World was released in April 1951. By the end of that year, the film had accrued $1,950,000 in distributors' domestic (U.S. and Canada) rentals, making it the year's 46th biggest earner, beating all other science fiction films released that year, including The Day the Earth Stood Still and When Worlds Collide. Bosley Crowther in The New York Times observed, "Taking a fantastic notion (or is it, really?), Mr. Hawks has developed a movie that is generous with thrills and chills…Adults and children can have a lot of old-fashioned movie fun at 'The Thing', but parents should understand their children and think twice before letting them see this film if their emotions are not properly conditioned". "Gene" in Variety complained that the film "lacks genuine entertainment values". More than 20 years after its theatrical release, science fiction editor and publisher Lester del Rey compared the film unfavorably to the source material, calling it "just another monster epic, totally lacking in the force and tension of the original story". Isaac Asimov thought it to be one of the worst movies he had ever seen. For his part, Campbell acknowledged that an adaptation would have to change elements from the original, which he considered too scary for most audience members, and hoped that at least the movie would succeed in getting people interested in science fiction. The film is now considered to be one of the best films of 1951 and one of the great science fiction films of the 1950s. It garnered an 86% "Fresh" rating at the film review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes from 65 reviews, with the consensus that the film "is better than most flying saucer movies, thanks to well-drawn characters and concise, tense plotting". In 2001, the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry. Additionally, Time magazine named The Thing from Another World "the greatest 1950s sci-fi movie". American Film Institute lists AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills – #87 Critical analysis Some critics have interpreted The Thing from Another World to contain commentary on the threat of Communism in America during the Cold War. Program notes from a Cinema Texas screening of the film stated that "The film is seen as being symbolic of McCarthyism and the fight against communism on the home front." Film critic Roger Ebert wrote about The Thing from Another World in