Trivia / The Thing from Another World

• Billing Displacement: Margaret Sheridan (Nikki) got top billing, despite having a less important role — and less film experience — than Kenneth Tobey (Hendry). Sheridan was a protégée of Howard Hawks, who thought she had the potential to become a major star. (He had offered her the female lead in Red River three years earlier, but she turned it down after becoming pregnant.)
• California Doubling: The film was partly shot in Glacier National Park and interior sets built at a Los Angeles ice storage plant.
• Creator Backlash: James Arness reportedly regarded his role as so embarrassing, that he didn't attend the premiere.
• Follow the Leader: This movie influenced John Carpenter in a big way, as well as such other filmmakers as John Frankenheimer, Tobe Hooper and Ridley Scott.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Six minutes were cut from the film for a theatrical re-release, and for years, that footage only survived in low-quality television prints. As a result, transfers of the film were a patchwork job of various sources, and the quality heavily fluctuated from scene-to-scene. Higher quality copies of the cut scenes were located in 2018, and the film was more seamlessly restored for Warner Archive's Blu-ray release the following year.
• Science Marches On: A mundane example. One of the crew members comes in from the cold with a frostbitten hand, and Hendry tells him to get it in ice water and rub it. While this was a common treatment at the time, it's now known to be basically the worst thing you can do in that situation.
• Sequel in Another Medium: The Thing from Another World essentially kickstarted the comic book sequels for the movie which in turned lead into Climate of Fear and Eternal Vows. Questionable Research can be see as a stand-alone Continuity Reboot.
• Stunt Double: Veteran stuntman Tom Steele replaced James Arness in the fire scene. Steele wore an asbestos suit with a special fiberglass helmet with an oxygen supply underneath. He used a one hundred percent oxygen supply, which while not combustible on its own, makes fires burn hotter and bigger. It was pure luck he didn't burn his lungs.
• Uncredited Role:
  • A number of the secondary cast members receive no screen credit, including Paul Frees as Dr. Voorhees.
  • Howard Hawks and Ben Hecht did uncredited work on the script.
• What Could Have Been: Originally, it was intended to make the creature a shapeshifter, as in the novel, but the limited budget forced the filmmakers to drop the idea. Early conceptual sketches depict a very plant-like looking creature, with one of its limbs seemingly undergoing a transformation into a human hand.

---