The Thing
Directed by John Carpenter (1982) ***
Author John Campbell’s 1938 “Who Goes There?”, originally published in Astounding magazine, is one of the most influential of all science-fiction novellas, used as the basis of more media than can be kept track of: movies, television episodes, novels, comic books, radio episodes and even video and board games. Even so, despite two of its film adaptations being helmed by superior directors, one could argue a definitively successful version has yet to be made.
The 1951 The Thing from Another World is ostensibly directed by Christian Nyby, but Howard Hawks, who co-produced and co-wrote it, has his fingerprints on every frame. (It’s been speculated that Hawks allowed Nyby to take the credit in order for Nyby to be able to attain membership in the Director’s Guild.) The U.S. Air Force is added into the mix, but the basic setting is the same as the story: scientists discover an ancient extraterrestrial craft frozen in the icy tundra. The ship is inadvertently destroyed as the crew attempts to unthaw it, but a creature of some kind is discovered in the ice and brought back to the research station. Here they eventually discover the alien is more vegetable than human, able to replicate itself through blood-nourished seeds, and is decidedly not in a diplomatic mood.
The creature (played by the magnificently tall James Arness) is eventually destroyed, but the film’s influence (it eventually earned nearly two million dollars) didn’t die. It spawned an entire decades’ worth of imitators, poorly written, usually cheaply made science fiction tales revolving around an actor in a monster suit (or, as in 1953’s Robot Monster, a gorilla suit topped with an antennaed helmet). Despite the sci-fi element, The Thing from Another World has little in common with those. In fact, its whiplashed dialogue almost works against it. The movie is made as if it’s a standard Hawks venture, with great overlapping dialogue, snappy patter, humor, camaraderie and wisecracks amongst the boy’s club scenario, a sharp, smart and strong female lead who holds her own amongst the guys and even some romantic sadomasochism (eventually eliminated from syndication prints). It’s like seeing a Milton Caniff strip brought to life (I mean that in the best possible way) or the cast of Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s The Front Page dropped into a horror story.
The result is a film that’s very entertaining to watch and listen to, but with the problem that the very real threat and importance of contact with life beyond earth doesn’t receive the kind of serious response it needs (except in the form of a scientist who’s so hopelessly naive he’s a threat to the survival of the camp). The group working for a common cause could have easily been digging a tunnel under Brooklyn instead of fighting an alien life form and the interplay between characters would have been much the same. Don’t let that, though, keep you from seeing a remarkable film.
John Carpenter, hot off 1981’s Escape from New York, was determined to make a version of the story more faithful to John Campbell’s original story (and to avoid the cliche of a man in a monster suit). In “Who Goes There?”, the creature could ominously take on the form of any organic creature it touched, adding another level of paranoia and suspense. In The Thing, Carpenter and make-up artist Rob Bottin used state of the art effects to create astonishing, pioneering body horror.
The Thing involves no armed forces personnel. Americans manning (there are no women in the cast) a research station in Antarctica are surprised when a Norwegian helicopter travels to their location while attempting to shoot and kill a sled dog also running to the station. The Norwegians are killed but the sled dog remains alive, to ingratiate itself into the group’s camp. In The Thing, a dog is not man’s best friend.
The Thing‘s cast includes helicopter pilot R. J. MacReady (Kurt Russell), Wilford (Quaker Oats ads) Brimley as the biologist, Keith David as a mechanic and Donald Moffat as the station commander. The others who make up the group are smaller in number than the 1951 version, making for a tighter, more manageable cast. The screenplay, by Burt Lancaster’s son Bill, seems to purposely go in the opposite direction of Hawk’s version: nary a one of the characters in The Thing are likeable or interesting, and in many scenes seem nearly indistinguishable. It’s apparent that what was important to Carpenter was not characterization or theme but gore. Put succinctly, The Thing tries to out-Alien Alien. Both stories involve a small group of workers isolated from the outside world, dealing with a malevolent shape-shifting alien creature, with no guarantee that anyone will survive (or that humanity will survive if the creature makes it to civilization). 
The melting, molting, morphing, rancid organic concoctions and fabrications Carpenter and Bottin came up with are truly unsettling, especially considering what’s seen on screen is pre-CGI. Is it fair to Carpenter’s film to point out that Alien had a better screenplay with more individualized characters, better actors and better alien designs (by the visionary H.R. Giger)? Probably. Ennio Morricone’s score, though, is a plus.
Credit goes to Carpenter for attempting to adhere more closely to John Campbell’s original story and for daring to close with an ambiguous ending (probably one of the reasons The Thing did not initially do well at the box office). As with the 1951 version, it’s worth your time. But there does seem something amiss when the creatures I was rooting for most when watching The Thing were the dogs. The opening sequence of the sled dog being shot at in the snow from a helicopter above was one of the most suspenseful scenes in the film. The dog who received the most sympathy from me was the one maniacally attempting to chew his way out of a metal cage while it was being sprayed by shots of white alien goo.
And I don’t even like dogs.
—Michael R. Neno, 2024 March 12