Well you know there's no two ways about it. Audiences have always loved that climax.
But if you've been here for even some of the Luton films, I guess that you can see how he would have felt.
All those sparks and that suddenly terribly solid monster would have looked like a long step backwards,
perhaps to the early days of Frankenstein. But it is a good thriller, isn't it?
James Unless, height just about six foot six, he played the monster. His makeup alone cost $20,000 in 1951.
And that explosion on the ice really did go wrong and it caused an A-bomb scare for 20 miles around.
It was staged in Montana by the way, not in the Arctic.
Dmitry Chomkin, who often worked for Luton, wrote one of his best scores ever for Hawks here in The Thing.
But to me the fascinating angle is the shift in themes between this 1951 version and the remake of only a couple of years ago.
In the one we've just seen, just one generation old, the threat is overpopulation really,
the spread of hungry, unstoppable, endlessly spawning aliens into every corner of our comfy and I suppose American world.
And the message is watch the skies and kill it if it moves.
But in the 1980s film the threat is to our minds, to our existence as simple individuals.
Unless we can win we'll look the same as ever but inside we'll be the selfless slaves of some alien maestro of the ultimate takeover.
And the 1980s message is how can we ever possibly be sure that we've really won?
And with that difference to think about, well that's it for this series of horror classics.
I've loved it, I hope you have too, and if we do it again I hope you'll be here.