BEFORE: A word about the linking, since "Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed" is a dead-end for me - it wasn't always that way, since when I set up this chain I was planning to have Peter Copley carry over into "Five Million Years to Earth", a 1967 film that I'm fairly sure I saw as a child, but I was going to watch it again in the chain for the first time as an adult. And that film was going to link to another film with a similar name that I haven't seen, which is "20 Million Miles to Earth". And they both were going to be part of this 10-film chain that's all about invading creatures, whether they're aliens or giant insects or whatever.
But then I wanted to add one more Chris Hemsworth film to November's chain, and that meant I had to drop something from the last 60 films on the year's schedule - the easiest thing to drop was the film that I had seen before, but this eliminated the connection between the films in the first half of October with those in the second half. In fact, this film and the next seven films, all made in the 1950's, form an interconnected loop, so I could basically start it anywhere, and consider it complete within itself. So now I'm moving "20 Million Miles to Earth" to further down in the chain, to be next to the 1956 film "Godzilla", which it seems to share some DNA with. And I may watch "Five Million Years to Earth" right after that, but I'm not going to count it, because as I said, I've seen it before.
My last-minute second-hand link, however, is that Victor Harrington from "Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed" was also in "The Diamond Wizard" with Margaret Sheridan. I know it's lame, but at least it's something.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "The Thing" (2011) (Movie #2,181) & "The Thing" (1982) (Movie #2,182)
THE PLOT: Scientists and American Air Force officials fend off a bloodthirsty alien organism while at a remote arctic outpost.
AFTER: Having seen two more recent versions of this same story before, both with much better special effects, what else can I learn from watching the original? First off, I've probably got a bunch of laughable not-so-special special effects in the days to come, so I'd better get used to that. The alien here never really looks like anything other than a big man in a suit with a mask - isn't a little weird that the alien is supposedly plant-based, but also humanoid? It seems like an awful coincidence that a plant creature would evolve on another world, but instead of roots and leaves, it would have two legs and two arms.
Of course, the original story this was based on ("Who Goes There?", written by John W. Campbell) featured a shape-shifting alien, something featured in the 1982 and 2011 remakes, but not in this 1951 version. That's a shame, because it removes much of the suspense here - thanks to a Geiger counter, the men at the Arctic base always know when the alien is approaching, but in the remakes, the alien could already be among the men, disguised as one of them. So that little fact really upped the paranoia factor - there's much less reason for the men to distrust each other here.
Or is there? One scientist in particular seems keen on keeping the alien alive, no doubt for the chance to study a plant-based humanoid that apparently drinks blood - he even keeps a bunch of seed pods drinking from a vial of plasma, without telling the other men at the base. So this is basically a primer on what NOT to do if you discover a flying saucer. Don't use explosives to free the saucer from the ice, don't bring the alien pilot back to your base in a big block of ice, but if you have to do that, be sure to stow the block of ice in a very cold place, or else it could thaw out...
This one's generally regarded as a horror classic, despite the fact that it was made so cheaply that you never really see the alien in close-up, because the make-up was so poorly done. As a result people felt a heightened sense of mystery and suspense, due to hardly ever seeing the creature, but this seems like a dodge to me. The audience shouldn't be required to adjust their reactions to the film presented to them, especially if shoddy filmmaking was involved. This sort of reminds me of the movie "Jaws", which had trouble with the mechanical shark. "Oh, it's brilliant and suspenseful, because you hardly ever see the shark!" Umm, no, that was due to technical difficulties, not as a conscious method of heightening tension.
Starring Margaret Sheridan, Kenneth Tobey (last seen in "Marlowe"), Robert Cornthwaite (last seen in "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?"), Douglas Spencer, James Young, Dewey Martin, Robert Nichols (last seen in "The Out of Towners"), William Self, Eduard Franz (last seen in "Dream Wife"), Sally Creighton, James Arness, Paul Frees (last heard in "Bells Are Ringing"), John Dierkes (last seen in "Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde"), George Fenneman, Everett Glass (last seen in "Pal Joey"), Edmund Breon (last seen in "Gaslight"), David McMahon, Robert Stevenson.
RATING: 4 out of 10 thermite charges
No comments:
Post a Comment