- In my admittedly limited experience with the genre, I find that most horror films fail for one of two reasons. The first possibility is that the monster just isn't that convincing in close-up. If the audience is left thinking "I was scared of that?" after the big reveal, things have gone wrong. The second, even worse situation is that the film drags whenever the monster's offscreen. If you can't stand to spend five minutes with the non-monster characters or fail to start imagining where that monster might be hiding, things have again gone wrong. Of course, some horror films manage to fail on both counts by starring lousy monsters who still manage to be the best part of the film , but I won't even get into those. The point here is that John Carpenter's The Thing is one of those truly rare horror films that handles the seen and unseen aspects of its monster with equal skill.
- The film opens to Ennio Morricone's intense, pounding rhythms and shots of two men in a helicopter cruising low over the Antarctic tundra trying to shoot a dog. Why would anyone go to so much trouble to kill a dog? The men are sufficiently agitated and Norwegian that we don't get a clear explanation before they are both killed. The employees of the local Antarctic Research Station, however, are understandably curious and send an expedition to the Norwegian outpost. What they find is a lot of burned-out wreckage, a hollow ice core, and...a corpse? I employ a question mark here because the charred multiple heads and strange appendages make it unclear precisely what we're looking at. Maybe "Thing" really is as descriptive as we can get. Anyway, they bring the remains back to the research station for examination while the newly adopted dog intently watches on.
- To the film's great credit, the audience given plenty of time to ponder the situation before the creature finally reveals itself. And what a revelation it is. When the new dog is put in with the others, the pen erupts into a confusing mass of tentacles, screeching, heads, and blood. It's the sort of beastie you might see near the bottom of a Hieronymus Bosch painting or, especially given the Antarctic settings, that could have been inspired by H.P. Lovecraft. In a word, grotesque. Fortunately, a flamethrower appears to make short work of The Thing, but an examination of the corpse and follow-up visit to the Norwegian site suggest we're dealing with an invasive extraterrestrial life form that can mimic human appearances. So who's real and who's alien? Now the real fun begins.
- Everybody has their own ideas, some better than others, on how to deal with this Thing. As the first to realize what's going on, Dr. Blair (Wilford Brimley) goes a little crazy, sabotaging the helicopter and communication equipment ostensibly to prevent The Thing from spreading off base. Some of the tougher hombres, like MacReady (Kurt Russell) and Childs (Keith David), lock Blair in a shed, but it isn't long before a full-scale witch hunt is underway. Like MacReady says, "trust's a tough thing to come by these days." Unfortunately for them, The Thing can just lie in wait until threatened, at which point it usually pops out of a body like a jack-in-the-box. In the film's biggest shock, Dr. Copper (Richard Dysart) reaches down to defibrillate a heart attack victim named Norris (Charles Hallahan) when Norris' chest opens up and bites Copper's arms off. The flamethrower takes care of Norris' body, but his head still has a little arachnoid life in it. "You gotta be fuckin' kidding," observes one of the crew.
- I've already covered most of the gore and surprises, so it says a lot about The Thing that its best scene involves the crew sitting quietly in a room. When MacReady realizes that even The Thing's blood is hostile, he gets the idea to tie everyone up to conduct a scientific demonstration. Sure enough, one of the blood samples erupts when he prods it, but the real tension comes from anticipating how The Thing will react to all of this. Perhaps needless to say, it does not react well. So after all of the flamethrower-firing, dynamite-tossing, and monster-killing, what are we left with? Two guys sitting around in the subzero temps, tossing a few back. "Why don't we just wait here for a little while...see what happens," concludes MacReady. It's not even close to being a happy ending, but it's probably the most appropriate conclusion for a uniquely enjoyable horror slaughterfest like this.
- Thermite strikes again, in a great nod to the Howard Hawks film.
- This and the Hawks film were based in part on a novella by John W. Campbell, Jr.
- The screenplay was written by Burt Lancaster's son!
