[The essay from which this excerpt is taken was originally published in a different form in Film Quarterly, Winter 1959.]

[The Thing from Another World, a 1951 film released in the United States as The Thing,] was based on a short novel by John W. Campbell, Jr.,… [entitled] "Who Goes There?" The story is regarded as one of the most original and effective science fiction stories, subspecies "horror." Its premise is convincing, its development logical, its characterization intelligent, and its suspense considerable. Of these qualities the film retained one or two minutes of suspense. The story and the film are poles apart. Probably for timely interest, the Thing crashed in a flying saucer and was quick-frozen in the Arctic. In Campbell's story "it had lain in the ice for twenty million years" in the Antarctic. In film as in source, when the creature thaws out it is alive and dangerous...