The Thing (1982)

Genre: Horror (alien/monster)
Director: John Carpenter
Writer: Bill Lancaster, based on the short story "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell, Jr.

Director, writer, and musician John Carpenter has done some very memorable work. He co-wrote and directed the original Halloween (1978); the campy adventure Escape From New York (1981); one of my personal favorites, Big Trouble in Little China (1986); and the paranoid, Orwellian science fiction flick They Live (1988). These are, in my opinion, some of his best works, and this is a small sample of his resume. I can honestly say that Carpenter is one of my favorite directors, although I still haven't seen all of his works.

Perhaps his most beloved film is The Thing, more-or-less a remake of The Thing From Another World (1951), which I have not seen. I say "more-or-less" in that both movies are based on the same short story, and Carpenter's vision for his movie evidently took more from the original source than it did from the first movie. Given that we now live during a time when movie remakes are very popular, I've noticed a number of people get rather touchy when it comes to defining what, specifically, a "remake" is in cinema.

The opening credits are preceded by a shot of a flying saucer falling into Earth's orbit and apparently crash landing somewhere on the planet. After this, the movie opens in Antarctica, near an American research outpost where a group of men are stationed for the winter. A helicopter is seen flying over the horizon, in pursuit of what appears to be an ordinary dog--a husky-wolf mix, to be exact. In its pursuit, the helicopter lands near the American outpost, where the dog finds refuge. Two men, both Norwegian, exit the craft and attempt first to lob a grenade at the dog--an effort that gets one of them and the helicopter blown up. The other man chases the dog into the outpost and fires wildly at it with a rifle. In his efforts, he accidentally shoots one of the Americans, and Garry (Donald Moffat), the highest authority in the outpost, returns fire with a pistol, killing the frantic Norwegian with one shot. Now the men at the outpost are left wondering what happened.

Two of the men, including the main character MacReady (the bushy-bearded Kurt Russell), travel by helicopter to the Norwegian outpost to check things out. They find that the outpost has been virtually destroyed, with many signs of a battle within. Among the debris and carnage is a burned corpse of what looks like a bizarre and twisted human being; they bring the corpse back to their own outpost for study.

As it turns out, the corpse and the dog are both incarnations of a strange alien life form that was discovered in the ice by the Norwegians. This life form--the Thing--is a shape shifter, capable of infecting and taking over other lifeforms. Once it takes over another being, it mimics it "perfectly." Throughout the film, there are many, many unanswerable questions regarding whom it has dominated and when. This leads into the central plot: a group of intelligent, educated men trying to survive against an enemy that can be any single one of them at any time. As Dr. Blair (Wilfred Brimley) later discovers, the Thing is capable of assimilating all life on the planet within a fairly short matter of time. This movie isn't just about these men's fight to survive, it's about their fight to prevent the end of all indiginous life on Earth.

One of the elements of the best horror movies out there is not the monster, alien or supernatural being that the protagonists are pitted against. It is the human element--the exploration of how people behave under bizarre and even impossible circumstances in their struggle to survive. In this movie, the dominant theme is that of paranoia. Once the men realize what it is they are up against, they become uncooperative, hysterical, even homicidal. It is the drama created by these behaviors that makes this movie one of Carpenter's strongest works, considered a masterpiece by many fans of the genre. Unlike many of the horror movies of the time, this movie stood out in that it did not feature a bunch of stupid teenagers too drunk and horny to notice a masked killer picking them off one by one until it is too late.

The special effects are also very well done, even by contemporary standards--the specific designs for the Thing itself had to have been some of the most disturbing and eldritch cinematic creations of their time. Like From Beyond (1986), from an earlier entry, The Thing features some very interesting latex prosthetics and plenty of slimy, icky stuff to keep the gore fans happy. I do appreciate a good campy movie as much as anyone, but any such campiness in this film is the result of being almost thirty years old, not goofy writing. Carpenter plays up the suspense almost perfectly, so the special effects serve as a welcome enhancement to the plot--the story does not rely entirely upon them.

Like many other well done horror movies, The Thing also leaves a number of questions completely unanswered. We never do discover all of the "rules" for battling the creature, we never discover exactly where it came from or what it was doing on the space ship during the prologue, and we never know who has been conquered by the Thing and who is still human at any point in time. It is a necessity of the genre that certain questions are left open to interpretation--one of our most basic fears as human beings is the fear of the unknown, and this movie takes full advantage of that.

While I do strongly recommend The Thing for all fans of the horror genre, I should point out that this is very much a guy's movie. The entire cast (and, actually, the crew) is made up of men. Plus, it stars Kurt Russell and Keith David, what more can a man ask for, huh?