The Hawks-Nyby Original (1951) The Thing (1982)
The Thing from Another World (1951), directed by Christian Nyby and produced by Howard Hawks's Winchester Pictures, is the first film adaptation of John W. Campbell's Who Goes There? and the most-imitated 1950s science-fiction film outside the Invasion of the Body Snatchers / Day the Earth Stood Still / Forbidden Planet triangle. Carpenter's 1982 film is in long, sustained dialogue with the Hawks/Nyby version — Carpenter has called the 1951 film one of his favorite films of any era — and the relationship between the two pictures is one of the most-discussed director-to-director conversations in 1980s American horror.
The film
The 1951 picture relocates Campbell's Antarctic research station to an Arctic military post and replaces the camp's twelve scientists with an ensemble of military men and journalists. The frozen body recovered from the ice is a single bipedal vegetable monster — eight feet tall, played by James Arness — that the camp has to contain in a single-night siege. The film's most-quoted line is the closing call to the world: "Keep watching the skies." (wikipedia)
The Hawks/Nyby Thing is a monster-attack film. The 1951 audience watches the men at the camp work as a competent professional team to identify the threat, contain it, and finally electrocute it. The shape-shifting and cellular-imitation elements of Campbell's novella are entirely absent. The threat is external and visible; the camp's job is to defeat it.
"The 1951 Thing is a Hawks film about professionals doing a job. The monster is the obstacle. The film is about the men working together. It is one of the cleanest examples of the Hawks ensemble I know of." — Robin Wood, Howard Hawks: A Critical Filmography (1968)
The Nyby/Hawks question
The director of record is Christian Nyby, Hawks's longtime editor; the producer is Howard Hawks, who was also on set for most of the shoot. The film has the Hawks ensemble register, the Hawks overlapping dialogue, and the Hawks closure on professional competence — and the consensus of Hawks scholarship is that Hawks directed substantial portions of the film with Nyby in the chair as a credit. Nyby's later films do not look like The Thing from Another World; Hawks's films do.
"Christian Nyby directed it on paper. Howard Hawks directed it on the set." — Howard Hawks, Cahiers du cinéma (1956 interview, archived in Joseph McBride's Hawks on Hawks)
Carpenter's relationship to the 1951 film
Carpenter has consistently named The Thing from Another World as one of his foundational influences. The 1951 film appears as the diegetic television viewing in Halloween (1978) — Laurie and the children watch it on the family TV — and Carpenter has discussed the film's structural lessons (the small group, the sealed location, the professional ensemble) as the template for Assault on Precinct 13, The Fog, and Escape from New York. The 1982 Thing's relationship to the 1951 film is one of fidelity to the source novella, not a remake of the 1951 picture.
"I love the 1951 Thing. It is one of the great films. But it is not Campbell's story. The 1982 film is not in competition with the 1951 film. The 1982 film is the version of Campbell's story the 1951 film did not make." — John Carpenter, Cinephilia & Beyond (2018)
Halloween's diegetic television
In Halloween (1978), Laurie Strode and the Doyle children watch the 1951 Thing on television in the living room while Michael Myers waits in the dark outside. The choice of film is structurally deliberate — Carpenter has said the 1951 picture is the kind of horror film he wanted his audience to be in conversation with, and the diegetic viewing is a way of citing the 1951 film as the source of his own horror grammar.
What Carpenter kept and what he changed
The 1982 film keeps the Antarctic setting (or returns to it from the 1951 film's Arctic relocation), the embedded research station, the ensemble premise, and the structural commitment to a single-location siege. It changes the threat from a single bipedal vegetable monster to Campbell's shape-shifting cellular imitator; it changes the resolution from a professional-team victory to an open-ended containment; it changes the cast from military men and journalists to a civilian research team. The 1951 picture is a film about professionals working together; the 1982 picture is a film about professionals failing to be able to know each other.
"The 1951 picture is the film I would have made if I had been working for Howard Hawks in 1951. The 1982 picture is the film I made because I was working for myself in 1981. Both films are right for their moments. The 1951 film thinks people can work together. The 1982 film does not." — John Carpenter, The Hollywood Reporter (2022)
The 1951 film's cast
The 1951 film starred Kenneth Tobey as Captain Patrick Hendry, Margaret Sheridan as Nikki Nicholson (the camp's sole female character — a major departure from Campbell, and a reason for Lancaster's choice not to add women to the 1982 cast), Robert Cornthwaite as Dr. Carrington, and James Arness as the Thing. Charles Lederer wrote the screenplay. Dimitri Tiomkin scored.