The
Thing by Jorge Solis, Resident John Carpeter
Expert
HUGE
Imagine you are stuck in a building with eleven
other people. You don't trust them and they don't trust you.
These eleven people are your only human contact because you
can't communicate with the outside world. Something else is also
in this building with you and it wants to kill you. I have just
described to you John Carpenter's The Thing.
This is a horror movie masterpiece. The
screenplay written by Bill Lancaster, based on the short story
"Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell, is gripping and
hard-hitting. Each one of the cast gives superb performances. A.
Wilford Brimly, T.K. Carter, David Clennon, Keith David, Richard
Dysart, Charles Hallahan, Peter Maloney, Richard Masar, Donald
Moffat, and Joel Polis deserve credit for bringing their
characters to life. Tough guy Kurt Russell is the leader of the
twelve man research team stationed in Antarctica. In their
research station is an alien that has fallen from the sky and
has been buried in the ice. After 100,000 years, the alien is
unfrozen and it is very angry.
You have seen this movie imitated in television
and other movies. The X-Files did an episode where Mulder and
Scully are trapped with other people in Antarctica. No one
trusts each other because they could be infected by alien worms.
The blood test from The Thing was imitated in the movie, The
Faculty. In The Faculty, the six characters each have to take a
drug in order to find out who is the alien. You can tell
director Robert Rodriguez and screenwriter Kevin Williamson are
John Carpenter fans because of The Faculty.
I haven't seen the Howard Hawks original so that
I cannot tell you if the original is better than John
Carpenter's remake. But I can tell you that the movie comes
alive whenever you see The Thing. The special effects were done
by Roy Arbogast, the makeup was by Rob Bottin, and the Albert
Whitlock did the special visual effects. The Thing is not a CGI
image like the dinosaur in Jurassic Park or a man in costume in
Alien. The Thing is a body within a body as Richard Dysart, Dr.
Copper, learns as he dissects it. The Thing is also a tarantula,
a human's head, and an eyeball in one scene. A lot of
imagination went into the making of the Thing for sure. The
movie also comes alive with the music. The music was done by
Ennio Morricone but in my opinion, he is imitating John
Carpenter's music.
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Violence, blood, and gore make a good horror
movie. There's a whole lot of everything in this movie.
John Carpenter knows where to put the camera. You're going to
see close-up a man's head rip itself apart. First the face
stretches out. Then the eyes start to bulge out. Then there's
blood all over as the monster jumps out of the head. But watch
out, here comes Kurt Russell with the flame-thrower. The Thing
also has the best line in cinema history. Listen to what David
Clennon, Palmer, says when he sees the alien waking around on
the floor. This is the best horror movie ever and only John
Carpenter could have made it. His direction in this movie is
aggressive and hostile. I said that Starman is his best work but
this is how I'm going to remember John Carpenter. John Carpenter
is the director of the horror movie masterpiece, The Thing.
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