I think maybe it was getting ready to transform into something else. So it stopped acting like a human for a minute and everyone else assumed it was some dude having a heart attack.
Or maybe that’s how it transforms you. You get infected and it slowly turns your cells into Thing cells. So for a time you are still you until you aren’t. Then you keel over dead until it pops back up as fake you.
Anyhow the movie is creepy as fuck.
A quote about the likely effect this has had from someone who spent several winters on Antarctica:
The Thing
John Carpenter’s science-fiction masterpiece is the absolute must see for anyone considering a winterover… And really freaky when seen in the middle of it…
Offtopic: this guy used his experiences to write a neat SF short story about the first manned mars expedition.
Heh, I have actually watched it before 
But thanks for the gee up.
Though this also makes me want to watch Aliens, haven’t watched that in a while (not the same, but still :D)
Oh, I forgot that Dark Horse has done a series of comics under the title Thing From Another World that continue the story of the film. As I feel that they can’t possibly be as good as the film, I haven’t read them.
I haven’t seen either version of the film, but I really liked “Who Goes There?” Should I bother watching the films, or stay with my memories of the story?
(IIRC, the X-Files also had an episode that was a decent adaptation.)
On Brimley’s infection:
In the scene when Brimley doing the autopsy on a Thing, he’s talking about how the every part of the Thing is alive. He’s using a pencil to poke at the body and then absent mindedly places the pencil in his mouth…I always felt it was that was the time, he became infected.
After complaining about my sister not watching it, I found myself not quite willing to sit down alone and do so by myself.
I was going to see it as a first date movie with my ex (we caught Alien vs Predator instead 
), but we caught it on DVD a few weeks later. After watching it we went to bed and I just couldn’t bear to have her touch and kiss me. I just thought of those tentacles and such… :o
Your ex had tentacles?
No wonder you broke up…
That’s my favorite bit.
Who couldn’t love an upside down human head sprouting spider legs and trying to stroll casually out the door in the midst of all the shooting and fire and confusion?
Oddly, the part of this movie that upsets me too much to watch is when they put the surviving dogs to sleep after the monster first appears. Poor doggies!
The rest of it, I love.
In the commentary by Kurt Russell and John Carpenter, they mention that while making the movie, the cast would argue about who did what when; and now John Carpenter can’t say for sure. It’s a paranoid nightmare.
They also feel there’s no real villain of the piece; just two species both fighting for survival.
I’ve been saying this about Alien for 30 years but nobody will listen.
I was told later that she would have gone down a storm in Japan.
Miss Mapp, I didn’t remember the bit about the rest of the dogs, I just remember the ones the Thing didn’t get running away. Was it a line or an actual scene.
In fact, don’t tell me, I don’t want to see the film again, or even keep it in my collection. This week it goes to a charity shop. I will erase it from my mind. Something to do tonight when I can’t sleep… :o