The Thing from Another World, sometimes referred to as just The Thing, is a 1951 American black-and-white science fiction–horror film, directed by Christian Nyby, produced by Edward Lasker for Howard Hawks‘ Winchester Pictures Corporation, and released by RKO Pictures. The film stars Margaret Sheridan, Kenneth Tobey, Robert Cornthwaite, and Douglas Spencer. James Arness plays The Thing, but he is difficult to recognize in costume and makeup due to both low lighting and other effects used to obscure his features. The Thing from Another World is based on the 1938 novella Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell (writing under the pseudonym of Don A. Stuart).

The film’s storyline concerns a U.S. Air Force crew and scientists who find a crashed flying saucer and a humanoid body frozen in the Arctic ice, near the craft. Returning to their remote research outpost with the body still in a block of ice, they are forced to defend themselves against the still alive and malevolent plant-based alien when it is accidentally defrosted.