ABSTRACT
Accounts of 1950s sf film and television often present it as dominated by alien invasion narratives, in which monsters from outer space seek to subjugate or exterminate humanity. What is more, these narratives are commonly presented as rather simplistic products of Cold War tensions in which the alien is merely a thin disguise for Soviet aggression (see Biskind 1983; Lucanio 1987; Warren 1997). But there are a number of problems with such accounts. For example, as Jancovich (1996) argues, the alien invader was used in a number of different ways and often explicitly articulated anxieties about developments within American society, rather than simply fears of threat from outside. In films such as The Thing from Another World (Nyby 1951) and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Siegel 1956), for example, the alien is associated with new forms of rational bureaucratic management at least as much as it is with communist expansionism. The first of these films concerns an isolated group of scientific and military personnel at the North Pole who discover an alien creature frozen in the ice. When the creature thaws out, it becomes clear that it feeds on human blood and can reproduce itself at an alarming rate, a situation that threatens human life on the planet. However, while the Thing is clearly presented as an aggressive threat that sees humanity as little more than food, the film also concerns a tension between the human characters. While the military personnel recognize the nature of the threat, the scientists want to preserve the alien for study, a strategy that proves to be as impractical as it is dangerous.
