I recently checked out the 1982 film, The Thing starring Kurt Russell, Keith David, and Wilford Brimley among others, from my local library.
I gotta tell you, folks, the film is pretty good!
A warning for those who love dogs more than people, a popular trend these days what with the website “Does the Dog Die" Dot Com” but with seemingly no “Does the Human Being Die Dot Com” in sight (site). The film opens with some Norwegians shooting at a dog from a helicopter. For the dogs, events get exponentially worse from there.
After this one random dog shows up on screen running through the show from the feds or whatever, the pup makes his way to an American scientific center in Antarctica, the dog was already on the continent he didn’t run there from Montana or anything. Perceiving the humans with guns as a threat rather than the beautiful, fluffy dog, the Americans in typical fashion shoot before asking any questions.
This leads them to explore the Norwegians’ base a few miles away and bring back a Thing that they think is dead, but of course, isn’t.
Remember how things got worse for the dogs? The random dog is one of these Things and absorbs another dog and out of concern, one of the team members, played by Brimley, takes an ax to them in what can only be described as a gratuitous but effective piece of cinema.
In any event, The Thing goes nuts and picks most of the crew of scientists off one by one as The Thing can shapeshift into whatever it wants. This breeds paranoia and mistrust in the crew. The film culminates in the base being exploded for the good of humanity, blah, blah, blah.
So, that’s the film.
The themes of paranoia and how the location of a scientific base in the Arctic reflects the isolation and cramped mentality that the characters have were particularly effective on a Sunday night alone in my apartment. It’s an interesting psychological piece as well as a fun effects film. Seeing each of the crew members have to deal with the threat is fascinating, from fear, arrogance, cowardice, and hope, all of humanity is on display in The Thing. All of the performances are superb with Keith David, Richard Masur, and Wilford Brimley being standouts to me.
The film also does a lot to establish characters and their personalities in the first few minutes of the film so that by the time they’re being picked off one by one you have a favorite.
As for the effects in the picture, they are a delight! Using a mix of puppetry and animation the team really brings The Thing to life in an incredibly creative and disturbing way. I audibly groaned and said “Yuck” when the thing transforms from people to its natural state. In a particularly fantastic transformation, the creature turns its chest into a mouth to bite off the hands of the doctor, played by Richard Dysart. From there it is decapitated and uses its tongue to slide across the floor and grow insect-like legs to try to escape. The character of Palmer, played by David Clennon, utters the words that everyone is thinking “You’ve gotta be F*cking kidding me.”
The themes of the film are excellent as mentioned before but I bring them up again to state that in an interview the film’s director John Carpenter illuded to the fact that the titular Thing is a metaphor for whatever social problem you want to be. But, the lesson is that the poison comes from within not without, and that it is people’s reactions to Things, not The Things themselves that cause the most destruction to society.
In the last moments of the film Keith David and Kurt Russell look at each other as the base is burning around them, both are suspicious that the other might be The Thing, but beautifully, they realize that it doesn’t matter, they’re going to die anyhow, so the might as well trust each other.
That trust is imperative for society to function and without trust we have nothing.