Blood, guts, snow, Kurt Russell, nasty alien goo and John Carpenter’s great eye for suspense are the immediate pleasures of this gory good time. Just under the surface though, it’s a curious meeting of the student and the teacher. Here, Carpenter doesn’t so much pay slavish homage to Howard Hawks (who is generally acknowledged to be the director of the original 1951 film, despite Christian Nyby’s credit) as he does look upon him eye-to-eye. Carpenter knows his Hawks inside and out. He doesn’t step around him or bow down to him. There’s a confident clarity to Carpenter’s vision of what should stay from the earlier film (that great title card is a keeper) and what could fly in another direction. Carpenter’s take is to stay more true to John W. Campbell’s original story, sing harmony with Hawks in the depiction of the camaraderie and tension between an ensemble cast and, in the end, simply make a great monster movie for the post-Alien age. It’s a film that’s totally comfortable in its own skin, even when its alien antagonist is ripping its way through peoples’ faces.
One interesting parallel between both films is that they each have a diametric opposite that came out in the same year. The 1951 The Thing From Another World came out close to The Day the Earth Stood Still. The former offered a killer alien while the latter featured a friendly alien. Fast forward to 1982 and the murderous monster of The Thing had to compete with the cuddly toy in ET: The Extra-Terrestrial, released in the same month.