everything as swamp gas and weather balloons.
The short story alien who could imitate other life forms was jettisoned - in this first movie we have something like a Frankenstein monster - in the form of a super vegetable that feeds on blood. They seemed to want to down-play the shape-shifting idea, which makes me believe there might be something to that idea after all.
In 1982 the John Carpenter version, (second movie) called The Thing, revives the idea of an alien that is able to mimic other living forms - a true shape shifter again. Carpenter brings the action back to the Antarctic, like the short story. A group of explorers in the Antarctic region have encountered a vicious alien organism that can consume a person and make itself a perfect copy. This is a classic horror film that is loaded with brilliant special effects and graphic violence that is a perfect way to spend a cold evening. Kurt Russel stars as a troubled alcoholic who takes charge and tries to find which person is really the alien creature. One of the most brilliant things about the movie is that it plays with the idea of not knowing who you can trust. Or, subliminally speaking, you can not get to close to an alien because he is likely to kill you and assume your identity - a very scary thought at that.
Set on an isolated base in Antarctica, this version seems almost to pick up where the original movie version (The Thing From Another World) left off. The American scientists discover a decimated Norwegian base some miles distant. Everyone is dead, and only the half charred remains of some unidentifiable thing left to smolder outside the compound might offer any answers to what may have happened. The Thing is brought back to the American base and, too late, the scientists realize that it is alive and lethal. The Thing thaws out and is off, not only killing anyone and anything that crosses Its path, but also absorbing them, making Itself into whoever and whatever it wants.
In the first movie version we find a lot of changes that seem designed to push us towards one version and away from another. True disinformation at its finest - since most of the changes were not needed in order to bring the story along. But I will leave that conclusion up to you - any comments?
