Sting'At The Movies' Japan [CD] { } ~54.00.00 88935

The Thing is the first movie of the fifties to offer us the scientist in the role of the Appeaser, that creature who for reasons either craven or misguided, would open the gates to the Garden of Eden and let all the evils fly in (as opposed, let us say, to those Mad Labs proprietors of the thirties, who were more than willing to open Pandora's Box and let all the evils fly out-a major distinction, although the end results are the same). That scientists should be so constantly vilified in the techno-horror films of the fifties-a decade that was apparently dedicated to the idea of turning out a whole marching corps of men and women in white lab coats-is perhaps not so surprising when we remember that it was science which opened those same gates so that the atomic bomb could be brought into Eden-first by itself and then trundled on missile carriers. The average Jane or Joe on the street during those spooky eight or nine years that followed the surrender of Japan had extremely schizoid feelings about science and scientists- recognizing the need for them and at the same time loathing the things they had let in forever ...»