Patrick Garone: REDUX Monster Movie of the Week: The Thing (1982)

Note this entry was originally published 8/18/09 and revised, expanded, and republished 8/28/26.

Director: John Carpenter
Genre: Horror/Suspense

THE MOVIE:

John Carpenter's The Thing is the story of a small group of men who are assigned to a remote American Antarctic outpost. Their isolation is interrupted by the arrival of a mysterious dog which is chased by a helicopter from a distant Norwegian settlement. Attempting to kill the dog, the helicopter and its pilot are destroyed. MacReady (Kurt Russell) and some others from the American base investigate the Norwegian settlement to find a gruesome mess. They also find what appears to be a flying saucer half buried in the ice and a mangled semi-human body.

When they return to the American station, the mysterious dog begins to mutate into some sort of Lovecraftian tentacle monster, attempting to absorb and mutate the other dogs in its pen but is torched by the crew before it can finish. From here we can very well have Alien On Ice, after all, this was produced immediately after the success of Ridley Scott's movie. No doubt, the success of Alien allowed The Thing to be made.

However, the twist offered by Carpenter's movie is that this alien creature is able to assume the form of any other organism, so there is a compelling mystery element of never knowing which members of the crew are human and which have been infected by the monster. This fact alone helps underscore the tension and heighten the relationships between the characters. It's the rare movie of this genre that gives its actors something to do other than running around screaming. The cast is pretty stacked including the perennially elderly Wilford Brimley (Cocoon) and a young Keith David, who's face and voice are known from everything to Platoon to Rick and Morty.

The Thing was released at the tail end of the late '70's and early 80's sci-fi movie boom and was lost in the shuffle, actually being released the same month as Blade Runner and the massively popular E.T. Clearly, 1982 audiences were looking for a different kind of alien experience, and it was widely considered to be a box office flop. At the time of its release, it was criticized for its excessive gore and disgusting special effects.

There was a time in which you either had to see a movie in the theater or on a television broadcast. Theatrical runs were much less front loaded than they are now, and movies would literally be in theaters for months and hit movies would even have re-releases. Popular movies had splashy TV premieres several years after their theatrical runs. If a movie had an unsuccessful theatrical run there weren't a lot of ways to recover the investment. That changed drastically with the advent of the home video rental market in the 1980's and also the rise of premium cable around the same time. Movies that didn't do well on first release could find a second life on home video. Movies that found their legs on the home video market include such classics as Blade Runner, The Terminator, and The Shawshank Redemption. The Thing is also a great example of a movie that was considered a flop upon release that people rediscovered in the subsequent years at home and the movie's reputation as a classic has only grown over time.

The movie has spawned a number of comic book sequels as well as a classic survival horror video game, and even a 2011 prequel movie, which confusingly shares the same title. Like Alien and Aliens,the influence of The Thing, can be felt in everything to the Halo and Resident Evil series of videos games to Tarantino's snowy ensemble thriller The Hateful Eight.

The Thing is actually a remake of a fifities sci-fi movie, The Thing From Another World, which in turn was loosely based on the novella "Who Goes There?" written in the '30's by John W. Campbell, which seems to have borrowed the Antarctic setting and themes from "At the Mountains of Madness" by H. P. Lovecraft. Carpenter's remake actually stays closer to the plot of the novella and restores the movie's idea that the creature can assume anyone's shape or identity. It also seems to have inspired the first season X-Files episode "Ice."

THE MONSTER/EFFECTS:

The Thing is a seriously gory movie but the effects are groundbreaking and imaginative and push the envelope of pre-digital effects. You don't really see creature effects this ambitious until T2 is released in 1991. I can even say that for a movie released in 1982 there are a few shots that DONT look dated today, which is pretty good for a movie that relies on stop-motion and animatronics.

The monster is only recognizable as a monster when it is in mid-transformation, when it is a mismatched collection of tentacles and bizarre flowery appendages, with human and animal parts randomly thrown in. Sadly, one never gets to see the alien's true form which would have been cool at the finale. Perhaps it doesn't have one.

MONSTERS FEATURED:

"The Thing" in various forms.

WHERE TO WATCH

There are various collector's editions which are loaded with extras and documentaries about the movie and its groundbreaking visual effects.

SEQUELS:

The 2011 prequels is set immediately before this and tells the story of the Norweigean station and an American scientist (Mary Elizabeth Winstead, in Ripley mode) brought in to examine the frozen creature. It was criticized for using CGI but using in-camera effects of the scale and ambition of the original movie was not.really a practical option in 2010 when this movie was made. I found it to be a fun companion piece to Carpenter's movie although not of the same level of quality.

SEE ALSO:

Alien (1979), The Fly (1986), The X-Files "Ice" 1993, The Thing (2011)

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