The fact we don’t know is part of the genius of the film. Carpenter and Bill Lancaster (Burt’s son, who wrote the movie) leave the audience is fundamentally the same place as the bewildered denizens of Research Outpost 31*; you never quite know what’s happening. Indeed, the film never uses dramatic irony; there is nothing you are ever told that the guys on screen don’t know.
The fact that you don’t know much is, IMHO, a fantastic choice. Not knowing where the Thing is from, precisely what rules it plays by, why it does what it does…it just adds to the horror.
There is no such outpost, and in fact the USA doesn’t have any outpost like it. In the film it appears it’s a year-round station; the only year-round stations are McMurdo, which is practically a little town, Palmer, which is a coastal station and isn’t even exactly in the Antarctic, and of course Amundsen-Scott.
Man, even just reading this thread takes me back and kind of gives me the willies. I originally saw this on cable in the early 80s, and it worked well. But it is one of those movies that my appreciation for it actually increases when I return to it. I actually feel more tense. Partly because I know what scene is coming, but mostly because yeah - you don’t know when anyone really starts their transition into being a Thing, and it’s maddening.
I know I’d read the story linked by @TreacherousCretin before. It is a great take from the other side, partly a “wow these things are poorly managed” critique, and well worth the re-read. Thankya!
I backed the 2018 Kickstarter campaign to get it ASAP of course. Along with the book there was also a short story anthology Short Things from 10 different authors of Thing-inspired stories. The KS version of Frozen Hell also features a preview of a sequel being written by John Gregory Betancourt.
Oh, you may also be interested that Todd Cameron, the #1 superfan of the 1982 movie, has just published a book about R.J. MacReady’s life leading up to his final career choice in the Antarctic, Snowblind.
Gosh, I hate spamming this thread but hopefully fans of the movie won’t mind. Two more Things (ha!):
The Thing Artbook is available on Amazon at a good price. It’s a whopping 400 pages of illustrations by hundreds of different artists. Foreword by Eli Roth and afterword by the man himself, John Carpenter. It makes a great coffee table book.
What I love most about The Thing is the level of paranoia and distrust John Carpenter develops throughout the film. After watching it and thinking it through, I realize that the real horror is not knowing who of your co-workers and friends may be an otherworldly creature that kills and assimilates to survive, or if even you yourself could be unknowingly harboring a threat to others. Blair’s research and assumptions are just hasty SWAGs really, so what we (the audience) think we know about how this intelligent blood born pathogen works may lead us down wrong paths to even worse conclusions.
Anyway, that’s a long winded way to say I don’t see that magic captured very often, but the second season of Slasher on Netflix comes close. There’s a lot of parallels to the movie, being trapped in a remote cabin and bound in by snow and cold, locking suspected people up in a separate cabin, fingers pointing desperately at everyone for motive for being the killer. While gory, it’s not the gonzo effects of the movie. Give it a shot.
I first saw The Thing around 1982/83 in VHS when I lived in Germany. (Bootleg VHS maybe?) I was only 6 or 7 at the time, so most of the subtleties were lost on me though the more memorable grotesque scenes were remembered. When I re-watched it around 2018 I really appreciated for the first time just how good that movie was. I find it odd that it wasn’t well received back in 1982.
It’s one of the more remarkable critical misses in movie history. At least downwards; it’s relatively common for movies to get rave reviews and later seem painfully dated. Movies reviled by critics and later loved by them aren’t as frequent as thing.
Know what we know about The Thing being able to morph, why did it allow its blood to be tested? Normally I would write it off a lazy writing to get the jumpscare but the writing is so go I’m sure it is some subtle going on.
I suspect that too many critics thought of it as a poor remake of the Howard Hawks/Christian Nyby 1951 film, rather than as a very good adaptation of Campbell’s short story. A lot of critiques focused on the goriness and grossness of the special effects, and figured this was just a step above slasher films. Science Fiction fans, on the other hand, were annoyed with the “dumbing down” of the original film (however good it was otherwise), the discarding of the original premise, and the use of an “intelligent carrot” as the alien – which is completely beyond Campbell’s intent and philosophy. They (we?) saw the 1982 film of a revival of the original cerebral intent of the story.
I liked The Thing and its very effective mix of paranoia and horror, although I wouldn’t say it’s a favorite movie of mine, and the creature sfx, as good as it was in 1982, looks a little amateurish these days. CGI has just moved too far ahead.
I’d read that before, and it’s terrific. And the last line… brrr!
Some previous SDMB threads that may be of interest:
One of the problems a lot of people had with the 2011 version of the movie is that the CGI was atrocious. Supposedly they used practical effects but someone got the bright idea to demand they use CGI and it just didn’t work well. I think CGI is great, Mad Max Fury Road used them effectively, but a lot of times it results in things looking cartoonish. I haven’t seen the 2011 version, but the scenes I’ve seen look like cutscenes from a video game.
I am quite certain most fans of The Thing never saw the 1951 film, which to a lot of folks looks silly and dated, or read the short story, and fair enough either way. The 1982 movie should stand entirely on its own merits no matter the source material.
I’m curious to know the source of your certainty. I agree that the film should stand or fall on its own merits, which is why the negative reviews of film critics at the time – which I am as equally sure is based on their reverence for the 1951 version – rankles.
Interesting thing about the film. The first time it was broadcast on non-cable TV it appeared on CBS, and they cut practically every scene that the creature was in, evidently deeming it too gory or too grotesque for general consumption. They also re-arranged the order of the shots. This lead to an incomprehensible film with a confused storyline. I don’t see why they even bothered showing the film.
When HBO showed it beginning in 1983 it was, of course, uncut and unedited.
The first time I saw it on an independent network was pretty much the opposite of the CBS broadcast. Not only did they not cut anything out, they actually added scenes, evidently cut for time or pacing, that “fleshed out” the story somewhat, and added a voice-over that explained who each of the characters was and gave a bit of backstory. I haven’t seen that version since.
The 1951 film was largely not known to the audiences of the 1980s, or only vaguely so. Most filmgoers in 1982 wouldn’t even have had access to the 1951 movie; this was not a movie that would have been easily found at a local video store, and many of not most viewers in 1982 wouldn’t have been born in 1951, or would have been very young. Most people who DID go to the movies in 1951 did not see the film; it did well enough to make money but wasn’t some sort of box office sensation.
31 years was a much longer gap then than it is now. Today we just take it for granted that you can watch any movie you want; to watch a movie made in 1990 is no big deal. In 1982 it very much was a big deal, and indeed, movies from 1951 are still not an easy find. I have a lot of streaming services but the 1951 film isn’t to be found on any of them.
I hadn’t seen a single minute of the 1951 movie until four years ago (and I didn’t watch it all.) I know literally no one in my personal circle of family and friends who’ve seen it. A film critic is not a representative example of a typical viewer. Most people just don’t watch that many movies, especially older ones, even now. Shortly after I had watched “The Thing” with my kid and her friend I was at an event with a large number of folks in their 20s and 30s, and mentioned I’d watched the movie. Not a single one of them had ever seen the film, and most had never heard of it. That’s quite normal, and we live in an age when you’re a few clicks away from watching it. People’s range of movie viewing is much more limited than I think we here might imagine.
To support RickJay’s point, I’m 50, saw and loved Carpenter’s The Thing as a teenager and also when I re-watched it again a couple years ago, and until this thread I had never heard of the 1951 movie. Or even the story both were based on for that matter.
My rewatch a couple years ago was a double feature of the 1983 classic and the Mary Elizabeth Winstead prequel from the 2010s. I liked the modern one, but of course it doesn’t hold a candle to the Kurt Russell classic. I was afraid the primitive visual effects would be too jarring but it wasn’t bad.
EDIT: The CGI in the modern one probably looked a lot better to me having just watched the Muppet version.
On the contrary - I found this movie easily in video stores and video rental stores, especially after the colorized version became available. It still showed regularly on the AMC channel and on things like TNT “Monstervision” and indy stations. I wasn’t born in 1955, but I saw the film frequently. In fact, even before home video, a shortened version was available on 16mm and 8 mm home movie format (I’ve seen it that way, too).
So what? My point is that the 1951 movie was shown on those stations long after 1982. There have been plenty of chances to see the film on cable, on VHS, and on DVD. The movie isn’t the obscurity some of you are trying to make it out to be.
And in 1982 it was showing still on the monster movie venues on independent stations, so if you’re arguing that people in 1982 couldn’t possibly have been familiar with the film, you’re wrong. As a high-quality yet inexpensive (because of its age) science fiction film, it was in frequent rotation. It wasn’t like the Columbia horror films of the 1930s that languished in obscurity because there wasn’t an effective way to market them.