The Thing from Another World (1951) – Review 2

Grade: C+

I was not expecting much out of this movie.  Sure, it appeared on multiple lists of the top whatever best horror movies, but I wrote it off because it was 1950s sci-fi horror; it screamed B-movie, ripe for Mystery Science Theater 3000.  I mean, the title of the movie is The Thing from Another World.  Come on.  So, my interest in the film and my reasoning for adding it to our list was simply because this was the movie that John Carpenter masterfully remade into his The Thing in 1982, and I thought it would be cool to see the movie that inspired Carpenter.  I didn’t give it a fighting chance.

I knew that I had made a mistake about 30 seconds in, as the first name to appear on the screen was that of Howard Hawks and then the title tore open in that creepy font identical to the one used by Carpenter 30 years later (see The Man in Black’s review).  But as the film continued, I began to think, “Is this a good movie?  More so than I ever could have guessed.  Is this a good horror movie?  …Yes and no.”