- David Petty reviews The Thing
My first lurid introduction to the world of John Carpenter was issue #8 of 80s fanzine The John Carpenter File. I remember the cover being a green and day-glo pink, with badly-placed images of Halloween 4, They Live, and The Thing. Though it wasn’t the ghoulish image on the cover that stuck with me – it was the one inside, of a disfigured face, stretched diagonally as if mid-transformation, one of the many iconic works of art created for the film by Rob Bottin’s visual effects department, charged with the daunting responsibility of bringing a completely new and unique alien lifeform to cinema screens. It wouldn’t be long before I saw The Thing, and from this little teaser, I knew it wouldn’t disappoint.
As a pre-teen ripe for being scared and thrilled by the cinematic luminaries of the time (not that I knew their names, but I certainly knew their films), it was the likes of Cronenberg’s The Fly, Scott’s Alien and Carpenter’s Halloween that satisfied that adolescent urge to watch films you weren’t supposed to, the Simon Bates BBFC warning at the start of these 15 and 18-rated films creating as much palpable tension for those not-quite-yet-of-age as the films themselves. Admittedly, when I first watched Halloween, I couldn’t have been a day over 10 or 11, and I had to have the landing light on every time I went upstairs for a good couple of months, lest Michael Myers was hiding behind a bedroom door! The Thing may not have frightened me quite so much – it’s a film brimming with tension and alpha-male frustration, fear of the unknown in a pressure-cooker environment, rather than an outright horror played for (what would become) clichéd scares – but it had a lasting impact on me that has made repeat viewings a joy. Halloween can’t hold a candle to this bad boy.
Kurt Russell headlines a twelve-strong cast that in any other horror film would be metaphorical cannon fodder who the viewer simply doesn’t need to know much about. The myriad genre films of late that knock off secondary characters without so much as a second thought make you think that, well, maybe the filmmaker simply doesn’t have time to let you get to know them – but Carpenter does. In two panic-fuelled hours, you invest as much in Russell’s MacReady as you do in the entire cast, in particular Wilford Brimley’s Blair, who ends up comically locked in a shack for his own protection – and for everyone else’s, not that they quite realise that when they close the door on him. The blood sample testing scene, carried out by a strung-out MacReady with what remains of the ice station crew tied up to chairs and sofas, is a masterclass in how to ratchet up cinematic tension, ending in geysers of blood being sprayed through walls of fire and giving the audience the best line of the film (I certainly won’t spoil it for those of you that haven’t seen it).
High praise indeed for a film that is itself a remake, praise that one finds hard to give to the constant slate of horror ‘reimaginings’ that seem to litter multiplex screens these days. Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes label has a lot to answer for, teens and pre-teens reared on what amounts to MTV celebrity wannabes getting CGI’d to death, leaving them with no idea of the long string of filmmaking talent that flourished in the horror genre in the 70s and 80s, showcasing moments of brilliance and flashes of genius to a cinema audience who simply had never seen anything like it before. The Thing takes you to the far reaches of the Antarctic and makes you pray for a happy ending, long before the credits have rolled… whether you’ll get one though, well, that’s another thing entirely!
- Marshall Trower reviews The Thing
It’s the cover. You’ve always got to have a great cover. Any horror film that’s any good has a great cover. It’s what attracts you to it in the first place. The Thing has a great cover, a dark figure with light coming from his head surrounded by a blue background. I remember being a kid in the early 90s staring at the cover in a video rental shop. It just made your imagination run riot: unlike most other 80’s horror films, The Thing lived up to it’s cover.
The first time I watched the film I was way too young to watch anything like that. The film environment was way different then too. I watched everything on video. Always horror, it had to be horror. I was old enough for the guy in the shop not to be bothered by what I was renting, but too young to know what anything was or what would be good. I remember The Burning had a great cover but the film was rubbish whereas The Thing didn’t let you down. It had everything in it I wanted: gore, violence, weird monsters, guns, explosions and loads of tension.
I’ve never seen The Thing on anything other then video. Like a lot of films from that period I think the quality of the format sort of fitted. I can’t imagine watching a lot of slasher films on anything else. I remember the sound quality wasn’t great either but that sort of worked with the film too, it helped the score in a weird way. The sound the alien makes when it’s attacking someone really went through me. It’s this sort of strange insect like hiss, making the alien less human. The alien really is something else: if you’ve seen the film, you’ll know what I mean. The first time you see it it’s horrible and you know the dogs don’t even stand a chance. It’s so different from any other film monster, even the characters can’t believe what their seeing; “You’ve gotta be f**king kidding” is a great line, and at that point in the film you agree! The effects compete with anything you see today and the amount of variations of the alien means you never get bored nor know what to expect. A lot of monster films you see get boring very quickly, most of the time it’s just some guy in a costume running around, but when the doctor gets his arms bitten off it always surprises me. Along with the scene in the Norwegian research base with the frozen corpse and the slit wrist…
What I love about The Thing is you get involved in the situation. It reminds me of Dawn of the Dead in the way you start to ask yourself “What would I do?”. When everyone is tied to the chairs you agree it’s a good plan, and when they try to sort out weapons you think “What would I get to kill it?”. It’s a real Boys Own adventure in that way but I love it for that because you really get involved, you back the smart characters and get annoyed with the stupid ones!
The Thing is a real nostalgia trip for me: it reminds me of how I used to watch films before DVD and three years of film studies. I’ve learnt a lot more about cinema since I first watched it and I know a lot more about John Carpenter and how The Thing came at the tail end of other great films, such as Assault on Precinct 13 and Escape from New York. I now know how it plays around with genre, mixing up horror, science fiction and ‘whodunnit’ mystery and how it is a remake. I also know how both films show different styles and tastes of the decades which they were made in. However, I love this film for none of those reasons, so don’t try to interpret any greater meaning out of it or political statement – just enjoy a walking head with eyes on stilts!
Twelve Antarctic scientists are unwittingly besieged by a shape-shifting alien life form, the beast picking them off one by one as relationships between the dwindling bunch of survivors become strained to breaking point.
While his oft-touted but arguably dated Halloween tends to crop up in most horror film ‘Best of…’ lists, John Carpenter’s The Thing is without doubt the superior of the two. Dovetailing an almost perfect balance of pace, style, laconic wit and schlocky thrills, it makes Halloween look like a student film by comparison. Building upon his previous horror efforts, the tension is ratcheted up to almost unbearable levels, every cast member putting in an unforgettable performance; and whilst the film’s origins may lie in 50s B-movie theatrics being a remake after all, it stands shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Alien and The Terminator as one of the best genre films of its time. A digitally remastered classic not to be missed on the big screen!
Cornerhouse Staff Recommend…
David Petty: “The Thing takes you to the far reaches of the Antarctic and makes you pray for a happy ending, long before the credits have rolled… whether you’ll get one though, well, that’s another thing entirely!” Read More>>
Marshall Trower: “What I love about The Thing is you get involved in the situation. It reminds me of Dawn of the Dead in the way you start to ask yourself “What would I do?”. It’s a real Boys Own adventure in that way but I love it for that because you really get involved, you back the smart characters and get annoyed with the stupid ones!” >>Read More
Reviews
“If it’s the most vividly guesome monster ever to stalk the screen that audiences crave, then The Thing is the thing.” Variety
“The Thing is one of his [John Carpenter’s] greatest moments, creating a terrifying atmosphere of claustrophobia, suspense and paranoia. ****” Total Film
“The special effects can’t hope to be as creepy to our seen-it-all eyes as they were to the film’s first viewers, but we can still enjoy the monster’s unique weirdness, and the story is a rock-solid yarn. One of its strengths is that, however panicked the characters become, they never do anything improbably stupid. ****” Edward Porter, The Times