365 Films in 365 Days – January 21: The Thing

This series is dedicated to matching memorable movies with the signature day each year upon which I could watch them forever. January 21st is about one month into winter. For those who hate winter, that places the date deep enough in the season to be ready for it to end (in the northern hemisphere, anyway), but not deep enough to hope that it actually will. This movie, too, is set in the earlier half of winter (ironically in the southern hemisphere given my premise), with the ultimate realization that too much of it remains for there to be any hope of surviving the ordeal. And since I'm unlikely to watch it south of the equator, I yield unto you this day:

The Thing (1982, Universal Pictures, John Carpenter)

This movie, Star Wars, and Predator all (vaguely) begin the same way. Ship screams into view as it approaches a nearby planet. That's the all-time great way to establish things. Start unfocused, writ-large and then narrow, narrow, narrow. Turn as many lights off as you can with this one and enjoy.

The original The Thing from Another World (1951) is quite a watchable gem of old school B&W cinema. It's very talky and fast and plays like a lot of vehicles of that sort from the era, but I can still watch it and enjoy it after seeing Carpenter's take. That said, this is definitely one of those times when the remake outpaces the original in almost every way. The plot, mystery, acting, effects, and ending all surpass the original without insult or injury. Admirable.

The ensemble cast (including Keith David, Wilford Brimley, and Donald Moffat) is headed by Kurt Russell in hot-blooded but not hotly contested scenes—no one seems to try ton upstage anyone else, and all the parts played are important and/or complementary to the whole. Carpenter's simple synth soundtrack is used for punctuation rather than to cover vast tracts of emptyness. And the "soundless" parts are just as necessary. If all you have of a thing is the thing itself, than do you really have anything at all? It's the quiet scenes that underscore and set up the louder ones.

Case-in-point: The original does a fine walk-around at the original crash site to determine what it is they're dealing with, but this remake really shows you what happened at "ground zero," and does a better job of foreshadowing what is to come for the current crew.

The scenes with the dog skulking and watching as proceedings take place are equally creepy and real. Who says you can't work with pets or kids?

Rob Bottin's work on the practical effects in this are top-notch. I actually thought it was Stan Winston's studio. Shame on me. Bottin probably kept Winston very honest in the 80s with outings like this. No room to cheat.

The scene where they all find the thing mid-transformation with the other dogs is pure nightmare fuel.

The great improvement this movie has over the original, though, is the introduction of doubt. After Blair's convo with Clark, you have to doubt whether anyone might be the thing. You doubt whether it's possible for anyone to even know who is or isn't the thing. The original never ventured into that territory. Is that a factor of a post-Nixon, post-Vietnam era storytelling versus one form before? There are absolutely better told stories from before this time and from before other remakes and retellings that would demand you take them more seriously than anything that came after.

I totally forgot that they make two trips back to the Norwegian encampment, or technically once to the camp and then a separate time to the dig site where the Norwegians found the 100,000-year-old ice where the ship was found. What a nice homage to the original. Clearly, Carpenter was a fan. 

The simple but effective object-that-you-thought-was-inert-a-moment-ago-moves-slightly-under-cover-when-you're-not-looking scene is quality horror.

Blair's character and situation might be the most damned of all. He knows what is going on, but has no chance of convincing the others of what he knows and how he knows he has to go about it. Summarily, he knows they've all got to die to ensure this thing doesn't spread to the rest of the planet. Or, at least the others think that's what he knows—or pretends to know—given that they can't trust whether he isn't already the thing himself! Just damned.

It's fun the way that everybody refers to each other by last name. I guess it's a military thing. Mac. Fuchs. Blair. Childs. Nauls. Windows. Names that immediately speak to their characters and live in the memory.

The scene where Windows goes to grab a shotgun and has a standoff with Garry goes absolutely nowhere! Nothing significant happens other than the exchange of command. But it's a gripping scene that really establishes the emotional vulnerability of a bunch of grown men in a desperate situation. It's also notable for the set dressing and how they made the hallways up to be reminiscent of the way they were in the original: pretty bare and lined with boxes. Again, Carpenter was a fan.

The level of stress-born distrust is portrayed so convincingly it's almost stressful to watch. Mac's predicament is all a matter of distrust and it just about ends him by way of lynching. He's practically saved when Norris falls and stops breathing only for the doctor to show up and get his arms chomped off when the doc goes about using a defibrillator on the fallen man. Norris's thing-head then just casually slumps off the body, uses its whip-tongue to lash onto a nearby anchored object, and then grows spider-legs to crawl away. But not before a healthy dose of flame-thrower!

The hot needle blood-test scene is pure tension that leads to pure mishap. And the only part of the movie that really gets to me on a visceral level is the thumb-slicing shots. Good Lord! I couldn't even watch it as Windows did his own. Poor, poor Windows.

Best line in the whole mess is delivered by Moffat as Garry: "I know you gentlemen have been through a lot, but when you find the time, I'd rather not spend the rest of this winter TIED TO THIS FUCKING COUCH!" Everything up until the all-caps part is delivered with such calm sincerity. The all-caps part with utter stress anger.

When all else fails, kill it with fire!

And then when Blair puts his hand through Garry's face you realize, "Yeah, he was damned. And damn him!"

The giant tentacle-dog monster that the thing reveals itself as at the end definitely deserves consideration to be put on the Mt. Rushmore of movie monsters.

The ending is rather bleak. But appropriately so. It doesn't cheat right up till the end. I'm not sure I can conceive of a better ending. If you showed them "paddling to shore" like Brody and Hooper at the end of Jaws, it would sort of rob your imagination of anything better, besides aping that classic too much.

January 21 — 10 of 365 logged

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