This is just a basic all-purpose appreciation thread. This is one of two films tied for my 2nd favorite horror/monster movie of all time.
I have watched it two times in the last day, and I’m, like, impressed to the max, dude! (hahaha :))
There’s nothing bad in this film. Nothing that doesn’t work. And some really incredible subtlety, in the way they don’t make it obvious who is infected. The camera redirection. The little scnes where the camera shows brief shots of the characters who are infected, but it’s subtle enough that it doesn’t give it away. You only notice it when you already know what’s happening and know what to look for.
The acting is great. The ensemble was awesome, and I think this was Kurt Russell’s best performance ever (even better than Big Trouble In Little China!).
The ending (I won’t spoil it yet, I’ll wait and see if it turns into a spoiler thread) is one of the best I’ve ever seen as well.
I know I’m being vague, but it’s on purpose so that I don’t spoil it for anybody.
But I do have one question…Who destroyed the blood? For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, there was a part where they realized that uncontaminated whole blood could be used as a test basis to find out who is infected.
Anyway, what do you guys think? Good, Bad, whatever…Let it rip.
It was one of the first horror movies I saw, and one of the best.
I liked the ending-- it wasn’t your typical “man fights back against the evil creature and wins in the end” horror flick. It was dark and uncertain and troubling.
Wish I could help you on the blood thing, but it’s been years since I last saw the movie.
This is my favourite Carpenter film. During the blood testing phase the entire audience leapt off their seats in the cinema when I saw it. And I agree with opinion on the greatness of the ending
This was the first movie I ever watched on video - I was alone, and babysitting. Scared the living crap out of me.
My favourite moment: when the guy’s head falls off, grows spider legs and runs away, and they whack it with the flamethrower. “You gotta be fucking kidding”.
It’s a tour-de-force; I admire the way he went all-out for grossness - no punches pulled at all.
My complaint is the nonsense with the computer modelling. I also recall some kind of plot-hole re. blood, but I can’t remember what it was.
Right after they find out, don’t they run through the options–who had the keys? I thought it was just Doc and Mac, implying it was one of them.
We know what happens to Mac. And I don’t want to say what happens to Doc, as I too do not want to spoil any part of this fine work of cinema. But it would’ve made sense if he did it, wouldn’t it?
I really liked this film. I saw it at a drive-in when it first came out, and sat through it twice. Bill Lancaster (Burt’s son) did a great job on the script, Carpenter on the direction, and all the actors. Neat Ennio Morricone score. My main regret is that Carpenter cut a lot of Ernie Farino’s animation at the very end (all that remains is the brief clip of The Thing bursting up from underneath and snagging the detonator with a tentacle). And I wished they’d finished the “Blairmonster jack-in-the-box scene” where he grabs the black kid.
All in all, much more faithful to the John Campbell short story than the first 1951 version (which is still excellent, though for different reasons). My main gripe is that they tookl the story beyond Campbell’s original ending to a much more ambiguous and unsatisfying one – the story ends with them killing off the last Alien duplicator, then finding the jury-rigged “flying saucer” it was building. The whole “blowing up the camp” thing and showdown in the basement was original to the movie.
This movie, as I’ve remarked several times, is the most butchered one I’ve seen. When it was shown on CBS the first time they cut out almost all the scenes with The Thing, and actually rearranged scenes. If you’d never seen it before, you’d have no idea what was going on. The versions shown in syndication now aren’t so bad, and even include some scenes cut out of the movie, along with some unnecessary narration.
A couple of jobs ago, my boss tookma sabbatical to lead an expedition to Antarctica. They had a VCR on board their ship, but very few tapes, so us employees got together an gave him a copy of the Carpoenter version of The Thing. It still warms my heart to think of him and his fellow explorers watching this film about a monster in the Antarctic ripping up a group of explorers.
Like many, this was one of my first horror films and is definitely in my top choices of movies. It’s an aliend buggy movie with a really cool alien and a lot of subtlety and subterfuge to boot. The fact that you’ve got creepy looking aliens and human looking aliens running around in an isolated area is just great. And the special effects were amazing, especially for the early 80s. The scene with the dogs will forever be etched into my brain.
Personally, I thought that it was Doc who destroyed the blood as well, although I can’t be too certain. I thought it was all part of his crazed “Nobody gets out” phase. Does the DVD have the cut out scenes on it? I always wondered what exactly happened to Cook (the black guy other than Childs). You see him walk off, and then Mac calls back to him and that’s the end of it.
Has anyone played the new game? I forget what system it’s for, but it’s supposed to be a continuation of the storyline where an expedition goes to the base and (of course) ressurects the Thing. According to this storyline, Mac and Childs don’t make it, which I find really kinda cool. I read a couple of the comics based off the movie, but I didn’t care all too much with how they treated the Thing towards the end. It always turned into some brightly colored insect like monster.
Which brings me to question: Do they ever give any kind of indication as to what the creature looks like in it’s natural form? Whenever it would reveal itself, it often became somewhat insect like, but I’m not sure if that really means anything.
I loves me some John Carpenter’s The Thing. I first saw it back in the 8th grade, when it was first on cable, and I watched it just about every time it was on. I have it on DVD now, and I can watch it over and over and over.
How great are those opening titles, with the ship crashing nearly silently into the Antarctic, then the words “The Thing” burning themselves into the screen?
Like CalMeacham, I also appreciated how closely the bulk of the movie stuck to “Who Goes There?”, although I wish they had included the camp having cattle as well as dogs. John Campbell’s description of the cattle “melting” when being hit with the prods was one of the most startling things I ever read as a teen sci-fi fan.
Blair’s freak-out in the radio room was so terrific . . . it was great to see Wilford Brimley in that role. In fact, that cast of seasoned character actors was one of the best ensemble casts I have ever witnessed. Brimley, Richard Masur, Keith David, Donald Moffat . . . good work from everyone.
I also could never figure out who destroyed the blood, though. Both Doc and Garry were human, as revealed by Mac’s blood test, so it had to be someone who got the keys away from one of them.
Not to be a prissy little fanboy (kinda pathetic if you’re 41 years old), but when it came to the blood, I think they agreed that only Dr. Copper (Richard Dysart) and Garry, the ostensible base commander (Donald Moffat) had a key. In fact, there was only one key, normally held by Garry, and given to Dr. Copper when he needed it. Given what we learn later about who’s who, this still leaves a mystery, but maybe it’s appropriate that not everything be made clear. I like the dark, ambiguous ending; a lot of movie makers seem to have forgotten that not every story has to have an upbeat ending.
The DVD also has a very enjoyable featurette about making the movie, filming on a glacier, etc. There are cast interviews, and after almost twenty years they still recall the movie as one of the most interesting projects they worked on; apparently several lasting friendships were formed. The commentary track with Carpenter and Russell is funny; they tend to forget there’s a movie going on, and just shoot the breeze. I think they may have been drinking.
Re. the blood: I recall speculating that one of the keyholders thought they might be infected, but still retaining their conscious mind. They destroyed the blood because they were scared of being exposed, and wanted to remain in denial.
Yes, the Thing is a great work. The music is good, the characters are good…the thing (ha ha I’m funny) that I noticed was how quickly Blair lost it. That long winter of boredom, than the sudden attack…did that contribute?
The base was just a generic science station. I don’t think they ever said what their mission was. I think it was to host a cool sci-fi/monster flick.
One of my favorite and more suble shots was just before the blood testing and the crab-head scene - After Nauls staggers back with MacReady’s ripped shirt and everybody decides MacReady must be a Thing: They’re all standing around yelling, then there’s a close up of the two characters who are Things, standing there looking at each other. And the way the Things try so hard to shift blame away from themselves. It’s brilliant.
I think jjimm’s explanation is probably the right one. Likely Doc or Garry thought he was infected, and did the blood to keep from being “found out”. That makes sense, considering the way each man, on passing the blood test, had a look of relief on his face, indicating that they might have thought they were infected.
And blair’s outburst wasn’t just losing it. He was alarmed at the results of his computer simulation - that there was a 75% chance that a member of the team was infected, and that the entire world population would be assimilated within 27,000 hours (just over 3 years) of first contact.
I think what he did was exactly the right thing to do, even though the others didn’t understand. Remember what he was saying while smashing the radio: “It didn’t want to be the dog, it wanted to be us!” Because “we” have helicopters and radios that will provide it with transport back to the population center.
I think the Thing was a pure parasite, like on Alien. I don’t think that was its own spaceship, but that of another species that it attacked and imitated.
I had originally thought that it was unintelligent, but it must at least have a memory of knowledge from its victims as well as of their shapes: Otherwise Blair wouldn’t have been able to build the spaceship.
Really great movie.
And I don’t mind the changed ending. The ambiguity of the ending added to the greatness of the film.
Another bit of trivia (which I read somewhere – I’m not clever or observant enough to have picked it up):
The poster in the rec room is a VD poster. It shows a woman wearing a button that says “I Have VD”, and the caption reads something like “They’re not all Labeled”, which is pretty much on-point considering that the issue is who has and who has not been “infected” by The Thing.
My problem is that I saw the movie with a bunch of engineers. All of us immediately deduced that “the Thing” was basically unkillable, especially with a flamethrower.
The premise clearly stated that each cell of “the Thing” was an independent organism, which means that roasting it would just produce a black crunchy crust around a living core of “Thing” cells. Foe example, when the Doc began his examination of one of the burned carcasses, he should have been attacked by the innards as soon as he cut into the mass.
Anyone with experience in a biology lab understands how difficult it is to kill off every. last. individual. cell. of a specimen. This is why lab equipment is autoclaved, basically run through a device which cooks the tools with extreme heat and pressure. And even then, the clean stuff can be contaminated, usually by the workers transferring organisms to the sterilized surfaces with their fingers that have touched other, non-sterile lab equipment.
We discussed the movie, and we decided that the only way to kill “the Thing” would be to section off the entire science base shown in the movie, and then sterilized EVERYTHING, including the equipment, buildings, boil the snow, etc. Ideally, this would be done by remote operated equipment, which would then push all of the sterilized material into a big pile (including themselves), which would then be sealed inside a big ball of cement or plastic. Like nuclear waste, you would want to isolate it forever.
The moral of the story is, don’t ever watch horror films with science-type people… they’ll find all of the plot holes and bad logic in the movie, and ruin the whole horror experience.
Loved this movie! Saw it for the first time on HBO when I was about 13. Somehow, I think this is the best time to see a movie like this for the first time. I can remember a group of us at Boy Scout camp re-enacting entire scenes, quoting dialog verbatim and everything.
I have not seen the DVD, so I’m not sure what these “deleted scenes” were or alternate endings. My impression of the ending was that, yes, the alien got blown up. But, the movie also closed with the “dah dum” theme music, which I assumed was the “cue the alien” music. Meaning that either it wasn’t all blown up (remember that it only takes a small piece of tissue to maintain viability), or that either MacReady or Childs was actually the Thing.
I also think this is the only movie I’ve ever seen without a female cast member, in some sort of a role (and no, the chess-playing computer [“Cheatin’ bitch”] doesn’t count!)
IK actually had the same objection as jhwood9’s engineering buddies, but it didn’t bother me. I figured the cells inside were subject to injury as long as they were part of a larger organism if they weren’t prepared to separate, or some damned thing.
What I DID object to was the remarkable availability of flame throwers, surely one of the most dangerous weapons a man can carry, in a research facility.
However, it was a terrific movie, a wonderful study in paranoia.
Another great bit of ambiguity in the movie: This is always the explanation that made the most sense to me, too, but it’s possible that Blair was already the Thing when he had his freakout. Thus, he separates the camp from contact with the rest of the world, or the possibility of escape, while ensuring that he can be separated from them to work on his little science project.
I always love the scene where Mac and Nauls go to the shack to ask Blair if he’s seen Fuchs, and while he’s talking to them, you can see he’s put up a noose in there. What a great little bit of detail.
