The Thing from Another World!

1951 science fiction movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Some army men discover a space ship buried in the ice somewhere near their Alaskan post. They decide to dick around with it and bring a space-monster-on-ice back to base. It turns out that he's a vegetable man! Vegetable man! He thaws, and havoc is wreaked.

A movie with a title this goofy isn't supposed to be this good. And speaking of the title, I'm sticking with the punctuation mark because the poster up there has one. Movies are always better when their titles include punctuation marks. Speaking of that poster, that's actually more of the monster than you get to see in the movie. It's more the suggestion of the monster, quicky glimpses, sound effects, and the after effects that create tension in this 50s Frankenstein-like-dude-on-the-loose flick. And the theremin-heavy score, of course. The winter wonderland setting also works well with the black and white to set the mood. Most interesting, I think, is the characters' banter, something that sets this apart from more ordinary science fiction movies from this time. You learn more about a lot of these people rather than just one or two of the most important ones, and there's a really interesting conflict other than the obvious man vs. space monster conflict. I also like the overlapping dialogue, almost reminiscent of Robert Altman. I think this one holds up very well. The fact that the monster is made out of celery is actually enough to make this a classic.