The Thing

i) how many Antartic research bases have flamethrowers and automatic weapons lying around?

ii) how come their base seems to have normal 24 hour days, despite being below the Antartic circle?

The blood test scene is one of the greatest movie moments ever; terrific Morricone score (mostly electronic, IIRC, something of a rarity and an obv. trib to Carpenter); even Kurt Russell doing his Clint schtick was OK (I love the moment when he pours whiskey into his computer!) Plus a really sharp script by Burt Lancaster's son!

I used to really like Anne Bilson's film reviews in Time Out, although sadly her vampire nov was a bit rub. Still I think I'd like to read this too. What a great, great flick.

they need pistols and flamethrowers in case the norwegians invade (when amundsen landed in "scott"s sphere of operations" in 1911, there was serious if brief discussion of the possibility of invading the norwegian camp and disabling the amundsen exhibition = they had guns available, for stray polar bears?) (haha very stray: polar bears = arctic not anarctic) (and yeah, no flamethrowers) (but anyway don't the Carpenter lot soup up the flamethrower from some more ordinary oxy-acetylene torch gizmo?)

The Thing is a masterful horror movie, which improves upon Hawks original by having a better monster (after all that giant carrot...) This body horror has never been bettered - the actual melting of people.....

Want to read this book. I want to read Quirke's Jaws book. I want to see more of these films with themed canapes and bouze afterwards.

ho ho, I didn't realise I was making a joke... I just can't stop being funny.

I agree with the points about mechanical rather than cgi effects. and there is a lot to like about the film.

it was slightly ruined for me by seeing it in a room with a load of sweaty horror fans, preceded by a documentary on Carpenter that had all the best bits in it. Which was annoying... I'd already heard about the "you gotta be fucking kidding" bit but had been at great pains not to spoil it for special friend Irene, and then the cockfarming documentary did it for me.

The Thing is still not as good as Assault On Precinct 13.

(the secret nagging question is: SO WHAT IF THE THING IMITATES US EXACTLY? If we are all turned into exact copies of ourselves, what has changed? "Go with the flow maan, resistance is futile... gooey tentacloid palps? bring em on!!")

Arctic circle is a grebt place to set a vampire film btw.

i read the story when i was like 12 and it *really really* spooked me (the monster is described, apparently dead, in the first para, oh no!! it has THREE EYES!! OH NO!!): in the bit where they do the blood test, mcready is testing 35 ppl!! carpenter cuts it down to a slightly less pedantic four, i think

the gender thing she says was probably the last possible moment they could cast the way they did: actually not strictly speaking "realistic" (antarctic stations had been mixed sex since the 50s), it was for emotional-narrative focus as much as anything

the question of blair's infection is interesting, because so deliberately left ambiguous i. on hand he jumps to the "it's a shapeshifting alien much too quickly", ii. on the other, he destroys the helicopters/radio etc, iii. on the third hand he misdirects mac towards clark (who ends up being shot and then turning out NOT to have been thinged) => billson points out that the unspoken question is, if you become a thing and it becomes you, how much of YOUR behaviour wd be a mask and how much wd be real...

i suspect childs's thing-dom is kept exactly as ambiguous (and remember someone finds a bit of mac's torn clothing: so he's not out of the picture, just cz he's the hero => yes he's behaving mac-like, but then the thing-that-became-mac WOULD, to fool the others or fool us!!)

http://www.arahne.si/Arachne06.jpg

Any other films with absolutely no women in at all. Actually - nu thread...

(also it stars frodo)

(the caffeine (= coke obv) scene = brilliant loving parody of the scalpel/test-tubes scene)

http://www.hbo.com/films/laramie/img/photo_cast_clea.jpg

jordana = cookiecutter brunette "looker" zzzzz

Hott brasilian-american with wonderful hair
http://www.tiramillas.net/cine/atodo/jordana.jpg

and goth poseur(real goths have black hair)
http://www.hbo.com/films/laramie/img/photo_cast_clea.jpg

(Actually I only like her cos she reminds me of dreamy skate-punk princess Lois, who has way better hair)

coz ok i just watched the movie and then "remembered" this whole mark s bit where he's totally sympathizing with the "thing" and spins this great hypothesis about how mcready is clearly "thing" but has decided by the strength of his will to be human that it doesn't matter. and also about how the "thing" is always in us, and in fact is our mutual fear and at the end, reduced to panic, everyone is reduced to "fire cleans all" which is as unscientific as you can get (and clearly the surface-opposition is science v. grotesque).

also about how blair ceases to panic and becomes "okay" when he reaches the same conclusion w/r/t the "thing" -- i.e. that it doesn't matter.

all of which i guess is part of the "so what if the thing imitates us exactly" except it's also all the BAD things the thing does are entirely human. except the thing gets to make k-cool spaceships too!

i may also have read all this elsewhere.

okay I need to read the book and see "the faculty" now.

also the initial scene with the thing and the dogs is totally horrifying as is the arms-getting-chomped scene, and the way the narrative closure with the two burned stations kicks this whole "statement of human nature" thing into high-gear.

(if true, this is the coolest thing evah btw) (best aspect: it can be totally real and totally unproveable simultaneously)

I thought that Blair WAS a "thing" by that point, that it had assimilated him just before he could hang himself (a noose in the background, isn't there?). But according to this, realising a lack of difference between the thing and the not-thing = becoming the thing-in-itself?

so maybe I do like this film after all.

Nice list - I mean, it would be better with less American films but it's pretty good xps

Just read the Billson BFI book in one sitting. Really excellent stuff, and very interesting to me for its sections focusing on compare/contrast with the Campbell novella and the Hawks film.

She really has a good eye for Carpenter's directing and structure, too. The little moments of brilliant misdirection (Clark's scalpel, Childs and Garry pushing back on Mac during the blood test), the singularly excellent casting and characterization, the escalating isolation (winter, storm approaching, no one answering, destroyed comms), etc.

Not much of this is really extremely new to me, but it's still so fascinating and nice to read something from someone who was deeply, deeply getting it at a point when so many critics were still thoroughly missing the point.

Just saw this in the theater for the first time. It’s a totally different movie with a crowd.

Finally got round to watching this before the apocalypse

This story is an interesting take

The Things by Peter Watts

There is also Adam Roberts's THE THING ITSELF.

"This was one of the first movies where the Black guy lasts to the final scene. I don’t think I’m the only brother who’s ever survived in a horror or sci-fi movie, but I’m certainly one of the few. It was great foresight on John’s part"

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2024/mar/25/john-carpenter-kurt-russell-the-thing-horror-classic

And in a situation where you don't really know which, between two people, actually "survived," adding to the fun

Playing the next few days at Film Forum as part of their Out of the 80s retro.

Enjoyed this but maybe the Hawks is still better

tying james redd to the rec room sofa and making him decide which film is better is my mcready moment

*pulses flamethrower a little, to test it has the juice just in case*

lmao

You're gonna find out what you already know, MacReady.

Have you watched the Norwegian prequel?

It’s pointless.

Yeah, seemed to be from the description

Hadn't realized John Carpenter had directed the Kurt Russell made-for-TV Elvis.

One thing this one has going for it is that Carpenter restored much of the original plot of "Who Goes There?" including the characters's names but also the shape-shifting aspects of the alien and the related testing at the end.

TIL (well YIL) that Charles K. Feldman was Howard Hawks's agent, that Hawks's business partner in the 1951 production Edward Lasker was married to Jane Greer (much to the consternation of Howard Hughes) and that Margaret Sheridan who played Nikki was a Hawksian protogée orignally slated to appear in Red River (where Nyby supposedly saved the day with his editing which is why he was rewarded with this directing job or credit) but was pregnant which is why the role went to Joanne Dru instead.

Also liked the homage of the title sequence image.

Really need to read that Campbell bio properly.

Which book says Campbell may have been somewhat inspired by Lovecraft, since "At the Mountains of Madness" was serlalized in Astounding, even though in general he disliked Lovecraft.

jules verne wrote a novel called THE SPHINX OF THE ICEFIELDS (1897)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/%27The_Sphinx_of_the_Ice_Fields%27_by_George_Roux_69a.jpg

that uh “sphinx” looks like the melted nazi from raiders of the lost ark

bad vibes imo

old-timey pictures of the sphinx which are terrible

That Jules Verne is a sequel to Poe's Arthur Gordon Pym, which is maybe proto-Thing as well?

https://pulpcovers.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/13_astounding_1936_02_brown-600x849.jpg

proof if proof be need be

How do people feel about THE FOG?

Basically love it, with the possible exception of when I'm actively watching it

Heh

It's playing at the FF on Thursday.

I was being a little flip ... the moments I genuinely love about The Fog are actually the moments where it feels like the plot is refusing to kick in, like it's really going to just coast on vibes like the best parts of Halloween did

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMTI1MDM5NDUwOF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMTc1MzkxMQ@@._V1_.jpg

by John W. Campbell, Jr. (as Don A. Stuart) The place stank. A queer, mingled stench that only the ice-buried cabins of an Antarctic camp know, compounded of reeking human sweat, and the heavy, fish-oil stench of melted seal blubber. An overtone of liniment combated the musty smell of sweat-and-snow-drenched furs. The acrid odor of burnt cooking fat, and the animal, not-unpleasant smell of dogs, diluted by time, hung in the air.

same energy:
a: "The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning."

b: "The room stank of demons."

lol

https://i.imgur.com/L3sg6Vg.jpeg

look i know it’s alien but i thought you guys would appreciate

an alienne cheftburfting vpon the table of a man

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNWSQgvnyzk

hello, I look like a man wearing a John Carpenter mask

Just saw that in my feed.

And thought the same about the mask

Wililam Tuttle iirc.

Although maybe that was one mask he didn't make

Meanwhile in real life: scientist’s ‘disturbing’ behavior, death threats at Antarctic base
https://interestingengineering.com/culture/scientist-disturbing-behavior-antarctic-probe-begins

https://i.imgur.com/1hf960g.png

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDIaL9Begao

throw me in the briarpatch baby