God smiles on fools
Still, whatever's under the ice is emitting radiation and causing distortions to radio signals. When they find a familiar disc shape with a suspicious fin buried in the ice, Hendry's men attempt to dislodge it, accidentally destroying the ship.
In an ominous development, the men find a living creature embedded in the ice near the remains of the ship. They hack it out and haul it back to base to await further instructions.
While the entity remains on ice in a freezing room, the scientists and military men clash over how to exploit the discovery. The scientists want to thaw and dissect the creature, while the Air Force representatives argue that responsibility should be passed to someone higher up.
Fate soon takes a hand, rendering the bickering moot. An ill-placed electric blanket left near the "thing" thaws and revives the creature, allowing it to ditch its icy coffin for the great big frozen world outside. The alien soon kills a sled dog, but loses an arm in the struggle.
Dr. Carrington retrieves the severed appendage. He notices that it has a nasty tendency to ooze green fluid, stores spores under the nails and regenerates, leading him to conclude in a burst of wild extrapolation that this creature is the end result of Darwinian vegetable evolution, stronger and smarter than us. And it thrives on animal -- or human -- blood.
Repressing the uncanny visitor
From here, the scientists act as though they have all lost their minds, putting Captain Hendry's accidental destruction of the flying saucer to shame. They find and suppress the location of the Thing, eventually descending into the macabre gesture of suspending several corpses in the greenhouse to harvest more blood for the creature.
Dr. Carrington, meanwhile, displays his sensitive side by nourishing the Thing's spores with suspended blood bags.
While all this is going on, the military descends into its own spiral of insubordination and madness. Captain Hendry receives explicit orders to secure the creature alive, but the dictum from headquarters only prompts a debate on the best way to kill the vampiric vegetable.
Perhaps in tribute to enforced home-economics training (this was the early 1950s), sharp cookie Nikki suggests cooking it, and it's with a wary eye that we watch the bumbling military men display their lack of kitchen skills as they set the creature aflame with kerosene. Naturally, they end up torching their own quarters and really annoying the Thing.
Blood, juice and snow
Upping the stakes, the military eventually rigs up the electric generator to shock the creature. The Thing retaliates by cutting all heat to the building. In a darkly funny twist on the then-nascent packaged-food industry, the vegetable seems to accept that frozen blood will be as tasty as the fresh variety.
Meanwhile, Dr. Carrington, now undeniably bonkers, turns off the generator in a quixotic attempt to communicate with the alien. "I want to understand you," he pleads.
The Thing, more interested in blood than gossip, backhands Carrington and strides purposefully onto the electrified trap. Several thousand volts of electricity later, the roasted smell of baked potato lingers in the air.
The usual obsessions
In the aftermath, reporter Scottie finally gets an alien invasion scoop. If all goes well, it'll be the only one in his career, and he uses his newfound fame responsibly, urging everyone to "Watch the skies everywhere!"
"The Thing" brought the "terrors of the sky" lurking behind the UFO craze of the late 1940s and early 1950s back down to Earth.
In particular, the choice of the Arctic Circle -- an area of our native planet, yet almost implacably hostile to life -- gave director Christian Nyby (who became better known as a director of television westerns) an interesting alternative to a distant planet.
At the North Pole, the edge of the Earth, the alien Thing ironically turns out to be better equipped for survival than fragile humans.
Science versus the Air Force
The now-familiar theme of nuclear responsibility rears its head in this film, continuing the omnipresent drone of caution and nausea that dominated much postwar science fiction. If 1951 audiences found it conceivable that the Air Force would use thermite explosives irresponsibly, could the military be trusted with its vastly more powerful atomic arsenal?
The scientific community also receives some subtle criticism in the person of Dr. Carrington. Driven mad by his lust for knowledge and deprived of a moral compass, Carrington embodies some of the worst ideas thought about scientists at the time: they'll unwittingly destroy the human race in their quest for exploring the unknown.
Moreover, with nuclear tension in the air, it's natural for the film to portray scientists as being in conflict with the military.
The Air Force wishes to defend what they have (keeping the planetary or national perimeter secure from invaders), while the scientists hunger to push beyond the borders, to explore the new even when it takes the potentially dangerous form of a strange creature from a distant planet.
Interestingly, the film takes a conservative line, stacking the deck in the Air Force's favor. Captain Hendry's flyboys are a witty, capable bunch, while the cause of science is upheld by the loopy, irresponsible Dr. Carrington and an ill-spirited chunk of vegetation.
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