The Thing from Another World (1951)

 "We aready found one boner..."

I've never seen this film before, unless you count the fact that characters watch it in Halloween. I'm impressed; it's well-made, well acted and scripted, and with realistic characters, all of which make this a serious film and not the B movie I was expecting. It's genuinely good. Except... it's actually quite dull in places.

The film has a lot to go for it. The characters feel real, including the only woman, Nikki, who comes across as intelligent and real. There's even a flirting scene between her and the Captain, featuring bondage(!) and some flirtatious dialogue that actually comes across as convincing. There's a slightly obsessive doctor who becomes more and more obsessed with studying the creature and preserving it whatever the cost- and interesting variation on the maerick scientist trope.

The concept is interesting and well-developed, too- an alien plant-based life form, completely different from us. There's also a lot of tension, especially in the earlier half of the film. The Arctic setting is nicely claustrophobic.

And yet... the plot is basically a padded out base under siege. The creature is found, gets loose, nd prowls around the base killing people until it's cught. Barring a few characer-based sub-threads, that's pretty much it. That's the plot. Pure base under siege and decidedly formulaic. The end result is a film which feels high quality but never quite succeeds in scaring us or getting us to invest in the stakes. That's a pity, and a surprise.

It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955)

"The mind of man had thought of everything- except that which was beyond his comprehension!"

Yesterday's long film review is today followed by a short one. This is a '50s monster B movie, no more and no less. It's fun, but there's not a huge amount to say about it. Still, let's try, shall we?

The most famous name associated with the film is Ray Harryhausen, but he's young here, and won't have an executive producer credit for many years yet. His stop motion giant octopus is brilliant, yes, but at this early stage of his Hollywood career it barely scratches the surface of what he's capable of.

It's interesting that Professor Lesley Joyce, portrayed as an eminent and respected scientist should happen, in a 1955 film, to be a woman. She's young, she's glamorous, and she's the Jeff Goldblum character. There's some tension in the film's attitude towTds her gender- she is given absolute professional respect, yet in terms of her romance with Pete the sexual politics are rather primitive. Still, you get the sense that the film's heart is in the right place.

The plot beats are exactly where you'd expect them in this sort of film but it's all competently done; this is far more fun than The War of the Worlds. There's a very '50s obsession with radiation but that's all part of the fun, and the atomic age even has its own atomic submarine. This is a short and entertaining diversion of you just want to switch off your brain and enjoy.