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The Appropriate Tune: 'Who Goes There' by nARK
This is the start of a little run that I like to call ‘Thunderbird takes the easy route’. Everyone knows about The Thing, everyone has talked about The Thing, so writing a review about The Thing is about as pointless as a circle drawn with a dull pencil. What can I say? That I was feeling a little bit nostalgic, that I wanted to get more horror in the Halloween marathon, that if I wanted to get a Carpenter film in this year that fit the theme it was between this and Memoirs of an Invisible Man, and that I wasn’t looking forward to stepping into the minefield of quality that is Chevy Chase’s later films? All of these things are true to some degree, and sometimes you just feel like watching a movie you know you’re going to enjoy. Not to mention that this gives me a great excuse to do Prince of Darkness next year, rounding out Carpenter’s loose ‘Apocalypse trilogy’, which is something I’ve wanted to do for a while. So here….we……go!
Released in 1982, The Thing was written by Bill Lancaster, directed by John Carpenter and produced by David Foster and Lawrence Turman through The Turman-Foster Company, based on the novel “Who Goes There?” by John W. Campbell Jr. as well as the 50’s film The Thing from Another World. It’s the first week of winter in Antartica, 1982, and the staff of U.S. Science Station 4 are treated to quite the surprise when two members of the nearby Norwegian camp burst in, ultimately getting themselves killed in an attempt to kill a dog. A touch of snow madness perhaps, but a visit to the Norwegian camp soon sheds light on the matter: some time ago the Nords discovered an alien spacecraft buried in the ice, and with it an alien lifeform. With thoughts of immortality in the annals of science history they brought the alien to their camp, but this proved to be a mistake. You see this wasn’t a preserved specimen but a living creature in hibernation; An almost parasitic being which assimilates other living creatures and perfectly mimics not only their forms but their behavior as well, like some sort of hideous combination of the Predator and the Borg. The thought of such an abomination lurking with Station 4, murdering and then masquerading as friends and colleagues is bad, but not as bad as that creature making it to civilization. MacReady (Kurt Russell), Childs (Keith David) and the rest have to stop it here, but when anyone could be the Thing, then who can you trust?
Easy. You don’t trust anyone.
Watching The Thing again after a couple years I can sort of understand why it wasn’t a big hit in theaters, as it’s not a very ‘fun’ movie. There’s no attractive ladies, there’s no maretable mascot antagonist, no goofy, over-the-top deaths, the things that would come to define horror in the 80’s. It’s a dour story of isolation and paranoia which preys upon our very nature as group animals, and while the special effects are iconic in their complexity the actual violence tends to be quick and brutal. While there had been ‘downer’ science fiction movies before, Planet of the Apes comes to mind, as well as Soylent Green, neither of those films feel as aggressively fatalistic as The Thing. Even Alien, sci-fi’s slasher flick, gave the audience hope in the form of Ripley. Not so in the case of The Thing, where even in the earliest scenes there’s this sense of doom hanging in the air, that we’re seeing the Titanic five minutes before the iceberg.
The term ‘Locevraftian’ gets tossed around a lot when taling about The Thing, and yeah, that fits. Beyond the shape shifting alien horror, the ethos of Lovecraft’s fiction was the insignificance of humanity in the face of the universe, and that’s the main thrust of the film. These aren’t Ridley Scott’s space truckers, they are scientists and g-men, men of intelligence and discipline, and none of it matters. They are out-maneuvered and outclassed at every turn by something that they can only barely understand, and they are fully aware of that fact. Whichmight be even more terrifying than the ‘confidence which shatters against the threat’ angle seen in films like Aliens. Confidence breeds hope, and these guys are just smart enough to know that they have none.
Speaking of these guys, John Carpenter knows how to build a solid genre movie cast. Kurt Russell follows up his career defining role as Snake Plissken in Escape from New York with another career defining role as the no gimmicks needed chopper pilot MacReady, Keith David gets a career defining role in his second ever film appearance as Childs, and Wilford Brimley shows the world what he looks like without a mustache. The rest of the cast aren’t as well known, some successful TV and stage actors, but they do stand out without being distracting, and their visual distinctiveness helps to underscore the film’s question of ‘is this person real or is he the Thing?’ I wouldn’t trade anyone out.
We also have the legendary Ennio Morricone on music, and who better to score scenes of barren lifeless tundra than the guy who scored scenes of barren lifeless desert? What I love most about Morricone’s work on this movie though is the slow shift in tone. The beginning is fairly standard, you got the strings, you got some synth, but as the film goes on and things grow more dire those strings pull back and the synth pushes forward, until it feels like the only thing you can hear is that pounding synth like the movie’s heart is in your ears. Synth-centric soundtracks weren’t uncommon in 80’s films, you could easily say that they were overused, but when they hit they hit, and the The Thing’s score was definitely a hit.
Of course you can’t talk about The Thing without talking about the special effects, the brain-child of Carpenter collaborateur Rob Bottin with help from Stan Winston, among many other talented folk. It is the primordial ooze from which Cronenberg and the bulk of the body horror spawned from, and is arguably one of the few films with the label ‘Lovecraftian’ which from a visual standpoint actually lives up to that title. Overall I’d say those effects hold up, although there are definitely bits which look better than others. The scene where Windows is attacked in the rec room very quickly shifts from chilling to goofy as you watch the Thing puppet flop around like Kermit the Frog, and the head spider waddling around on the floor doesn’t strike fear into my heart like it used to in years past. In spite of the limitations however it’s the visceral quality of those practical effects that grounds The Thing in the real world, making it all the more disturbing for the audience, and while the puppetry can come across as goofy I prefer their dynamic energy when compared to the glacial stuff we would see years later with In the Mouth of Madness. I enjoy that movie but I think even Carpenter was aware of how bad those monsters were which is why you barely see them in the film proper.
John Carpenter’s The Thing is an obvious recommendation. If you’re even slightly interested in science fiction and horror films, which I assume you are because you’re reading a genre movie blog, then you’ve already seen this movie, but if you somehow haven’t then it should immediately go to the top of the queue. Carpenter occasionally had problems pushing unique concepts without falling into the realm of camp, but The Thing rides that edge beautifully and as such is the most effective film of his boom period. Aside from Halloween maybe, but that’s a review for another year. Until then, watch The Thing, but be sure to avoid The Thing. The Thing sucks compared to The Thing.
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