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Review by Kelly Parks |
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John Carpenter's - 1982 |
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I hate exposition.
Are you with me? Don't you hate exposition? The first ten or (jeezus!) more minutes of a movie where we get to know everybody and meet the tough but lovable cop or the hard drinkin' crack whore with the heart of gold. You have to wade through all the introductions before stuff in the movie starts HAPPENING!
Dull.
Which is why I love it so much when a movie opens in the middle of the action, the way God intended.
THE
THING, John Carpenter's (HALLOWEEN, THE FOG, ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA, THEY LIVE, IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS, VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED [1995], GHOSTS
OF MARS) 1982 re-make of the 1951 Howard Hawks' classic (both based on the John W. Campbell Jr. short story "Who Goes There?"),
opens with a helicopter chasing a dog across the endless frozen waste
of Antarctica. A man leans out of the helicopter and aims a high powered
rifle at the dog. Now that's the way to start a movie! Right away, you're drawn in. What the hell is going on?
Despite a great many bullets and a few thermite grenades, the dog makes it to a small American science base where the curious American residents have come outside to see what's going on. The helicopter lands but is quickly blown up by a poorly thrown grenade. The only survivor continues to fire at the dog, wounding one the Americans, Bennings (Peter Maloney: THE AMITYVILLE HORROR, THE CHILDREN, REVENGE OF THE STEPFORD WIVES, MANHUNTER) in the process. Unable to communicate with the crazed gunman (Norbert Weisser - who is screaming things in what turns out to be Norwegian), American base commander Garry (Donald Moffat: THE DEVIL AND MISS SARAH, THE TERMINAL MAN, MONSTER IN THE CLOSET) returns fire and kills him.
TRIVIA Did you know that John W. Campbell Jr., being an editor of Science Fiction, would write under the psuedonym, "Don A. Stuart"? Read the Novella * John Carpenter's THE THING THE
PUPPET MASTERS John Carpenter's THEY LIVE FINAL FANTASY, GAMER Cyriak Harris has created something that looks THING inspired. Judge for yourself when you watch |
The murderous rampage is attributed to cabin fever (not at all unusual at the very isolated bases near the South Pole) and the nice doggie is allowed to roam the base.
Meanwhile Dr. Copper (Richard A. Dysart: THE TERMINAL MAN, SPAWN [TV]) and helicopter pilot MacCready (Kurt Russell: ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA, GRINDHOUSE: DEATH PROOF) fly over to the Norwegian base to see if they can help.
Now if you're at all into horror movies you instantly know that something weird is going on with the dog. The movie doesn't try to hide it, which would have been lame. Instead there are some excellent scenes where the dog gives various characters some intense, motionless stares that clearly imply intelligence (animatronics or just a well trained husky?1 I don't know, but it looked good). MacCready and Copper return from the burned out Norwegian base with evidence the Norse scientists had discovered something strange in the ice. Shortly thereafter things get tense.
The special effects are amazing, graphic, gory, cool and apparently nearly fatal for Rob Bottin (THE HOWLING, THE FOG, ROBOCOP, TOTAL RECALL, SE7EN). He did much of the special make-up work and lived on the set working seven days a week for over a year. He had himself hospitalized for exhaustion when filming was done.
This movie is part of the very well known formula of the "alien among us" story line. The creature in question can digest anything living and then make itself into a perfect copy. When these isolated men realize what's going on, they also realize that some of them may not be human anymore. Paranoia doesn't begin to describe the way they feel.
This formula has been followed by many films, but here it's done well.
By the way, if you saw THE THING on network TV then you saw something very different from the theatrical version. The networks in their wisdom rearranged some scenes and added narration. Why would you add narration? Because the networks believe people are idiots and must have everything explained to them.
Did I mention that I Hate exposition?
This isn't the Scariest part
There are some flaws. The way computers are portrayed made me cringe and showed a complete lack of understanding on Carpenter's part as to exactly how they work.2 Plus you just have to ask yourself, once you understood that THE THING was taking people over only when they were alone and no one was looking, why would you EVER leave anyone alone? Wouldn't you stay together constantly, thus never giving the Thing the opportunity to absorb anyone else?3
This isn't the scariest part either
But the scary atmosphere and awesome creature effects allow your suspension of disbelief to skip these issues. That's why THE THING gets four shriek girls.
This review copyright 1999 E.C.McMullen Jr.
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For those who scroll...
1. The dog was real. A half Wolf half Malamute breed and his name was Jed. His biggest role was in 1991 as the lead character in WHITE FANG. Jeb died in 1995.
2 How the computers worked was not up to John Carpenter, but computer hardware builder, programmer, and operating system builder extraordinaire, John C. Wash. For THE THING, John programmed a "Cromemco S-100 system in FORTRAN to produce CGI imagery..."
John is credited for creating the hardware and software that propelled the ultra advanced (for their time) Computer Graphic Images (CGI) used in
DARK STAR
STAR WARS
ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK
BLADE RUNNER
HALLOWEEN III
BRAINSTORM
2010
DEMOLITION MAN
OUTBREAK
THE RELIC
THE X-FILES (TV and Movies)
THE VAMPIRE DIARIES (TV)
and many more
3. I'll be delicate here, so as not to spoil anything, but there are three distinct moments in the movie that explain why the researchers are too terrified to both be alone or "stay together".
- Feo
NEWS
THE ORIGINAL FAN
Producer Stuart Cohen labored for ten years as he struggled to bring John W. Campbell's short story to the screen. At his blog he gives THE THING fans all they could ever want to know about this masterpiece.
TheOriginalFan.blogspot
'THE THING' AT 40: The Cast & Crew's Definitive History of John Carpenter's Masterpiece
By Josh Weiss
At SYFY
40 Years Ago, THE THING Set a New Standard for SCI-FI Thrillers — and Accidentally Inspired a Modern Movie Trend
At Inverse
Fangoria "The Thing" Art Contest, 1981
In 1981, Fangoria magazine ran a Design the Thing contest, inviting readers to draw what they thought the alien creature in John Carpenter's movie would most resemble. While 22 year old Rob Bottin destroyed everyone's presumptions with the most original creation ever put to film, the fans, competing for the chance to win an all expense paid trip to Universal Studios (sucks if you live in the neighborhoods around Universal Studios) in California.
Those entries still exist at the excellent Horror weblog, MonsterBrains.
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