The Thing

Now before lavishing praise upon one of the seminal horror movies of all time its worth reminding yourself that this was in fact…..whisper it now…..a remake. John Carpenter did what all critics are so eager to lambaste modern Hollywood for when he updated Howard Hawks 1951 The Thing from Another World. But instead of following the Rob Zombie/Michael Bay template of employing a cast of buxom beauties and square jawed quarterbacks to rein act the same story, Carpenter translated the McCarthyism witch-hunt thematic of the original and contextually updated it to reflect the cold war paranoia still prevalent in the early eighties.

A horror film with a subtext, something as alien as the Thing when discussing the current crop of uninspired, unoriginal drivel that floods our screen, but this was only one of a series of similarly culturally resonant movies at the time of release. Think Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) and Alien (1979).

A flop upon its original theatrical run, it made only $3.1m during its opening weekend. Apparently audiences were more susceptible to a homesick alien and his attempts to “phone home” than that of a shape-shifting xenomorph intent on obliteration.

The Thing found its true home on VHS, and from late night showings when it would scare the wits out of you before the screen went snowy in the days prior to 24 hour broadcasts, leaving you with a feeling of abandonment and hopelessness akin to that of MacReady and Childs sat desolately in the snow, waiting for answers that never came.

The story focuses on a weary team of scientists based at a remotely desolate Antarctic research facility. They take in a stray husky dog that seems to have been a target for a recently downed Norwegian helicopter crew, and further investigation of their origins leads to mutilated corpses and an abandoned outpost. When the canine gruesomely metamorphosises into a tentacled monstrosity it’s too late for the small crew to stop the symbiote from shape shifting it’s way through the paranoid crew.

Remembered for its fantastic special effects by then 22 year old Rob Bottin – the docs arms being severed by the chest cavity (film studies gender classes must have had a field day with that imagery) and the still astonishing crab-like decapitated head – it remains largely overlooked in the classic stakes. If anything the tension is even more palpable than Carpenter’s signature film Halloween. Revisiting it on the big screen can surely only heighten the spring wound claustrophobic nervousness of the blood-testing in petri-dish scene. If there is anything that rivals that in Final Destination 3-D or the forthcoming Halloween II then this reviewer will happily watch Carpenters career nadir, Ghosts of Mars on repeat.