1. The Thing
This is my favorite John Carpenter film, my second favorite horror movie and hangs around my top 5 films eternally, usually at number 3. A spaceship crash lands in Antartica thousands of years ago only to have a group of Norwegians find it in the present day (1982). The stars aren't the Norwegians, if you want to see their story The Thing 2011 is an OKAY telling of that with some major flaws, it does its best to sync up with this film, though. The film begins with two Norwegians chasing a husky dog with a helicopter, a sniper rifle and some explosives. The dog reaches a group of American researchers and the Norwegian tries to warn them but in his native tongue, when he begins firing at the dog one of his shots grazes one of the researchers and this is pretty much what causes peril for all. The man is killed under the belief he's attacking the US team and no chance for translating/understanding him is afforded. The dog isn't a dog, it's an alien that can take any form and it's in their base now.
This film was a box office bomb at release and a critical flop as well. It would take years for it to be re-examined and find an audience. It's all sort of mystifying to me because the qualities of the film aren't subtle. The atmosphere, the music, those goddamn creature effects... there's little about the film that isn't stellar and the horror genre could use more films not centered around teens, it's kinda refreshing to see a film in the genre that's strictly adults who act like adults. Some of them lose it a bit as the events unfold but how many of us wouldn't? I've always enjoyed movies where you can't trust the people around you, the paranoia about their possible motives, in this case that they aren't even human. This film keeps its secrets about who is or isn't human right up until everyone finds out and usually these are the biggest shocks of the film.
While movies like Invasion of the Body Snatchers used this paranoid device to represent things like the fear of communism in this film I'm going to argue it's about the spread of STDs. They're all men, the tagline is "Man is the warmest place to hide", they do blood tests to figure out who has it, it passes it to you when you're alone and out of sight of other prying eyes and the big give away is a certain poster behind Kurt Russell during the big blood test scene. It's an old timey poster saying "They aren't labelled, hun" with some girl smiling on it while wearing a pin that says "I've got VD" VD is for venereal disease. It's subtle enough I usually didn't notice, but when you think of the production of a film everything has a purpose, why put that poster up so it's visible during the blood test sequence? Anyway not important I convince others of this, the movie is great without it.
Ennio Morricone's score for the film is among his finest, definitely among my favorite scores, what some may not realize, though is that not all of his cues were used for the film. Carpenter wanted things more subtle than some of what Morricone provided, he ended up rendering some extra music with Alan Howarth that isn't credited in the film. In fact their contributions only got released recently, a few years back. A few of the tracks Morricone provided that aren't in the film at all made an appearance in The Hateful Eight, another film about people trapped in the cold who can't trust who's who.
I'm kind of obsessed with horror centering around aliens and on top of that horror that is atmospheric, this film gives me one of the most enigmatic and terrifying alien creatures ever put to film, with multiple disgusting and terrifying forms taken throughout the course of the film and the sort of atmosphere that actually makes me feel cold and alone while watching. There's an early scene of Kurt Russell's RJ MacReady playing a chess computer game, when he loses he accuses the computer of cheating and pours his alcohol into it, frying it. To me this sums up the film, it's a big chess game between him and the Thing and when he realizes he's being outplayed... he decides to burn it all down. Then, of course, there's the final scene where Childs returns from God knows where and they sit in the cold, waiting to see what happens next... he offers Childs some of his liquor... maybe Childs accepts it because at this point who cares, they're both dead either way... but it's established earlier in the film they should do things like eat out cans and not share bottles (even saliva can pass on the STD!) so Childs accepting it could be a sign he's The Thing at the end. In the script after passing the bottle MacReady realizes Childs is the Thing and torches him with his flamethrower... this remained in the script, though because Carpenter preferred the ambiguity of the ending he went with. That said, I do think Childs is the thing and there's a good video by Rob Ager explaining why.
He has another good one where he figures out what happened with the blood bank. There's a lot of things you're not shown in the film, who turns who when and such, so it's content that's potent for theorizing on Youtube and plenty of people do it, Ager is just one of my favorites for this.
Haunting, disgusting, cold and pessimistic, this film is the perfect apocalyptic horror.
Rating: 10/10
This is my favorite John Carpenter film, my second favorite horror movie and hangs around my top 5 films eternally, usually at number 3. A spaceship crash lands in Antartica thousands of years ago only to have a group of Norwegians find it in the present day (1982). The stars aren't the Norwegians, if you want to see their story The Thing 2011 is an OKAY telling of that with some major flaws, it does its best to sync up with this film, though. The film begins with two Norwegians chasing a husky dog with a helicopter, a sniper rifle and some explosives. The dog reaches a group of American researchers and the Norwegian tries to warn them but in his native tongue, when he begins firing at the dog one of his shots grazes one of the researchers and this is pretty much what causes peril for all. The man is killed under the belief he's attacking the US team and no chance for translating/understanding him is afforded. The dog isn't a dog, it's an alien that can take any form and it's in their base now.
This film was a box office bomb at release and a critical flop as well. It would take years for it to be re-examined and find an audience. It's all sort of mystifying to me because the qualities of the film aren't subtle. The atmosphere, the music, those goddamn creature effects... there's little about the film that isn't stellar and the horror genre could use more films not centered around teens, it's kinda refreshing to see a film in the genre that's strictly adults who act like adults. Some of them lose it a bit as the events unfold but how many of us wouldn't? I've always enjoyed movies where you can't trust the people around you, the paranoia about their possible motives, in this case that they aren't even human. This film keeps its secrets about who is or isn't human right up until everyone finds out and usually these are the biggest shocks of the film.
While movies like Invasion of the Body Snatchers used this paranoid device to represent things like the fear of communism in this film I'm going to argue it's about the spread of STDs. They're all men, the tagline is "Man is the warmest place to hide", they do blood tests to figure out who has it, it passes it to you when you're alone and out of sight of other prying eyes and the big give away is a certain poster behind Kurt Russell during the big blood test scene. It's an old timey poster saying "They aren't labelled, hun" with some girl smiling on it while wearing a pin that says "I've got VD" VD is for venereal disease. It's subtle enough I usually didn't notice, but when you think of the production of a film everything has a purpose, why put that poster up so it's visible during the blood test sequence? Anyway not important I convince others of this, the movie is great without it.
Ennio Morricone's score for the film is among his finest, definitely among my favorite scores, what some may not realize, though is that not all of his cues were used for the film. Carpenter wanted things more subtle than some of what Morricone provided, he ended up rendering some extra music with Alan Howarth that isn't credited in the film. In fact their contributions only got released recently, a few years back. A few of the tracks Morricone provided that aren't in the film at all made an appearance in The Hateful Eight, another film about people trapped in the cold who can't trust who's who.
I'm kind of obsessed with horror centering around aliens and on top of that horror that is atmospheric, this film gives me one of the most enigmatic and terrifying alien creatures ever put to film, with multiple disgusting and terrifying forms taken throughout the course of the film and the sort of atmosphere that actually makes me feel cold and alone while watching. There's an early scene of Kurt Russell's RJ MacReady playing a chess computer game, when he loses he accuses the computer of cheating and pours his alcohol into it, frying it. To me this sums up the film, it's a big chess game between him and the Thing and when he realizes he's being outplayed... he decides to burn it all down. Then, of course, there's the final scene where Childs returns from God knows where and they sit in the cold, waiting to see what happens next... he offers Childs some of his liquor... maybe Childs accepts it because at this point who cares, they're both dead either way... but it's established earlier in the film they should do things like eat out cans and not share bottles (even saliva can pass on the STD!) so Childs accepting it could be a sign he's The Thing at the end. In the script after passing the bottle MacReady realizes Childs is the Thing and torches him with his flamethrower... this remained in the script, though because Carpenter preferred the ambiguity of the ending he went with. That said, I do think Childs is the thing and there's a good video by Rob Ager explaining why.
He has another good one where he figures out what happened with the blood bank. There's a lot of things you're not shown in the film, who turns who when and such, so it's content that's potent for theorizing on Youtube and plenty of people do it, Ager is just one of my favorites for this.
Haunting, disgusting, cold and pessimistic, this film is the perfect apocalyptic horror.
Rating: 10/10
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