The Thing from Another World (1951)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The thing from another world |
| Original title | The Thing from Another World |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1951 |
| length | 83 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Christian Nyby |
| script |
Charles Lederer Ben Hecht |
| production | Howard Hawks |
| music | Dimitri Tiomkin |
| camera | Russell Harlan |
| cut | Roland Gross |
| occupation | |
| |
The Thing (Original title: The Thing from Another World ) is an American science fiction film from the year 1951. He is considered a groundbreaking classic of its genre. The film opened in German cinemas on October 26, 1951.
action
Not far from their research station in the Arctic, a team of scientists discovers a spaceship that has crashed and frozen in the ice. A group of soldiers called for help tries to blow up the spaceship, accidentally destroying it. An unknown being, however, frozen in a block of ice, can be recovered intact and brought to the research station. There the ice melts and the being awakened to life begins a murderous hunt for people and animals. Scientists find that the stranger is a type of plant that feeds on blood. The essence seems invincible until it succeeds a group of survivors, the thing through high voltage to bring down.
production
Although anonymous, producer Howard Hawks also directed the film at times. He moved the plot from the South to the North Pole and made numerous changes to the script, the 1938 short story Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell Jr. , before. In contrast to the short story, for example, the thing cannot transform itself into another form of life.
The scene in which the actors discover the UFO under the ice was filmed - due to the lack of snow and ice - with the help of flour and cornflakes on the premises of the RKO Pictures studios in California's San Fernando Valley . When an explosive device was detonated to “uncover” the spaceship, several window panes in the area were broken. The camera followed the rising cloud of smoke over the edge of the polar sky, an editing error that can still be seen in the film today.
Reviews
Filmstarts describes Das Thing from Another World as a “highly exciting classic”, which impresses with its “different angles and well-lit characters”.
“[...] an exciting, coherent science fiction classic, which makes use of contemporaries' fear of flying saucers and can also be interpreted as a political parable (fear of communist infiltration). For the first time, a monster from space was placed at the center of a utopian film. "
Related movies
- In 1966, Fatal Freight appeared , which Das Ding ... served as a model.
- In 1982 came a remake with Kurt Russell and directed by John Carpenter .
- In 2011 a prequel of the remake was released with the English title The Thing , directed by Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.
Others
- World premieres
- USA: April 6, 1951
- Germany: October 26, 1951
- Austria: April 1952
- The black and white film was shown for the first time on German television on May 12, 1973 on ARD . The original version is 87 minutes, the German version 82 minutes.
- Campbell's novel, first published under the pen name Don A. Stuart, was voted Best Short Novel Before 1965 by the Science Fiction Writers of America .
- The extraterrestrial was played by James Arness , who is eight feet tall ; Arness became known as Marshall Matt Dillon in the television series Smoking Colts , which was produced from 1955 to 1975.
- The first guard who is supposed to keep an eye on the frozen monster in the film whistles - as if to encourage himself - to the music from Red River , then a well-known film by Howard Hawks (and now a classic of the western genre), in which the current official director Christian Nyby took over the editing and Dimitri Tiomkin also composed the music.
- The film inspired, among other things, Ridley Scott's 1979 film Alien : Similar to The Thing from Another World , a small group of people is confronted here in an inhospitable place with an overpowering, alien enemy who is hunting people. Both films try to kill the creature with flames. Another parallel is the Geiger counter, which shows the approach of the alien; in Alien it's a motion detector.
- The film adaptation of the same name by John Carpenter from 1982 sticks more closely to Campbell's short story.
- In 2001 the film was entered into the National Film Registry .
- In 2012, a musical about the film was created under the direction of Jon and Al Kaplan. Nick Amado played the main role.
literature
- John Wood Campbell : That Thing from Another World. Translated from the English by Fabian Dellemann and Alexander. Rösch Festa Verlag, Leipzig 2016 ISBN 978-3-86552-432-4 .
- Werner Faulstich : Invasion and Sex. The science fiction film of the 1950s: "The thing from another world", 1951. In: Werner Faulstich, Helmut Korte (ed.): Fischer film history. Volume 3: 1945-1960. Fischer, Frankfurt 1990, ISBN 3-596-24493-5 , pp. 171-188.
Web links
- The Thing in theInternet Movie Database(English)
- The thing from another world in the online film database
- The Thing atRotten Tomatoes(English)
- The thing from another world on bmovies.de (information, posters and posters)
- The thing from another world in the German dubbing index
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://www.filmstarts.de/kritiken/40104-Das-Ding-aus-einer-anderen-Welt.html
- ↑ The thing from another world. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ^ The Thing (1982). Internet Movie Database , accessed September 7, 2019 .
- ^ The Thing (2011). Internet Movie Database , accessed June 10, 2015 .
- ↑ World premieres according to IMDb
- ^ The Thing. The musical. The hilarity.