The Thing (1982) (a.k.a John Carpenter's The Thing) Directed by John Carpenter. Starring Kurt Russell. Reviewed by Michael A. Turton (turton@cc.fy.edu.tw)
Director John Carpenter once noted in an interview that he was puzzled by the the indifference of audiences to _The Thing_. In view of the cult status of so many of his films, the failure of _The Thing_ to find popularity is a bit of a mystery, all the more so since it features the same pairing of director and actor (Kurt Russell) that helped make _Escape from New York_ a cult classic.
_The Thing_ is taken from one of the best SF short novels ever written, a Golden Age work by John Campbell entitled "Who Goes There?." There are some changes which in my view strengthen the storyline (surprising for a Hollywood script). The film is also a remake of an old (and now hokey) horror movie.
The story takes place in an isolated antarctic research station. As the film begins, a dog shows up chased by a seeming madman in a helicopter. When the man accidently shoots one of the station personnel in an attempt to kill the dog, he is shot to death by one of the researchers. The dog wanders around the station for a few hours before being put in the kennel with the other dogs. When he is, strange things begin to happen.
Meanwhile MacReady (Kurt Russell), the taciturn helicopter pilot, hops over to the madman's point of origin, a Norwegian research station. There he discovers that everyone is dead. Some of the bodies are bizarrely changed, others the result of bloodily painful suicide. Slowly, as the evidence comes in, MacReady learns that the Norwegians found an ancient spacecraft beneath the ice that contained an alien capable of assimilating and becoming any species, from dog to human. As the story unfolds, it becomes apparent that not everyone at the research station is human anymore.......
The story moves at a more leisurely pace than some of Carpenter's other tales, since the viewer needs more information to understand what is going on. Characters are boldly-drawn, just this side of being stereotypes, but MacReady, whose character screams Vietnam vet, is given an introspective side which doesn't quite save him from becoming the cliched hard-edged, gruff hero.
The special effects are excellent and have held up well, although there are some fairly silly inconsistencies that are probably necessary to increase the horror factor. For example, people's bodies split open and the alien pops out a la the film _Alien_. Why? The alien is not _inside_ the person, the alien _is_ the person. The sound effects are wonderful, especially in the scene where one of the station personnel, fleeing the station during his "change," suddenly reveals he is an alien. Tiresomely, as in too many other movies, the horrifying aliens look like insects. Is there no other form they can take?
Carpenter's direction is competent and the tension builds well, following the original story more or less faithfully in general right up to the end, where there is a radical departure. Unlike Campbell's original, in which the good guys win out by a nose, Carpenter's version is both bloodier and more ambiguous, requiring much more sacrifice. In that sense, the movie is more realistic than the original story. In my judgement, the changes Carpenter made in the plot make it a much stronger story. Additionally, the understated score by a veteran movie composer is a winner.
Carpenter resists well the urge to Hollywoodize this classic. There is no love story here (no female characters), no redemptive ending and no blond-haired, blue-eyed people save the world. Instead, a bunch of relatively real people muddle their way through, fouling up right and left, led by a hero who is constantly off balance.
_The Thing_ is one of my personal favorites. I give it 4 out of 5 stars. Always a solid rental choice.
Copyright 1998 by Michael A. Turton
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