Synopsis
In Antarctica, a Siberian Husky races across the ice with a helicopter in pursuit, shooting at it. The dog reaches a United States research station manned by twelve men. These include a burnt out pilot named MacReady (Kurt Russell), who rather than let a computer beat him at chess, pours a bottle of Jim Beam into the wiring. The helicopter lands and a man steps out, babbling in Norwegian. He fires at the dog and when he hits one of the Americans, is shot by the facility commander (Donald Moffat).

MacReady and the base physician (Richard Dysart) fly to the Norwegian camp to investigate. The camp has been gutted by fire and is completely deserted. MacReady discovers a block of ice that’s been thawed out, while outside in a burn pile are the remains of something that looks like it might have been human. The specimen and stacks of videotapes are taken back to the facility for study. The men don’t know what happened, but know it’s something bad.

After wandering the base all day, the dog is locked in a kennel with the other dogs. It transforms into a hideous creature, part crab, part spider, part dog and attacks the other animals. The ill-tempered Childs (Keith David) blasts it with a flamethrower, but the thing escapes into the ceiling. A biologist named Blair (Wilford Brimley) theorizes that what they’re dealing with is an organism that imitates other life forms, absorbing them and producing a perfect imitation.

Studying the Norwegian tapes, MacReady flies to a dig site, where he discovers a massive spacecraft buried in the ice. By the time the camp realizes that the alien remains may not be dead, at least one of the men is partially absorbed by the Thing. Calculating that if the thing were to reach a populated area, it could infect all life on Earth within 27,000 hours, Blair goes crazy and smashes the radio. Isolated and unsure who they can trust, the men look to MacReady, who comes up with a test he believes will prove who’s who.

Production history
Who Goes There? was a 1938 short story by John W. Campbell Jr., published under the pen name “Don A. Stuart” in Astounding Science Fiction magazine. The story concerned scientists in Antarctica who discover a spacecraft buried in the ice. They recover an occupant and thaw it out, only to find the alien has the ability to assume the shape and memories of anything it devours. The men have to figure out who among them has been replaced by the alien, which they refer to as the Thing.

Campbell’s story became the inspiration for a Howard Hawks production released in 1951 as The Thing From Another World. Directed by Christian Nyby, the film version presented the Thing as a lumbering, Frankenstein-type monster played by James Arness. Along with The Day The Earth Stood Still, the picture helped fuel the science fiction boom of the 1950s, which in many instances, reverberated the unease and paranoia surrounding the Cold War.

Twenty-five years later, producer Stuart Cohen picked up the screen rights to Campbell’s original story. Cohen brought in producers Lawrence Turman and David Foster, securing a development deal with Universal Pictures. Kim Henkel & Tobe Hooper worked on the project, but Cohen wasn’t impressed with the script they delivered. John Carpenter then entered the picture. Carpenter was a huge fan of Howard Hawks and The Thing From Another World, playing clips in the background during Halloween.

Carpenter felt that the remake should go back and explore the themes of Campbell’s original material. Bill Lancaster adapted a screenplay and a 20-year-old makeup effects artist named Rob Bottin suggested that instead of being a man in a suit, the Thing could look like anything it had imitated in the universe. Bottin promised he could do things on screen that had never been done before. With a budget of $10 million, shooting commenced in June 1981 on a glacier in British Columbia.

When The Thing was test screened, Carpenter got a taste of what he was in store for. “I had this 16-year-old ask me what happened at the end – which one of them was the Thing. I told her she had to use her imagination. She told me she hated that. So I realized we were in deep trouble with that film.” Two weeks before The Thing was to be released, E.T. began setting box office records with an alien who was full of wonder and love. The Thing was so unsettling, Carpenter alleged someone ran out of a test screening to throw up.

People who Carpenter knew personally called to tell him he’d gone too far. Reception among critics was openly hostile. Damning the film with faint praise, Roger Ebert called The Thing “a great barf bag movie.” Other critics referred to Carpenter as “a pornographer of violence.” Deemed a disappointment at the box office, Carpenter and Lancaster were removed by Universal from a planned adaptation of Stephen King’s Firestarter. Carpenter was so shocked by the response, he didn’t work for nine months. His career never made a full recovery.

Opinion
Now regarded as a masterpiece by some of the same critics who panned it in 1982, The Thing not only represents John Carpenter at the peak of his creativity as a director, it helped usher an era of unremittingly stark and challenging science fiction. The film’s genius isn’t in its gore, but its questioning of what it means to be human, and whether you’d even realize you were an imitation if the Thing took you over. Instead of reassuring Reagan era audiences that everything was going to be all right, the Thing could be anyone. It could be you.

With gothic lighting by Dean Cundey and a pulsating musical score by Ennio Morricone, an atmosphere of dread hovers over the film from start to finish. It’s a credit to Rob Bottin how well The Thing holds up. The transformations still stand as some of the most amazing ever captured on camera. The film’s nihilistic tone may have unsettled audiences much more than any of the gore, with an ending that refuses to triumph good over evil, but challenges the viewer to arrive at their own conclusions about who goes there.

Vince Leo at QWipster’s Movie Reviews writes, “There are a few things that occur to me the more times I see The Thing, the biggest among them is how well it has aged … Even by today’s standards, the film’s gore factor is quite high, with some truly grotesque and convincing creatures to give you nightmares the rest of your life. It’s a b-movie through and through, but they don’t come much better than this.”

“John Carpenter’s The Thing is a reasonably effective thriller, a good horror fantasy, and great entertainment. Just try not to take it too seriously. It’s not 2001 or Close Encounters,” writes John J. Puccio at DVD Town.

Rumsey Taylor at Not Coming to a Theater Near You writes, “Underlining every frame of The Thing is an anticipating dread: the characters — and the viewer — sense the potential menace of an enemy they cannot see. Tracking shots frequent empty hallways, draped in cold fluorescent lighting; it is a subjective viewpoint, not of a particular character, but of a characterization — it is the cinematic manifestation of a pure emotion.”

“Twelve men have just discovered something. For 100,000 years it was buried in the snow and ice. Now it has found a place to live, inside, where no one can see it or hear it or feel it.” View the 1982 theatrical trailer for The Thing.

© Joe Valdez