The Thing (dir. John Carpenter, 1982)
“First goddamn week of winter.”
Somehow in all the times I have seen John Carpenter’s The Thing, this is the first time I’ve noticed that line from R. J. MacReady (Kurt Russell). The personnel of US Outpost 31 have only begun their season on the ice. They have months ahead of them when this Norwegian helicopter flies into their airspace, a passenger shooting wildly at this running dog and at them before the aircraft explodes and both he and the pilot are dead. Imagine if it had months later when all this happens–the Norwegians, the discovery of this strange corpse at their base, the infestation that threatens not only this Antarctic research station, but the whole world–and how much worse off they would have been then. Their supplies of fuel, booze, and Palmer’s weed running low, tensions running even higher after so long stuck with each other, even worse weather conditions. There’s no way they’d make it as far as they did.
The first film of Carpenter’s Apocalypse trilogy and I think the director’s finest film, The Thing hardly needs any introduction. Based on the novella “Who Goes There?” by John W. Campbell and previously adapted as The Thing from Another World, the 1982 film was absolutely hated on release. It is relentlessly grim. The closest thing to comic relief comes when Blair (Wilford Brimley) sequestered in his cabin after destroying all the radio equipment tries to reassure MacReady that he’s fine as a noose hangs from the ceiling. It is all about masculine power struggles and paranoia. The special effects work used for the alien creature’s shapeshifting abilities set a new precedent in gore.
But beyond all that, I think the aspect of the film that truly sunk its chances at the box office was all the wantonly cruel dog death. There’s no winning an audience back after showing them a kennel of Huskies be devoured alive.
The Thing is acknowledged now as a masterpiece. Sure, there are some details that don’t make much sense [1], but I can think of no finer expression of paranoia in cinema than this. Invasion of the Body Snatchers is fine, but there are places to run. The political films of the 1970s such as Alan J. Pakula’s All the President’s Men and The Parallax View and Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation are excellent, but are tied to a particular moment and culture. Even Carpenter’s later film They Live is about a late eighties distrust of and disgust for Reagan. But The Thing makes it primal: who can you trust when removed from civilization? That this trust is predicated on matters of biology–are you human or alien–is somewhat problematic due John W. Campbell’s noted bigotry, but Carpenter’s use of a racially diverse cast tempers that particular sentiment. The lack of any women in the film, too, gives The Thing a certain energy that can be off-putting, I think, but that’s an issue for many other movies as well.
The Thing has become a part of the culture of Antarctica. At the start of the winter season, the scientists and personnel at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station marathon the film along with The Thing From Another World and the 2011 prequel depicting the events at the Norwegian base. It’s a little bit like watching Alive, Fearless, and the first ten minutes of Final Destination on a flight, but you never know when this knowledge will come in handy.
After all, just this last month, Antarctica has seen “naturally formed” rectangular icebergs and a stabbing at Bellinghausen Station on King George’s Island. But then again, that’s the Russian outpost, so things are as likely to be getting Dostoyevskian down there as it is an extraterrestrial invasion.
[1] Why are there so many guns on the base? I can excuse the flamethrowers for deicing purposes, but how aggressive could those penguins be? Also, where is Palmer getting all that cannabis? Does he have a connection in McMurdo? Did he smuggle it onto the continent himself? What?
October 29, 2018
oliveresque 