The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982)

I am upset that this motherfucking piece of greatness is not on cable EVER AT ANY TIME. Tho I guess AMC (blarg) is showing it soon, at 56 AM or something.

you can always buy the dvd

i have the dvd, and i really need to watch it again because i can't picture anyone except macready and blair off the top of my head.

where is the dog???

Haha, my thoughts exactly.

maybe a "mod" can "fix" this "poll" and "add" the dog

or in this case "dog"

this movie was scary when i was a kid.

Clark. Watch Clark.

ya hear me?

man such a great cast in this. sounds like this was really fun to make, too.

I think I gotta go with Blair, just for the gagging sounds he makes during the dissection.

NO CHICKS

there's some talk about that on the DVD "making of" feature - mostly it was a decision to remove any questions of sexual tension/politics/identity from the plot. which, when you think about it, makes perfect sense - having a mixed-sex crew at the station would've raised a lot of issues and complicated the plot. and the simplicity of the story/concept is really key.

nauls and windows were probably the go-to guys in case of sexual emergency

there's a big second of that "fecund horror" essay linked on the 80's sci-fi poll about the Thing, and the gender issue specifically.

beards and earrings are key

lol, that poll is before the actual essay on google now.

wtf is a big second

second = section

it's been a long day.

Chariots of the Gods, man. They practically own South America. I mean, they taught the Incas everything they know.

watching videotapes of gameshows = classic

there's a big second of that "fecund horror" essay linked on the 80's sci-fi poll about the Thing, and the gender issue specifically.

conclusion explicitly drawn is that there's no women because the film is predicated on an inherently gay subtext. which I guess is true insofar as one accepts that a bunch of guys = gay.

Almost an Anal Cunt song title, that.

"You're a Bunch of Guys Alone in an Antarctic Base = You're Gay"

astronauts in the right stuff? GAY

all-male cast of "Stand by Me"? GAY

You Look Infected

This was on TV a couple of weeks ago here, I love this film :)

The DVD commentary track on this is the only commentary that I've listened to more than once.

Best part:

Carpenter asked Brimley what he was thinking about when he (as possessed Blair) was trashing and mutilating the place. Brimley replied that he was thinking about doing his laundry

where is the dog???

It's not the dog or the computer chess game. It's all about MacReady's ridiculous hat.

Also, this page to thread

"As a whole the subjects became less trusting and more suspicious of others immediately after their year in Antarctica." –A.J.W. Taylor, Professor of Clinical Psychology, "The Selection of People for Work in Polar Regions"

...

On casual viewing, the movie appears to be just another sci-fi movie with dubious special effects. However, no other movie in history has ever depicted daily Antarctic life and its problems with such accuracy and intuitive brilliance. It took place at a research station with no scientists, which is the case with McMurdo Station in the winter. The doctor was nuts, which underscores the problem of attracting to Antarctic stations qualified physicians who have no practice at home and who are willing to work for peanuts on year-to-year contracts. The doctor was locked in a hut away from the others after his madness, much like the kitchen worker who was locked in McMurdo's luxurious Hut 10 to await retrieval by the FBI after attacking his co-worker with a hammer. There was suspicion of aliens, which parallels the evacuation from McMurdo in November 2000 of a science tech who held a lecture called "The Reality of Dreams" and later advertised to the hoi polloi that one Thursday aliens would descend in spacecraft to meet him outside the galley. In the film, the testing of the crew's blood brings to mind the USAP employee drug tests. And the film prophetically dramatized, and served as propaganda for, the U.S. political push to ban dogs from Antarctica, which the other Treaty Nations reluctantly consented to in 1991. And what of "The Thing", that can infect any fellow and turn him into a threat against his neighbor, that leads to the ultimate fizzling out of "The Station"? The Thing represents Bureaucracy, reproducing via individual hosts who are each stunted by their fear of an organized but faceless entity that influences every aspect of their daily lives. If there is a more lucid film that describes daily Antarctic life, it has already crumbled to dust in obscurity.

Common icons of Antarctic life are repeated throughout the movie with uncanny precision: spilled fuel; ubiquitous barrels; plentiful whisky; anti-intellectualism; resentment toward Norwegians being the first at Pole; general madness; obsession with generators; and black flags planted in the snow are all familiar to the Antarctic station. There are minor annoyances, such as that the crew stores dynamite in a supply closet in the main building, that they don't tie anything down outside to keep it from the wind, and that their machines start up in the cold without being plugged in, but the most noteworthy deviation from actual USAP practices is that in the film everyone has a flamethrower. In the movie, fire is a tool against insidious dangers and is employed as an agent for the community against the threat of a larger hostile organism. In the actual USAP, employees are forbidden flamethrowers.

This movie gives an exceptionally accurate image of an early 80's Antarctic workcamp, and it certainly does justice in relaying the stark and expansive nature of the continent itself, at least as it is along the coasts. The movie also does justice to the fact that Antarctica, like all others, is a blue-collar continent populated by grunts, with many workers here giving only a very casual if not disdainful glance at the Science they Support. Perhaps I have ensconced myself in a circle of cynics, but it has been my experience that people who believe they are here in the name of Science are considered naive, and if this attitude persists into a second season or longer, they are scoffed at as fools. To be sure, this place is infested with said fools, who feel they must surely be on the cusp of something larger than themselves, and thus revel in the perceived majesty of unspoiled nature. They would better revel in the majesty of the power plant, for if they had to live in tents and shit in the cold, they would surely call a turd a turd.

There is genuine value in scientific endeavors here, and some of it is even interesting. But Science is a facade. The real name of the game is Geopolitics. The base in The Thing doesn't seem to be studying anything; it's just there to hold on to some unspecified claim. The money that supports this fictional base is, like its more authentic counterparts, for something much larger and far more tenable than Science. We (the United States) aren't spending 250 million dollars a year because we care about penguins. I am happy to point out that the movie is entirely penguin-free. Indeed, the film gives the impression that if a penguin were to show up before this motley group, the beast would be seized and held as a mascot, at least until one of the dogs tore it to pieces.

one thing i liked about the film, which is touched on above, is the way the fuchs character--the most bookish-seeming--isn't "one of the guys", something communicated just in his background presence in much the film.

This was the main feature at last year's HP Lovecraft Film Fest here in Portland:

http://www.hplfilmfestival.com/current/schedule/img/2007poster.jpg

Seeing it on the big screen is great.

In the actual USAP, employees are forbidden flamethrowers.

A rule probably the subject of loud complaints year after year, too.

The MacReady action figure is pretty freaking great

http://www.sotatoys.com/productphotos/69-1-m.jpg

Also: http://www.outpost31.com

i saw this when it came out, i was 15. my buddies and i got free tickets from the local nyc classic rock station (wplj or wnew - jim kerr was the dj who handed the tickets out). also a free "THE THING" t-shirt which i wish i still had. the movie was everything i expected, plenty of gore & shocks. i haven't seen it since! i also remember it got really bad reviews at the time.

http://www.outpost31.com/vistar/games/brdgame.html

for a long time, I had some of the "monster" figures from that action figure series. the one with the dogs and the blair head was uh something else.

Best line in the whole film.

“I know you gentlemen have been through a lot, but when you find the time, I’d rather not spend the rest of the winter TIED TO THIS FUCKING COUCH”
http://www.houseofhorrors.com/garry.gif
Gets my vote.

I really liked the increasingly paranoiac vibe of the flick. Just a bunch of guys all with firearms and booze and smokes and no sleep and dynamite. The head guy packing a sidearm, etc.

I don't know if I could call it realism, but one of the other bits I like was Mac's initial reaction to seeing something weird in the dog-pen; unlike every other monster movie idiot character before him, he actually grabs a gun and pulls a fire pull station as his first responses.

Also, the blood-testing sequence isn't just great for the suspense, but for the humor & the editing, too. Each guy freaks out to be let out of his ropes, cut to a reverse angle shot of the just released guy aiming a weapon at the rest of the group. Repeat.

And Keith David is awesome in this flick.

"you gotta be fucking kidding..."

i haven't seen it since! i also remember it got really bad reviews at the time.

It came out the same year as E.T. Everyone wanted cuddly Spielberg aliens.

"I dunno what the hell's in there, but it's weird and pissed off, whatever it is."

Yeah, I can't think of this film being more loved nowadays. Guillermo del Toro talked about seeing it in Mexico as a kid (on a horror-film list show) and how the crowd was loving every minute of it.

If only Carpenter aged as well as this flick.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/414FT7G7X6L._AA280_.jpg

Destroy: that supposed remake of this. I mean, no. I don't care if Ron Moore's involved or not.

Search: Dan Simmons' The Terror, which while inspired by the fifties film more nicely ties together fucked-up polar region death and mayhem with the fate of the lost Franklin expedition.

heh, i'm reading that right now

I went to college with Dan Simmons daughter. She used to tell hilarious stories about waking to find Stephen King passed out on the couch.

!

Hahah, beautiful.

http://i153.photobucket.com/albums/s236/mezxspectrum/Thing-wilf.jpg

it's on tv right now! thank you, amc!

"this is *bullstuff*!

I bought the DVD. :D

the music in this is super classic

totally

tried to watch this last night and got super scared after first like 10 minutes. going to try again now.

The first season X-Files tribute episode is mighty fine as well. Especially the cold open.

The whole cold isolated antarctica surrounding is vital in this movie, as is Carpenters amazing music score.

Watched it again recently, and unlike some re-watches I've done lately I managed to sit riveted through the whole movie.

Class!

as is Carpenters amazing music score

Ennio Morricone!!!!!!!

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

"tried to watch this last night and got super scared after first like 10 minutes. going to try again now."

Er, how did you get on with the other 99 minutes ... ?

Morricone mistaken for Carpenter: understandably!

i got through to the end of 1 hour!
am going to finish this wkend - i guess i was feeling kinda sensitive/weird last wkend i don't know so yeah
it's so good tho!

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Computer chess game 2
Keith David - Childs 2

?!

If 'severed upside down head with spider legs' was an option...

half those votes are for kurt russell's hair

ok gonna finish watching this thing

the thing

half those votes are for kurt russell's hair

I voted for his hat

Childs is great. Also shows up in They Live and There's Something About Mary!

made it through - realized i'd only ever seen the first 45 min before
so great will watch again

In reference to the gay comments way up thread, I just watched this again last week... and based on the entire "making of" bonus featurette, it takes no stretch of the imagination to think that all these actors were having one big gay orgy the whole time they were in BC.

Don't believe me? Watch the making of and get back to me. It's hilarious, and kind of heart warming they way they talk about it.

it's not so much that the characters are actually gay, but that any all-male situation can have "gay panic" undertones, i.e. locker rooms, the army, etc, where gayness is something to be brought up in order to be shot down. if you add an alien that causes the men to literally give birth to themselves then it gets a little more intense

no homo

Yes, but I'm not talking about the characters or the scenario. I'm talking about the director, actors, and crew. Watch the "Making Of" and get back to me. It could not be more thinly veiled.

ok i'll bite

Yes Nate every time they talk about how making the film was an "amazing experience" they're talking about taking Wilford Brimley's cock up their ass.

You watched it!

I have watched the extras (as I ref'd above) and I still think the gay panic thing is kinda overreaching (or overreaching around) in terms of what is actually shown on screen

stfu, many xposts

gay panic thing, cold war geopolitics, six of one, half a dozen of the other

really, the whole film is a metaphor for gay panic on film sets

Like every 1982 film.

Blade Rammer

Petergeist

Tootsie
The Missionary
The Humpback of Notre Dame
Eating Raoul

ALL GAY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILIvPzyK_8I

mark s, myself and starry sarah discuss "who goes there" with OUR ACTUAL HUMAN VOICES and transmit it over the airwaves -

http://freakytrigger.co.uk/slugoftime