John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982)

[Silver Nemesis]

I discovered John Carpenter's films at a young age and developed a particularly strong interest in them throughout my teenage years. Much as I enjoy a lot of his work, I would never go so far as to describe him as a great director. Not great in the way Murnau, Kurosawa, Hitchcock, Bergman, Kubrick or Tarkovsky were great. Instead I'd compare him to cult filmmakers such as Bava, Romero, Argento and Raimi. With that said, I would argue that The Thing (1982) is the closest Carpenter ever got to making a truly great film. I love Assault on Precinct 13, The Fog and Big Trouble in Little China, but The Thing stands head and shoulders over any other Carpenter movie as far as sheer quality of filmmaking is concerned. It's a legitimately good picture and a classic of the science fiction horror cross-genre.

Is the film a remake of Christian Nyby and Howard Hawks' The Thing from Another World (1951), or is it a re-adaptation of the 1938 novella Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell Jr.? The answer is it's both. I read the book about ten years ago (however I have yet to read the extended version that was discovered in 2018), and one thing that struck me about it was how much closer it was to Carpenter's version than the 1951 film. Both pictures take liberties, but the 1982 movie is a far more faithful adaptation. For one thing, the original book and Carpenter's film both take place in the Antarctic, while the 1951 movie takes place in the Arctic.

From what I remember, the 1951 film presents a completely different cast of characters from those featured in the book. That's not the case in the 1982 movie, where most of the protagonists – including MacReady, Blair, Clark, Garry, Norris, Kinner and Copper – are based on characters from the novella. Certain scenes in Carpenter's version are also directly based on events from the book. These include the sequence where the Thing tries to assimilate the dogs in the pen and the humans have to use the flamethrower on it, and the scene where the outpost crew devise a blood test to determine who is and who isn't a Thing. In short, the 1982 film is the more accurate adaptation.

That's not to say the 1951 film isn't good too. It's a classic in its own right and Carpenter's film pays homage to it in a number of ways. We never get to see the spaceship take flight in the original film, but we do in the 1982 version. It retains the basic flying saucer design of a typical 1950s spaceship, albeit with a post-Star Wars sheen of glossy eighties special effects.

The brief scene of the ship crashing on Earth is followed by opening titles that carefully recreate those of the 1951 movie.

Later in the film the outpost crew reviews the footage shot by the Norwegians that discovered the wreckage of the crashed ship. This black and white recording recreates the memorable scene in the 1951 film where the members of the American expedition stand in a circle to outline the shape of the buried vessel.

Both films contain the sinister image of the hollow block of ice from which the Thing was thawed.

The full body burn stunts in Carpenter's film pay tribute to one of the most impressive scenes from the 1951 movie.

Carpenter assembled an impressive cast that includes genre favourites Kurt Russell, Keith David and Wilford Brimley. The movie is all about paranoia and distrust, and it's the intensity of the acting that sells the group fear dynamic. This film was made one year after Russell first played Snake Plissken in Escape from New York (1981), and both films helped cement him as one of the leading men of eighties action cinema. His alpha male presence among the ensemble cast is similar to that of Arnold Schwarzenegger in Predator (1987). He manages to bring star power to the movie while also delivering a terrific performance that complements those of his cast mates without ever overshadowing them.

The director of photography was Dean Cundey, who cut his teeth working on various classic John Carpenter films before going on to serve as cinematographer on major Hollywood productions such as the Back to the Future Trilogy (1985-1990), Jurassic Park (1993) and Apollo 13 (1995). His work on The Thing ranks among his finest, and I always feel physically cold whenever I watch the film. Admittedly that's largely because I tend to watch it in the dead of winter each year, but the movie itself amplifies any real cold with a chill factor of its own. Cundey's lens work favours an icy colour palette that emphasises blues, whites and greys, interspersed with occasional flashes of heat in the form of pink and fiery orange. The film simply looks cold.

The editing also plays a part in this. During the night-time scenes, editor Todd Ramsay uses fade-to-black transitions to convey the passage of time, and this gives the impression of the weary protagonists succumbing to exhaustion as sleep overtakes them. By contrast, the daytime exterior scenes use fade-to-white transitions instead of dissolves, and this creates the whiteout impression of the snow overwhelming the camera lens and blinding the viewer. It all contributes to the overall sense of cold and isolation. The same editing technique was used during the Hoth scenes in The Empire Strikes Back (1980).

Audio also contributes to the chill factor. The Foley ensures the wind can be heard howling in the background at all times, persistently reminding the viewer of the frozen expanses that lie beyond the outpost's walls. As someone who was raised on Sergio Leone's Dollars Trilogy, I was a little disappointed by Ennio Morricone's low-key score for The Thing the first time I heard it. I think I was expecting something more epic and sweeping. But on repeated viewings, the music has grown on me and I now think it suits the story perfectly. The minimalist heartbeat theme that runs throughout the main title (which I'm fairly sure was composed by Carpenter himself) is chillingly atmospheric, and the synthetic pulse motif reflects the film's central concept of a nonhuman entity trying to imitate the functions of the human body and not quite getting it right.

As for the special effects, what can I say that hasn't already been said a thousand times? They're magnificent. Everything you see in this movie was captured in camera. Rob Bottin built these creatures for real and they were photographed just as any other live action element would be. 

To wrap up my thoughts, I'd say The Thing is John Carpenter's magnum opus. It's a survival horror story about isolation, paranoia and distrust set against one of the most remote and inhospitable backdrops on the planet. The performances, cinematography, audio, editing, music and special effects are all top notch. These dark cold winter nights are the perfect time to revisit it (although technically an Antarctic winter like the one depicted in the film would be summertime for those of us living in the Northern Hemisphere).

Here's Carpenter promoting the movie on the David Endocrine show.

As far as recommending related films or television episodes, the one to start with is obviously the 1951 movie The Thing from Another World. Without that, we wouldn't have Carpenter's version.

There's also the Tom Baker Doctor Who serial The Seeds of Doom from 1976, which was clearly heavily influenced by The Thing from Another World. Episodes III-VI take place in England, but the first two episodes are set on an Arctic base where the British crew discover a vegetable-based extraterrestrial pod buried beneath the ice. The ending of the second episode, where the Arctic base is blown up, foreshadows the ending of Carpenter's movie.

I've also got to mention 'Ice', one of the best episodes of The X-Files' first season. The plot sees Mulder and Scully joining an expedition to investigate the loss of contact with a team of geophysicists in Alaska. When they get there they learn that the scientists had found a parasitic organism frozen in the ice, which somehow drove them to kill themselves and each other. This episode was very consciously influenced by Carpenter's version of The Thing, and it plays on many of the same ideas of paranoia and distrust. If you like the 1982 version of The Thing, you'll certainly like this too.

Finally there's the 2002 videogame The Thing which serves as a sequel to the 1982 film. I got this when it first came out and at the time I loved it. The NPC fear/trust system was unlike anything I'd ever seen in a game, and the squad-based gameplay and cold environment mechanics made it incredibly challenging. It's very dated now, but I loved it back when i was a teenager. I think it's about time we had a new game of The Thing made in the style of Alien: Isolation.

What does everyone else think about this film? Do you agree that it's Carpenter's finest, or was the original critical mauling it received justified? Did anyone bother watching the 2011 prequel? Any observations, analysis or opinions related to The Thing, or connected books, movies, games and TV episodes, are welcome in this thread.

As a broader question, was 1982 the greatest year ever for genre films? That year saw the release of The Thing, Blade Runner, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Conan the Barbarian, Rocky III, Creepshow, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, The Dark Crystal, First Blood, Poltergeist, TRON, 48 Hours, Halloween III: Season of the Witch, The Secret of NIMH and many other classic action, sci-fi, fantasy and horror movies. Compare that to how starved we are for good genre films nowadays, and the audiences of 1982 were truly spoilt for choice.

[The Laughing Fish]

I watched the 1982 version of The Thing six years ago, and thought it's one of the best horror movies of all time. From what I understand, the biggest reason why it bombed was because it opened a few weeks after E.T. came out. It's strange to compare the family friendly E.T. to the gruesome and terrifying Thing, but I suppose that goes to show how the innovative special effects worked too well.

My favourite scene would have to be when MacReady runs a blood test among all the remaining survivors to determine who had been infected, which lead to Windows' demise. Aside from the disgusting special effects, the most disturbing aspect of The Thing is how the host could mimic anyone and turn people against each other. The thought of how it cause such distrust and paranoia is probably just as disturbing as all the gore that unfolds. The most unbearable scene to watch, in my opinion, was the Dog-Thing scene. The panic from one of the dogs trying to bite its way out of the cage is both chilling and gut-wrenching.

I did watch the 2011 prequel, and while I don't necessarily think it's as bad as some people make it out to be, the CGI does look too polished for something that was meant to take place before the events of 1982 film. I never understood why the prequel shared the same name as Carpenter's movie either. I guess the only real impressive details about the prequel was the continuity it established with the Carpenter movie. It explored the backstory of who were the people trapped in the Split-Face Thing, which its remains would later be discovered by MacReady and co, and the ending ties with the Norwegian helicopter chasing after the Dog-Thing, which we see in the beginning of the 1982 film.

The only criticism with the Split-Face Thing in the prequel was it was completely burned by Kate Lloyd, but IIRC, it was partially burned in 1982. Perhaps you could say the corpse was regenerating its flesh; after all, it did assimilate with Bennings. But what's odd about the recreation of the Split-Face Thing in the 2011 prequel was the special effects team incorporated both animatronics together with CGI. Maybe if they had more time and budget, the whole creature could've been designed purely as an animatronic.

https://bloody-disgusting.com/movie/3416931/insanely-cool-thing-practical-effect-covered-cgi/

Speaking of having more time and budget, we would've seen Nauls' gruesome demise if the production had all the necessary resources to film that whole sequence. This video shows storyboards and details of how Nauls last moments alive was supposed to unfold.

Despite this, Nauls disappearing off camera is still just as unsettling. It leaves a lot to the imagination.