Well, this is it both for this year, and this decade. So, to celebrate the end of era, I decided to go back to a film I did back when I was doing short versions of these on my Facebook page way back when. It has come to be one of my all time favorite horror movies. So, to close out the last Masterpiece of Horror Theatre review of the 2010's, here's John Carpenter's The Thing . (Apologies for the lateness. I haven't had a great couple weeks, and there is a lot to go into, especially the history, so I need a bit more time to process it all.)
"Who Goes There" was first published in Astounding Science Fiction in 1938, written by the legendary editor of the magazine John W. Campbell (for context, he would go to discover authors like Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, L. Sprague de Camp, Theodore Sturgeon etc., among other... stuff, shall we say). The story of a group of Antarctic scientists fighting off a strange shapeshifting alien was well-regarded, and in 1951, producer Howard Hawks and director Christian Nyby loosely adapted into the film The Thing from Another World, which is regarded as a classic in 50's science fiction. In 1976, producers David Foster and Lawrence Thurman proposed a close adaptation of the original novella to Universal. Universal acquired the remake rights from Wilbur Stark, who owned several RKO Pictures, and began searching for directors. John Carpenter, who was heavily influenced by Hawks as a director and a fan of the original (having featured it briefly in the original Halloween) was approached as early as 1976 (while fresh off the success of Assault on Precinct 13) , but had to wait until Halloween was a big hit. Even then, being a huge Howard Hawks fan, he was reluctant to approach the project until reading the novella and finding a new angle to explore the story. The screenplay went through several writers (including Texas Chainsaw creators Tobe Hopper and Kim Heinkel, the former of who was attached to direct before Carpenter), before actor and writer Bill Lancaster (son of Burt, and known at the time as the writer of The Bad News Bears) came on, writing something very close to the original novella. As with most of his films, Carpenter himself would make some rewrites to the script. Many of Carpenter's collaborators would return for this film. His The Fog cinematographer Dean Cudley would make his debut in a Hollywood feature with this. Special effects creator Rob Bottin, whom Carpenter also worked with on The Fog, would do the legendary special effects. Escape from New York star Kurt Russell would headline the movie, along with newcomer Keith David. Unlike much of his filmography, Carpenter did not score this film, instead giving the duties to Italian composer Ennio Morricone (known for his collaborations with Sergio Leone, another director Carpenter admired), whose synthesizer score would define the film for many people. Bottin would work incredibly hard to bring the unique of a strange, shapeshifting alien to life, often working incredibly long hours, using a 35 person crew (including legendary special effects creator Stan Winston to help with the dog design), and was even hospitalized for exhaustion. The film was shot in the fall 1981 in Alaska and British Columbia, with interiors filmed in the Universal lot. Released on June 25th, 1982, it was drowned financially among the many other famous films released that year, including ET: The Extra-Terrestrial (indeed, some associated with the film have blamed it and its more optimistic view of aliens for The Thing's failure), Blade Runner, Poltergeist, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Conan (1982 was a really good year for genre films). Not helping was savaging by critics, who were aghast at the fairly bloody nature of the effect. Carpenter himself was especially hurt by The Thing from Another World director Christian Nyby lambasting the film as too gory. However, eventually, the home video market and television would give the film a new, younger audience, who would adopt the film as a classic of the horror genre. Over time, it would come to be regarded as one of the greatest horror movies ever made and a major influence on many horror and science fiction media (you might've seen this film shown in Stranger Things), and many directors who were still frightened by it. The film has even become a tradition for scientists stationed on the seventh continent. At the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, it is screened every February to commemorate the beginning of winter in the South Pole. Carpenter himself would come to call this his favorite of the movies he's made and the first of the Apocalypse Trilogy (with Prince of Darkness and In the Mouth of Madness) . For my part, it is not only one of my favorite horror movies, but one of my favorite films, period.
The film opens with an alien spacecraft crashing to Earth, so.... yeah, you know what you're getting into. Soon after, American scientists including MacReady (Kurt Russell), Blair (Wilford Brimley), Childs (Keith David), and Dr. Cooper (Richard Dysart) take at an Antarctic base witness a man on a helicopter (Larry Franco, one of the producers) chasing a sled dog across the snowy plains, trying to shoot it. When the helicopter crashes, they confront the man, who yells in Norwegian, while the dogs warms up to them. When the Norwegian shoots at them, he is killed by station commander Garry (Donald Moffat). The scientists take the dog in, while MacReady and Cooper go to the Norwegian station to investigate. They find it abandoned, with a mysterious block of ice carved out, a heavily disfigured frozen corpse, and the frozen body of a strange creature. Blair performs an autopsy of the creature, only to find it having regular human organs. The dog soon arouses the fear of the other dogs at the station kennel, which causes it to reveal itself to be some eldritch abombination that kills and absorbs the other dogs, before Childs is able to put it down. Blair also autospies the dog to find whatever took it over can make a perfect imitation. As they use the Norwegian data to track down a dig site to a large alien ship (estimated to be 10,000 years old), Blair also discovers that the alien cells can absorb, assimilate, and imitate any other cell. And when Bennings (Peter Maloney) is absorbed, it can be any one of the crew, and they would never know who it was until it was too late....
I honestly don't know where to start with the great things about this film. I suppose I could start with my own personal favorite thing about the film: The production design. The settings used, whether the cold sterility of the base, the harsh Antarctic landscape or the devastated Norwegian base, help add to the atmosphere of isolation and paranoia. You feel just as lonely as the characters in the film, watching them handle an impossible situation and slowly devolving and turning on each other as they try to figure out who might be the alien. The fact that it is primarily set at the base, and thus it becomes intimately familiar to viewer, adds to this, as even this becomes untrustworthy and isolated as the film goes on. The special effects are simply some of the best put to film. The alien is incredibly well designed, with a unique, ever-changing look which instills a lot of fear just looking at it, and especially watching it transform from seemingly innocuous organisms and see it brutally kill the people on the base. There is one particular transformation towards the end that is seared in my mind due to both the look of the alien and the sheer intensity of the scene. Oh, yeah, the disturbing effects and the viciousness by which they are used make incredibly scary. It is horrifying seeing this creature put out of nowhere, especially after tense scenes of the crew arguing and fighting, and they go on long enough that they instill themselves into your mind. Ironically, these keep you invested in the film itself, as the scale of the threat is abundantly clear. It is a creature that can be any living thing, that can take on its form to the smallest cell and absorb it. It can be anyone, and if it escapes the uncolonized Antarctica back to civilization, mankind is doomed. Despite it being a strange being with motives beyond the comprehension of mankind, one of the other best things of the film is the fact that the scientists act like scientists. They investigate, they hypothesize, they test, and it helps them combat the creature to the best of their abilities, while still being human enough that they still don't know whether their colleagues have become a creature beyond their understanding. It helps keeps us invested in the characters, while still fearing for their safety. I would use the term "Lovecraftian" as many others have (indeed, many have speculated "Who Goes There" was written in part because of Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness) to describe the overall feeling of the film. The idea of a being that is completely beyond human comprehension and dumb fleshbags unable to deal with it or get any help from elsewhere to really combat really fits into the Lovecraftian Cosmicist worldview. It is a nice metaphor for the helplessness of mankind in the face of a dangerous, unknown universe (or fickle, mercurial people) and the lack of a loving god to help us against it. Finally, the score by Ennio Morricone is iconic, of course, helping cement the atmosphere of sheer helplessness in the face of a menace beyond knowing.
Not much here on the other hand. Some parts can get a bit confusing if you're not paying attention, and sometimes you confuse the names of characters, but you can follow each character, their roles, and what happens pretty well regardless.
So, like I said, this is probably one of my all-time favorite horror films. I've seen it a few times since that first Facebook review years ago, and I'll probably watch it again for many more years. It is a great film. Not just a great horror or a great science fiction film. A great film, that works on so many levels, and reveals something about humanity that it is uncomfortable and disturbing to ponder. It is mandatory viewing for horror and science fiction fans, of course, but even if you don't like these genres (or are squimish about blood), it is well-crafted, well-written and well-acted enough to be worth at least one view (again, it is fairly bloody, so be warned). It is always a pleasure to watch this film.
So, that concludes the Masterpiece of Horror Theatre for this year and this decade. I really hope you enjoy reading these as much as I enjoy writing them, and I hope it convinced you to seek out something new to watch for the Halloween season. I want to thank you all for reading these for all years, whether on Facebook or the Linkara rip-off videos I did also on Facebook, or on this blog, and I look forward to doing them again next year along with a very Summer of Terror I plan for next year. I don't know what I have planned for November, but I hope you stay tuned for that. To close out, here's noted SF illustrator Wayne Barlowe doing a version of the creature from "Who Goes There"
Happy Halloween, everyone
"Who Goes There" was first published in Astounding Science Fiction in 1938, written by the legendary editor of the magazine John W. Campbell (for context, he would go to discover authors like Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, L. Sprague de Camp, Theodore Sturgeon etc., among other... stuff, shall we say). The story of a group of Antarctic scientists fighting off a strange shapeshifting alien was well-regarded, and in 1951, producer Howard Hawks and director Christian Nyby loosely adapted into the film The Thing from Another World, which is regarded as a classic in 50's science fiction. In 1976, producers David Foster and Lawrence Thurman proposed a close adaptation of the original novella to Universal. Universal acquired the remake rights from Wilbur Stark, who owned several RKO Pictures, and began searching for directors. John Carpenter, who was heavily influenced by Hawks as a director and a fan of the original (having featured it briefly in the original Halloween) was approached as early as 1976 (while fresh off the success of Assault on Precinct 13) , but had to wait until Halloween was a big hit. Even then, being a huge Howard Hawks fan, he was reluctant to approach the project until reading the novella and finding a new angle to explore the story. The screenplay went through several writers (including Texas Chainsaw creators Tobe Hopper and Kim Heinkel, the former of who was attached to direct before Carpenter), before actor and writer Bill Lancaster (son of Burt, and known at the time as the writer of The Bad News Bears) came on, writing something very close to the original novella. As with most of his films, Carpenter himself would make some rewrites to the script. Many of Carpenter's collaborators would return for this film. His The Fog cinematographer Dean Cudley would make his debut in a Hollywood feature with this. Special effects creator Rob Bottin, whom Carpenter also worked with on The Fog, would do the legendary special effects. Escape from New York star Kurt Russell would headline the movie, along with newcomer Keith David. Unlike much of his filmography, Carpenter did not score this film, instead giving the duties to Italian composer Ennio Morricone (known for his collaborations with Sergio Leone, another director Carpenter admired), whose synthesizer score would define the film for many people. Bottin would work incredibly hard to bring the unique of a strange, shapeshifting alien to life, often working incredibly long hours, using a 35 person crew (including legendary special effects creator Stan Winston to help with the dog design), and was even hospitalized for exhaustion. The film was shot in the fall 1981 in Alaska and British Columbia, with interiors filmed in the Universal lot. Released on June 25th, 1982, it was drowned financially among the many other famous films released that year, including ET: The Extra-Terrestrial (indeed, some associated with the film have blamed it and its more optimistic view of aliens for The Thing's failure), Blade Runner, Poltergeist, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Conan (1982 was a really good year for genre films). Not helping was savaging by critics, who were aghast at the fairly bloody nature of the effect. Carpenter himself was especially hurt by The Thing from Another World director Christian Nyby lambasting the film as too gory. However, eventually, the home video market and television would give the film a new, younger audience, who would adopt the film as a classic of the horror genre. Over time, it would come to be regarded as one of the greatest horror movies ever made and a major influence on many horror and science fiction media (you might've seen this film shown in Stranger Things), and many directors who were still frightened by it. The film has even become a tradition for scientists stationed on the seventh continent. At the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, it is screened every February to commemorate the beginning of winter in the South Pole. Carpenter himself would come to call this his favorite of the movies he's made and the first of the Apocalypse Trilogy (with Prince of Darkness and In the Mouth of Madness) . For my part, it is not only one of my favorite horror movies, but one of my favorite films, period.
The film opens with an alien spacecraft crashing to Earth, so.... yeah, you know what you're getting into. Soon after, American scientists including MacReady (Kurt Russell), Blair (Wilford Brimley), Childs (Keith David), and Dr. Cooper (Richard Dysart) take at an Antarctic base witness a man on a helicopter (Larry Franco, one of the producers) chasing a sled dog across the snowy plains, trying to shoot it. When the helicopter crashes, they confront the man, who yells in Norwegian, while the dogs warms up to them. When the Norwegian shoots at them, he is killed by station commander Garry (Donald Moffat). The scientists take the dog in, while MacReady and Cooper go to the Norwegian station to investigate. They find it abandoned, with a mysterious block of ice carved out, a heavily disfigured frozen corpse, and the frozen body of a strange creature. Blair performs an autopsy of the creature, only to find it having regular human organs. The dog soon arouses the fear of the other dogs at the station kennel, which causes it to reveal itself to be some eldritch abombination that kills and absorbs the other dogs, before Childs is able to put it down. Blair also autospies the dog to find whatever took it over can make a perfect imitation. As they use the Norwegian data to track down a dig site to a large alien ship (estimated to be 10,000 years old), Blair also discovers that the alien cells can absorb, assimilate, and imitate any other cell. And when Bennings (Peter Maloney) is absorbed, it can be any one of the crew, and they would never know who it was until it was too late....
I honestly don't know where to start with the great things about this film. I suppose I could start with my own personal favorite thing about the film: The production design. The settings used, whether the cold sterility of the base, the harsh Antarctic landscape or the devastated Norwegian base, help add to the atmosphere of isolation and paranoia. You feel just as lonely as the characters in the film, watching them handle an impossible situation and slowly devolving and turning on each other as they try to figure out who might be the alien. The fact that it is primarily set at the base, and thus it becomes intimately familiar to viewer, adds to this, as even this becomes untrustworthy and isolated as the film goes on. The special effects are simply some of the best put to film. The alien is incredibly well designed, with a unique, ever-changing look which instills a lot of fear just looking at it, and especially watching it transform from seemingly innocuous organisms and see it brutally kill the people on the base. There is one particular transformation towards the end that is seared in my mind due to both the look of the alien and the sheer intensity of the scene. Oh, yeah, the disturbing effects and the viciousness by which they are used make incredibly scary. It is horrifying seeing this creature put out of nowhere, especially after tense scenes of the crew arguing and fighting, and they go on long enough that they instill themselves into your mind. Ironically, these keep you invested in the film itself, as the scale of the threat is abundantly clear. It is a creature that can be any living thing, that can take on its form to the smallest cell and absorb it. It can be anyone, and if it escapes the uncolonized Antarctica back to civilization, mankind is doomed. Despite it being a strange being with motives beyond the comprehension of mankind, one of the other best things of the film is the fact that the scientists act like scientists. They investigate, they hypothesize, they test, and it helps them combat the creature to the best of their abilities, while still being human enough that they still don't know whether their colleagues have become a creature beyond their understanding. It helps keeps us invested in the characters, while still fearing for their safety. I would use the term "Lovecraftian" as many others have (indeed, many have speculated "Who Goes There" was written in part because of Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness) to describe the overall feeling of the film. The idea of a being that is completely beyond human comprehension and dumb fleshbags unable to deal with it or get any help from elsewhere to really combat really fits into the Lovecraftian Cosmicist worldview. It is a nice metaphor for the helplessness of mankind in the face of a dangerous, unknown universe (or fickle, mercurial people) and the lack of a loving god to help us against it. Finally, the score by Ennio Morricone is iconic, of course, helping cement the atmosphere of sheer helplessness in the face of a menace beyond knowing.
Not much here on the other hand. Some parts can get a bit confusing if you're not paying attention, and sometimes you confuse the names of characters, but you can follow each character, their roles, and what happens pretty well regardless.
So, like I said, this is probably one of my all-time favorite horror films. I've seen it a few times since that first Facebook review years ago, and I'll probably watch it again for many more years. It is a great film. Not just a great horror or a great science fiction film. A great film, that works on so many levels, and reveals something about humanity that it is uncomfortable and disturbing to ponder. It is mandatory viewing for horror and science fiction fans, of course, but even if you don't like these genres (or are squimish about blood), it is well-crafted, well-written and well-acted enough to be worth at least one view (again, it is fairly bloody, so be warned). It is always a pleasure to watch this film.
So, that concludes the Masterpiece of Horror Theatre for this year and this decade. I really hope you enjoy reading these as much as I enjoy writing them, and I hope it convinced you to seek out something new to watch for the Halloween season. I want to thank you all for reading these for all years, whether on Facebook or the Linkara rip-off videos I did also on Facebook, or on this blog, and I look forward to doing them again next year along with a very Summer of Terror I plan for next year. I don't know what I have planned for November, but I hope you stay tuned for that. To close out, here's noted SF illustrator Wayne Barlowe doing a version of the creature from "Who Goes There"
Happy Halloween, everyone
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