lthough it's by no means as graphic and gory as the 1982 John Carpenter remake, the 1951 movie The Thing From Another World still stands as a landmark in SF cinema—and Dimitri Tiomkin's creepy score is one reason why this is so. Genre archetypes abound—a menacing alien that must be destroyed, the intellectual scientist who refuses to believe the creature can be as bad as everyone else knows it is, a claustrophobic setting and, of course, the fate of mankind hanging in the balance. But they weren't archetypes back then—this movie brought them out.
Tiomkin was one of cinema's most famous composers, but he had never done any science fiction before, and never did any afterward. In fact, he didn't like this score very much. He felt that he was better at doing popular melodies. But few would deny that this score, bombastic though it may be in places, perfectly fitted the film and became something of a blueprint for '50s "monster" movies.
The film opens with its "Main Title," an upbeat 6/8 march straight out of the newsreels. This phases into the main theme, with swirling cymbals, thundering brass and theremin as the title burns its way onto the screen—a classic opening. An arctic storm swirls under the credits as the theme wails on.
"Flying Saucer Sequence, Part 1" uses the lumbering main theme and theremin again, as the scientists and military men disembark at the crash site of what proves to be a craft from outer space. Some erratic percussive licks on a xylophone add tension and uncertainty to the scene.
All of the cues are very good. The voluminous background info in the booklet adds a lot, too—the notes for "The Hand," which accompanies the scene in which the Thing's severed forearm begins twitching, reveal that the cue is a combination of two separate recordings.
Tiomkin takes the high ground
One really nice "thing" about this release is the fat, info-rich booklet accompanying the CD itself. Lots of production notes and photos are included—even a sketch of a very cool-looking alternate (and completely nonhuman) version of The Thing's appearance that wouldn't have looked out of place in the 1982 remake. Details of the shoot, the actors and Tiomkin's scoring give plenty of satisfaction. Though the score for Take the High Road! is almost twice as long as The Thing, the manufacturers obviously know what the selling point is, because more than half of the booklet is given over to details about Hawks/Nyby flick. As it should be.
This album marks FSM's eighth year of classic soundtrack releases. Interestingly, this is the first time the original score has been released complete on disc, including one cue—"Plasma Plants #2"—that was not used in the film.
The master tapes of the sessions are long lost, but the complete score survived on mono acetate transfer disks in Tiomkin's personal collection. Two of the cues are even in rudimentary stereo, owing to the use of separate overlays for the vocal tracks.
The Thing From Another World clocks in at only 26:50, so the CD also contains Tiomkin's 1953 score to Take the High Ground!, which is an MGM military-training film with Richard Widmark and Karl Malden. Tiomkin's work on this score is far more traditional. It features a rousing military march as a title song, with a lusty male chorus singing lyrics obviously meant as patriotic and inspirational. There's also a rather saccharine love song, "Julie," plus four so-called bonus tracks. The listener's tolerance for this stuff probably depends largely on a taste for war movies.
