The Thing
 (1982)
review by Red Velvet Kitchen

John Carpenter fans are a strange bunch; apologies if you're one of them. They insist that after the pointless 'Vampires' and the vaguely embarrassing 'Ghosts of Mars', Carpenter will rise from the ashes of credibility and make a film as good as 'The Thing' again. However, 'The Thing' isn't all that great itself, and for that matter, nor is Halloween, The Fog, Escape From New York, Big Trouble in Little China or Starman. Good, not great. Yet these films are devoured and hailed as classics by many rabid types, honoured as if the Citizen Kane of the alternative horror market. Whilst Carpenter is always watchable and often clever or interesting, he does not make the kind of life-affecting, nerve-wrangling, trauma-inducing films that usually mark out a cult favourite in the extreme cinema realm. He's good, he's a hoot, but he has no real idea how to marry his undeniable technical expertise with the bold ideological concepts his horrors slip awkwardly towards. The Thing is a perfect example of this deficit, a gruesome cocktail of exploding skin, burning flesh and bleeding wounds with added apocalyptic musings, attached to a decently suspenseful men-on-a-mission type film. The problem is, the two aspects stay disparate, never troubling each other during the course of Carpenter's apparent mission to coerce audiences into blurting out the film's most notorious line. His mission however is a failure, as we might say 'You got to be fuckin' kidding' about Rob Bottin's amazing special effects work, but you're certainly not going to chant it Third-Reich-style about the disappointment that echoes when the gore has gone.

I think you can often spot an interesting actress by her stalker, or lack of. An actress worth your time will have that mixture of good looks, a fascinating persona and a decent résumé in the acting stakes. The type to obsess over, to look at with strange, longing eyes is an actress to admire. No one is going to get worked up and messed around by the permanently normalised likes of Sandra Bullock or Meg Ryan; film fans are more likely going to go for Asia Argento, Monica Belucci or Emily Watson, female performers with a genuine edge. By a similar token you can also spot interesting horror helmers this way, through the endearing mixture of guffawing praise and po-faced seriousness fans feel obliged to spout whenever their master is mentioned. From the absurd extremities of early Peter Jackson to the way Lucio Fulci uses the human body as some kind of extreme piñata experiment, the fanboys are a good indication of something fascinating. Carpenter however doesn't have much to show for; he has no real niche, no exciting nuances, bravado or daring. This would be okay if he was a brilliant filmmaker, but wake-up-alarm-stapled-in-ear to followers, he obviously isn't up there with Orson Welles and Martin Scorsese dining out on critical caviar. He's merely quite good, and thus his rampant following will probably always confuse me unless a rabid fan sees me on the street after reading this and proceeds to bash my head in with a monkey wrench until I nod systematically and repeat Stepford Wives-style 'Carpenter is God'. But that probably won't happen, as I can be quite the scrapper if you try (you don't think Deckard was a replicant? Prepare to eat my fist. That kind of thing), and besides I seriously can't imagine anyone having the strong desire to stick up for this vaguely above average director anyway. Fulci maybe (some guys just like their blood messily extracted) but surely the guy that tried to feed us a film involving Chevy Chase which doesn't contain embarrassing jokes, doesn't invoke that sense of breast-beating passion and empowerment that makes horror auteur dedication so much fun.

The funny thing is the film really should be rather good. To start off, there's a cracking ensemble cast whose little cautious glances and individualistic interaction suggest stories, altercations and tales from the past. This greatly increases how Carpenter decides to play the horror; its not shocking, disturbing or explosive, but coiled in knots of paranoia and claustrophobia. Kurt Russell meanwhile is too obviously the figurehead, diminishing the apparently random, impartial killing method of The Thing and kind of ruining the idea that there are no real good or bad guys, just a bunch of organisms with their survival instinct kicked in. This man of action dynamics emerging from the bemused pack to thwart the alien menace is neither surprising nor invigorating. He's beefier, hunkier and edgier than the rest of the cast, who seem strangely wary of trying to steal the limelight (unlike the superior Alien, where everyone is going for broke). Besides, I've never understood the appeal of Russell who is as close to a mainstream cult item as I can currently think of, which is odd because although consistently watchable, he's neither distinctive, particularly charismatic, dangerous, captivating or idiosyncratically fun. He's the thinking man's muscle, but little else is there to merit those that have Plissken quotes rolling from their tongue. The missing link between goon guru Bruce Campbell and the king of winningly absurd action flicks, Arnold Schwarzeneggar (a combination that surely only sicko's would want to see) perhaps it's just that he really does look a lot like a lion. This detail though is typical of the way the film deceives, ostensibly heading off into a new, original or provocative direction before being grounded by a pat answer or formulaic passage. The 'Spider' scene notwithstanding, the only truly daring moment is the chilling ending, which manages to be both ambiguous and satisfying, concluding the story but also shifting our perception of the previous hour and a half with its bleak and vaguely apocalyptic closing chapter. However, like so much of this film, the powerful ending deserves to be in a film which carries its convictions and interesting ideas all the way through; the final line is a knockout blow, but the fight is disappointingly inconsistent.

In fact, apart from the final scene, the best line of dialogue in the film comes during the taut and tense (but ultimately worthless, much to my chagrin) blood testing sequence, involving Russell in a strained moment of supreme mistrust accidentally shooting a dissenting member of his team. The most intriguing member of the cast shadowy Keith David wryly adds after his negative testing 'Doesn't that make you a murderer?' which bursts open a writhing can of worms concerning mortal responsibility, masculinity under breaking point, and the relationship between rashness and guilt, regret and redemption, which should then force the film into scarily unchartered waters, the ideological footing of the film as slippery and cold as the omnipresent snow. In reality this potent remark is played as a throwaway remark. This continues further down the line, neat ideas underdeveloped for the sake of pursuing Carpenter's desired mixture of throwback horror smacking noisily into the decadence of the modern age, no clearer than in the central conundrum (which the film takes ages to correctly unveil): 'Do you know if you're The Thing?' which is a perfect clash of old time spook virtues and timely identity questions. Naturally, the film asks more questions than it ever cared to answer, and this compelling thread remains thoroughly enigmatic. Once you think about it, there is so much more that could have been done with this 'creature-as-premise' concept; the furthering of the great idea of the alien forming creatures it had encountered on distant planets (it would have been great if Carpenter had doggedly pursued his apocalyptic musings and had the alien visit a post nuclear or meltdown wrecked planet to show where our little plot of land was heading), or the spectacular special effects cutting deeper than portraying The Thing as a neat piece of kit, rather than an instinctive, pitiable, desperate creation.

Ponder for a few minutes, and the bad outweighs the good, which leads to disappointment. There should have been more scenes like Russell's longing and regretful ode to his Dictaphone, Carpenter shouldn't use the impressive cinematography from Dean Cundy as a template for yet more interesting angles and distancing techniques, and with the urgency and desperation of the scenario, it's a shame to see Carpenter's familiar flaws cropping up again. The man lacks any emotional urgency to his horror, his characters never have anything to lose or gain, and the villainous entity rarely has any genuinely affecting motive. Both of these factors combine to create an especially numb and neutral effect, bizarrely considering the violent histrionics often on show. Whilst other horror directors sentimentalise or contort their film for maximum scares, Carpenter just detaches.

However, I'm being a little unfair here, because The Thing is a pretty good film, one that at least has ambition, verve and much to recommend it as a more casual watch. It's just in the face of its label as a modern classic, you've got to concentrate on the downers, just as a lover of the film 'Chopping Mall' would have to create one hell of a stunning argument in order to convince us that it isn't a stupid, inane generic miscarriage with a misleading title. The Thing is clinical (for better, and then worse), making excellent use of its location in regards to sound and vision. The film's shifting between eerie calm, paranoid and awkward silences and utter chaos is expertly mirrored in the colour scheme which frequently dashes between vibrant reds and yellows and the muted omniscience of the solid snow, and the soundtrack whose deft Ennio Morricone orchestration and underplayed dialogue is often ripped apart by tortured screams, blaring weaponry and the sense of noisy, irrational panic. If you were to catch a glimpse of this film, say a five or ten minute sequence, I'm pretty sure your appetite would be whetted, but the film lacks cohesion and coherence, as it rumbles its way from memorable moment to memorable moment in a crucially unmemorable fashion. Like a dot to dot puzzle someone has filled in incorrectly but not had the stalwart instinct to rectify the errors. With added chest cavities and exploding plasma. Good, not great.

The DVD however is a great little nostalgic trip. A superb commentary gives you a real feel for the filmmaking process as both a technical feat and a gathering of creative-minded people. There's a real sense of camaraderie between Russell and Carpenter, and whilst the latter is informative, elaborate and compelling, the former just seems to be having a great time discussing a film he fondly remembers. Other than this, there are some disappointing featurette-type options which offer a rapidly changing sequence of text pages which are good if bored, a decent collection of photographs, some truly interesting initial sketches for the monster, and an hour long 'making of' recollection featuring amongst others Carpenter and Bottin. This is predominantly about the special effects (and to an extent, this reflects the film's modus operandi) but is nevertheless packed with the customary collection of anecdotes, backslapping, technical explanation and plain, good old fun