Director: John Carpenter
Starring: Kurt Russell, Donald Moffat, Keith David, Wilford Brimley, T K Carter, David Clennon, Richard Dysart, Charles Hallahan, Peter Maloney, Richard Masur, Joel Polis, Thomas G Waites
Score: 9/10
This review by xxxnapoleansolo of the awesome SciFiLove site (well worth a look in my opinion for my 31 Days of Horror. He’s only gone and reviewed my favourite film of all time – worth getting a Blu-Ray player just to watch this film in my opinion.
Send me your horror film reviews.
THERE are many questions that can be asked about horror films, but one I always return to is whatever happened to John Carpenter?
For a time in the late 1970s and early 1980s, he was the master of all he surveyed and turned out several movies which are considered classics like Halloween, The Fog, Christine (at a push) and my favourite – The Thing.
All of those films are distinguished by Carpenter’s trademark transformation of the everyday, harmless mundanities of life into pants-wettingly awesome instruments of terror.
In The Thing, the transformation is literal as a shape-shifting alien parasite begins to kill and then replace members of a research team at an American base in the South Pole.
As paranoia grows – revealing the Cold War origins of the original Howard Hawks film – the team desperately try to find out who is real and who is likely to bite off their hands with their chest as a light appetiser before lunch.
At any level, this is masterful film-making by Carpenter, who builds tension virtually from minute one so that the viewer has no idea who is the alien until it is too late.
Just like the Jaws head in the boat scene, I still jump every time I watch this through my fingers or over the top of a cuchion with the lights on, even though I know what is coming – from the dog tentacle attack, to Blair’s hand in the face of Garry, the team leader.
My favourite – and probably the most famous scene – is where Kurt Russell’s character, MacReady, ties the rest of the surviving team members to chairs and takes blood samples to test with a hot needle, to see which person’s blood avoids the heat and so reveals them as one of The Things. It is filmed slowly, so slowly, with the camera moving from face to face as each test is clear …. until……
When the alien is revealed, it is done with blinding speed and razor fast cuts, the editing backed up with great performances by top level character actors like Donald Moffat and Keith David as well as truly shocking special effects, even today.
In my opinion, the fact they were physical effects and not computer generated adds a level of reality and gore to what we see, as poor Windows is virtually eaten alive – one of many disgustingly realised deaths.
Watching it again – indeed, watching any of Carpenter’s classic films from this era – it is sad to see some of his later works which suffer terribly by comparison. Let’s be honest, they would suffer terribly by comparison with Plan Nine from Outer Space or Dude Where’s My Car?
How is it that a once-great director can lose the things that made them great? Is it age? Money? Audience familiarity with favoured techniques and ideas? A creative block?
I think it is probably a combination of all of these things, with only a few true greats being able to sustain critical and commercial success over a longer period of time. You know, like Brett Ratner.
But despite Escape from LA, Vampires and Ghosts of Mars making me want to sandpaper my own retinas, Carpenter captured lighting in a bottle with The Thing, which is always worth coming back to and cements his place as a master of horror.
