The Thing

Oh boy, do I love this film. Saw it again last night on ITV4 or something. Sadly, it appeared to be the original cut, not the director's cut.

If I were a lazy man, I'd simply say this is a remake of the 1951 classic "The Thing From Another World". But that doesn't even begin to do this film the justice it deserves.

Very few remakes manage to be any better than the original. Most are consigned to obscurity, with questions raised about why they bothered remaking it. Quite a few are bloody awful. Very very few manage to surpass the original. This film is one of them. In fact, it's basically a "How To" film on remaking a classic of science fiction.

There are plenty of homages to the original. The film of the Norwegian's showing the shape of flying saucer echoes the spine tingling moment in the original film, where the team space themselves out on the edge of the buried object, only to discover it's perfectly circular.

When I first saw this, I thought that the big reveal about the alien happened too soon. However, later I realised that John Carpenter had to get it out of the way early on, so that the suspense and paranoia could take over and drive the rest of the film. The characters' degeneration from sociable through suspicious, hostile and into paranoid is done so well. The base provides much of the mood, the snowstorm making it feel claustrophobic and threatening. They are, after all, trapped in a small arctic base, with nowhere to go, no help to call on and limited resources, fighting a creature that can look and act exactly like them. This theme of being trapped and beyond rescue is used often in sci-fi and horror. Look at the Alien quadrilogy, Predator, The Abyss, 2001.

Also, and although you notice it without noticing, this film has no female cast members.

The final scene, is spectacular.

There's a very good computer game of this movie, using a "social engine", the other characters react to your behaviour. The script is fluid, so people get duplicated at different event triggers and in a different order, dependant on what you do.

Score: A (Although it has yet to find its way into my DVD collection)

OQ: I know you gentlemen have been through a lot, but when you find the time, I'd rather not spend the rest of this winter TIED TO THIS ****ING COUCH!

Fav bit of trivia: In August 2003 a couple of hard-core fans, Todd Cameron and Steve Crawford, ventured to the remote filming location in Stewart, British Columbia and, after 21 years in the snow, found the remains of Outpost #31 and the Norwegian helicopter. The rotor blade from the chopper now belongs to Todd and rests in his collection of memorabilia from the film.

At the beginning of the film the Norwegian with the rifle is the second unit director and associate producer as well as Kurt Russell's (then) brother-in-law, Larry Franco. According to John Carpenter, on the commentary track, Franco is not speaking Norwegian but making up the dialog. "Schmergsdorf" as Carpenter puts it. The subtitles, however, give the impression he is speaking Norwegian. The words spoken are actually understandable for Norwegians. Albeit broken Norwegian, the line goes: "Se til helvete og kom dere vekk. Det er ikke en bikkje, det er en slags ting! Det imiterer en bikkje, det er ikke virkelig! KOM DERE VEKK IDIOTER!!" This translates to: "Get the hell outta there. That's not a dog, it's some sort of thing! It's imitating a dog, it isn't real! GET AWAY YOU IDIOTS!!"

The Norwegian dog in the film was named Jed. He was a half wolf/half husky breed. Jed was an excellent animal actor, never looking at the camera, the dolly or the crew members. Jed, however, is NOT the dog seen in the beginning chase scene, where the Norwegian istrying shoot him. Per Carpenter's commentary, this was another dog painted to look like Jed.

The Norwegian camp scenes were actually the charred remains of the American site from the end of the film. Rather than go to the expense of building and burning down another camp, Carpenter re-used the destroyed American camp.

This film is considered a benchmark in the field of special makeup effects. These effects were created by Rob Bottin, who was only 22 when he started the project.

The flesh-flower that attacks Childs is actually an incredibly detailed effect. Its petals are 12 dog tongues complete with rows of canine teeth. Effects designer Rob Bottin dubbed it the "pissed-off cabbage".

In the scene where Norris' (Charles Hallahan) head separates from his body, special-FX designer Rob Bottin used highly flammable materials for the construction of interior of the head and neck models. During the shoot John Carpenter decided that, for continuity reasons, they needed some flames around the scene. Without thinking they lit a fire bar and the whole room, which by now was filled with flammable gases, caught fire. Nobody got hurt, but the entire special effects model, on which Bottin had worked several months, was destroyed.

John Carpenter and Kurt Russell both admit that after all of these years they still do not know who has been replaced by the creature and when.

Kurt Russell was almost injured in the scene where he blows up the alien Palmer with a stick of dynamite. Apparently, he had no idea exactly how big of an explosion it would produce, and the reaction that he has in the movie is genuine.

An alternative ending was originally shot showing MacReady rescued and a blood test proving he was human but it was done as a precaution and never used even for test screening and not part of John Carpenter's original vision for the film.