Information about John Carpenter's The Thing

John Carpenter’s The Thing
Directed by	John Carpenter
Produced by	David Foster Lawrence Turman
Written by	Novella: John W. Campbell, Jr. Screenplay: Bill Lancaster
Starring	Kurt Russell Keith David Wilford Brimley David Clennon Donald Moffat Thomas G. Waites Joel Polis Peter Maloney Charles Hallahan T. K. Carter Richard Dysart Richard Masur
Music by	Ennio Morricone John Carpenter (Uncredited)
Distributed by	MCA / Universal Pictures
Release date(s)	June 25, 1982
Running time	109 min.
Language	English Norwegian
Budget	$10,000,000 (estimated)
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

The Thing is a 1982 science fiction film, directed by John Carpenter. Ostensibly a remake of the 1951 Howard Hawks film The Thing from Another World, Carpenter’s film is actually more faithful to the original novella, “Who Goes There?” by John W. Campbell, Jr. (writing under the pseudonym of Don A. Stuart). The film’s musical score was composed by Ennio Morricone, a rare instance of Carpenter not scoring one of his own films. Carpenter considers the film to be the first part of his Apocalypse Trilogy, followed by 1987’s Prince of Darkness and 1995’s In the Mouth of Madness.

Plot

An American Antarctic research station is infiltrated by an alien creature with the ability to perfectly imitate any organic life-form that it physically contacts. The crew of the station come to distrust each other as they cannot discern who is human and who is not. One by one they are killed, either by the creature or by each other.

The crew realize that if the creature were to reach the outside world, it would devour all life on Earth in a few years. Although they destroy a vessel the creature was secretly building, the crew are ultimately forced to destroy the station in order to kill it, even if it means their own demise. In the end, there are only two survivors—neither of whom is sure if the other is human, but both too weak to fight.

Cast

Actor	Role
Kurt Russell	R. J. MacReady
A. Wilford Brimley	Dr. Blair
T.K. Carter	Nauls
David Clennon	Palmer
Keith David	Childs
Richard Dysart	Dr. Copper
Charles Hallahan	Vance Norris
Peter Maloney	George Bennings
Richard Masur	Clark
Donald Moffat	Garry
Joel Polis	Fuchs
Thomas Waites	Windows

The only woman in the film is the voice of a chess computer, voiced by Carpenter regular (and then-wife) Adrienne Barbeau.

Some television versions feature a narrator during the opening that introduces the setting and characters.

Critical reception and themes

The film fared poorly at the box office, possibly due to the release of both E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial two weeks earlier, with its more optimistic view of alien visitation, and of Blade Runner the very same day, as speculated by Carpenter and writers that have covered him, such as Michelle Le Blanc and Colin Odell. Carpenter remarked that the audience for horror films had shrunk when questioned about the failure of The Thing in the book Prince of Darkness. The film’s reputation improved in the late nineties through home video releases, with the film even penetrating the IMDB Top 250. A collector’s edition DVD was released in 1998.

Despite the film’s lack of box office success, its special effects were simultaneously lauded and lambasted for being technically brilliant but visually repulsive. Roger Ebert called the special effects “among the most elaborate, nauseating, and horrifying sights yet achieved by Hollywood’s new generation of visual magicians,” and called the film itself “a great barf-bag movie.”^[1]

A scene from this film was listed as #48 on Bravo’s 100 Scariest Movie Moments. The film ranked #97 on Rotten Tomatoes’ Journey Through Sci-Fi (100 Best-Reviewed Sci-Fi Movies).

This film is cited as the first installment in Carpenter’s “Apocalypse Trilogy,” followed by 1987’s Prince of Darkness and 1995’s In the Mouth of Madness. While the plots and characters of the films are not related, they all feature a potentially apocalyptic scenario. The film is also notable in Carpenter’s career for two reasons—it was his first foray into studio film-making and it was Carpenter’s first film to be made without Debra Hill as co-producer. The Thing was the fourth film shot by cinematographer Dean Cundey (following Halloween, The Fog and Escape from New York).

Continuation of franchise

As of early 2007, there have been two announced projects to expand the franchise:

• Sci Fi planned to do a four-hour mini-series sequel to the film in 2003. Carpenter stated that he believed the project should proceed, but because of the lack of updates and the removal of all mention of it from the Sci-Fi Channel homepage, it is likely now abandoned, assuming it ever existed at all.
• In September of 2006, it was announced in Fangoria magazine that Strike Entertainment, the production company behind Slither and the Dawn of the Dead remake, is looking for a writer or writers to write a theatrical prequel to The Thing.^[2]
• According to Variety, Strike Entertainment and Universal Pictures are preparing to remake The Thing. Ronald D. Moore is set to write the script with Marc Abraham and Eric Newman producing. David Foster, producer of the original film, will be executive producer of the remake.^[3]

Video and DVD releases

After its cinema run, the film was released as usual on video, and also on laserdisc.

The Thing has been released twice on DVD by Universal. The first edition was a Universal Collector’s Edition released in September of 1998. It contained the documentary on the making of the film, along with deleted scenes (shown in the television version), a theatrical trailer and production notes. The only omission was an anamorphic widescreen transfer which was remedied with a new DVD release in October of 2004, which features a new anamorphic transfer with nearly identical supplements to the 1998 release. The Thing has also been released on HD DVD.

The Terror Takes Shape documentary on the 1998 Region 1 Universal Collector’s Edition DVD contains the option to replace the documentary’s dialog with the full, isolated Ennio Morricone soundtrack. This feature is absent on the 2004 release, as is the benefit of chapter stops during the documentary.

Other media

Theme Parks

In 2007, the Halloween Horror Nights event at Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida, the film property was designed as a haunted attraction called The Thing-Assimilation. Guests walked through Outpost 3113, a military facility where the remains of Outpost 31 were brought for scientific research. Scenes and props from the movie were re-created for the attraction, including the bodies of Macready and Childs.

Video game

In 2002, The Thing video game was released, acting as a sequel to the film. The game uses elements of paranoia and mistrust intrinsic to the film, and was released on multiple video game platforms: PC, PlayStation 2, and Xbox. The game is horror-based with action elements. Some retailers, such as GameStop, offered a free copy of the 1998 DVD release as an incentive for reserving the game.

Books and comics

There was a novelization by Alan Dean Foster published in 1982, based on the second draft of the screenplay. It includes the sequence in which MacReady, Bennings and Childs are forced to chase after some infected dogs who escape into the Antarctic tundra.

Dark Horse Comics published three comic miniseries sequels to the film, featuring the character of MacReady as the lone survivor of Outpost #31 and revealing Childs to be infected, although the comic books are not considered film canon^[4]. The series was renamed The Thing from Another World (the 1951 Howard Hawks original film title) in order to avoid confusion (and possible legal conflict) with Marvel Comics’ orange rock skinned Fantastic Four member also known as The Thing.

After their publication, John Carpenter stated he enjoyed the comics so much that he would adapt them if he ever filmed a sequel himself.

Television

In 2007, South Park parodied the famous scene in which the men test samples of their blood by burning it with a wire in order to determine who is an alien. The episode Lice Capades has Cartman--wearing a fur-lined jacket-- sequester the boys of South Park in a shack and makes them give him blood samples so that he can burn them in order to determine which of his classmates is infested with head lice. Kyle Broflovski then notes that Cartman got the idea from watching "The Thing."

CD Soundtrack

The original soundtrack, composed by Ennio Morricone, was released by Varese Sarabande in 1991. It has been out of print for some time, and usually fetches high prices at online auctions.

Track Listing

1. Humanity (Part I) (06:50)
2. Shape (03:16)
3. Contamination (01:02)
4. Bestiality (02:56)
5. Solitude (05:58)
6. Eternity (05:35)
7. Wait (06:22)
8. Humanity (Part II) (07:15)
9. Sterilization (05:12)
10. Despair (04:58)

References

Further Reading

• eBook All About ‘The THING’; analyses the film in depth

External links

• The Thing at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Thing at Box Office Mojo
• thething.ca The world’s largest The Thing memorabilia collection.
• The Thing at theofficialjohncarpenter.com
• The Thing: Between arrival and spontaneous emergence (The Thing and pulp-horror)

•  • [ e] Films directed by John Carpenter

Feature films: Dark Star • Assault on Precinct 13 • Halloween • The Fog • Escape from New York • The Thing • Christine • Starman • Big Trouble in Little China • Prince of Darkness • They Live • Memoirs of an Invisible Man • In the Mouth of Madness • Village of the Damned • Escape from L.A. • Vampires • Ghosts of Mars • Psychopath Made for television: Someone's Watching Me • Elvis • Body Bags • John Carpenter's Cigarette Burns • John Carpenter's Pro-Life