The Thing From Another World: A Sci-Fi Classic!

When scientists in the North Pole discover something strange has crashed into the ice near their research post, an Air Force team led by Captain Patrick Hendry is dispatched to uncover just what it is. However, what they find not only threatens them, but the entire world.

Even though it was released in 1951 and contains some unavoidably dated special effects, The Thing From Another World remains a fun and intriguing film to watch. The fun comes from the way director Christian Nyby, (although most film connoisseurs will argue that the film’s producer Howard Hawks did the bulk of the directing for the film), was able to utilize the isolated setting of the Anchorage outpost (where the bulk of the action took place) to elicit a sense of claustrophobia and fear as The Thing went about hunting Captain Hendry and the rest of the cast. There was also plenty of action and crackling dialogue (a standard for Hawks - directed films) which kept the film moving at a compelling clip. The intrigue of the movie came from recognizing the impact that it has had on the sci-fi films which came after it. Movies like Alien and Aliens were influenced, both in story and iconography, by The Thing From Another World (witness the Geiger Counter employed by the Air Force men which is similar to the Motion Tracker used by Ripley and others in the Alien films as well as the desire by the Air Force leadership to capture The Thing for further study, something the Weyland/Yutani Corporation was always trying to accomplish in the Alien films). Beyond the obvious influences on modern sci-fi cinema, The Thing From Another World serves as a sort of time capsule which captures the mood of 1950’s America regarding subjects such as the Cold War and the uncertainty regarding the Space Age which had just begun.

All film theory aside, The Thing From Another World is just a tremendously entertaining film to watch.

Grade: A

Bringing Up Baby: Blame it on film class

Before I ever stepped foot in a film class I thought all old films were the same. I thought my parents and grandparents would watch them so they could relive their younger years and point out to me that "this is the way movies should be, not littered with violence and bad language like most modern films." For the longest time I didn't believe them, but then I walked into my first film class and I was blown away by the classic films, like the one I'm going to talk about, we watched. I gained an appreciation for movies that were not bursting at the seams with CGI or curse words that would make even a sailor blush.

Doctor David Huxley’s life appears to be heading in the right direction. He has just received the final bone that will complete the brontosaurus skeleton he’s worked on for four years, plus he’s about to marry his fiancé Ms. Swallow. Everything seems great, until he meets Susan Vance. After the two share a series of unfortunate events, they head to Connecticut in order to deliver a leopard named Baby to her aunt.

The premise of the film was very screwballish, but the film itself was fun and entertaining. The main reason for that were the performances of the lead actors, Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn. Grant’s Huxley was a bit of a bumbler prone to pratfalls and other physical humor. He was a book worm, the type of character one would not have expected the usually suave Grant to portray. He played the perfect foil to Hepburn’s Susan. She was the exact opposite of David, free-spirited and wanting to have a good time at any price. When they were together on screen the dialogue snapped back and forth and it was hard to not laugh uncontrollably as Susan antagonized David into another precarious situation. It's a shame that more modern filmmakers cannot seem to duplicate what happened on the screen in this movie for director Howard Hawks gave the audience everything they could want in a comedy. Not only did you get Grant slipping on his hat, or Hepburn imitate a gangster's moll but you got to see those characters interact and actually build their relationship. They were not just slapped together due to some silly happenstance as is so rampant in a modern romantic comedy rather, they were allowed to figure each other out and grow so that when they finally did get together the journey they endured seemed believable and satisfying. Bringing Up Baby was a classic screwball comedy everyone could enjoy.

Grade: A