The Thing (1982)
The distinctly underrated and undeniable genius of one John Carpenter is such that itâs amazing that mainstream Hollywood has seemingly chosen to turn their collective backs on the man in recent years, because despite the fact that he was a known maverick back in his day, it still doesnât change the fact that in his prime he managed to churn out one undisputed sci-fi and / or horror classic after another, leaving a legacy that is untouched by anyone before or since and beloved by genre fans everywhere. Now while an Honorary Oscar when the man is still alive might be considered out of the question in this day and age, there are still several films of his that were most deserving of seeing him score at least a Best Director Oscar nod, most notably this 1982 offering that turned out to be a perfect mixture of mood, atmosphere, paranoia, and highly advanced gore. Carpenter has even gone on record as stating it to be his personal favorite of all his films, which is most unusual considering that he didn’t even have any hand in writing it (it was actually written by the guy who created The Bad News Bears franchise(!), and adapted from the story âWho Goes There?â by pioneering science fiction writer John W. Campbell Jr., which had previously been made as a 1951 movie called The Thing From Another World but of which this version was actually much more closer to the book), but for which he was able to fully apply his gifts for setting up a story, getting to know the characters, and then sucking the audience into the beyond horrifying events that take place therein. In doing so, he utilized one of his favorite big name âgo toâ actors in Kurt Russell (immortalized as Snake Plissken in Escape From New York and nearly just as good here) as the lead performer along with an impressive group of familiar, dependable character actors to fill up the rest of the cast and then go from there. The film begins with a helicopter containing two Norwegians chasing down a husky Arctic dog for some strange reason (and amazingly a 2011 prequel would tell their story and end that film with the beginning of this one), and they have every right to be hunting the animal, it being the last known isolated life form of an alien species that has utterly decimated their own camp and is now desperately trying to escape, seeing its luck pick up by running into an American outpost where all of the inhabitants (naturally) take on the âoh, what a cute little doggieâ routine so that when the Norwegians run right on in there screaming for blood and indiscriminately start firing away with their rifles to try and take the beast out, they themselves are quickly put down by the Americans with extreme prejudice while the deadly dog is rather stupidly (and unknowingly) pretty much adopted into the camp without even being checked out in order to learn just why the unwelcome visitors were after it with such a virile bloodlust in the first place. The base camp itself appears to be some kind of a science outpost, populated mostly by doctors, scientists, and researchers rather than of a military nature, with Russellâs R.J. MacReady being their world weary helicopter pilot, his job having little more to do than sitting around his little shack getting drunk unless being called upon to ferry one of the others around the Arctic tundra on any kind of impromptu expedition. At first, things go back to normal (with a few of them wondering aloud why those Norwegians were acting so damn crazy), but when the infected dog is put into the kennel with the other canines, it begins to change into something truly horrifying, killing most of the other dogs and compelling MacReady and a couple of others to head back over to the Norwegian camp to survey the remains and collect some evidence, which when gathered and examined by the smartest of the scientists on base (Wilford Brimley, on the cusp of his 80s run as âAmericaâs Grandpaâ), brings him to the horrific realization of both the creatureâs methods and its motives, driving him seemingly crazy in the process (or does he?) as he realizes that the only way to protect the entire world from this alien being is to cut off the base from having all outside contact with civilization and then to have all of the crew members be able to accept their own deaths while still having to hunt it down. Indeed, The Thing is a crafty creature with its own ways of employing psychological methods to turn everyone against each other while using its own deadly assimilation skills to perfectly recreate and mimic those whom it kills right down to their very personalities (a valuable asset that differs from any variations of Body Snatchers, where the recreated personâs robotic, âsoullessâ personality or lack thereof usually gave them away pretty quickly). And as a result, the team members realize that itâs every man for himself with nobody to trust even while being forced to work together to combat the creature (and to this day, there are still several suspicious plot developments that have NEVER been sufficiently explained by Carpenter). When the gun toting commanding officer (Donald Moffat) is quickly suspected of being infected, he manages to do the right thing and lay down his weapon so that someone else can assume command, which turns out to be MacReady due mostly to him being an even handed, good natured guy, that is until we get into an extended portion of the film where the others even suspect HIM of being The Thing (and the viewer really has little other reason to doubt them), as his newly acquired command is openly challenged by Childs (the awesomely legendary Keith David scoring massive points despite not having much to work with), and everyone else is constantly looking over their shoulders at these guys that some of them have known for YEARS all while fearfully wondering if their turn is next, with Carpenter literally making their fears palpable to the viewer especially with the character of Windows (Thomas Waites), the radio operator who appears to be so much of a nervous wreck that you wonder if itâs really him who is scared or that maybe The Thing itself is fearing for its own life as to whether it will actually manage to escape this place and make it to civilization so that it can truly be able to infect the planet. Carpenter shows that he is second to none as the master of the slow build, as while save for the dog attack scene and one minor character being caught transforming, he spends over an hour building up all of the horror, fear, and paranoia, with the last third of the film becoming an all out assault on the senses, including a bonechilling âblood testâ sequence to determine who is infected and who is not, as Carpenter expertly knows just how exactly to cut the tension and relax the viewer before quite suddenly hitting us with a big ârevealâ which results in more lives being lost, before MacReady and the others go to check on Brimley (who has been placed in solitary confinement after initially going insane), only to learn more secrets about the creature itself, much of which is shown here with the use of graphically gory special FX by Rob Bottin that far outdoes Rick Bakerâs Oscar winning work in American Werewolf the year before and is so awesomely viscerally gruesome that one really wonders exactly just how the hell this got by with merely an R rating from the MPAA when seemingly other violent films (like many of the Friday The 13th movies) got an X rating for having considerably less, because Bottinâs work here truly is that intense, not to mention incredibly stomach churning. And the rest of the cast (with no female parts) also fill their roles quite well (despite less than stellar character development), including T.K. Carterâs frightened cook Nauls, David Clennonâs shamelessly pot smoking hippie Palmer, Richard Dysartâs inquisitive Dr. Copper, Charles Hallahanâs squeamish Norris, Peter Maloneyâs unlucky Bennings, Richard Masurâs hulking Clark (a guy so creepily attached to those damn dogs that youâd think he was having intimate relations with them), and Joel Polisâ extremely worried Fuchs. All of them not only have to deal with their own mistrust of the others, but also with the master strategist that happens to be The Thing itself, effectively using misdirection to completely throw everyone off their game to its own advantage and perhaps being cinemaâs greatest villain whose true face and form are never actually shown (except maybe Keyser Soze, of course) with all of it leading up to a final battle where the good guys would appear to win despite mass confusion abounding everywhere, and then the two apparent survivors meet up for their legendary final exchange of dialogue, with the implications being of what actually happens after the final fade out continuing to be debated by fans to this very day, but by not spelling everything out directly to the viewer via spoonfeeding and instead making one get caught up in the claustrophobic setting and unfolding nightmare as it happens, shows that Carpenter was not only able to transcend his ability to entertain us, but also to challenge us as wellâŚ
9/10