THE THING

New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 663, 21 March 1952, Page 19

THE THING

(Winchester Pictures-R.K.O.-Radio) |F you’ve read the H. G. Wells story about a man who was attacked in his greenhouse by .an orchid which proceeded to suck his blood you'll know something of the possibilities of an intelligent and malignant vegetable. Linked to the current preoccupation with flying saucers and men from other worlds, a variant on the old Wellsian theme turns up in The Thing (From Another World), a film which incidentally looks like being part of another invasion-from Hollywood. There is a greenhouse in this piece, too, where The Thing prepares to multiply itself by feeding spores, brushed from its body, with the blood of a brace

of slain scientists, This development isn’t conveyed pictorially, but all the same you'll understand that The Thing isn’t the thing for Junior (whatever his taste in comics), as the censor has recognised in a special certificate. I think Christian Nyby, who directed the film, has done well to keep his prize exhibit literally in cold storage as long as possible while doing what he can to build up suspense. As a result we’re ready for something when an electric blanket is carelessly thrown over the murderous vegetable’s icy prison (this is all happening near the North Pole), and more inclined presently to share the horror at The Thing’s indifference to bullets. I think we were entitled to expect of The Thing at least some startling variations on the human form, but so far as I could discover (for it’s never very clearly seen) there was nothing about it that Boris Karloff hadn’t frightened. us with long ago. The use of the Geiger counter to detect the monster’s movements also suggests a mind behind the scenes prepared to throw all the known tricks into the basket and let it go at that. There is even a sweater girl in the camp. All the same, there is some suspense and excitement in this film, and it’s a pity that it falls flat at the end.