Wednesday, October 5, 2011

ONE THING LEADS TO ANOTHER - COUNTDOWN TO HALLOWEEN (Day 5)

Besides having, perhaps, the coolest title sequence in the history of film, there is quite a lot to love about THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD...





In the movie, HALLOWEEN, there are a few scenes where THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD is playing on television. It was that film that was very influential on young John Carpenter, the creator of HALLOWEEN, and we don’t have to look hard to see that.



So when Carpenter became a sucessful filmmaker, one of his dream projects was to do a remake of that film. If it weren’t for John Carpenter’s THE THING, his reimagining of THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD (1951), many of us may have never discovered one of the best of the science fiction/horror films ever made. Not that Carpenter’s version is a slouch in that department either.



But it is THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD by Howard Hawks we focus on tonight. It is a thinking man’s feature, taking the debate about first contact with an alien creature into a realm we didn’t normally get in other “creature” films of the day (or all these years later).




And, lest we forget, THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD ends with one of the most famous lines in all of science fiction film:
"Tell the world, tell everyone: Watch the skies everywhere, keep looking, keep watching the skies."



Carpenter is the guest programmer for TCM this month and he is probably the reason the line-up on TCM is what it is tonight..

OCTOBER 5
8:00 pm – The Thing From Another World
9:45 – It! The Terror From Beyond Space
11:00 pm – The Curse Of Frankenstein

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