85. The Thing

John Carpenter, 1982

What can I say? I’m a huge fan of John Carpenter. I love Assault on Precinct 13, Halloween, The Fog, Escape from New York, and, of course, The Thing. I am a little bothered by this odd and recent trend to remake John Carpenter films, particularly since they hold up very well as is. Still, in addition to the umpteen Halloween installments Hollywood, and Carpenter himself, seems dead set on releasing, including Halloween Water, we have had to bear recent remakes of both Assault on Precinct 13 and The Fog. I would hardly be surpassed if The Thing were next on the list. Of course, that would actually be sort of appropriate given that The Thing itself is a remake, specifically of The Thing from Another World, the 1951 film commonly attributed to director Howard Hawks. Now, as a rule, I’m not much of a fan of remakes. There are exceptions, of course, but, by and large, I’d just as soon see the original and have today’s filmmakers create something new. Still, if one is going to remake a film, I would just as soon see a complete reinvention of the core concept and that is what Carpenter gives us in The Thing. At it’s core, The Thing is the story of an American Antarctic outpost, what they’re doing there is unclear, who comes into contact with an alien monster that had been buried beneath the ice for millions of years. In the Hawks original, this was a Frankenstein’s monster looking vegetable man. Trust me, its cooler than it sounds. In Carpenter’s film, however, the creature is not limited to just one form, but an form. It comes to the camp, populated by Kurt Russell, Wilford Brimley, and a series of then unknowns cast to preserve realism, in the form of a dog. As the dog shoots out tentacles and grows a second head while attempting to eat the other dogs, our boys realize something is very wrong.

Like Alien, this is the ultimate claustrophobic horror story. Our heroes are based in the Antarctic, so there is no hope for rescue and, once the helicopter is destroyed, no hope for escape. Worse though, is the fact that the alien here can be anyone. Once the alien kills and eats you, it can assume not just your shape, but become a perfect copy of you on a genetic level. Thus, for most of the film, our heroes have no way of knowing which of them are human and which are alien. There is, quite simply, no one you can trust. Carpenter has taken away our one monster and given us a dozen possible monsters, who can kill you in any number of surpassing and grizzly ways. True, the alien may look like a human on every conceivable level, but it can also grow tentacles or spider legs or claws. It can kill you anyway it wants and then become you. Worse still, the monster is not limited to one form. By killing a man, it can reproduce. It does not stop being the man who killed you to become you. It becomes both. In this way, we’re told, if this thing should escape Antarctica, it will replace the world’s population in under three years. It’s a hell of a monster, unlike anything we’ve ever encountered before and Carpenter plays it to the hilt, particularly with the undertones of extreme paranoia.

Another thing I like about this film is how it pays homage to the original, while still being its own story. Indeed, in some ways, The Thing functions more as a sequel to The Thing from Another World, taking the original concept and expanding it, making it more threading, upping the stakes. There are even a series of visual cues to the original film in Carpenter’s version. The Norwegian camp visited by Kurt Russell in The Thing, and where the threat seems to have struck first, is identical to the American camp in the Hawks version. In particular, Russell and his fellows watch a video of the Norwegian team forming a giant circle around a flying saucer buried beneath the ice, just as the Americans do in the Hawks film.

So, creepy, original monster, excellent atmosphere, fine directing in Carpenter’s usual pulpish style, no breasts, multiple beasts, about a gallon of blood, metamorphosis fu, tentacle fu, spider leg fu. Four stars. Joe Bob says check it out.