For shivers and suspense the 1951 Hawk's film, The Thing From Another World, aka The Thing, is hard to beat in movies of its day. It was based on a gripping 1930's science fiction short story by Joseph W. Campbell called "Who Goes There?" [read the story here]
As a young girl, I remember being wide eyed as the huge mysterious creature stalks the stranded scientists and soldiers in their snowy world.
Perched between the here-today-gone-tomorrow 1947 Roswell, NM UFO episode and the mysterious 1953 Washington D.C. UFO flyover, the almost mythic image and story hinted at many unknowns, possibilities, and just might be things yet to be discovered.
Did the image sear itself into cultural memory and emerge later as a smaller version?
Decades before the stereotypical big headed, big eyed alien, of the 1980's, the 1951 film showed a head strikingly similar. The Thing, as portrayed in the film was not small, but rather a large framed humanoid. More recent movies present more special effects and gore but that strange vision of such an unworldly head just becoming visible in the ice scene is interesting - and still able to provide more than one good shiver.
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