Saturday, April 28, 2007

The Thing


I'm going to venture a little into B-Movie Catechism territory and talk about a film for a little bit.

The first time I saw The Thing I was twelve years old and was spending the night over at a friend's house. They had cable and The Thing was playing. I still remember sitting on the floor watching as a dog's face split like a banana peel. And it just got more gory from there. My mother didn't let me see most PG films so this was forbidden fruit. And like Adam and Eve I was sorry at the time that I tasted it. I had nightmares for a while after. (If you haven't seen the movie it was really groundbreaking in the amount of blood, guts, and monsters that looked like guts.

And that's what a lot of critics and regular people took from the movie (not that I blame them.) But if you separate the gore and view the movie from a storytelling and cinematic perspective the film approaches greatness.

The opening of the movie begins with a flying saucer hurtling toward earth which I personally could have done without. It seems to have been placed there for the slower audience members who later might question, "how did a flying saucer get buried in the ice?" So cut that part out.

The next thing you see is the title card in which light bursts through suggesting the nature of the monster killing from the inside out. It is genuinely creepy and was fashioned after the titlecard of the original film version of this story; The Thing From Another World, made in 1951.

The original short-story was about trust and here it was deftly fashioned into an allegory for the post World War II era in which it was made. The idea of a foreign body infiltrating and imitating someone you know echoed the concerns of the day; the spread of Communism and it's agents and sympathizers in the United States, and to some extent the film industry itself.

Similarly the 1982 version is an allegory of the times, only accidentally. Unbeknownst to the filmmakers, the AIDs epidemic was just beginning to make news. The similarities between the two, while completely accidental, are almost as creepy as the movie itself:

- The thing kills on the cellular level.
- The only way for the characters of the film to find out who is infected is to test their blood.
- The thing is projected to take over the world if it isn't stopped.
- The thing only attacks when two people are alone.
- The cast of the film is completely male (not indicative of AIDs as a disease itself but more of the prevailing notion early on that it was a "gay" disease.)


Anyway, the film really begins with a dog running over ice chased by a helicopter whose occupants are shooting at the dog. It's basic storytelling to begin the story in the middle, but basic isn't bad. On the contrary it's incredibly effective and you find yourself wanting to know more just as the characters of our story do.

Now I'm not going to give you a scene by scene blow. If you haven't seen the movie, you should. If you have then you know what I'm talking about. This movie does an excellent job of setting it's atmosphere. The music is perfect (a score not provided by the director himself which is unusual for this director.) The look of the film is perfect which is pretty hard considering there is a lot of snow and ice. Some of the lighting choices are brilliant; whole scenes are lit with flares alone. There are really great parts here.

But that's the problem. Atmosphere doesn't make a movie. And the gore keeps getting in the way.

By today's standards it's pretty tame and of course in our age of digital manipulation the foam rubber monsters and goo seem kind of fake in moments. But at the time it was a real gross out picture. Which is a tragedy because there are the makings of a really good movie here (Kurt Russel pictured below is excellent.)


Less is more. I've been saying it for a while now (ref.: "Why I hated the Jurassic Park movie.") I wish the filmmakers had opted to show us less. Some of the most memorable moments in the film are not the creature itself but the characters' reactions to it. Most are subtle changes in the face. Some are funnier moments (a certain stoner and a very memorable line.)

For me, Jaws is a perfect movie. And that movie's production was blessed with a shark that didn't work most of the time. Consequently they had to use the barrels to show you the shark was down there. It was absolutely brilliant but happened only out of necessity. Somebody out there tell me that the first shark attack of the movie isn't horrifying. And you don't see the shark during the whole thing! It's done completely with reaction and some very effective "breath" acting.

I guess I wish that The Thing had been plagued with similar problems. Its monster moments are at their best when the most subtle. For instance, the burned remains of the thing at the Norwegian science station still bother me when I see them today. They're a jumble of body parts and what looks like two half faces separated by about six inches but joined together in this truly hideous morphing of flesh that results in a grotesque expression not unlike the faces of Thalia and Melpomene (the smiling and frowning masks that symbolize comedy and drama.) It leaves space for your imagination to work.

Another memorable monster moment that still works is when the characters corner one of their own who has been taken over but isn't completely changed. At first, when he turns, he looks human in all aspects but the camera slowly reveals that he has these weird and gross crab/claw hands. The monster in mostly human form then lets out this slow otherwordly wail just before they kill it. Like I said, still very creepy.

And no, I don't see the appeal of today's horror movies. They appear to me to be no more than a competition to see who can be the most twisted. The idea of a monster that "could" exist has been replaced with the idea of a monster that does exist in our world: a person doing horrible things to another person.

Anyway, there's more good in this movie than bad. If you haven't seen it, check it out. If it's been a while since you've seen it, watch it again. Just watch it through a pair of rose colored glasses, if you will. And after all, what's more fun than pink snow?

4 comments:

  1. I'm a big fan of The Thing. I enjoy its sparseness (is that a word?) The setting is brilliant, like a character all its own.
    The scene where Kurt tests the blood with the hot coil is an absolute classic.
    Carpenter had a good run there for a while of creating genuinely creepy atmosphere and tone.
    Great movie.

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  2. Aw, I don't believe for a minute you needed me to goad you into talking about a movie. I DO believe every hack churning out remakes these days should be forced to study this film frame by frame until they figure out how it's done correctly. (Of course, that probably wouldn't work either considering the recent Carpenter remakes.)Curious as to whether you think there is a genre out there where "more" is better than "less"?

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  3. That's a really good question. I'm going to have to think about it. Maybe I'll answer it with its own post.

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  4. never was a huge fan of the Thing. Sure...it was interesting. Maybe because everytime there was a free HBO weekend..it was on. Perhaps I'll view it again, though. I'm certainly getting less & less enthused about current movies. Initially, I was a fan of CGI but now I think it's waaaay overused. Sigh. I think this now officially makes me a geezer.Get ready...I'll soon tell you how I walked to school in the snow....

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