Tag: classic movies

Classic Science Fiction: ‘The Thing’

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The Thing From Another World - The American Society of ...

Shouldn’t’ve thawed it out, boys!

Given really bad weather yesterday, we stayed in and watched a movie: classic science fiction, The Thing, vintage 1951.

A flying saucer crashes near the North Pole, and a scientific team makes a lot of not-so-wise decisions that result in a Thing From Another World (James Arness, pre-Gunsmoke) getting loose and killing people. It’s a monster vegetable, just about impossible to kill. Like, what do you get if you cross the Frankenstein monster with a turnip?

Directed by Howard Hawks, and based on a 1938 story by science fiction great John W. Campbell, The Thing crackles with suspense; but to me it’s more a great big air raid siren blasting out a warning: “Do not make an idol of Science!”

Still true today. Maybe even more so. Damn the consequences, jump right in–head-first. What could possibly go wrong?

Same Hymn, in a Movie (‘Leaning on the Everlasting Arms’)

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Just by way of contrast, the very first time I ever heard Leaning on the Everlasting Arms was in a movie, Night of the Hunter, sung by Robert Mitchum and Lillian Gish. Mitchum plays a fake preacher who kills people; Gish protects orphaned children from him. It’s the only movie ever directed by Charles Laughton.

I can’t explain what the hymn is doing in the movie, but it feels right. Something must have made it right to be there, or I wouldn’t have remembered it for so many years.

‘The Best Movies That Were Never Made’ (2013)

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I know some of you don’t like movies–well, the kind of movies they’re making now, who can blame you? But I want to go back to the classics: in this case, classics that were never actually made.

The Best Movies That Were Never Made

There are plenty of great movies that were never made. I’ve only mentioned three–which gives you scope to volunteer a few of your own favorites.

‘Miracle on 34th Street’

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A post-Thanksgiving tradition, here at Chez Leester, is to watch Miracle on 34th Street: not a remake, but the 1947 classic starring John Payne, Maureen O’Hara, and little Natalie Wood, with Gene Lockhart as the beleaguered judge and, of course, Ed Gwenn as Kris Kringle, the man who says he’s Santa Claus.

The Book of Hebrews tells us that faith is “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” That’s what this movie is about–faith. And it’s very cleverly done! The more you think about it, the more you really don’t know whether Mr. Kringle is indeed the one and only Santa Claus, or just a sweet old man with a harmless delusion. Writer Valentine Davies kept the question open.

This movie always makes me wonder what self-proclaimed “realists”–like Maureen O’Hara’s character–believe in. It’s obvious that for all their insistence on “absolute truth,” they believe in their own set of fairy tales: Big Science, Big Government, Man-made Climate Change, perfection created by imperfect human beings, and all the rest of that humanistic tommyrot. And in so doing they impoverish themselves–and can never reach out to claim the blessings only obtainable by faith.

The movie limits itself to “faith” in Santa Claus, faith in the power of love and generosity, and faith in one another: but of course we know that true faith leads us to treasures greater by far than these.

And it is the gift of God.