I’ve watched the original and the prequel, and never thought to ask WHY both camps have flamethrowers handy lying round to be used?
Not sure about the remakes, but the original from 1951 takes place mostly in a military base in Alaska.
Those bases had the typical items for those days just before or at the end of WWII: Bombs, TNT, Termite, candy bars - cigarrets - chewing gum 
, and flamethrowers.
:smack:
It still seems a losing proposition in the arctic, but I suppose you can’t just bring a big bag of salt.
Salt is good for fighting giant monster slugs and snails.
It also stops rocks from growing.
Salt also doesn’t work when it gets too cold out (around 0 F), which it probably will in the deep arctic or antarctic.
They can’t use their pulse rifles when they’re under the primary heat exchangers.
“What are we supposed to use, man, harsh language?”
Must be for the pre-sequel The Alien Thing From Another World
In any horror film, the correct question to ask is really, “Why NOT flamethrowers?”
Depends on the monster. If it’s the zombie apocalypse then you have to worry about running out of fuel and blazing zombies wandering around setting things on fire before they finally die.
I guess Things is taken.
Not sure Bobby Darin had that in mind when he sang the song. Could be a great theme tune, tho!
Speaking of which, why did the crew of the Nostromo from the first Alien film have flamethrowers on board a spaceship?
Or are we to assume in both cases these are some sort of jury-rigged welding torches?
In Alien captain Dallas clearly tells engineer Parker to rig up a couple incinerator units. They had handguns, the “weapons” Dallas told them to break out before going to search the derelict spaceship. These were visible in holsters on the thighs of their spacesuits. Once they realized that the alien had acid for blood and that blowing holes in it was bad for their ship, they rigged the flamethrowers as a way to “drive” the alien, which at that time was still the small chestburster.
Which always made me wonder why there were weapons on the Nostromo to begin with.
Back to The Thing, I also wonder why “El Capitan” (Jim Cromwell) is wearing a holstered sidearm at the beginning of the film.
.
<ahem>
“Kill it.”
“Kill it with fiiire!”
Thank you.
Carry on.
Not James Cromwell. Donald Moffat.
In hindsight, you’d need to annihilate all of the creature - a few surviving cells will start everything up again. That, or use a cryogenic weapon and freeze the entire creature - and then completely incinerate it.
Without that, with no weapons, a flamethrower can be rigged up with basic mechanical elements and fuel.