The Thing (1982)

Top Ten in both horror and science fiction

Such a great film. The spfx still holds up.

Invasion Of The Body Snatchers

My friend and I went as Thing 1 and Thing 2 for Halloween

Very well done, start to finish. An excellent film with a perfect ending.

Are Adrienne Barbeau’s breasts in this?

Ennio Morricone's score is excellent too.

Wonderful film, and Rob Bottin’s special effects are groundbreaking.

I always thought this would work really well as a stage play as it’s so claustrophobic.

One of the best science fiction films I have ever seen. Wilfred Brimley's best work. GREAT ensemble cast. Great script. Great special effects. GREAT direction. GREAT editing. (and that is a lot of greats) Honestly, some of Kurt Russel's best performances ever filmed.

The movie flopped hard on its initial release. A critical and box office dud. Just goes to show you that a film is what it is, but people and tastes change over time. The bombs of today might be rediscovered as classics 10 to 20 years from now. The Thing is one of my favorite sci-fi/horror movies. I’m glad it’s appreciated.

The Thing always depressed me until I realized that the film is convincingly horrible enough to fill you with dread.

Depressing isn't the correct way to describe the film.

Oh , I saw the remake and the remake is inferior in every way including the special effects.

It's one of my favourite horror films, but I have to close my eyes during the dog scenes.

The scene with the defibrillator? Yikes.

It's good, but overrated. I prefer the original version by Howard Hawks.

Carpenter's remake doesn't have Dewey Martin in it, so it's automatically inferior to Hawks/Nyby.

The 2011 Prequel is good too

R8, it is an usual misconception that movies in confined , limited spaces can be adapted to stage . Actually, The Thing is the opposite, as part of the terror involves moving rapidly from one room or confined space to another and this effect, claustrophobic on film, would be lost on stage.

The opening of the movie is eerie, specially on second viewings.

R2 which is why the prequel was disappointing, too much cgi.

It’s a tradition to screen it at the start of the winter season at McMurdo, after the last plane leaves.

The ensemble cast is great. One leader- Kurt Russell

One menacing red herring- Keith David (in his film debut).

Two good character actors- Richard Dysart and Wilford Brimley

One great stage actor- Donald Moffatt

The rest were unknowns. It is so eerie.

Agree. It's a fantastic film and one of my favorite horror films. The score is just chilling...

R12 is too dumb to realize that film was a prequel, not a remake.

I used to see Donald Moffatt on the Metro North sometimes, headed up to Westchester from Manhattan. It was from this movie that I knew him best and he has the funniest line in the whole movie, so I was sorely tempted to talk to him about it, but New Yorkers consider it rude and gauche to talk to actors so I would just sit and pretend not to notice him.

Oh I love Donald Moffatt! What a great character actor. I would have nerded the hell out if I saw him

R10, that was the same for Blader Runner as well.

John Carpenter really knew how to entertain people- Halloween, Big Trouble in Little China, The Fog, Escape to NY, Starman, but used up all his creative talent after They Live.

Carpenter's decision to add gratuitous meat market fx knocked the entertainment value down a few notches for me. (And no, I'm not vegetarian.) It was otherwise OK.

The Thing (2011) was better.

The blood test scene is one of the greatest.

Great scare, r28. So many great jumpy scenes.

Thank you, op, i have just watched it again because of you. It is a very fine film, when i first saw it I didn’t realize how much it must’ve been influenced by alien.

Kurt russell was extremely cute, he looked like a porn star. His beard looks modern now. I thought the ending would be more protracted, i think i was confusing it with the prequel.

Some parts are extremely well filmed, John carpenter is very underrated.

[quote] I prefer the original version by Howard Hawks

As do I but each in its own way is an excellent film. The remake with its grisly special effects is closer to the original story but the Hawks version has a superior pulp magazine sensibility.

And it was a pulp magazine story.

[quote]R15: I prefer the original version by Howard Hawks.

The film which discarded the entire premise of the short story on which it was based ('Who Goes There?' by John W. Campbell Jr, 1938), because it was thought audiences wouldn't understand it?

So the 'Thing' wound up being depicted as a vampire carrot from outer space.

[quote]R5: An excellent film with a perfect ending.

What's your understanding of the ending? Which one of them is the Thing?

MacReady? Childs?

Both?

Neither?

[quote] The rest were unknowns. It is so eerie.

I was NOT unknown!

R33. No idea, dragon. This is what makes the film a masterpiece. Perfect ending.

I can only think of one other film with a perfect ending, " Some Like it Hot", which still makes me bust out laughing.

Russell's beard and hair were astoundingly hot.

I've always wondered how the alien infiltrated the dogs/humans - through the air, physical contact, alien telepathy? I've often pondered this after watching the scene when they cornered the alien while it was in the bald scientist and we saw his hands were all freaky, they circled him in the snow and lit him up with a flamethrower, so it should have been the end of its reign of terror right there. Instead, we know that the alien was able to jump into the next man. Could it inhabit more than one human at a time? We can all only ponder....

Is this movie about AIDS? The characters are all males.

r37, my understanding that it could inhabit 2 beings at the same time.

One of my favorites!

Back during the Covid lockdown, I stumbled across a YouTube video “the making of” for some of Carpenter’s films. It was a playlist for Halloween, the Fog and The Thing plus one or two more, iirc.

What I remember most about Carpenter’s commentary on making The Thing was about the special effects guy. Apparently, this was his first film and he made all of the creatures. Carpenter let the guy’s imagination run wild and the guy nearly worked himself to exhaustion trying to get the stuff to his standard.

Carpenter said he visited the guy in the effects “shop” one day to look around and his quote was “I had no idea lube came in 5 gallon buckets”. That was what he was using as the slime for the Thing.

You're talking about Rob Bottin, who was something like 21 when he did the effects for The Thing. Bottin was smoking hot in a late-70s/early 80s kind of way, with long hair and a very hairy chest.

Bottin also did the SPFX effects for, "American Werewolf in London". He is an icon and legend in the film makeup artist circles.

No, Rick Baker did An American Werewolf in London (and won an Oscar for it). Rob did the equally impressive The Howling (and should have been nominated for that.)

Great movie, very terrifying. Too bad it wasn't a commercial success, but that can be said of many wonderful movies throughout the years.

What do you guys think of the ending?

A. Both are humans

B. Russell is human, David is not

C. David is human, Russell is not

D. Both are not humans

I doubt it would be D because if they both weren't human they would be able to recognize each other as such.

My favorite sci fi movie. I never get tired of watching it. Wonderful, tense atmosphere.

This collection of cut scenes contains at the very end (with no sound) footage that was considered for the very end that I always thought was creepy. It’s now daylight of the next day and the burning research station is seen in the distance. A lone dog runs away from it in the snow, looking back once.

I agree that the ending as-is, is perfect. But I would count this lone dog ending as a possibility. Only because…

This is NOT the alternate ending that there are entire articles written about online where Russell makes it to another research station and is given a blood test proving he’s human. That would have been a terrible ending.

R48 Yes, this scene is also on the DVD extras and discussed on the commentary. I agree the lone dog ending could have worked because it’s equally ambitious to the ending they used. And creepy. But I think the ending works best as it stands.

The lone dog ending would have worked if it was added after the ending with David and Russell. Not in place of.

[quote]R46: I doubt it would be D because if they both weren't human they would be able to recognize each other as such.

No, individuals who had been taken over did not recognize one another; the copies were just that good. And in the interests of survival, one 'thing' was perfectly willing to point out and torch another 'thing.'

For me, the answer is either 'C' or 'D' - or would become 'D' shortly thereafter, since Childs drank from the same bottle as MacReady.

Whatever the ending was, you knew that both would end up not human eventually.

I’m the poster who thinks, with a bit of work, it would be amazing onstage as you could effectively have all the characters trapped in one room and it’s believable. Imagine how tense the blood testing scene would be when there’s basically one room with everyone in it and nowhere to go. Obviously the gorgeous exterior shots and the dogs running would have to be re-imagined.

Changing tack, I remember when this movie was discussed before and our resident Norwegian poster talked about how he knew the surprise from the start given the other researchers are yelling it’s not a dog or something similar 😂

a) Childs is definitely human. You learn in the prequel there is a way to tell.

b) MacReady is almost certainly human, because he is after all Kurt Russell.

c) In the original short story humans captured the alien spacecraft engine giving them the key to future spaceflight. Can you imagine how paranoid human space explorers would be, unable to risk any alien life forms encountered might already be compromised. Capt. Kirk leading a fleet of genocidal berserkers.

[quote] it would be amazing onstage

Dear armchair stage director,

Let us know when you've figured out how to chop off someone's arms with a giant fanged belly monster's jaws, onstage, eight times a week for Broadway; four or so Off.

The core of the film is the paranoia that anyone could be the Thing. You don’t need gory onstage effects to create this effect.

R53, i revisited the film last night and confirmed there are few films less prone to being adapted to the stage than The Thing. Further to what i said as r18, even your scene of the blood on stage would lose much, if not all. of its tension, without the close-ups, the encircled space, the blood, etc. to speak nothing of the special effects, as r55 puts it.

I'm trying to remember a very off off unauthorized Broadway type of musical where they had tons of blood spewing out- they gave garbage bags to the first two rows of seats. Evil Dead? American Psycho? Re-animator?

Anyway, it can be done.

There are many plays with a "splash zone" gimmick, and all reduce the violence to comedy. Audiences laugh at it. A stage version of 'The Thing' could only be done as camp horror.

Good luck finding investors for your hit show, R53/R58.

You remind me of those types who say, when they learn that I work in publishing, that they 'have an idea for a book.'

Evil Dead definitely had a "splash zone." I saw it at the New World Stages over Thanksgiving weekend in 2006 at a Sunday night performance which was not super full so they let us sit wherever we wanted to. I chose the first or second row (there was no one in front of me) on house left, figuring that the whole splash thing was wildly overexaggerated. I wound up walking back to my hotel that night looking like an attempted murder victim. People on the street were giving me a wide berth.

What’s up with MacReady’s fucking F-Troop hat? 🤣

'Evil Dead the Musical' sounds like fun. I watched a video of it on YouTube a while back. It's linked.

But it's a musical comedy adaptation, and the original film is horror/comedy.

"The Thing" is not funny. It would not work as a stage play.

[quote]R54: b) MacReady is almost certainly human, because he is after all Kurt Russell.

I will circle back to this later, and tell why I think he's not. (I have a lot to do today.)

[quote]c) In the original short story humans captured the alien spacecraft engine giving them the key to future spaceflight.

That was not my impression, R54. They seem to have destroyed the ship with decanite bombs and thermite trying to free it from the ice.

The story:

In terms of gore onstage (in a serious manner), does anyone remember an off-Broadway play in 1992 by Todd Alcott called "One Neck?" It ran for a few months. I remember seeing it in the Spring of that year and then taking some students a couple months later who I was assistant teaching for a summer program.

It's about a gathering of friends for a dinner party in the Hamptons and one of the gusts turns out to be a serial killer. He murders the other guests in very graphic, bloody ways. They handled the effects incredibly well (though they were just blood and one severed head as opposed to what The Thing would be). It was a really interesting, thought-provoking play. I found a copy of the text a couple years ago and re-read it. It's definitely dated, but still packs a punch.

Oh, I forgot to mention that one of the cast was Allison Janney in an early role.

Adding to the successful onstage gore/violence genre, 'The Lieutenant of Inishmore' was good with splatter/torture, but again in a black comedy style.

And even 'Carrie the Musical' gets bloody, but the prom massacre's mostly done with lighting.

But to again counter R53/R58 position, 'The Thing' also includes several dogs as a pivotal early plot point. How to accomplish that? Offstage sound effects? Puppets? Nope. Not gonna work.

[quote]You're talking about Rob Bottin, who was something like 21 when he did the effects for The Thing. Bottin was smoking hot in a late-70s/early 80s kind of way, with long hair and a very hairy chest.

YES!

It is eerie that you don't really know who is possessed and who isn't, but it plays out like a murder mystery more than a horror film.

Is it ever made clear anywhere if the "Thing" is/was the one piloting the ship, or did the ship crash because the crew/pilot had become infected by it?

The Thing is one of my all time favourite movies and the first horror film I ever saw at the cinema.

I also like this:

Good drama, bad special FX. Carpenter should have outsourced the score. The one he created is monotonous.

r71, How very dare you! The Thing is venerated for its makeup fx. No CGI can compare (the modern remake is very meh).

[quote]R69: Is it ever made clear anywhere if the "Thing" is/was the one piloting the ship, or did the ship crash because the crew/pilot had become infected by it?

It can be assumed that The Thing built and piloted the starship because, once it had taken over Blair (who, being kept in unmonitored isolation, had a lot of free time), it busied itself building a smaller model of the ship. It never had time to complete it because the ship was discovered and blown up.

When/how was Blair infected? Some possibilities:

a) when the dogs were transforming, a piece of The Thing broke loose, knocked open some boards from the kennel ceiling, and escaped. This constituent may have later happened upon Blair in the shed, and taken him over.

b) While dissecting and explaining the 'Dog Thing,' Blair had a bad habit of touching parts of it with the eraser on his pencil, and then touching the eraser to his mouth. Cells could have transferred to his mouth that way.

c) When leaving the sedated Blair in the shed, the last person to leave was MacReady. He suggested that Blair "just trust in the Lord," swigged from the liquor bottle, corked it back up, and left it with Blair.

If one believes that MacReady was The Thing, a possibility I've entertained for years, then Blair drinking after MacReady would have done the trick. In Campbell's short story, one of the Thing's manifestations was highly religious. MacReady's "trust in the Lord" remark might have been a tip of the hat to that detail.

I'm watching the prequel now over on Peacock.

R73 good theories!