Yes, I've raised the question about TCM's print of The Thing before.
The problem began in the 1970s, when RKO cut about 7 minutes out of the film (apparently in some bone-headed attempt to shorten it so it would more easily fit into a 90-minute running time on commercial TV). This made the movie 80 minutes long, and this was the print used for the first RKO VHS version released in the 1980s. (There was a VHS with the complete film from Nostalgia Merchant, but it wasn't in the best shape throughout.) Meanwhile, the cut footage was seldom seen and left to deteriorate in the studio vaults in California.
However, in the late 90s, the missing footage was restored in a new VHS from RKO/WB, and this is what's currently available on DVD. As you say, this print is in excellent shape -- supposedly they found a pristine, full-length copy in Britain, which meant they didn't have to use the degraded footage in the US.
The segments of the movie that are in poor shape on TCM are -- mainly -- the footage that was removed over 30 years ago. Evidently TCM persists in using a print that took the good footage from the edited 80-minute print, then spliced in substandard footage from the original. Why they insist on doing this, instead of using the clean DVD print, is both annoying and a mystery.
The restored footage includes: (1) the middle of Hendry's meeting with General Fogarty; (2) the scene in the bunk room with Hendry, Eddie, Scotty and Barnes in which they discuss what to do with the Thing and Scotty complains about not being able to send out any news; (3) the scene soon after where Hendry and Nikki continue their romantic banter (including where she's tied him up); and (4) a small portion of a later discussion between Carrington and his associates, before he shows them the seedlings he's growing. All this was cut in the 70s. (Cutting segment 2 was particularly stupid, since it contains key information from Barnes as to why they can receive radio from Anchorage while Anchorage can't hear them: it's because Anchorage has a stronger station. Without this segment, it's never explained why they can hear Anchorage but not vice versa.)
Unfortunately, where the print used by TCM spliced these parts back in, using degraded footage, they also included the lead-in segments which were not cut in the 70s. This method made it easier to reconstruct the film than trying to insert missing segments into the middle of scenes (that is, scenes not broken by a shift in camera angle). However, these lead-ins were also degraded, so we get even more degraded footage beyond what was actually cut years ago.
This problem of mixed good and bad footage is not unheard of: the same thing, only worse, exists in Howard Hawks's next film, The Big Sky, where 19 minutes cut soon after the film's release in 1952 were restored in the 90s, but all of it heavily degraded, and the lead-ins also use bad footage even though pristine footage of those portions exists. But in that case it's unclear whether any good prints of the full film still exist. However, TCM is known to occasionally show poor prints of some films (for example, of the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes movies) for which pristine prints are available. As you pointed out, the DVD of The Thing From Another World is of excellent sound and picture quality throughout. Why TCM persists in using a bad composite print is frankly dumbfounding.
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