Howard Hawks turns his recognisable style - a close knit bunch of professionals (including a woman who holds her own with the men) who talk in overlapping dialogue and a laid back manner deal very well with a stressful situation, in this case an alien who has crash landed in the arctic.
The cast consist entirely of unknowns who remained that way even after this film - but their performances are spot on, relaxed and confident, and stand as tribute as much as anything else to Hawk's skill with actors (and casting) (NB Christian Nyby is credited as director but I think everyone agrees it's a Hawks movie).
It treats the story logically and with intelligence (though even Gielgud would have been hard pressed to tackle the essential silliness of "an intellectual carrot? The mind boggles") and "watch the skies" is a great last line. But it's a bit too laid back and relaxed - a bunch of soldiers stuck in a frozen outpost is a terrific, inherently tense situation, but the film never becomes as exciting as you would think. We never get the sense our heroes are in any realy danger, they barely raise a sweat (everyone's a bit too competent and professional) - only the mad scientist has any flair.
Added to this is the fact there seems to be too many people in the cast - that isolated station is fairly overflowing with people. And the nominal hero, Kenneth Tobey, looks a bit too much like his 2-I-C. And does anyone else find it a bit creepy when his men try to badger him and Margaret Sheridan into marriage at the end? The much-maligned remake remedied these faults; its main problem was having a sequence which made us worry that Kurt Russell, the audience surrogate, might have been infected.
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