1982 was a landmark year for science fiction. There was the legendary Blade Runner, the box office juggernaut E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, the best Star Trek film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and the first all-CGI film Tron. This film, though initially a critical and box office failure, in retrospect stands up with the rest of them. I'm not going to pretend to lay down a hyperbolic blanket statement that The Thing was the cream of the crop, but it's definitely the scariest, and the best one to watch around Halloween.
At an Antarctica research station run by an American team of scientists, including MacReady (Kurt Russell), Blair (Wilford Brimley), and Childs (Keith David), a Norwegian helicopter from another station comes shooting at a dog (They wildly miss 50 sniper shots; probably the only reason PETA didn't boycott this film). The Americans shoot the Norwegian after he comes storming onto the base with guns blazing. The dog takes over the other dogs in the kennel and Blair learns that the "thing" can take over other life forms. One by one they're picked off, and at the point the last survivors are too aggressively paranoid to do anything constructive, MacReady blows up the camp, seemingly destroying "The Thing" once and for all. And in the best ambiguous ending since The Blair Witch Project, MacReady and Childs are the only two survivors. MacReady asks where Childs went, and after he says he got lost in the storm, they both sit down and share a bottle of scotch while they await their death by exposure in the subzero temperatures.
The original The Thing from Outer Space from the '50s had a similar sense of overwhelming paranoia, but served primarily as an allegory for communism. Although the same overarching mood is present (and amped up to its logical extreme), there are quite a few little details that helps it transcend its predecessor by leaps and bounds. Even though a quarter of the 10 million budget was set aside for the bizarre creature designs, which stand to this day as quite possibly the high water mark for practical effects in the history of motion pictures, they are not the star (although some critics, including Roger Ebert, would argue they are). The real star is Carpenter's brilliant direction, having the audience constantly questioning who's been taken over. When "The Thing" emerges, it comes out of nowhere. Even though I've seen this film a few times, even after I revisited it a few nights ago for this blog, I was startled because I forgot who was who. We're more paranoid than the characters. Even leaving the theatre after the ambiguous ending you still feel unsettled.
Although the AIDS crisis was in the very early stages of outbreak in 1982, the constant blood tests to see who's human and who's not makes for an interesting cultural reflection. John Carpenter usually scores his own films (he came up with the Halloween theme) but this time enlisted the services of the legendary Ennio Morricone (of The Good, Bad, and The Ugly "waha-waha-wah" theme) because he wanted a "European" feel (whatever that means). He doesn't make a "European" score but crafts one based on a synthesizer heartbeat. It never escalates, but is always present. And filmed in Juneau, Alaska by the legendary Dean Cundey (Halloween, Back to the Future, Jurassic Park, Apollo 13, the list goes on) this film feels icy cold even inside. The fact that the film has an overwhelming alternating dark/light blue hue certainly helps that on a psychological level. Kurt Russell ironically doesn't look human by the end, resembling a wax sculpture with the icicles forming on his beard. And speaking of Kurt Russell, this is his performance magnum opus. He is a brilliant leading man/character actor. He works best with John Carpenter, such as a John Wayne type hero in Big Trouble in Little China, and a grizzled ex-con in Escape from New York. This is the best of both worlds as he portrays a grizzled hero. He drinks (he dumps his whiskey down an '82 chess program he loses to), but he fights the good fight. His quiet stoicism is a break the stereotypical torn/tragic archetype we see nowadays. Honestly, this film feels like Carpenter, Cundey, Morricone, Carpenter, and effects guru Stan Winston firing on all cylinders, all bringing out the best in each other.
I can't finish this review without talking about the effects. Although they had a budget of 2.5 million dollars, and the chief visual effects designer Rob Bottin collapsed due to 21 hour works days, the effects are so simple in many ways. According to Wikipedia: "The creature effects used a variety of materials including mayonnaise, creamed corn, microwaved bubble gum, and K-Y Jelly." When "Norris" fakes a heart attack and the doctor attempts defibrillation only to be sucked in, it was shot by "recruiting a double amputee and fitting him with prosthetic arms filled with wax bones, rubber veins and Jell-O. The arms were then placed into the practical stomach mouth where the mechanical jaws clamped down on them, at which point the actor pulled away, severing the false arms." When "The Thing" goes up the wall, "The production uses a camera centrifuge—a rotating drum with a fixed camera platform, allowing him to seem to run straight up the wall and across the ceiling." There's a reason Computer Generated Imagery is so fake, it's lazy. I could talk about it all day, but I'd recommend looking at the picture at the bottom of this post to see what I mean.
Overall, you can come for the visuals, or stay for a great film.
Rating: **** out of 4
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