Remake post #704357432

Those who watch current movies have been going gaga over a movie coming out today called The Thing, which has its national release today. The reviewers I've read talk about it in comparison to John Carpenter's 1982 film, also called The Thing. It often gets called a remake, although technically, like the recent Star Trek movie from a few years back, it's more of a prequel in that it purports to tell events that happened before the action in Carpenter's movie. All of this is just another version of the classic sci-fi/horror film The Thing From Another World, of course. But even that movie wasn't an original, in that it was taken from a 1938 short story. (People who have read the short story and seen the first two films inform me that Carpenter's is much closer to the original story than the 1950s film. Obviously there couldn't have been any Cold War paranoia in a 1938 short story.)

I'm not certain if it was deliberate on the part of TCM, but if it was, it's brilliant. Tonight's schedule doesn't have The Thing From Another World, but instead looks at remakes by showing three different versions of The Three Musketeers, starting at 8:00 PM with a 1974 version starring Michael York. That's followed at 10:00 PM by Gene Kelly's 1948 version, and at 12:15 AM with the 1935 version. The Fox version from 1939 with the Ritz Brothers is thankfully not included.