Review of The Thing from Another World (1951) by Sean D — 11 Jan 2016

Contrary to most other people's feelings, I didn't like this film. I had the pleasure and enjoyment to be in a position to view all 3 films, one after another. And as a result, I did. Now, I have never read the book that the film is based on, but I read editorials about these films and how closely one film or another relates to the book. The book titled "Who Goes There?" is basically about an outer world being landing on the planet killing off a remote settlement team in Antarctica by transforming and taking the place of anybody and can do so multiple times at the same time.

There will be of course more to the book than that, including characters, setting and plot nuances. But the film or films that follow the story more closely are the 82 film and it's 11 prequel. That's not to say this is a bad film or so because they chose to loosely follow the story. No, not at all. The film plays into the era in which it is film. The year is 1952 and there is peace and prosperity during the roaring era following the 2nd World War.

Instead of Antarctica, we have Alaska. Instead of a crazy being from outer space cloning and killing folks, we still have an out of world being, but more of which is a seemingly indestructible monster. Okay, it's different. Okay, it's a slasher sort-of before the genre ever came to be. But it's a generally annoying clueless monster that just makes grunting noises and goes on a killing spree.

The film contains way too much dialogue and becomes very monotonous and very boring, very quickly. Eventually, it's like come on....is anything ever going to happen? The film strangely enough doesn't even with the taking care of the monster, but still continues a little longer. The last 15 minutes of the film are the best scenes in the entire film. The monster creature looked like some cross between the Frankenstein monster and the people from The Hills Have Eyes. I wasn't impressed and as a result, this is easily the worst of the 3 films.