The Thing (1982)
Directed by: John
Carpenter.
Written by: Bill
Lancaster based on the story by John W. Campbell Jr.
Starring:
Kurt Russell (MacReady), Wilford Brimley (Dr. Blair), T.K. Carter (Nauls), David
Clennon (Palmer), Keith David (Childs), Richard Dysart (Dr. Copper), Charles
Hallahan (Vance Norris), Peter Maloney (George Bennings), Richard Masur
(Clark), Donald Moffat (Garry), Joel Polis (Fuchs).
The
first film I thought to rewatch when a global pandemic trapped us all in our homes
with our loved ones for days, weeks, perhaps months on end was not Steven
Soderberg’s Contagion – I still haven’t ventured back into that one yet, but
likely will this week, but John Carpenter’s The Thing instead. This is perhaps
Carpenter’s best film (Halloween can also credibly make that claim) – a
paranoid creature feature with great special effects, but is all the scarier
simply when it traps its characters in a room together, no one quite sure if
the others are still who they say they are, with no way to escape. Like much of
Carpenter’s work, The Thing wasn’t quite a critical or commercial hit when it
came out in 1982 – maybe it was the odd decision to release this cold,
snowbound movie in June, maybe it was because the film came out just three weeks
after Poltergeist and two weeks after E.T. (when was the last time we had a
summer with a trio of mainstream movies that stellar?) – but it has rightly
gone onto be recognized as the horror classic it so clearly is.
The
story is simple enough – a group of men are stuck at an Antarctic science
station – prepared, already, to spend many long claustrophobic months together,
when something strange happens – a dog comes running into camp, followed by a
helicopter, who has one very determined Norwegian leaning out the side trying
to gun down the dog. Needless to say, it is the dog who survives – not the
Norwegians – but the dog isn’t really a dog anymore – but instead is something
the Norwegians found frozen in the ice, that has no dethawed. And it can take the
shape of anyone it so desires. It takes the men a while to realize this of
course – but once they do, they don’t handle it well.
What’s
remarkable about The Thing is how much Carpenter is able to convey, while
telling us so little. He dives into the story headlong, right with that dog
running across the snowy terrain, being chased by the helicopter, and unlike
say Alien or Jaws, he doesn’t take his time revealing the monster itself. It’s
that same night, when the dog keeper places their new arrival with the other
that it is revealed to be not like other dogs – in a virtuoso special effects
sequence that surely could be done with CGI now, but wouldn’t have the same
impact. Often when filmmakers attempt this – diving into the story, getting to
the “good stuff” quickly – they sacrificed elements like story and character.
Not for Carpenter – it helps that the narrative is relatively simple and
straight forward, but as the movie progresses you certainly understand all you
need to know about the main characters – Kurt Russell’s MacReady, the closest
thing the film has to a hero, although that may be because we spend the most
time with him, since he also does things that if he wasn’t out hero, would make
him the villain. Or Wilford Brimley’s Dr. Blair – who seems, well, like a warm
Wilford Brimley character until he isn’t. Or the hotheaded Childs played by
Keith David – who remains mysterious to the end. And on and on – I’m not
suggesting that these are particularly deep characterizations, just that they
are as deep as they need to be to make them not just interchangeable
characters, simply there to increase the blood flow – sacrificial lambs to the
slaughter, even if in effect they kind of are.
The
special effects, strangely, seem to be what drew the ire of contemporary film
critics at the time – Roger Ebert called it a “geek show, gross out movie … it seems clear that
Carpenter made his choice early on to concentrate on the special effects and
technology and to allow the story and people to become secondary” in his 2.5
star (thumbs down) review, Vincent Canby completely dismissed it “The Thing is
too phony looking to be disgusting. It qualifies only as instant junk”. Even
reviewers who got what Carpenter were going for, didn’t seem to like it – Dave
Kehr said “he seems to be aiming for an enveloping, novelistic kind of effect,
but all he gets is heaviness”. I bring this up not to shit on the reviewers who
either didn’t get or didn’t like The Thing in 1982 (nothing is more tiresome to
me than pieces like that) – because on one level, I get them. I do wonder what
movies in the CGI age will end up being regarded like The Thing is today – and
whether when that movie emerges, it will be one that I dismissed as more CGI
soup. When you watch lot of movie with special effects, they can blend together
to a certain degree – you can roll your eyes and think “here we go again” when
the same visuals come onto the screen. Special effects can do that now – and it
seems like it did it make in 1982 as well. It wasn’t even like the horror
community embraced it that much – only two Saturn nominations (Best Horror
Film, and Best Special Effects) – hell, the idiots at the Razzies nominated the
brilliant Ennio Morricone score for Worst Score of the year.
But
it isn’t the special effects – as wonderful as they are – that I think when I
think of The Thing. It’s the long sequences of paranoid men together in a room,
sizing each other up, trying to figure out who is real, and who is the Thing.
The blood test sequence is the best, most sustained example of this – a
sequence that goes on minute after agonizing minute, you’re starting to doubt
the whole thing, they whole process, before the big reveal. It is perfectly
played by the cast – but then it all is. Even the effects heavy climax is nailed
by Russell, Brimley, David and T.K. Carter – the fact Carter’s Nauls simply
vanishes, and we never see what happened (a budgetary restriction, which works
to make the film’s ending even more ambiguous than intended. Carpenter’s The
Thing is a triumph of 1980s special effects – I know some will snicker at them
now, but they still work on me (and compare them to other special effects at
the time – no, it isn’t Cronenberg’s The Fly level, but it’s close) – but the
reason the film has lasted is because it is the exact opposite of a “geek show,
a gross out movie”. Sorry Roger, you were wrong on this one.
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