Alien Universe (13 page)

The story here is simple and clear. Mankind of 1950 was on the precipice of imminent annihilation. The Soviet Union and the United States both had fission weapons and were vying for world domination. Incineration of civilization is a real and pressing concern. The world had just completed the most horrific war ever, in which many tens of millions of people had died. The gray specter of communism was a real danger and the memories of world war only too fresh. It is unsurprising that the movie reflected these worries. It is also interesting to see that the worry of communist infiltration was not a central theme, except for when one matron alluded to the idea that the flying saucer was a Soviet creation. The full impact of McCarthyism was still a future worry. This movie was remade in 2008.

The Thing from Another World

The 1951 movie
The Thing from Another World
took some of the iconic filmmaking character types from earlier monster films and brought them to science fiction. These now recognizable types include the hard-headed and suspicious military man, the naïve and arrogant scientist, the reporter concerned only with getting a story, and an isolated group, with no hope for reinforcements. The movie is much faster paced than most others of the era, with an intensity that would not be out of place in a modern movie. Part
Frankenstein
and part
Alien
, it was patterned on John W. Campbell’s 1938 novella
Who Goes There?
One major difference between the film and the original is that in the novella the Alien is a shape shifter.

The story begins with an air force flight crew investigating a report of a plane crash near the North Pole. With a reporter accompanying them in case there is an interesting story, they fly to the remote Polar Expedition Six, the research site of a brilliant Nobel Prize–winning scientist. It is determined that the object that crashed was metallic, too large to be a plane and too nimble to be a meteor.

When the air force crew and some of the scientists arrive at the impact site, they find a large spot where the polar ice had been melted and frozen over (
figure 3.3
). A single rudder made of some unknown alloy sticks out of the ice. The airmen and scientists spread out at the edge of the object and realize that they are standing in the shape of a circle. One of the airmen exclaims, “Holy cow! We found one! We found a flying saucer!” Recall that this movie was released just four years after the flying saucer frenzy.

The captain decided to melt the ice using thermite. In a moment of Hollywood hyperbole, they claimed that a single thermite bomb would melt hundreds of tons of ice in 30 seconds. To their horror, the thermite ignites the skin of the flying saucer, and it is utterly destroyed. (This isn’t explained in the movie, but in the original novella, it was explained by having the flying saucer made of magnesium.)

The destruction of the saucer seems like a disaster, but clicks on a Geiger counter lead them to an 8 foot tall body frozen in the ice. With a storm on the way, the airmen chop out a cube of ice with the body encased in it, load it on the plane, and fly back to the base. During the flight, the filmmakers pay homage to the recent UFO frenzy and the air force’s famous response, known as Bulletin 629-49. An airman reads “from the Office of Public Information, December 27, 1949, Bulletin 629-49, regarding item 6700, extract 74,131: The air force has discontinued investigating and evaluating reported flying saucers on the basis that there is no evidence for their existence. The air force said that all evidence indicates that reports of unidentified flying objects are the results of: one, misinterpretation of various conventional objects; second, a mild form of mass hysteria; third, that they’re jokes.” While the movie text is not a direct quote of the real bulletin, it is similar in message.

FIGURE 3.3
.
The Thing’s spacecraft has melted the ice and been frozen underneath in this image from
The Thing from Another World
. In the left photo, we see the rudder of the craft, while in the right picture, we see the airmen standing around the perimeter of the craft, showing its circular shape.
Winchester Pictures Corporation
.

When they make it back to the polar base, tension sets in between the lead scientist and the captain. The scientist insists on melting the ice to get at the creature, while the captain, wary after the destruction of the saucer, instead insists on keeping the Alien frozen until he receives orders. Given that the captain has troops and guns, the military mindset wins. The block of ice is brought into a storeroom, and the windows are broken to ensure a frigid environment. Sentries guarding the creature are, of course, very cold and are given an electric blanket to make their time more comfortable. They are unnerved by the creature’s eyes, and one of the guards covers them with the blanket without thinking through the combination of a heated blanket and ice. The dramatic tension mounts as the audience sees the water drip off the melting block.

Apparently freezing doesn’t affect some Aliens, as, once the block melted enough, the creature revives and comes toward the guard. The guard panics and shoots it several times with a pistol and runs away. The bullets seem to do no damage and, when the guard returns with more men, the creature is gone. However, they hear noise outside and see something fighting with the sled
dogs. In a flurry of blows, the Alien flings the broken bodies of the dogs in all directions and then escapes. When the men check the carnage, two dogs are dead and one is missing, but they find the creature’s arm and heavily clawed hand.

The next scene opens with the scientific team poking at the hand. They determine that the creature is not an animal. It is a vegetable, and they even find seedpods in its arm. The reporter has difficulty believing that the creature was a vegetable and comments that “it sounds like you’re talking about a super carrot.” The station’s lead scientist retorts with “this carrot, as you call it, constructed an aircraft capable of flying some millions of miles, propelled by a force yet unknown to us.”

Meanwhile, the chief scientist has surreptitiously taken the seedpods and “watered” them with human plasma. A plant begins to grow. There is a disagreement between the scientists on whether this course of action is wise, however the chief scientist tells them not to let the military know about it. He is adamant that they should contact the creature, not kill it. In a dramatic moment, an incoming radio transmission from an air force general forbids destroying the Alien.

The captain believes the orders to be foolish, so he discusses with his men how to kill the creature. As the men discuss among themselves how to kill a vegetable, a female character suggests boiling, baking, stewing, or frying. (After all, this was the 1950s, and men weren’t expected to cook.) This advice leads them to decide that fire was the way to go. They rummage up some kerosene however, as they do it, the Geiger counter again starts to click. The creature is returning, coming (literally) for blood. It breaks through a door and is seen in silhouette, looking essentially like the classic Frankenstein’s monster. The airmen throw kerosene on it and set it afire. The creature escapes by jumping through a window and dousing the flames.

Since fire seemed to be only a marginal deterrent, the airmen decide that electrocution might be more effective. While they start to put their plan into action, the creature shows that it is intelligent by cutting off the fuel to the heaters. Knowing that the next target would be the generators, they decide to make a last stand there and set up the electrical trap.

When the Alien attacks again, it is destroyed by lightning and reduced to a smoking mass. The airmen then burn all the scientist’s notes and the seedlings that are still in the lab. Nothing is left to prove the creature even existed.

The bad weather begins to lift, allowing radio communications to resume. After spending the whole movie moaning about not being able to submit his
story, the reporter is finally given the microphone to tell his tale. The movie ends with his report, in which he says, “And, before giving you the details of the battle, I bring you a warning. Every one of you listening to my voice, tell the world, tell this to everybody, wherever they are. Watch the skies. Everywhere keep looking. Keep watching the skies.” After all, where there is one flying saucer, there could be many.

The movie
The Thing from Another World
taps into many phenomena. The flying saucer frenzy of 1947 was a recent memory, as were the atomic explosions ending World War II, with the subsequent development of a Soviet weapon. Atomic energy was thought to be the future, but the power and danger of atomic weaponry was well known. It isn’t surprising that filmmakers would invoke radioactivity as something that would identify the Alien. In addition, the Alien arrived in a flying saucer. Like the much later
Alien
movies, the creature from outer space was powerful, invincible, and totally alien. Mankind had little in the way of defenses in a one-on-one battle, making human beings the prey. It’s a classic monster story with an extraterrestrial twist. The movie was remade twice, first in 1982 and again in 2011.

Red Planet Mars

Red Planet Mars
(1952) is the Alien film that perhaps most overtly involves communism. Even the title is a clearly intended double entendre between the planet and the Soviet Red Menace. A Nazi scientist invents a “hydrogen valve” that makes it possible to boost a radio’s performance sufficiently so as to contact Mars. He is sent to prison by the Soviets before he can make the device. An American scientist finds the plans in the Nuremburg files and makes such a radio, determined to communicate with Martians. He is certain that there is intelligent life on Mars because an astronomer observes canals on Mars, along with a huge ice cap. A second observation of Mars shortly thereafter reveals the ice cap has melted and the canals are full of water. We see Percival Lowell’s influence a half century later (
figure 3.4
).

The American scientist has difficulty communicating with the Aliens until his son suggests using the value of
pi
. (His son comes up with this idea while eating the last piece of pie.) The scientist sends out 3.1415. When the Martians send back 3.1415926, the scientist is certain that communication is possible. Martians tells the scientist that they live to an age of 300 years, can feed a thousand people on a half acre of land, and get power from cosmic rays. This news upends the economies of Western civilization.

Meanwhile, we find the Nazi scientist in the Andes, having replicated his earlier equipment using money and supplies from the KGB. He is unable to contact Mars himself but can monitor the American’s transmissions. The KGB finds him and threatens him if he is unsuccessful in his own attempts to contact Mars.

FIGURE 3.4
.
Red Planet Mars
(1951) clearly shows the ongoing impact of Lowell’s Martian canals (see
figure 1.2
) , even decades after they were scientifically discredited. In this image from the movie, we see the canals and the polar icecap that was subsequently melted and the canals filled.
Melaby Pictures Corporation
.

Things get weirder when Martians speak of their philosophy, going so far as quoting the Christian Sermon on the Mount. This has a huge impact on Western society, but an even bigger one behind the Iron Curtain. A resurgence of religion in the Soviet Union brings down the government.

Later, the Nazi scientist makes his way to the American’s laboratory to reveal that it wasn’t Martians with whom the Americans were communicating but rather the Nazi using his equipment in the Andes. His motivation was to bring down the governments of the West and of the Soviet Union. However, it turns out that he only made the economic communications. The philosophical and religious ones actually
had
come from the Martians. In a bit of a muddled plot twist, the laboratory is exploded by a gas leak from the hydrogen valve that is shot by the German scientist.