From the Vault: John Carpenter's The Thing

With the prequel/remake hitting theaters it's only fair to talk about the original.  Actually, even this movie is a remake of an earlier movie called, "The Thing From Another World" made back in 1951. 

This has to be one of the best horror/sci-fi movies ever made.  The Thing makes perfect use of practical effects.  The special effects are not CGI but uses stop motion animation.  The musical score created by Ennio Morricone while simplistic is striking and memorable.  The mimicing of the heartbeat is heard throughout the movie. 

The movie starts with a lone dog running across the snowy landscape being shot at by helicopter.  We learn why soon enough when the turns out to be the mysterious alien "thing".  What makes the "thing" so scary is the same reason we are scared of the shark in Jaws.  We never see it.  When we do see it, we usually see it in a transition phase.  We see it in a process of absorbing someone or tearing itself apart to form something else.  The thing was intelligent.  It adapted to better conseal itself.  It would purposefully leave false information pointing to someone else as the thing.  When attacked, it would change to defend itself.  All while keeping a low profile in hiding and building a spaceship without anyone ever noticing.

The atmosphere of the movie should be a lesson to all future filmmakers.  It's set in Antartica but they shot the movie in northern Canada.  And it was cold.  They saw their breath and the cold added to the danger and the isolation the characters felt.  Since they felt it, the audience felt it.  In most monster/slasher movies, one complaint people have is that they never run away.  In this movie, running away is just as life threatening as staying.  They would freeze to death if they just ran away. 

The characters are all memorable and it doesn't take long to learn much about them either.  Take MacReady.  We learn so much about him in a single scene.  We have a scene where MacReady is playing chess on the computer.  While he's playing he has a glass of scotch in his hand.  The computer beats him and he very calmly dumps the drink into the computer frying it.  Then he just says, "Cheating bitch" just as calmly.  What did we learn about MacReady from this scene?  We learned that he is intelligent, impulsive, a drunk, and abnormally calm.  All things that come into play later when he takes charge after the thing is revealed.  He's the one to think of the idea of a blood test.  He's the one holding a gun to people's heads ready to kill them if they don't do what he says. 

If you haven't seen this movie yet, it will blow you away.  But I offer this challenge.  For those that love CGI in movies, watch this and see how good practical effects look and how much of a different reaction you get from the actors when they actually see something in front of them rather than leaving it up to their imagination. 

This movie must be watched.  It's too good to pass up.