The Thing
Flashback Friday takes us back to the icy tundra and a new battle for survival against an alien from another world. Director John Carpenter's adaptation of John W. Campbell Jr.'s novella Who Goes There? stays closer to the source material than The Thing from Another World. Set in Antarctica, our evil invader from outer space had already been thawed by a group of Norwegian scientists, the last of whom are chasing an infected dog to the American outpost. Killing the out-of-control foreigners, our team of protagonists will have to piece together how the story began not realizing the cute sled dog they've just let into their camp could very well mean the death of them all.
The idea of an alien that can infect and hide among the men on the base certainly adds to the overall tension of the 1982 film. While making back its budget, the film was seen as a critical and box office disappointment. Some may have been turned off by the bleak nature of the film. Others, like myself, might not care for how strongly Carpenter leans into the body horror grotesque gore highlighting the creature in mid-transformation and the autopsy of its previous infected hosts. I don't know that this version of the film is any scarier than The Thing from Another World but it's certainly uglier which some may find hard to enjoy.
Kurt Russell leads the cast of soldiers at the American base which also includes Keith David, Wilford Brimley, Richard Dysart, Charles Hallahan, Peter Maloney, Richard Masur, and others. The horror from the film comes from both the disgusting and disturbing nature of the creature (less of this would go a long way to improve my appreciation of the movie) and from the insecurity of each member of the station unsure of who it may have infected and turned into another Thing. Despite it's initial struggles, The Thing found an audience on home video and an appreciation over the years for a film that audiences in 1982 weren't yet ready for (and which many current filmmakers point to as a pivotal film for the horror genre influencing movies yet to come).
- Title: The Thing (1982)
- IMDb: link
