Saturday, March 18, 1972: The Thing From Another World (1951) / The Face of Marble (1946)

Synopsis: Capt. Pat Hendry (Kenneth Tobey) is the pilot of a C-47 transport plane that makes frequent runs to a scientific research station at the North Pole. He and his flight crew are at the Air Force base in Anchorage, waiting to be deployed again. While playing cards in the officer's club, Hendry is introduced to newspaperman Ned Scott (Douglas Spencer), who has just arrived at the Anchorage base. Scott is looking for a story, and is intrigued to hear that Hendry's crew frequently visits the remote station where the famous Dr. Carrington (Robert Cornthwaite) and a gaggle of other scientists are working. Scott asks Hendry to consider bringing him along on their next run.

Scott doesn't have to wait long; almost immediately Hendry is summoned by his commanding officer, General Fogerty.  Dr. Carrington's team has reported that a large aircraft has crashed in the vicinity, and Fogerty wants Hendry to investigate. Hendry asks permission to bring Scott.  "I don't care if you maroon him up there," Fogerty says tartly, then adds, "Now, don't get me wrong about who gets marooned." He refers to an landing ski that was broken on a previous trip to the pole, which delayed Hendry's return.  Hendry calls the broken ski "an unavoidable accident", but it's clear that Fogerty doesn't believe him.

Within hours Hendry's crew along with Scott are on their way up to the research station. Almost as soon as the plane has landed Hendry seeks out Nikki (Margaret Sheridan), an assistant to the scientists at the station. We learn that the two have not seen each other since Nikki's last visit to Anchorage; she had come down at Hendry's invitation, but the visit didn't go well.  Hendry behaved like a drunken boor (he doesn't even remember the times that he spent "making like an octopus", as Nikki puts it).  He is angry that she not only left without saying goodbye, but put a note on the passed-out Hendry's chest, listing his unattractive attributes, including his legs.  "Now the whole Air Force is laughing at me," he complains.

He asks if it's possible to start over.  She doesn't say no, but there isn't time to discuss the matter: it's time for Hendry to meet with Dr. Carrington, who turns out to be a frosty and condescending sort.  Carrington tells Hendry that he wants to proceed directly to the crash site.

Carrington's urgency is driven by the fact that whatever crashed is too massive to be an airplane, and it isn't a meteor either.  Once on the scene the scientists and military make an assessment, deciding that the object that crashed melted the ice surrounding it and sank before it re-froze.

Attempting to determine the shape of the dark object, the group discovers that it's round - the object is, they deduce, a flying saucer.  Eager to uncover it, and spurred on by a winter storm headed their way, they set thermite charges, but instead of melting the ice as expected, the ship is destroyed.  All that is salvaged is an alien body frozen in ice. They cut a block encasing it and transport it back to the base.

The scientists argue about the best way to thaw the creature so they can examine it, but Hendry tells them that they should do nothing until he gets further orders from Fogerty.  But the winter storm has knocked out communications and they are on their own.

Hendry assigns Corporal Barnes (William Self) to guard the room where the frozen alien is lying.  But Barnes, not wanting to see the alien's open eyes, carelessly tosses an electric blanket on top of the ice. Within a few hours, the ice has melted and the alien body is gone....

Comments: The Thing From Another World was one of the first films to combine the old genre of horror with the new genre of science fiction, and even today it's one of the best examples of that hybrid. It is an absolutely riveting film, still as tense and scary as it was upon its release in 1951.

For many years science fiction aficionados looked down their noses at this picture.  Though it was based on the well-regarded short story "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell, Jr., the plot was significantly changed for Hollywood.  Instead of a monster that created cunning duplicates of its victims, leading to a situation where everyone in the camp suspected his neighbor of being an imposter, the movie offered a more prosaic monster-running-loose-through-the-research-station scenario.  That -- and the fact that a woman was added to the cast to create some romantic interest -- led to the charge that The Thing was a profoundly dumbed-down interpretation of Campbell's story.

But judged on its own merits, this is really one of the best horror films ever made. It gets rolling quickly and never takes its foot off the accelerator. The screenplay by Charles Lederer (said to have been substantially reworked by Ben Hecht) absolutely crackles, without an ounce of fat on it. It smartly moves from one setpiece to another, keeping the viewer off balance. The brisk pace also keeps the viewer from thinking about the plot holes until later (for example, there's no real reason for everyone to be in such a hurry to dig out the spacecraft; a winter storm might dump a foot or two of snow onto it, but considering it's already encased in ice, that's trivial).  The film also benefits from one of the greatest film scores of the decade, a nerve-jangling and theremin-infused work by Dmitri Tiomkin.

 A minor though interesting subplot to the movie is the way in which Hendry redeems himself in Nikki's eyes.  He is a distinctly unimpressive fellow in his early scenes. Even allowing for the boys-will-be-boys attitude of the 1950s, Hendry initially comes across as something of a lout. We learn he'd embarrassed himself by getting drunk and regaling Nikki with his sexual escapades in Hawaii, before "making like an octopus" and then passing out.   He is all but accused by his C.O. of sabotaging his own aircraft in order to get more personal time with a pretty girl.  The pretty girl in question, once she got an opportunity to see him up close and personal, decided there was less to him than meets the eye.

But as the crisis builds, Hendry's best self emerges: he is sensible, diplomatic, decisive; he is willing to listen to advice from those around him, regardless of their rank or status.  He is scrupulous in following the orders of his superiors until he determines that the situation has changed enough that he can act on his own authority.

Hendry's leadership style is quite different from that of military men in other science fiction films of the era, which usually assume a good leader is someone who barks out a lot of orders. Nor is there the standard macho posturing and / or fistfight between romantic rivals as was standard in films of this era (e.g., Richard Carlson and Richard Denning in Creature From the Black Lagoon). It's a relief, frankly, to be spared the dreary, standard-issue romantic triangle.


The character of Nikki herself is surprisingly self-assured for a woman of this era, though as has been pointed out many times elsewhere, Nikki is very much in the mold of brassy Howard Hawks females. She is refreshingly smart and resourceful, and gets her share of one-liners ("If I start to burn up again, who's going to put out the fire?"). While she is never central to the action, she is far stronger and more sensible than women in films of this era.

One weak point in the film is the depiction of Dr. Carrington, who as the designated champion of science and reason repeatedly butts heads with Capt. Hendry.  Everything about Carrington is designed to telegraph that he's not a "real" American, or even a real guy -- everything from his attire (furry Russian-style hat and expensive-looking but impractical cloth coat) to his effete-looking goatee and supercilious manner. Carrington's pedigree is further called into question by the fact that he seems not to notice the presence of his strikingly attractive secretary. In fact, he only has eyes for the monster.

 Carrington is clearly enamored with the creature and its asexual method of reproduction, believing it to possess a cool, cerebral purity unsullied by base emotions and needs. There isn't really any reason for Carrington to believe this except that it's necessary to the plot that he do so; in fact the Thing behaves more like a snarling monster than the "intellectual carrot" that we keep hearing about. Nevertheless if the film can claim to be making any sort of social commentary it appears to be that xenophobia is the correct default response to anything coming from outside, and that intellectuals are dangerously lacking in common sense.  When one of his colleagues refers to the Thing as an enemy, Carrington pushes back. "There are no enemies in science," he says sharply, "only phenomena to be studied". This notion would have seemed particularly dangerous at the height of the Cold War, and we are clearly supposed to regard Carrington as deeply misguided at best and a traitor at worst.

We can actually forgive this clumsy characterization for a number of reasons.  First, from a screenwriting standpoint, there must be ongoing points of conflict between the human characters in order to maintain tension, and with the exception of Carrington, there really aren't any.  Everyone gets along very well -- almost too well.  Hendry's men work together smoothly and efficiently, and the scientists at the base are sober and helpful.  Nikki effortlessly becomes a valued member of the team in spite of her early verbal sparring with Hendry, and despite his cynical wisecracking Scott is as much on board with Hendry's decisions as everyone else. It's a bit clumsy for Carrington to keep turning up as the sole enabler of the Thing's agenda, but somebody has to throw up obstacles for Hendry's team to overcome, and Carrington is a convenient fall guy.

Second, the presence of Carrington's colleagues helps to soften the anti-intellectual message.  With the exception of the snooty Carrington himself, all the scientists are portrayed as friendly, patient, cooperative, and happy to explain difficult concepts to the layman. They quickly grasp the threat the Thing poses.  When Dr. Stern sees the nursery that Dr. Carrington has arranged for the creature's progeny, he is fascinated, but he also recognizes that breeding them is a bad idea.  "Imagine what a thousand of them could do," he says. Dr. Voorhees, an early Carrington ally asks, "What if this being came not to visit the Earth, but to conquer it?" These are reasonable people who don't let their passion for knowledge overwhelm them. The reassuring presence of the avuncular Dr. Stern and the level-headed Dr. Voorhees and Dr. Chapman prevent us from viewing scientists in general with contempt.

By the same token, the military gives Carrington the benefit of the doubt at every turn, always operating from the assumption that while the scientist might be mistaken or even misguided, he is not their enemy.  Hendry in particular is patient with Carrington and goes out of his way to respect his point of view, even when Carrington's actions are dangerous. They treat him the way Nikki sees him -- as "a kid with a new toy" -- and chalk up his misdeeds to exhaustion and an excess of enthusiasm. At the end of the film, in Scott's radio report of the incident to Anchorage, he notes that Carrington is "recovering from injuries sustained in the battle" -- a technically true but deeply misleading statement. "Atta boy, Scotty," one of the men says behind him, and we must assume he speaks for everybody. 

A lesser film would have been much less subtle with this relationship; we would no doubt have had had the military men complaining loudly about Carrington, shaking their heads and wondering whose side he was really on. It's to Lederer and Hecht's credit that the military men are as low-key as they are depicted here.

This film was enormously influential; a whole slew of filmmakers including Tobe Hooper, Joe Dante and John Carpenter cited The Thing as having a big impact on them as kids. Stephen King wrote extensively about it as well in his book of essays Danse Macabre.  The film was commonly referred to simply as The Thing for decades, but it's now usually referred to as The Thing From Another World in order to distinguish it from Carpenter's own The Thing (1982) and Matthijs van Heijningen's prequel to the Carpenter version, confusingly also called The Thing (2011). 

While there's much to admire about the Carpenter version, I found the characters to be rather sour and unlikable, and I never really cared what happened to any of them. The van Heijningen version offered a more interesting set of characters and some clever variations on how to prove one is a human instead of an imposter.  But because it was a prequel, we knew how it was going to end, deflating a good deal of the suspense.

The original is deft and spectacular in its own way: not as cool or cynical as the later versions, but a  taut and suspenseful picture that still packs a wallop. It's the kind of movie late-night creature features were made for.


 The Face of Marble

 Synopsis: Dr. Charles Randolph (John Carradine)  lives comfortably in a large seaside house with his wife Elaine (Claudia Drake). Working in the basement with an array of high-voltage appliances, Randolph and his assistant David (Robert Shayne) are trying to find a method of bringing the dead back to life.
As the movie opens, Randolph and David are trying to restore to life a drowned sailor they found washed up on the shore. David is uneasy with this, fearing that they have crossed a moral line; but Randolph insists that they can't do any harm to a man who's already dead.
As they apply higher and higher voltages to the body, Randolph notes that the face of the sailor has taken on a stone-like appearance.  As the two men watch, the sailor sits up, then stands, but suddenly collapses, dead.  The experiment has failed, but Randolph feels they were very close to success.  He notes that the electrical generator has burned out, and  he goes into town to get a replacement.
The next day the local chief of police comes to visit Randolph, who had earlier alerted the authorities a body had washed up on the shore. The chief says the sailor Randolph found died under curious circumstances. --  an autopsy has revealed he was electrocuted.  Furthermore, the sheriff notes that Randolph had gone into town to buy a replacement generator, and he wonders if there is a connection. Randolph tries to laugh it off, but it's clear that the police chief is suspicious.
Meanwhile, we learn that Elaine has fallen in love with David.  Randolph is entirely unaware of this; and David's behavior is quite above-board, but the Randolph's maid Maria, who's very loyal to Elaine, practices voodoo, and plants a doll under David's pillow - one that she believes will make him fall in love with her mistress.  Meanwhile, Dr. Randolph, noticing David's growing uneasiness around the house, arranges for David's girlfriend Linda (Maris Wrixon) to come and visit.  This only increases the tension in the household, and before long Linda becomes troubled by the house's odd vibe and leaves.
Dr. Randolph decides to try the experiment again -- this time on Elaine's beloved Great Dane Brutus.  He and David fail to revive the dog.  But before long, they hear Brutus barking from another room.  The dog is alive, but somehow changed: it has an odd, stony faced appearance, seems to have turned savage in the presence of humans, and has an odd ability to walk through walls.
Unexpectedly, Elaine dies, and Dr. Randolph can only think of one way to save her --by reviving her the same way he revived Brutus, and suffer the consequences, whatever they may be....

Comments: Hoo boy, another Monogram picture, and perhaps not coincidentally, another picture about scientists working on a way to bring the dead back to life. This no doubt seemed like a jolly good idea back when Frankenstein premiered. But really guys, enough already.

The problem with The Face of Marble isn't that it's bad (though it isn't good, exactly); it's that it never quite figures out what sort of movie it wants to be, and lurches from one disconnected plot point to another until time runs out.  Using electricity to revive the dead and stealing corpses for the experiments is borrowed from countless movies that in turn borrowed from Frankenstein; the voodoo maid could have come from Night of Terror or I Walked With a Zombie or a dozen other movies. The small-town chief of police who keeps stopping by for friendly "chats" about sinister doings about town is equal parts The Devil Commands and Son of Frankenstein.

Only two plot points come across as even slightly original.  The love triangle stands out because it's Elaine, not one of the men, who wants to change the romantic equation.  In this era, women characters were distinctly lacking in agency, particularly involving matters of sexuality.  By introducing Maria and her black magic, the movie cheats a bit, taking some of the onus off Elaine.  But there's no way around the fact that Elaine hungers for something she doesn't have and which society says she shouldn't want.  And this is made more interesting by the fact that the movie chooses not to stack the deck against her husband, Dr. Randolph. He is not depicted as a jerk or a boor.  To the contrary, he is charming and generous to those around him, certainly more likable and lively a character than stuffed-shirt David.

The other point of interest is the mysterious transformation of Brutus. The dog's personality changes as a result of the experiment -- he becomes savage -- and he also gains the ability to move through solid objects, which even for a movie like this is an unexpected side effect. And so it's a bit novel to have the dog wandering around the house, walking through solid walls.  And later, when Elaine inevitably undergoes the same treatment, she and the dog become a tag team, moving through solid objects like ghosts in a spooky seaside manor. 

I've made no secret of the fact that I'm not a John Carradine fan but I have to admit that I liked him here.  He plays a character not unlike the one he played in The Invisible Man's Revenge, which perhaps not coincidentally was the other Carradine performance I liked.  I never find the man's evil characters interesting or compelling, but for some reason I find him more believable as a good-natured (but slightly naive) tinkerer. 
 Claudia Drake is perfectly acceptable as Elaine, and Robert Shayne gets all of his lines right as David.