The ‘Thing’

It was win­ter. It was 1951. I don’t remem­ber what month it was, but school was in session.

The thing that char­ac­ter­ized the sea­son was the fact that it got dark much ear­li­er, espe­cial­ly in those days when day­light sav­ing time was not yet thought of.

There was a new sci­ence fic­tion movie show­ing at Leeds. Jake and I knew it would be gone before the week­end — when the typ­i­cal week­end fare at the the­atre would be Abbott and Costello, the Bowery Boys, Dagwood and Blondie, or one of the many west­erns show­ing in those days.

So, with our par­ents’ per­mis­sion, Jake and I hur­ried to the the­atre to catch the after­noon show­ing of the new movie, The Thing.

The movie start­ed about four o’clock, and after show­ing pre­views of com­ing attrac­tions, per­haps a news­reel and a car­toon, the movie prob­a­bly did­n’t actu­al­ly begin until around four-twenty.

The Thing was filmed in black-and-white and, believe it or not, that seemed to make it more men­ac­ing.  Of course, in those days, near­ly every film was in black-and-white unless it hap­pened to be some Cecil DeMille epic.

James Arness was the title char­ac­ter, but of course, we did­n’t know that at the time and did­n’t real­ly care.  Kids don’t read film cred­its.  All we knew was that it was sci­ence fic­tion and would have some cool effects in it.

Little did we know that the “mon­ster” would be so hideous... or so invul­ner­a­ble.  But the space­ship in which he arrived was part of the “cool­ness” despite the fact that it was destroyed very ear­ly in the film.  And the eerie music that accom­pa­nied the scene when the space­ship is dis­cov­ered was enough to send chills up a spine.

As should be expect­ed from any sci­ence fic­tion or hor­ror film, as the movie pro­gressed, things became more and more tense. A cou­ple of eleven-year-old boys might have been seen ner­vous­ly wolf­ing down their pop­corn as the movie pro­gressed — if they hadn’t already devoured it dur­ing the car­toon and previews.

Jake and I had start­ed off sit­ting in our favorite spot in the the­atre, about halfway down on the left side.

About two-thirds into the movie “The Thing” is encoun­tered imme­di­ate­ly behind a thrown-open door.  It tow­ers over the humans and, as the door is quick­ly slammed shut, it swings its claw-shaped hand and pulls shards of wood from the door frame.

Jake and I imme­di­ate­ly glanced at each oth­er and, with­out a word between us, simul­ta­ne­ous­ly rose from our seats and walked gin­ger­ly to the last row of the the­atre, near the exit, where some stray light from the lob­by shown into the auditorium.

There we pro­ceed­ed to watch the remain­der of the movie, with me glanc­ing out through the lob­by every so often to see that the after­noon was wan­ing and dark­ness approach­ing. Despite our trep­i­da­tion of the impend­ing dark­ness, we watched the remain­der of the movie from our new perch­es, occa­sion­al­ly touch­ing to make sure the oth­er was still there.

As we left the the­atre at the end of the movie, in dark­ness, we hur­ried home a bit more quick­ly than normal.

“Wow, what a great movie,” opined Jake.

“R..r..r..right,” was all I could reply.