The Thing from Another World (1951) on Netflix

NR19511h 27mHorror Sci-Fi

Captain Pat Hendry is sent to a North Pole outpost where a crash has been reported. He finds a saucer in the ice and a frozen body that Dr. Arthur Carrington wants.

Netflix3.5/5
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Plot summary

General Fogarty orders a flight north to Polar Expedition Six, a research outpost at the North Pole, after its lead scientist, Dr. Arthur Carrington, reports an unusual aircraft down nearby. Captain Pat Hendry pilots the transport, carrying journalist Ned Scott, Corporal Barnes and crew chief Bob, along with a sled dog team; at the station he finds Nikki Nicholson, Carrington's secretary. At the crash site the group works out that they are standing around a saucer buried in the ice. Thermite charges meant to free the craft destroy it instead, but a Geiger counter picks up something else under the snow, a body hauled out intact in a block of ice. A storm closes in as the block is flown back to the outpost, where Hendry takes command and bars the scientists from examining it.

Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Thing from Another World (1951)

Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.

Who really directed the film has long been disputed: credited director Christian Nyby may have gotten the job mainly so he could qualify for his Directors Guild membership, while producer Howard Hawks paid him only $5,460 of the film's $50,000 director's fee and kept the rest, all while publicly denying he had directed it himself.
The sequence where the alien is doused in kerosene and set on fire is regarded as one of the first full-body fire stunts ever captured on film.
Carpenter's 1982 remake, The Thing, paid homage to the 1951 original by reusing the same "slow burning letters through background" opening title sequence, and his earlier Halloween (1978) did too: its protagonist is shown watching The Thing from Another World on television.