John Carpenter's The Thing

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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
Budget	$10,000,000 (estimated)
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IMDb profile

John Carpenter's 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 novella that serves as both films' source material, "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell, Jr. under the pseudonym of Don A. Stuart. The musical score was by Ennio Morricone, a rare instance of Carpenter not scoring one of his own films. Carpenter considers this to be the first part of his Apocalypse Trilogy, followed by 1987's Prince of Darkness and 1995's In the Mouth of Madness.

Contents 1 Plot 2 Cast 3 Critical reception and themes 4 Alternate ending 5 Continuation of Franchise 6 Television version 7 Video and DVD releases 8 Other media 8.1 Video game 8.2 Books and comics 9 Trivia 10 References 11 External links

[edit] Plot

An American Antarctic research station is infiltrated by an alien creature, which has the ability to perfectly imitate any animal or human it has come into contact with. The crew of the station come to distrust each other as they cannot tell 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 vehicle that it was secretly building, ultimately the crew are forced to destroy the station in order to kill the thing, accepting that this act would also kill themselves. This appears to be successful. There are only two survivors - neither sure if the other is human, but also too weakened to defend themselves.

[edit] Cast

Actor	Role
Kurt Russell	R.J. MacReady
A. Wilford Brimley	Blair
T.K. Carter	Nauls
David Clennon	Palmer
Keith David	Childs
Richard Dysart	Copper
Charles Hallahan	Norris
Peter Maloney	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.

[edit] Critical reception and themes

Upon its release, the film was lambasted by critics for its special make-up effects, created by Rob Bottin, which were seen as excessively bloody and repulsive 1. 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 same night, as speculated by Carpenter and writers that have written about him such as Michelle Le Blanc and Colin Odell. Carpenter also said that the audience for horror movies had shrunk when questioned about the failure of The Thing in the book Prince of Darkness. Yet its reputation improved in the late nineties through home video releases, with the film even penetrating the IMDB Top 250 [1]. A collector's edition DVD was released in 1998.

A scene from this film was listed as #48 on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments.

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. The plots and characters of the films are not connected. 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 in a co-producing effort. The Thing was the fourth film shot with Dean Cundey as his cinematographer (following Halloween, The Fog and Escape From New York).

Though strictly unintentional, certain elements of the film (transmission of the alien organism through bodily fluids, the use of a blood test to detect the presence of disease, the inability to determine infection simply by sight) paralleled the first reports of a new disease, AIDS (both Carpenter and Kurt Russell discuss this coincidence on the DVD edition's commentary track).

[edit] Alternate ending

The film's ambiguous ending leaves open the question of whether the alien organism has been destroyed. An alternative ending was originally shot, but only as a precaution and was never used, even for test screening. According to Carpenter it involved Macready being rescued and tested for infection; he would of course test negative, a rather upbeat ending for such a relentlessly dark movie.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Continuation of Franchise

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

The Sci-Fi Channel planned to do a four-hour mini-series sequel to the film in 2003. Carpenter stated he had heard about the mini-series as well and 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, if 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 tackle a theatrical prequel to "The Thing.".^[1]

According to Variety, Strike Entertainment and Universal Pictures (the companies behind the 2004 version of Dawn of the Dead) are getting ready 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 also executive produce the remake.^[2]

[edit] Television version

The prime-time television CBS airing of The Thing made several changes. Most of the gore was edited out, and the profanity dubbed over. Interestingly though, extra narration was added to the opening scenes of the film, introducing and describing the characters at the camp - importantly, Norris is stated to have a heart condition, which the original film does not make clear. The scene with Blair at his computer has an extra voice narration by Wilford Brimley reading the wording on his screen.

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

The Terror Takes Shape documentary on the Region 1 (but not Region 2)Universal Collector's Edition DVD contains the option to replace the documentary's dialogue with the full, isolated Ennio Morricone soundtrack. This isolated soundtrack is accessed by first selecting the Terror Takes Shape documentary, then going to the “Language Selection” option, and clicking “Music Score,” which takes you back to the Terror Takes Shape screen.

[edit] Other media

[edit] Video game

Main article: The Thing (video game)

In 2002, a video game was released, taking the form of a sequel to the film. The game — also titled The Thing — makes use of the elements of paranoia and mistrust intrinsic to the film, and was released on multiple platforms: PC, PlayStation 2, and Xbox. The game is horror-based with action elements. The game's trust-based mechanics, which allowed you to test your fellow team members for Thing-infection, were undermined by the game's insistence on automatically converting previously uninfected team members into Thing infectees at certain waypoints. This lent a feeling of pointlessness to the game's testing mechanic, as you could test somebody, find out that they're clean, and then see them erupt into a Thing as soon as you walked through an invisible waypoint moments later. Some retailers, such as GameStop offered a free copy of the 1998 DVD release as an incentive for reserving the game.

[edit] Books and comics

There was a novelization by Alan Dean Foster published in 1982. It was 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 escaped onto the Antarctic tundra.

Dark Horse Comics published three comic book sequels to the film, featuring the character of MacReady as the lone survivor of Outpost #31. 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.

The 2003 comic book Venom, about Marvel Comics' popular anti-hero, was partially based on The Thing. In the comic, U.S. communications specialist Patricia Robertson is stationed at a radar station in Canada near the Arctic Circle. During a routine supply run to an outpost owned by the Ararat Corporation, she stumbles upon a grisly scene: everyone at the installation is dead except for one lone scientist locked in the freezer. It is later revealed in the series that a clone of the Venom parasite was created and released in the outpost. The last surviving scientist at the outpost exhibits extreme distrust toward his colleagues inside the compound after the symbiote kills most of them, another recognizable influence by the Thing. The alien symbiote has powers similar to The Thing, including the ability to possess people and animals and the ability to mutate the possessed at will, as well as a weakness to fire. One notable exception is that the parasite does not spread to multiple hosts like the Thing (but it can reproduce). Also, the parasite uses the creatures it possesses not only as a host, but also a source of energy, consuming their life force and killing the host when it leaves the body.

[edit] Trivia

• This film was parodied in the South Park episode "Lice Capades" when Cartman uses an adaptation of the film's "heated wire in blood" test to see which student has lice.

[edit] References

1. ^ September 6: THE THING prequel on the way. Retrieved on September 8, 2006.
2. ^ Michael Fleming (2006-11-16). U preps for 'Thing' fling: Carpenter classic set for remake. Retrieved on November 17, 2006.

[edit] External links

• Outpost #31 - The Ultimate THE THING Fan Site
• The Thing at the Internet Movie Database
• 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)
• Review of The Thing video game at Something Awful