Movie Review: "Dead Shadows" (2012; DC Medias/Section 5/Shout Factory)

...for this ardent viewer of cult and genre films...well, sometimes it almost seems that he's seen it all. Heck, are there really any more original ideas, out there?? It's gotten to the point where this devoted auteur of oddball cinema can spot a concept film, coming from miles away. It's no wonder, one cannot help but think that all of the great core concepts have been used up, and all that there's left, is a melding of concepts....'this', crossed with 'that', with a smidgen of 'this, over here'. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I truly wish that I was a fly on the wall, in one of those darkened studio executive board rooms, watching some young and enthusiastic writer, wildly acting out a concept, in front of a gaggle of stiff-suited, stogie-puffing, poker-faced executives...trying to convince them to invest their interest and monetary resources, in what the writers believe is a great idea for a movie (...and to be quite honest, being an aspiring writer myself, I would genuinely want to be on the writer's end of this scenario, as for the most part, they're on the deckplate level, like all of us, and as such, they seem to have a finger on the pulse of what audiences would want to see; most studio execs, given their opportunity to put in their two cents worth, idea-wise, seem driven foremost by money, and as such, think that they know what movie watchers want...coupled with what they believe will bring in the big bank...and for the most part, time and time again, both motivations fail to mesh as irreadily as their mis-matched concepts, and in the end, more than often, they tend to be wrong)...

Movie Review: The Thing From Another World (1951)

Directed by Howard Hawks, Christian Nyby

Starring Kenneth Tobey, Margaret Sheridan and James Arness

Run time- 87 minutes


A distress signal is sent from a scientific outpost near the North Pole to the nearest U.S. Air Force base, a thousand miles away in Alaska. Radar and other instruments have detected a large metallic object entering the atmosphere and crashing into the ice, a short distance from the outpost. Quickly taking action, the Air Force commander dispatches a rescue and recovery team, thinking the object may possibly be a secret Russian aircraft of some type.

Soon after ariving at the outpost, Captain Patrick Hendry (Kenneth Tobey) and his crew, along with a few of the scientists from the outpost, led by Dr. Kerrington (Robert Cornthwaite) take the short plane ride in search of the crash site. With the object causing major magnetic disturbances to their navigation equipment, they are forced to home in on the object with a Geiger counter and eventually find their quarry, a mysterious ship, completely submerged in a layer of solid ice.

A severe miscalculation in their attempt to free the ship causes it to self-destruct though, and at the moment they think the find of the century has been lost they then discover that there is something else trapped in the ice not far away, something that looks eerily like a man.....a very, very, large man.
Using axes they then free the strange looking being, taking care to keep it locked safely in a block of ice and return it to the outpost.