No Thing To Be Found!

Frankly I've always been a bit surprised that a really good DVD of the the classic Howard Hawks movie The Thing From Another World (officially my favorite sci-fi flick) has not come onto the market. The one that is available has been so for years and is a bare bones offering.


I own the movie a few times on VHS, getting a super cheap one ages ago back in the stone age of video, and then updating with a new black and white copy and the colorized version many years ago now. I've not gotten the DVD because I figured the week after I dropped a dime on it, they'd come out with a really cool version with all the fringe benefits. I'd love to hear a solid commentary on this movie.


Then I heard about the prequel that's due to be released to theaters about any time and I assumed that would be the launch date for a new version of the classic. But I cannot uncover it if it exists. I guess I'll just have to cave in at last and get the one that has been lounging on the racks all these years.

Sheesh!

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The Thing Is Dead! Long Live The Thing!

James Arness has passed away. While he was Sheriff Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke for about a zillion years, I will always remember him as the titular character in the awesome sci-fi invasion classic The Thing. He's also a standout as FBI agent Robert Graham in Them! the truly great movie about giant ants.


I know what movies I'm watching tomorrow.

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Watch The Skies!

When I'm asked to list my favorite movie, The Thing From Another World is usually the one I mention. It's not always my favorite all the time, but it's always on the short list. It's a great movie, exquisitely paced and offering up a superb image of the ideal American, a no-nonsense man of grit, determination, savvy, and a man willing to collaborate and sacrifice for the greater good. The scientists in the story are a mixed lot, some obsessed by their craft and overcome by intellect as opposed to wisdom, and some striking a better balance. But the soldiers are a gang of good men who have worked together in tough times and who trust one another and who respect the chain of command when it works. There's a practical problem-solving quality to this movie as they and The Thing match wits and strategy at the top of the world with only the winner surviving.


The message of Cold War paranoia is leavened in this one by practical men facing up to the tough requirements a proven enemy demands. They must respond with force and more importantly with wits or they will all be lost. What they think is most important as well as what they feel. It's a battle for the heart as well as the head, for a balance between the two. That's why they win, because they make room for both.

As I said, it's a great movie. They don't make them like that anymore.

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