ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - June 25th
"THE THING" released today in 1982
Who Goes There? first terrified readers when published in Astounding Science-Fiction in 1938. Over the next 40-years, John W. Campbell Jr's science fiction novella would be adapted to the screen three times; The Thing from Another World (1951) and Horror Express (1972) being the first. But is was John Carpenter's treatment of the story in the horror classic that would be remembered as the definitive film version - The Thing!
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At a remote weather station in Antarctic, a small American research team is preparing for the first week of winter when a Norwegian helicopter appears overhead, shooting at a fleeing Alaskan Malamute. During the shooting, the helicopter explodes (killing the Norwegian pilot) and the second is shot by the station commander, Garry (Donald Moffat). Cooper (Richard Dysart), the station doctor, enlists their own pilot MacReady (Kurt Russell) to join him in investigating the Norwegians camp for answers. They find the camp all but destroyed, along with the charred bodies of the remaining station crew; and a video tape that recorded their efforts to dig up a flying saucer buried in the ice for more than 100,000 years. Back at the US camp, scientist Blair (Wilford Brimley) performs an autopsy and theorizes that there is an alien organism that can perfectly imitate other organisms, including the Malamute the Norwegians were trying to kill. When the creature finally reveals itself, paranoia spreads through the rest of the station crew; Childs (Keith David), Nauls (T.K. Carter), Palmer (David Clennon), Bennings (Peter Maloney), Norris (Charles Hallahan), Clarke (Richard Masur), Fuchs (Joel Polis) and Windows (Thomas Waites). Just who is really human and who has already been taken over by the Thing?
[MacReady and Fuchs talk privately in the snowmobile]
Fuchs: There's something wrong with Blair. He's locked himself in his room and he won't answer the door, so I took one of his notebooks from the lab.
MacReady: Yeah?
Fuchs: Listen: "It could have imitated a million life-forms on a million planets. It could change into any one of them at any time. Now, it wants life-forms on Earth."
MacReady: It's gettin' cold in here, Fuchs, and I haven't slept for two days.
Fuchs: Wait a minute, Mac, wait a minute.
[reads from the book]
Fuchs: "It needs to be alone and in close proximity with the life-form to be absorbed. The chameleon strikes in the dark."
MacReady: So is Blair cracking up or what?
Fuchs: Damn it, MacReady!
[reading from the notebook]
Fuchs: "There is still cellular activity in these burned remains. They're not dead yet!"
Top and Above: Helicopter-pilot MacReady (Kurt Russell) and other members of the station crew from Antartica's US Outpost 31 discover a UFO frozen in the ice, that was unearthed by a doomed Norwegian crew.
Early drafts of the screenplay were written by Texas Chainsaw Massacre co-creators Tobe Hooper and Kim Henkel, none of which were liked by Universal studios that the pair were contracted too. Producers Lawrence Turman and David Foster turned to Bill Lancaster to re-write the film and approached John Carpenter to direct; Carpenter fresh off the success of Escape from New York (1981). Carpenter then approached actors he had worked with previously for various roles in The Thing, including Isaac Hayes, Donald Pleasance and Lee Van Cleef - with only Kurt Russell among them being cast in the lead role of MacReady. Carpenter's most important collaborator was special creature effects designer and creator Rob Bottin. Bottin and his crew of 40 special effects artists went on to create the most realistic creature effects that are still remembered to this day!
With filming being done primarily on sound stages in Los Angeles, to give the illusion of icy Antarctic conditions the interior sets were refrigerated down to 40 F while it was well over 100 F outside! In the scene where Norris' head separates from his body, Bottin used highly flammable materials for the construction of the head and neck models. During the shot, John Carpenter decided that, for continuity reasons, they needed some flames around the scene. Without thinking, they lit a fire bar and the whole room, which by now was filled with flammable gases, caught fire. Nobody got hurt, but the entire special effects model, on which Bottin had worked several months, was destroyed! Stan Winston was soon brought in to create the dog creature when Bottin's team found themselves overloaded with work on the other creatures seen in the film.
With filming being done primarily on sound stages in Los Angeles, to give the illusion of icy Antarctic conditions the interior sets were refrigerated down to 40 F while it was well over 100 F outside! In the scene where Norris' head separates from his body, Bottin used highly flammable materials for the construction of the head and neck models. During the shot, John Carpenter decided that, for continuity reasons, they needed some flames around the scene. Without thinking, they lit a fire bar and the whole room, which by now was filled with flammable gases, caught fire. Nobody got hurt, but the entire special effects model, on which Bottin had worked several months, was destroyed! Stan Winston was soon brought in to create the dog creature when Bottin's team found themselves overloaded with work on the other creatures seen in the film.
MacReady: Somebody in this camp ain't what he appears to be. Right now that may be one or two of us. By spring, it could be all of us.
Childs: So, how do we know who's human? If I was an imitation, a perfect imitation, how would you know if it was really me?
[everybody begins to look at each suspiciously]
Top: The crew recover a alien specimen from the Norwegian camp;
Above: Unbeknownst to the Outpost 31 crew, the Thing has already infiltrated the crew!
The final weeks of shooting took place in the British Columbia town of Stewart. The camp was built in July 1981 in anticipation of filming commencing in December, where temperatures ranged between 0 F and -15 F during the filming costing the production $75,000 alone just to keep cast and crew warm in winter gear. Russell was almost injured in the scene where he blows up the alien Palmer with a stick of dynamite. Apparently, he had no idea exactly how big of an explosion it would produce, and the reaction that he has in the movie is genuine. Wrapping in February 1982, Carpenter collobrated with composer Ennio Morricone on the score - this being the first time Carpenter has not score one his movies himself - and supervised the special stop-motion effects sequence of the Blair-Thing for the finale. Carpenter ultimately cut most of the scene, leaving in only a few seconds, as the effects were not convincing enough due to the limitation of the technology.
When it was first released The Thing was a commercial and critical disappointment. The film's makeup special effects were simultaneously lauded and lambasted for being technically brilliant but visually repulsive and excessive, Time magazine's Richard Schickel wrote, "Designer Rob Bottin's work is novel and unforgettable, but since it exists in a near vacuum emotionally, it becomes too domineering dramatically and something of an exercise in abstract art." Film critic Roger Ebert called the film "disappointing", though said he found it scary and that it was "a great barf-bag movie." Carpenter himself would later state about The Thing in 2014 that he takes all his failures hard but "The one I took the hardest was The Thing.The movie was hated. Even by science-fiction fans. They thought that I had betrayed some kind of trust, and the piling on was insane. Even the original movie's director, Christian Nyby, was dissing me."
The Thing has been reappraised substantially in the years following its release however, being named "the scariest movie... ever!" by the staff of the Boston Globe in 2007 and was selected by Empire magazine as one of The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time in 2010. The movie also has become part of the culture in Antarctica - it is a long standing tradition in all British Antarctic research stations to watch The Thing as part of their Midwinter feast and celebration held every June 21.
When it was first released The Thing was a commercial and critical disappointment. The film's makeup special effects were simultaneously lauded and lambasted for being technically brilliant but visually repulsive and excessive, Time magazine's Richard Schickel wrote, "Designer Rob Bottin's work is novel and unforgettable, but since it exists in a near vacuum emotionally, it becomes too domineering dramatically and something of an exercise in abstract art." Film critic Roger Ebert called the film "disappointing", though said he found it scary and that it was "a great barf-bag movie." Carpenter himself would later state about The Thing in 2014 that he takes all his failures hard but "The one I took the hardest was The Thing.The movie was hated. Even by science-fiction fans. They thought that I had betrayed some kind of trust, and the piling on was insane. Even the original movie's director, Christian Nyby, was dissing me."
The Thing has been reappraised substantially in the years following its release however, being named "the scariest movie... ever!" by the staff of the Boston Globe in 2007 and was selected by Empire magazine as one of The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time in 2010. The movie also has become part of the culture in Antarctica - it is a long standing tradition in all British Antarctic research stations to watch The Thing as part of their Midwinter feast and celebration held every June 21.
ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE: 81%
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