CHRISTIAN NYBY

Bil’s rating (out of 5):  BBBB. 

USA, 1951.  RKO Radio Pictures, Winchester Pictures Corporation.  Screenplay by Charles Lederer, based on the story Who Goes There by John W. Campbell Jr..  Cinematography by Russell Harlan.  Produced by Howard Hawks.  Music by Dimitri Tiomkin.  Production Design by Albert S. D’Agostino, John Hughes.  Costume Design by Michael Woulfe.  Film Editing by Roland Gross.  

Fun chiller from the fifties that emphasizes unseen terror and builds tension through characters and dialogue. Its ability to get under your skin with little apparent effort makes you nostalgic for the good old days when people made scary movies that didn’t give everything away in the first reel. It takes place in an Arctic laboratory where a group of scientists discover a spaceship frozen in the barren lands around them and thaw it in order to discover the nature of the craft and its contents. What they find inside is a monstrous alien who wakes up and starts killing people at the ice station, and now they must figure out a way to fight back. More enjoyable than the John Carpenter remake (and less gory), with the typical trademarks of fifties science-fiction (the women must always clasp their hands to their teeth when they scream) but a level of class that puts it a cut above as well.