Many people know how this movie was overshadowed by the incredibly popular E.T. when it first came out. It was a box-office bomb for Universal Pictures. But gradually its reputation spread by word of mouth, until, about twenty-five years later, many people rate it among the best horror movies ever. I definitely
would not go that far, but The Thing definitely packs a punch to the gut.
I remember how disappointed I was with
this movie the first time I saw it. I can recall what I
thought was missing in The Thing. What I
wanted to know about was the terrible change from being human to becoming the ultimate alien monster; do you feel
horrified, ecstatic, or perhaps a rush roughly like
adrenaline but more intense, as you sense your new powers.
Watching this movie now, I still would love
some answers to my questions. But I don’t think
the filmmakers had this in mind. It definitely did
not come up during the Commentary included in
the deluxe DVD with John Carpenter and Kurt Russell. They
focused squarely on other issues.
First, how does a group of people
not trained for war react when suddenly face to face with
an enemy different from anything that people have ever
fought? Second, how do they cope with the
sudden paranoia when they’re surrounded by people in a closed
space, and some of them could be already infected by the
Thing?
Questions about exactly how and
when the infected people got infected go
unanswered. Many plot threads are left dangling at the
end. But then again, that’s not what this movie
focuses on.
What you get instead are the desperate
strategies these new recruits try to use, when
suddenly threatened with a life-form capable of taking over
the whole planet. (In just over three years,
according to Blair’s computer.) And the added
desperation of knowing that any of the people around them could
already have been taken over by this life-force. This is the
focus of The Thing, not any deep philosophical questions.
The Thing begins in the
brightest of daylight with one unanswered question. Why are
these Norwegian researchers risking their own lives, and
those of the Americans, to kill a dog? The Norwegians
seem hysterical with panic, but why? When one of them
injures a member of the Americans to get to the dog, he is
immediately shot dead. Zero chance for explanations.
One of the M.D.’s, Copper, and the helicopter
pilot MacCready fly to the Norwegian base
to investigate. The clues they find suggest something
horrible but impossible to pin down. Every
building burned. A bloody axe buried in a wooden
door. A man sitting, now frozen, his wrists and
throat slashed with a straight razor. Strangest of all,
the body of a distorted man, combined with some
other lifeform, frozen in the snow just outside the
buildings. The face contorted, seemingly stretched into
two distinct halves, facing slightly different directions.
MacCready finds a Norwegian dead, an apparent suicide…no
explanation
MacCready and Copper fly the frozen body back
to base. It is dissected but its internal organs appear
normal.
Each man on the base does his best to resume life as
usual. Bennings, the man shot in the leg, hopes that a
card game will relax his nerves. A dog, the same one the
Norwegians tried to kill, brushes against him, making him
jump. This dog has been wandering the rooms and passageways
of the base all day, with everyone’s mind on other
things. Bennings asks Clark, the man responsible for the
dogs, to put this one in the pen with the others.
The dog hesitates at first, then enters the pen
and lies down, not sure what the others will do.
You can’t tell how the pack will figure out who’s now the dominant
dog. Whether dominance can be established without a
fight. The other dogs make threatening signs. Can this
battle be settled without bloodshed?
Suddenly this question is shoved aside for all
time, as the conflict changes into something worse than most
nightmares. Personally I cannot recall ever having a
nightmare as bad as this.
The dog’s fur and skin rip apart. From
this mass of naked muscle, legs tear themselves free, spider-like
legs, but from a spider as big as the dog. Unearthly shrieks
come from the mass of flesh and contorting legs.
Venomous-looking liquid shoots out of somewhere in this formless creature, covering one of the dogs while structures looking like tentacles strangle it.
The dog–starting to change
Congratulations. You’ve just witnessed the best special
effects in movie history, the first of several in The Thing. Someday someone will accomplish more, using CGI, but this
is still the champion for right now, over 25 years and
counting.
The camp’s other M.D. Dr. Blair, and MacCready,
the chopper pilot, are starting to get the big picture now
and it is plenty ugly. What they are dealing with is an
extra-terrestrial form of life with the ability to change
itself into a perfect replica of another form of life. It
can copy one of the humans as easily as it can one of the
dogs. Blair becomes obsessed with cutting off all the
Thing’s possible escape routes, shooting the rest of the
dogs, and destroying the helicopter, tractor, and the computer
system.
MacCready appears less educated than the
others, but he is the most intelligent, resourceful,
and courageous. In addition, he is an excellent
detective, taking clues and quickly using them to
gain insight. Along with Blair, he is the first to feel
the coming wave of paranoia that will soon sweep
the others: Given its capabilities to mold itself, any
one of them could be harboring the Thing.
You can sense the paranoia after Dr. Copper
thinks of a way to identify the Thing using
refrigerated blood kept for emergencies. But the crew
finds the entire blood supply is gone. Accusations
and counter-accusations fly. The intense fear is masked with
an anger, genuine fury, probably the crew’s best defense
against panic.
MacCready: “Trust’s a hard thing to come by these
days.”
A new blood test is devised, but order is on
the verge of crumbling. Garry, the only man with a key
to the blood supply has become a prime suspect. Other
major suspects: Dr. Copper, who often gets access to blood,
and Clark, due to the long stretches of time he spends with the
dogs. Blair, the man with the deepest insights into the
Thing’s biology, is kept prisoner after his spree of
destruction. Garry is deeply offended about being
accused, and refuses to be leader any more. MacCready, with
his courage and decisive nature takes charge; he is all that
stands between the crew and chaos.
The new blood test is given. Without giving too much away, leave it at this: All the guesses as to the Thing’s identity (to be fair, all were backed up with some logic) turn out to be dead wrong. In a few scenes,which match the dog-transformation scene in their power, the Thingis brought out of hiding, in ways that are as imaginative as they are horrific. To repeat one of the most quoted lines in The Thing, one astonished crew member
stares at a new lifeform the Thing created, saying “You
gotta be fucking kidding.”
The death toll mounts, but no one can say which
of the survivors has become the Thing’s latest replicated
form of life. Scariest of all is MacCready’s idea, probably
sound thinking: The Thing will be happy to go to sleep
in the intense cold and wait until spring to revive itself.
He sees only one answer, and it means sacrificing all who
have survived this far, “We’re going to have to warm things
up around here.”
Plenty of plot threads are left hanging:
What was the deal with the torn-up uniforms? Who turned
on the light in MacCready’s shack? Whatever happened to
Nauls? Just forget these details for now.
This movie finally puts to rest, the man in the monster suit
with the zipper down the back.
Listen to the Commentary, and appreciate how
much the technical advances meant to the filmmakers’ sense of
creativity. As much as we all loved E.T. we
can now appreciate how alien a form of life from
another solar system might be. Especially a form of life
with the intention of re-populating our planet.
I can’t say enough good things about Rob
Bottin’s special effects. We are all less fortunate for
the limited amount of work he has done since, after
reportedly burning out to keep up with finishing this
movie. The music by Ennio Morricone (The Good the Bad and the Ugly) is chilling, with two notes, like sinister heartbeats
repeating again and again, building the tension. Kurt
Russell (MacCready) has never been better. The rest of
the cast, mostly familiar as character actors, are excellent
as well.
The Thing begins with some rather conventional
flying-saucer effects. What comes next is anything but
conventional. Forget the loose ends in the plot. This
is one movie that will grab you and not let go.