So while my wife was stuck working yesterday, I watched 1982’s The Thing – yep, another John Carpenter movie. While I’m not much of a horror movie guy – this one, being just as much about sci-fi in most ways, is a bit of an exception.

So a few interesting trivia – the movie is a remake of a 50’s monster movie by the same name. But here, the story is much closer to the original short story by John W. Campbell – ‘Who Goes There?’ But if you’ve read any HP Lovecraft, you will recognize Campbell’s story as being more than a bit derivative of his novella ‘At The Mountains of Madness‘. And fans of the X-Files (1st movie) will also remember a flying saucer in the Antarctic at one point in one of the movies also – not sure whether inspired by any of these stories/movies or not, but it’s there.

Finally, the most silly far-fetched reference I can think of is in Godzilla: Final Wars, where at the start of the movie an advanced submarine about to be destroyed by Godzilla ‘buries’ him far beneath the ice by blowing up an ice cliff over his head – later in the movie they are forced to blow him out of there to save Earth (because in the meantime, aliens have taken over all the other crazy Kaiju monsters and now seek control of mankind, too). Of course, Godzilla literally ‘walks’ (ocean depths notwithstanding) to all these various cities on different continents, defeats the other monsters, then helps a crazy team of Japanese kung-fu mutants (led by an even more ridiculous American soldier who looks like the white trash cousin of GI Joe) defeat the aliens and save earth.

But back to The Thing – this movie’s closer adherence to the John Campbell story means far more gore and tougher special effects than the 50s movie. At one point a guy’s head melts off and turns into a spider to run away – great stuff! Basically a shapeshifter alien infiltrates an American Antarctic research base and begins killing/imitating everyone – the Americans start to fight back, led by Kurt Russell, but it’s a tough battle. Wilfred Brimley (who now largely sells life insurance on tv) is the scientist who figures out what’s going on (but then weird stuff happens).

If you haven’t seen this movie, rent it sometime – but not for kids, definitely – unless you want to be up all night with them crying. The cast is great and the atmosphere of the flick really creates a sense of what it would be like to be isolated in a research base like that while being stalked by a killer – who could look like anyone!

oh and yes, Merry Christmas! 🙂

candybowl