Larry Koehn

Visible crew/equipment: A shadow of a mike boom can be seen to the upper-left of a window in a laboratory following a professor who is about to give a demonstration. (01:00:00)

Larry Koehn

Revealing mistake: The tri-lens is now facing the movie camera and not facing down towards the table top when Barry attacks the Martian. (00:52:25)

Larry Koehn

Continuity mistake: The tri-lens of the Martian camera becomes detached from its casing after Gene Barry pounds it to death. When he picks it up and puts it on a table, it rocks forward and comes to rest, facing down, on the table: the tri-lens is now firmly attached to its casing. (00:51:30)

Larry Koehn

Other mistake: When the captain comes face-to-face with the Thing for the first time, the upper right frame becomes blurred once the door starts opening until it closes followed by a scene change. Very odd except maybe they were trying to hide the minicharges to create the bullet holes after they close the door. The implanted charges are very visible when the scene is not blurred. Also there is a small charge in the wooden frame of the door near the door handle. (00:57:32)

Larry Koehn

Revealing mistake: The Thing takes a swing at the captain after the captain opens the door. As the Thing swings his arm, he takes out a chunk of wood out of the door. If you step through the frames on the DVD, you can see the wood leaving the door a full second after the Thing has hit it. A small explosive charge that was not in sync with the actor. You can also see the outline of where the wood comes off before he swings his arm. And one more thing, his arm does not touch the door or even comes close to where the wood comes off - a safety precaution I presume. (00:57:33)

Larry Koehn

Continuity mistake: The main actress has her hair parted in the middle. When the Thing is set on fire, he takes a swing at the actress hiding behind a mattress and her hair is not parted (stunt double). The hair is parted again after the Thing escapes. (01:10:30)

Larry Koehn

Revealing mistake: If the scientists are near the North Pole, their shadows would be very long. But the scenes near the saucer show the men having very short shadows; thus, they are in Hollywood (naturally). (00:21:55)

Larry Koehn

Visible crew/equipment: When the airplane flies over the area where the saucer skidded in and became buried in the ice, you can see the equipment used to clear the snow and smooth out the ice (at the narrow end of the ice). You can also see the tracks from the machine criss-crossing the circular portion from the aerial shots. (00:16:20)

Larry Koehn

Visible crew/equipment: When the scientist finds the saucer near the North Pole, the panorama of the sky reaches only to a certain height. When the camera pans upward, as the smoke billows up from the explosive charges, the backdrop of the sky disappears and the real sky appears above the Hollywood backlot. (00:22:55)

Larry Koehn

Visible crew/equipment: The panorama, at the saucer, has several very visible vertical seams which they tried to paint over by making it appear as clouds. (00:22:00)

Larry Koehn

Revealing mistake: When Gort begins to walk down the saucer ramp, after Klaatu is shot, the crowd gets scared and runs away. I guess the director found the extras running too slow so he sped up the film. (00:10:30)

Larry Koehn

Plot hole: Klaatu is shot and his body is lying in a prison cell. Gort leaves the flying saucer and walks all the way to the heavily guarded police station in downtown Washington DC. Gort is 8 feet tall and is a robot plus he uses his noisy death ray to create a hole in the police station to retrieve Klaatu's body and nobody noticed him? On top of that, he walks all the way back to the saucer unseen with a dead body. (01:22:36)

Larry Koehn

Continuity mistake: Klaatu introduces himself to the Professor for the first time by relaying some details of his stay at the hospital to verify who he is. Klaatu tells the Professor he was staying in room 309, but the early scenes at the hospital show him in room 306. (00:41:48)

Larry Koehn

Visible crew/equipment: When Gort picks up Patricia Neal next to the flying saucer, you can see cables leading down to her body to keep her hoisted. (01:20:15)

Larry Koehn

Revealing mistake: While Bond is taking his "civilized" bath with his Japanese counterpart and four ladies, there are two shots where you can see James wearing skin-colored swim trunks.

Larry Koehn

Continuity mistake: While avoiding the glowing meteoroid, they decide to fire their jets to push them into a higher orbit. In a couple of scenes they go up but a third one has them going back down.

Larry Koehn

Continuity mistake: Mantee finds a pool of water after falling through a hole. He gets in nude, but you can see him wearing tan-colored trunks during the close-ups. However, the far away shots do show him naked.

Larry Koehn

Revealing mistake: The ground beneath Mantee's feet gives way with him falling through the hole. Boy, that hole sure looked rectangular.

Larry Koehn

Other mistake: The abandoned orbiter requires fuel to decelerate and drop out of its stable orbit. Mantee knew the orbiting spacecraft was out of fuel before leaving it, but he was still trying to give the craft voice commands to land some forty minutes into the film.

Larry Koehn

Visible crew/equipment: Paul Mantee's helmet reflects two stage lights often when he is supposedly outside.

Larry Koehn