I think you might owe it to yourself to see Carpenter’s The Thing. It’s a perfectly crafted film of paranoia. And Rob Bottin’s special effects were really bar-none. Even now, they hold up pretty well. There are genuine “Holy Shit!” moment’s you’ll never forget.
Just be sure to watch it alone, with the lights off and at 3am.
I’m down for the remake, it looks like they struck the right tone. I just hope they’re able to pull off some really nightmarish CG Thing creations. (is it really a prequel?)
“Would somebody… GET ME OUT OF THIS FUCKING CHAIR!!!”
Yes, the creature knows what it is. But the question is, does the person it’s imitating know that it’s an imitation? When someone’s talking to Blair after the thing gets him, is Blair thinking, “Ha ha, puny human!” Or is he thinking regular Blair thoughts, unaware that deep in his subconscious is this alien entity, watching and waiting?
In fact, if you listen to the commentary track with John Carpenter and Kurt Russell, they weren’t sure if you did know. So if the director and lead actor aren’t entirely sure, then it wasn’t settled at the time.
Maybe; there’s also a scene where a guy turns around and the old-doctor-Thing rams its hand up his face, then drags him off still attached.
Or to go back to my own theory; the dog-Thing may simply not have been smart enough to know what it was doing; notably, it went to no effort to avoid notice when it attacked the way the human-Things did, it just openly went all tentacled and attacked the dogs. And the purpose of the tentacles may be what I suggested earlier; to infuse enough Thing biomass to copy over its knowledge and personality.
I just popped the movie in, and the dog clearly seems to be up to something before the kennel scene. When Mac and the doc get in the helicopter to go to the Norwegian camp, the dog appears to be listening to the sound of the helicopter leaving. Then it’s shown wandering around the compound, as if it’s scouting the place. Finally, right before they cut to the Norwegians, the dog walks into a bedroom where you can see the shadow of someone through the doorway. The shadow looks over at the dog, and the scene ends. It’s not clear whose shadow it is: Might be the Keith Richards-looking dude. At any rate, that guy probably gets eaten and replaced right there.
When the helicopter gets back, the dog is standing on a writing desk, watching through a window. When they bring back the twisted up corpse from the camp, its watching from the doorway. Its not until some time later (it appears to be a few hours later) that someone notices the stray dog underfoot and puts it in the kennel. After the attack, the bearded guy who’s in charge of the dogs and Wilford Brimley are talking. The bearded guy says the dog’s been wandering around the camp “all day,” and admits to having spent “maybe an hour” alone with the dog.
Just saw that scene. Bennings (the bald guy with the red beard) and Windows (the radio operator) are putting the twisted corpse from the Norwegian camp into the store room. Windows moves the blanket to look at the thing, then replaces it and walks out. As his back is turned, you can see the blanket move by itself, then the camera pans down to blood, and something more solid, sliding out from under the blanket.
A few minutes later, Windows walks back into the room, and sees a pile of bloodied clothes, and, in the corner next to the corpse from the Norwegian camp, a blood soaked Bennings wrapped in tentacles, which are extruding from under the edge of the blanket. He runs for help, and this leads to the scene of a partially transformed Bennings kneeling in the snow, howling inhumanely at the rest of the cast while they douse him in gasoline and set him on fire.
Interestingly, the partially consumed/transformed Bennings has enough presence of mind to grab his coat before he runs out in the snow.
Yes. There is also Bennings, left alone in the storage room with the “dead” Thing. Bennings was presumably human when we see the others leaving him alone in the room. When Windows returns, Bennings is being quite thoroughly invaded by a tentacled Thing.
There is also Palmer-thing attacking Windows, in the exciting “couch” sequence of events. Palmer-thing descends from the ceiling, splits open to reveal some tentacles, some of which glom onto Windows. Palmer-thing leaves, and a mangled, bloody Windows slumps down to the floor. Perhaps Windows is simply dying at this point — however, he is also gurgling and twitching, so it would seem that a chunk of Thing is in him, taking over.
If you’re referring to the computer simulation that Blair ran, the estimated time for world take-over was 27,000 hours — or about 3 years.
If the new film has its own, different scenario going on, then never mind.
A better question is does the Thing absorb the thoughts and knowledge of the person it kills? I think there are two reasons the Thing doesn’t just kill and imitate everyone:
It probably requires a certain mass to kill/dopplegang someone. We don’t see anyone actually getting infected by a single drop of blood. They get absorbed by a human/animal sized mass of Thing.
The Thing wants to get to population. It probably figures it’s easier to tag along with the group than to kill everyone and be stuck with no idea how to contact a ride back to civilization.
Agreed - it’s quite faithful in many respects, and is a well-made modern (for the time) update to the story.
I’m not a horror movie fan, but I love this film. There are gory moments, definitely, but the overall atmosphere is one of serious tension, (justified!) paranoia, and the creeping realization that it may be the end of humanity.
BTW: In the movie, they were roommates. There was that scene where each one was lying in their bunks and smoking a joint while watching Wheel of Fortune tapes. It could have been either one of them.
(I can’t find a specific YouTube link, but it’s pretty early in the movie.)
ETA: Please ref: Post 26/Miller’s comments. I was answering that, but I goofed on the reply.
Hot chick needs to get Thinged. Seriously. She could pull a Ripley and sacrifice herself for the good of humanity, but there’s no way she’s getting off that ice cube knowing a Thing is around. Or she got Thinged and escaped :eek:
I’m fascinated by the Thing’s biomorphs- in the original, one of the Thing’s gets flamethrowered, so it ejects its head and tries to crawl off. In most of the cases, when confronted, the Thing tries to escape- for all of the scary tentacles, heads, spikes n stuff most of it seems defensive in nature.
I wonder if the Thing had a native form, if the UFO were full of Things or aliens infested by them (more likely). Some theories:
[spoiler]Like cowboys and aliens, the chick turns out to be some sort of ‘good’ Thing that is trying to stop the Bad Things. She either gets killed by accident or sacrifices herself.
…Or, the aliens are even more horrible than the Things- the Things being some sort of bioweapon to keep some kind of agressive warlike alien race from rampaging the galaxy. Those horrible mutant tentacly dogs? They’re actually helping us and we dont even know it! :eek: What a twist! [/spoiler]
