There's a brilliant parallel between Kurt Russell's introduction and the end of the movie. He loses the chess match in his introduction, so he destroys the computer. The thing outplays him in the end so he blows up the base.
Add to that the pretty vague but very interesting links between Russell's drinking after losing chess and handing Childs a drink when they are together at the end (when Childs could be a Thing). An excellent amount of mystery for the film, great movie
Another interesting thing, the chess computer did cheat as the move it made was impossible. Not sure if that was intentional or not but interesting still
I'd call that more like major reaching than anything. Nothing to show a person is a sore loser other than blowing up a base. No other reason to blow it up at all. Especially not any interdimensional overpowering body snathers. Nope. Nothing at all.
You don't mention that the best part of this movie; the fact that the characters make rational decisions based on what they know. The character's aren't stupid, and they don't get into trouble simply because the writer or director needs them to in order to ramp up the tension. No one makes a foolish decision. You are never once screaming at the screen going "Why did he do that? I would never do that! Why doesn't he do this?" They all act in a reasonable way, despite the unreasonable situations they are in. Great characters, and great writing.
That's why I'm on the Prometheus hate train. We don't do it to feel popular, Ridley Scott fans, we just ride that train because that biologist character was so goddamn stupid.
Great example, mate, of where things happen because the writer/director/producer/whoever wanted to see them happen, and so contrived events to get there, rather than allowing the characters to make reasonable decisions given their knowledge of the situation.
Jimmy De'Souza I think you could put some of those down to shock or a lack of understanding of the situation. I don't expect the characters to make the perfect decision every time, just a reasonable one given what they are going through.
I feel like some of that could be attributed more to the shock and exhaustion of the characters. The Norwegians also had been through some shit so it makes sense for them to be irrational.
If Stephen King wrote this, it wouldve had: a human bully, a team member with psychic ability the Thing wouldve been an "elemental demon" it wouldve taken place in a lighthouse in Derry, Maine where the team is cut off due to a hurricane and flooding.
Fun fact. If you are norwegian, swedish or danish the fact that the dog is a monster is revealed in the first minutes of the movie. The desperate scientist in the beginning litherally screams "the dog is a monster" in norwegian(not that it isnt kind of obvious that something is weird, but still).
We don't dub, that's a German thing. Actually, the reason we Scandinavians all know English may be linked to that fact. Sadly they dub kids material now...
Someone pointed out somewhere that the theme song to John Carpenter's The Thing sounds almost like a human heartbeat, but just different enough to be off putting. Such a great little detail I had never noticed before.
I watched it tonight. I thought it WAS a heartbeat. I didn't notice ANY of the music besides those little beats and I didn't even realize that it was music.
Summer of '82 sounds like an absolute blast. Imagine seeing Road Warrior, The Thing, and Blade Runner in a theater on the same day. I'd pay full ticket price today for all 3 of them, easily.
@@Takeshi357 The Last Crusade, Ghostbusters II and Batman one Saturday then Lethal Weapon II, The Abyss, and Uncle Buck another Saturday. Also probably try to fit License to Kill in there somewhere as well.
@@habadasheryjones Also UHF, Back to the Future part 2, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, Weekend at Bernie's... ...and if you're really bored, Friday the 13th part 8 and Star Trek 5.
@@StubbsX88 You mean the voice over that Harrison Ford tried his best to botch on purpose and the studio put it in anyway? As ham as it is, 99% of the movie is still in that cut of the film. I'll take seeing the theatrical version on the big screen as long aa I get to double bill it with The Thing. I'd prefer the Final cut but it's not like I had the choice in '82.
wonderguardstalker Yeah that's the only scene it works for. Even later in the film when the Blaire thing kills Gary you can clearly see a glint in its eyes.
I thought he would have been more famous for everyone spouting off his line of "Don't ask questions. Just consume product and get excited for next product."
One thing that always killed me about the 2011 version was the use of modern tools in the film. At the beginning she is using a probing camera to examine the mammoth remains, the Norwegians are using cordless drills. All in a film that is supposed to be a prequel to a film that is clearly set in the winter of 1982.
Lil' Connor Peterson so the groups working in the harshest possible conditions would get new unproven and potentially unreliable equipment? Makes sense to me!
@@MegaZeta Wasnt even the effect that killed the 2011 one. Like they showed in the video. The Thing is more like a wild animal and doesnt really care much most of the time if it is sneaky or not. (I wanted to like it to the Xenomorph but that is also more sneaky then the 2011 Thing)
@daskampffredchen9242 it's more confrontational in the prequel because it's never been around humans before, it has no idea what we are capable of (thinking wise) therefore it starts to opt for stealth and secrecy as much as it can in the original
Oh yeah. It was on TV every year around October. "La Cosa". My mom liked watching all this horror movies when I was little but she never let me watch them.
The pinnacle of horror movies. What a small team of artists achieved here with practical effects hasn't been surpassed by rooms filled with CGI artists on computers. Much like Rich Evans, it gets creepier every time I watch it. :-D
It's always the movies that affect you in some way that makes or breaks it for critics. When it came to these films, the content of them disturbed people so much that they just wrote it off as 'shock value', which is stupid. It's like what Stephen King said about The Shining. "This is a movie made to hurt people," or something. If the movie succeeds at what it's aiming for, then that's a good thing! Movies that invoke real emotion in the viewer are good, damn it! 'Mainstream critics' are just pretentious jerkoffs that don't actually appreciate films they watch. Art direction, scores, shot composition, it doesn't matter to them. But that's what you should expect from the mainstream itself.
It's because horror is a very niche appeal. A lot of people don't like feeling scared or disturbed, so they pan movies that are actually scary while praising movies that are labeled 'horror' even if they actually aren't. The recent trend of horror movies over the past decade has been much more horrifying in how it's happened than any of the movies themselves.
@Bobby Peru To be fair, all you need to do is watch BOTW to kind of understand why. Horror and action are really open to exploitation, so I can kind of understand why critics might think this movie is just trying to capitalize on shock value and gore effects. They saw those, which are typical of exploitative b-movies, and made assumptions about the intent of the director rather than judging the film on it's own merits. But you know what happens when you assume...
The fact that people still debate who, if anyone, was the Thing in the end scene means that scene worked, not that those people are missing the point. The intent of that scene was to sum things up while showing that there's still that same paranoia even then, and the fact that people debate it means they were so successful in showing it that it infected the audience as well. The people that debate it come up with theory after theory as to how they could tell who's human or not, and that's the _point_ After all, that's what the characters spend a good part of the movie doing, so getting the audience to keep theorizing this far on just means they did an excelent job setting up viewers to empathize and connect with the characters.
Agreed, though I think the point they mean is about people forgetting that there is no answer to that question (who if anyone is a Thing at the end of the movie). You can have a pet theory, but there is no actual answer.
I mean, thats exactly what they said tho "the fact that the paranoia is still there means that it worked" they just take it a step further and restate what carpenter himself has said about the scene: he intentionally made it ambigous. You'll never truly find out who if anyone was the thing, and its on purpose. Theres enough hints that could go either way but not enough to fully prove anything. The fact that peole still talk about it means it worked, sure, but the point was never to really figure out who is or isnt the thing. The paranoia was the point. People who make the theories have to take them with a grain if salt because the dierctor himself has said the answer is ambigous
@@eldenlean5221 Exactly. It's fun to come up with theories and follow their logic. It's the people who thing they know as a fact...well, they're doing it wrong.
@@Ocrilat yeah I just rewatched it yesterday and its amazing how well executed that ambiguity is. Its brilliant how its set up so that you have equally good reasons to believe one or none of them are the thing.
When the biologist is trashing the radio/vehicles and going "crazy" he is still human. He is then locked in the cabin and goes to kill himself (as a noose is seen dangling from the rafters). However before he could, someone went to the cabin and infected him - when the group visit he is suddenly happy to see them, says he feels fine and ignores the noose completely (as if he no longer remembers what humans use nooses for). My money is on Palmer-Thing infecting him, because interestingly the doctor starts talking _very_ much like Palmer does in this scene. He starts saying "Hey man" repeatedly in the same way Palmer does, whereas he spoke very formally when he was human.
SerMattzio I agree that the sequence of events you stated is correct, but I want to point out that the Thing perfectly copies its victims including skills and memories, so the Thing would know about the purpose of a noose, and it wouldn’t confuse Palmer with Blair. I think the noose might be an attempt to convince the rest to take him back into the base (to stop him from killing himself).
@@omegastar19 Well, the characters _say_ it perfectly imitates other life forms but that's their best guess at the time. I'm not sure the consciousness itself is perfectly imitated. Note Palmer is half-listening to his headphones during the argument over the blood bank. He looks very confused and dazed, staring into space as if he's trying really hard to understand what he's listening to, but he no longer understands the concept of music. Any human would of course know immediately what the headphones are. The suicide-risk ruse is interesting and equally plausible IMO, though I would expect the Thing to try and show off some depression symptoms instead of cheerfulness if it was actually doing this. Also interesting to note that at no point (IIRC!) do we see Things using sophisticated human combat tactics. Palmer at one point picks up a flamethrower but he never attempts to actually use it. They stick to using their natural hard-coded ambush and imitation strategy, almost as though they do not copy all of their host's memories or mentally adapt in the same way humans do.
@@MegaZeta I think its a possible valid interpretation of the scenes using clues provided by the story/shots. Weirdly hostile reaction to a fan opinion and equating it to their directorial debut/fanfic of The Thing. You both like The Thing so shut up. lmao
I agree he wasn’t infected or fullly infected when he was isolated. But his pencil did hover (touch) the thing during his investigation. The shot leaves it ambiguous. He then touches the pencil to his lips.
@@tastycookiechip He would also rant to his half Jewish wife about Jewish people, in which she would have to remind him he shouldn't disparage his own wife's race. lmao And his cat's name means he might not be afraid of black people, but he didn't mind using a popular slur for them.
well it was released in Northern Hemisphere summer, which is Southern Hemisphere winter (aka where Antarctica is) so they did do this in a certain sense
But I wanted that prequel. And it was made by true fans of the original. Very awesome effort ruined by the suits who replaced much of the awesome practical effects with CGI. I'll admit that the ending was a little weak, though.
@@jna6246Learning that they created ACTUAL practical props for the scenes of The Thing for that prequel movie, including that scene were you see the guy start getting assimilated, was depressing. I don’t understand why higher ups dont realize that practical effects will look better and hold up for YEARS. CGI effects look extremely dated within a couple years while practical effects stand the test of time
@@daskampffredchen9242 Just rewatched the prequel. I noticed the CGI the worst when it jumps through the ceiling. It really lacked the subtlety of the original. The female lead is too prominent in being the only thinking character while everyone else is either antagonistic or doesn't have much to do. They don't develop the other characters and there are too many of them, so when they get killed off a bunch at a time, you just don't care. I did feel like it got better at being creepy later in the movie and closer to the original. Having the female character survive felt kind of empty. I realized after that there didn't seem to be too much stupidity from the characters, so there's that. The movie feels too clean and modern for being a setting based in the 80's. They should have shot it in film to give it that vibe. My only other major gripe is that it was a remake instead of being a well crafted prequel with a more original script. I suppose the nature of the problem is this prequel did not need to be made. Just from how the Norwegian camp is discovered this scenario clearly played out somehow, but that is best left to the imagination. Seeing it played out just feels repetitive and it's boxed in to the things we already know about the monster and 80's Thing.
The delay in filming really forced Carpenter to spend more time evaluating characters and considering the story than he normally would, which is I think why it came out so much better. I imagine if Alaska had been clear at the time, we may have gotten a much more typical Carpenter film.
As mentioned in the Predator re:View Jay had a problem with the alien ship flying in at the beginning. When I first saw The Thing I was just flipping through channels and saw a guy in a helicopter shooting at a dog, which I thought was hilarious, so I just had to watch it. I didn't see the damn ship scene! I had NO IDEA what I was watching and it made everything way more impactful! It became my #1 favourite movie of all time and I have to wonder if I would have had the same reaction had I seen the movie from the very beginning.
@@5K1ZZ same, I have a bad habit of skipping production company logos so I just skipped to the opening credits, that spaceship scene is only a few seconds so I didn't even know I'd missed anything until rewatching it with friends.
Through it all, I think what warms my heart the most about the film is that Carpenter finally got to see his favorite movie get the respect it deserved. It took a couple of decades, but he's alive to see and know just how beloved The Thing's become over the years.
@@namelesswalaby True, but The Thing flopped hard in its day, commercially and critically, and it wasn't particularly profitable for him either, so he was actually pretty bitter about all that for a long while. There was some other director, or a writer, who had lunch with him back in maybe the 80s or 90s, and the wanted to mention how much he loved The Thing and what an excellent movie it was, and how Carpenter should be so proud of it, but Carpenter kind of just dismissed that praise because it bombed, he felt that it didn't really mean much. I can only imagine that it must have felt extremely cathartic and vindicating that the movie gradually grew to be rightfully recognized as the masterpiece that it actually is, especially with how everyone else on the film crew really put their best effort in too.
Can someone timestamp the exact moment that the baby gets stabbed in the head and walks away in the film, I must’ve missed it. Guess it must only be in the director’s cut🤔
Oh God! That scene with the Bennings-thing kneeling just kinda defeated in the snow with all of the crew standing around it and it just looks at MacReady and howls but in a really melancholic way like it's own death doesn't even matter. Then it just kinda sits there and screams while the flames engulf it and the dark winter of the antarctic is lit up only slightly around them as it burns. Jesus, it gets me every time.
My first bottle of alcohol that I ever purchased was a bottle of J&B, because of this film and the fact that Kurt Russell is such a badass. So I guess the advertising worked!
Honestly, while this movie has so many good things in it, one thing I think is worth mentioning is that dogs performance. I'm watching it and I'm just wondering what kinda training they put it through to give that performance. Every moment it's on screen, it just feels like it's planning something, it feels like a highly intelligent creature.
If you watch the film alongside John Carpenter's commentary track, he says that the wide shots of that dog were fake plastic replicas, while the close-ups were an actual trained canine.
The dog was a half wolf/half husky hybrid named "Jed." He had a bunch of film experience, the most notable other role was "White Fang" in 1991 where an older Jed co-starred. I had heard that when Jed was on set of The Thing (they may mention it in the special features doc of the movie), the cast and crew had to be down to the bare minimum people, because as with most hybrid wolf dogs, they tend to be unpredictable and they didn't want to spook him, which I think only added to the eerie performance Jed gave in the movie. In closing, I think I know too much about a dog that passed away in 1995.
Mr. Carpenter said he takes every failure hard... this one hurt him the most. The movie failed on arrival. E.T was in theatres at the time, and a bunch of other reasons. But its went on to be one of the finest horror movies ever made. I hope he can see that!
Drew Maria Yea. Very true. Travesty. He's said it in an interview. He even says this is his own favorite movie he made. He was never the same after the reviews and Box office performance. I don't understand Universal Studio's opened it so close to E.T., another Universal movie?? Bad decision and dumb critics..
@@joeymerk3706 fox did the same thing with big trouble in little china. releasing it a week after aliens of all films killed any momentum that film could’ve had
@@joeymerk3706 It must feel vindicating for him to see the movie become recognized as the actual masterpiece that it is. Back in its day, it just got shit, but today, The Thing is known as one of the best horror movies ever made.
The Thing From Another World was pretty amazing too. The scene in that where they're all throwing buckets of gasoline at a stuntman on fire and the shot goes on for like 60 something seconds is hardcore as fuck.
Agreed, that scene when the lights dim and the door smashes open to reveal the creature's silhouette is masterfully done and the flames sequence looks so dangerous, but they seem to pull it off with utter ease.
Yep. I think that's the scene where they're all in a dark room waiting for it to come through the door, and suddenly it swings open and they throw gasoline on it. This scene is surprisingly effective even today, and I can only imagine the effect it had on the early 50s audience! Considering what was available back in the early 50s, they did a fantastic job on that movie.
I love the scene with Blair and the noose. I always took it as he was planning on killing himself before the Thing took over. The noose is still there when the group visits him because the Thing had no concept of suicide so just left the noose hanging because it didnt understand that it would be suspicious. It's just so creepy seeing it try to convince them that it's fine and not acknowledge the noose at all.
The Thing produces perfect imitations so that doesn't make much sense. In all honesty Blair-Thing left it there probably for pity so he could be taken back inside.
@@vorbo01 The Norris imitation literally had a heart attack because the real Norris had a weak heart. If the imitations weren't perfect, even by a little, a close friend of the victim could probably identify that their friend was being imitated, or at the very least that something was up
Nothing against Colin, but I kinda would have liked to see Mike on this one. He has said before he isn't a big John Carpenter fan so it might have been interesting to see him reviewing the best Carpenter film with that bias in place.
I like the interpretation of the ending where they're actually both the thing, and after sitting in the snow for a few hours, they have an awkward moment where they realize it. Then it turns into an Odd Couple style sitcom.
@@digitalwayfarer7404 I suppose you might think that if your reaction to seeing pussy is to run away screaming. 😂😂😂 Not sure why you admitted that about yourself! 😂😂😂
I think the reason critics didn't like it is simply: it was too ahead of its time and too extreme. It probably scared the living shit out of these critics, but in a way that made them dislike the movie, it was just too intense for them.
My mum & dad rented this film & bought in some pizza to eat while they watched, to this day my mum tells me she regretted buying that pizza. It was completely unlike anything they'd seen.
I just only now watched the movie. And for some background I love Alien, and The Thing really hits the same notes. But in the end The Thing never felt tense or extreme. I liked how all hints to solve the movie were subtle, but in the end I could never get tense on the movie. After Blair goes crazy, firstly as a wise move to destroy comms so no-one finds the Thing, but after Windows drops the keys and it's clear the blood was destroyed by a replacement Blair all tension was lost for me. After that I could only enjoy the scenery and sets that fueled my sense of adventure, and the satisfying practical effects making for some praise worthy gore, the plot was still lost. It felt pointless to see the people suffer through when their chances of survival are 0.
26:29 interesting bit of trivia about that scene, everyone except Wilford Brimley nearly threw up during filming. Wilford Brimley had been skinning animals all his life, so it didn't bother him so much.
"Test screenings really changed the shape of this film... I can say going through this experience that no studio would make a film like 'Alien' or even Carpenter and Lancaster's version of 'The Thing' today." -Eric Heisserer, Screenwriter (on why we can't have nice THINGs)
"We got a group of about fifty people from the same area with similar interests and they're going to dictate the future of your film for thousands of others. Don't worry it's foolproof." Test screenings are an awful concept.
Questionable Object a lot of test screening are done in Vegas, entirely to get a diverse group of people because people from all over the country come to visit the strip. Test screenings still ruin artistic visions, but they do attempt to get a representative group of people for the American population.
I love the bit where they mention you root for Kurt Russel's character because he's Kurt Russel when in the source material short story, McReady is described literally as a "bronzed god."
The menu music from The Thing DVD is in hateful 8 as well and it gives me flash backs to falling asleep to the DVD at age 15 and having it play all night. That shit is not good to wake up to.
John Carpenter's The Thing is the best horror film I've ever seen. The drama of not knowing who is or who isn't a monster, the music, the special effects, the acting. Everything works so fucking well with one another.
I'm really surprised you didn't bring up the screams of the thing. It's one of the more unsettling parts about the film, especially with the severed head the way it cries out as it's set on fire. Reminds me of the scream from the 70s Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
@@epochpilot9404 I found that so unsettling even though it was the least grotesque scene with “the thing” I grabbed my bf’s arm and said “nope, don’t like that, I’m out!” And then I had my eyes glued to the tv the whole movie.
This is probably the last movie that REALLY scared me. When I was a kid I was scared of any horror movie, and then I got less sensitive as time went on. I specifically remember being in the bathroom after I watched this movie at my friend's house, and freaking out when his cat started sticking it's paws under the door like it was trying to get in.
Also, the new version of suspria is actually good... like the thing, it was critically booed, and I have a feeling it may go on to be well liked. It's a completely different movie, beat wise, which is exactly what a remake should be, but it also kept to the spirit of the original well. They did it on re:view later and I know Jay likes it more than the original film.
@@lawrencescales9864 Yeah Suspiria is a very interesting one for me. I didn't even know there was an original until an hour or so before I saw it I was just interested in it and I remember not knowing how to feel after I watched it. I admired the filmmaking and thought very highly of some aspects but it wasn't until a little while later when it finally settled in how much I truly loved it. It's an incredible movie that I don't blame people for not enjoying due to the nature of it but I hope it gets the recognition it deserves in the future.
The Thing is definitely my favorite horror movie! Such a shame it didn't do so great initially. Probably my favorite scene was when Kurt Russel turned to the camera and said, *"Body horror."*
Well it made money eventually, but it had a 15 million dollar production budget and 19 million dollar box office take, so once you take out the theaters' cuts plus the ad budget it definitely lost money at least initially.
Even when i know it's a semi mechanical rubber puppet covered in fake blood, it still is a discusting puppet that i would hesitate to even touch. CGI does not come close to creating that level of creeped-out-ness in me.
Also most of the time cgi things somehow manage to look like they dont have mass. Sometimes they over animate/over physics simulate and that just ruins it. Its a really fine line. The worst parts are when cgi has to interact with real things and its almost always obvious that cgi is a slave to real objects or actors motions. "You may not have noticed this, but your brain did."
A buddy of mine lend me his un-cut version and I made the mistake to watch it at night, while I was alone in the house. That night and the following nights I couldn't really sleep......My mind always thought that there is a weird dog monster sticking in the corner, reaching out for me. And when RLM showed parts of the dog transformation scene I felt this awful sickening punch in the gut. The effects are probably the best of it's genre. It still leaves me reeling every time to the point where I want to close my eyes. The images of this movie just burns into your mind. This is far away from modern jump-scares horror movies.
"INSTANT THRASH". Oh my god, I couldn't stop laughing for at least 2 minutes straight. Holy hell, how can you be so wrong about something and yet so confident about your assessment?
@@psychosociety7910 I wish someone would hunt down their emails and post them here so we can all spam them to death about how shit they are at their jobs.
Mega Zeta bro wtf are you doing😭 I respect the troll game but you are literally commenting on every single post bro get outta moms basement, get a job or hobby or a girlfriend, something bruh Jesus
I remember when I first watched this, I was in grade school and I was expecting to be bored (I was born in '96 so the SAW movies were the horror standard when I watched this), I was blown away by how good and how scary it was.
Lol, I was born a the same time, but The Thing is first horror movie I ever watched, way before grade school. I believe my dad had left the tv on starz/encore and passed out while I stayed up.
I'll admit I didn't watch a whole lot of horror movies from the time, but I remember the few I did watch were like gross-out/gore shit like the Hills Have Eyes remake from that time and 30 Days of Night
Having seen & loved this movie on its initial release in '82, it has been gratifying to see public opinion of The Thing evolve over time, to where it is now rightly regarded as a masterpiece.
I wonder if Jay knows there's The Thing video game which is a sequel to the movie, that Carpenter deemed to be canon. MacReady actually survives, but you can find frozen corpse of Childs. Game was fine.
Forsete Spoony overdid it, it is hillarious review and some points are spot on, but it's not bad as he is making it to be... It's actually pretty good in my opinion, you should give it a try.
Klaus Kinski was the perfect casting choice for the remake, but Max Schreck was - and is still to this day - iconic. The fact that fans can have a clear favorite, but totally understand how anyone could favor the other is a testament to the quality of both films!
There are definitely two camps as to which one is better. I prefer the remake, which is rather daft, since the original is a groundbreaking landmark in cinema (despite Gustave von Wangenheim's hammy acting), and without it, the remake wouldn't exist, but the remake (for me, at least) is an objectively better film, but I think it boils down to whether you like your horror straight up or more folk/fairytale.
I saw The Thing 2011 and then The Thing 1982. I couldn't believe how much better the latter was; it has aged superbly for a horror film, particularly a nearly 40 year old one.
my theory; it boils down to framerate. film had it relatively low, so the true nature of practicals never stuck out. now that everything is cgi and nothing is practical, ultrahigh fps and clarity actually works against stuff like this. it stands the fuck out.
It is more than just framerate, it is also the lighting and actors reacting or beeing surprised by some effects that are actually happening in front of them. Don't get me wrong, there is great cgi around nowadays, but if it's done wrong it just has a totally diffrent kind of eeriness than any practical effect. Bad cgi is just scarily laughable, while even bad practical effects can cause some real dread and fright, even if it's not a horror flick 😅
Christian Nyby to be exact. I suspect there were some sour grapes over the fact that John Carpenter's The Thing was actually a better adaptation of the novella. Not to mention that Carpenter actually 100% helmed his 1982 version.
I think this movie gets better through time as well. The fact that all characters behave rationally is a major plus and the effects only get better through time as well. Like Colin said, your brain doesn't even have the time to process what horrifying stuff you're seeing before something even more disgusting happens. It looks absolutely great as well.
The Thing 1982 : I remember and care for ALL the characters. The Thing Prequel : I could not remember a single one of them or give a damn if they died.
Film has more influence on culture, and therefore the public mood, than most people realise. E.T. was a hopeful feel good movie that audiences went back to see again and again, because they wanted to 'stay in Pandora' (yes Avatar also falls into this category). E.T. took over social consciousness in 1982. It's difficult to understand from here and now, outside the giddying influence of E.T., outside the hype of the time. E.T. had a genuine effect on people, and one of those effects was a kneejerk reflex to dark and depressing stories. E.T. was responsible for The Thing being a flop in my humble opinion.
I completely agree. For a solid year after it was released, ET was a cultural phenomenon. There were so many tie-ins with product placement, and follow on advertising, that the character of ET became something of an actual celebrity. I feel like the masses were so horrified by the audacity of "The Thing" to be so blatantly bleak and nihilistic, that they just recoiled from it. It was simply too ugly to look at. As a child of those times, and a huge fan of "The Thing", I can honestly say that this movie would have been FAR better received, and probably gotten the recognition it deserved, had ET never existed.
Mass-audience film is a _product_ of culture, and usually trails shocking innovation in other parts of it by a few years, not the other way around. There is absolutely no way that _E.T._ did what you think it did. What it did was speak to a preexisting appeal as mediated by advertising and marketing.
@@mittycommitspizzatime92 Couldn't have said that better. Love The Thing and love E.T. but sometimes hold a grudge that one is being talked about and not the other.
In the '70s movies were auteur-driven and reflected the societal feelings of malaise and paranoia. In the '80s, people went to heartwarming family blockbusters, snorted cocaine, and voted for Ronald Reagan. Twice.
As a freshman in high school in 1982, this movie was indeed enthralling and terrifying and remains a favorite to this day. Excellent job by Carpenter and the cast.
The 2011 prequel to The Thing really upsets me because if you look into the making of said prequel, you'll see that its one of those movies that has a very decent movie within it....ruined by, of course, executive meddling. It so pisses me off because it really could have been a proper prequel :(
Just watched the 40th anniversary yesterday at the theater, it was great to see it on the big screen with my daughter who had no idea what she was in for!! She liked it as well had a lot of good questions to ask...
I saw this movie on release when I was 18 and there was just one other person in the auditorium. It blew me away and still does. Plus I’ll never forget the glance we shared over the seats as we stood up to leave after that ending, properly creeped out!👌
The main theme is absolutely by Ennio Morricone (pronounced 'Morri-coney' not 'Morri-cone') and it sounds just like Carpenter because Carpenter asked him for something 'simpler and spookier' and 'not to do so many notes' and he came back with basically an impersonation of a Carpenter theme - which I think is kind of fitting, due to the subject matter. If you listen to the original soundtrack album (which features only the music Morricone composed), the theme is featured in ‘Humanity Pt. 2’ and he also uses the same melody in a slower orchestral arrangement in the track ‘Humanity Pt. 1’, which is also used in the film. Carpenter and Howarth maintain that they only created some moody, interstitial cues - great ones at that - including the music that plays during the reveal of the title. I totally understand why people assume Carpenter must have written the main theme -- I thought the same thing! -- but Carpenter says the theme is Morricone's (he even said so before he performed the theme in his live shows a couple years back) and Morricone says it's his, and both men have no reason to lie about it, so... it's his.
What are you talking about. As an italian, it is pronounced Morri-con-e, with the e pronounced like in "end" and the double r it is pronounced like actually saying r two times in a row.
Have you guys seen Pingu's The Thing, a recreation of most of the iconic story beats from The Thing with children's show claymation penguins? It's actually pretty amazing.
My favorite movie of all time! I remember seeing the dog scene as a young boy by accident and it scared the living shit out of me. Didn't watch the full movie until I was a teenager. It was so amazing!
I love everything about the thing. The soundtrack is great because it does such a good job of setting the tone and feel, while drawing you in. The movie feels cold, and you feel like you could actually freeze to death if you where there. The characters and fear it creates is perfect. The practical effects are both beautiful, haunting and sort of look a little unreal but fits whats going on so perfect. Ive watched this movie so many times, and that dog cage scene always scares and unnerves me so much, even just the noise of the thing.
this film terrified me when I was a kid, still to this day no other film has disturbed me more, the characters are so unsympathetic and the movie is so relentlessly bleak it seemed to have none of the normal tropes I was comfortable with as a kid and i found that made it more scary. honestly i think it suffered critically because it was just too good at its job of scaring the shit out of everyone.
Развлечения
There's a brilliant parallel between Kurt Russell's introduction and the end of the movie. He loses the chess match in his introduction, so he destroys the computer. The thing outplays him in the end so he blows up the base.
Wow, that's yet another thing in this movie I've never noticed before
Add to that the pretty vague but very interesting links between Russell's drinking after losing chess and handing Childs a drink when they are together at the end (when Childs could be a Thing). An excellent amount of mystery for the film, great movie
Another interesting thing, the chess computer did cheat as the move it made was impossible. Not sure if that was intentional or not but interesting still
Deep
I'd call that more like major reaching than anything.
Nothing to show a person is a sore loser other than blowing up a base.
No other reason to blow it up at all.
Especially not any interdimensional overpowering body snathers.
Nope. Nothing at all.
You don't mention that the best part of this movie; the fact that the characters make rational decisions based on what they know. The character's aren't stupid, and they don't get into trouble simply because the writer or director needs them to in order to ramp up the tension. No one makes a foolish decision. You are never once screaming at the screen going "Why did he do that? I would never do that! Why doesn't he do this?" They all act in a reasonable way, despite the unreasonable situations they are in. Great characters, and great writing.
That's why I'm on the Prometheus hate train. We don't do it to feel popular, Ridley Scott fans, we just ride that train because that biologist character was so goddamn stupid.
Great example, mate, of where things happen because the writer/director/producer/whoever wanted to see them happen, and so contrived events to get there, rather than allowing the characters to make reasonable decisions given their knowledge of the situation.
Jimmy De'Souza I think you could put some of those down to shock or a lack of understanding of the situation. I don't expect the characters to make the perfect decision every time, just a reasonable one given what they are going through.
I feel like some of that could be attributed more to the shock and exhaustion of the characters. The Norwegians also had been through some shit so it makes sense for them to be irrational.
one of my favorite aspects of this movie: zero subplot. no romantic interests, no scheming.. the entire movie is so focused I love it.
@@electricfishfan7159 Oppressive is a good description, this is one of the most 'atmospheric' movies I've seen.
Common trait of most classic movies. They're relatively simple and focused.
If Stephen King wrote this, it wouldve had:
a human bully,
a team member with psychic ability
the Thing wouldve been an "elemental demon"
it wouldve taken place in a lighthouse in Derry, Maine where the team is cut off due to a hurricane and flooding.
@@zarreff that kind of sounds like john carpenter’s the fog
@@zarreff it would also have flashbacks to when they all hung out as kids
The real reason the Thing crash landed on Earth: it heard this was the one place it could find a good Chess Wizard.
dethcon5002 and when it heard Kurt Russel fried it, The Thing began killing everyone off. Good lore, 10/10.
Hah! You made me spit out my water.
And it was wrong
Because it’s a cheating bitch
it's a well known fact that alien shapeshifters have a weakness for blended whiskey...
Fun fact. If you are norwegian, swedish or danish the fact that the dog is a monster is revealed in the first minutes of the movie. The desperate scientist in the beginning litherally screams "the dog is a monster" in norwegian(not that it isnt kind of obvious that something is weird, but still).
So does he scream "the dog is a monster" in english for the norwegian dub?
Norwegians dont dub. Most speak english, the rest use subtitles
Guts we dont dub movies in the nordic countries. Atleast not in normal movies. Mostly only childrens movies.
We don't dub, that's a German thing. Actually, the reason we Scandinavians all know English may be linked to that fact. Sadly they dub kids material now...
Øystein A. The simpsons movie in swedish still haunts me till this day
"He did all these amazing movies, and then he did Jack and Jill."
"I think he does commercials now."
Yes, Jay already mentioned Jack and Jill.
Bravo lol
I was just thinking that lol
Someone pointed out somewhere that the theme song to John Carpenter's The Thing sounds almost like a human heartbeat, but just different enough to be off putting. Such a great little detail I had never noticed before.
I watched it tonight. I thought it WAS a heartbeat. I didn't notice ANY of the music besides those little beats and I didn't even realize that it was music.
Why can I not read more. Send help.
What does it mean if my heartbeat exactly matches up to the theme?
I actually just noticed this when hearing it in this review and actually focusing on it for probably the only time. John Carpenter is the fucking man.
What's really funny is that there's a very similar music used in some of the TOS episodes...
Summer of '82 sounds like an absolute blast. Imagine seeing Road Warrior, The Thing, and Blade Runner in a theater on the same day. I'd pay full ticket price today for all 3 of them, easily.
Would you do that for the '89 lineup?
@@Takeshi357 The Last Crusade, Ghostbusters II and Batman one Saturday then Lethal Weapon II, The Abyss, and Uncle Buck another Saturday. Also probably try to fit License to Kill in there somewhere as well.
@@habadasheryjones Also UHF, Back to the Future part 2, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, Weekend at Bernie's...
...and if you're really bored, Friday the 13th part 8 and Star Trek 5.
Except the Blade Runner in theaters was the voice over, happy ending one
@@StubbsX88 You mean the voice over that Harrison Ford tried his best to botch on purpose and the studio put it in anyway?
As ham as it is, 99% of the movie is still in that cut of the film. I'll take seeing the theatrical version on the big screen as long aa I get to double bill it with The Thing. I'd prefer the Final cut but it's not like I had the choice in '82.
Holy shit that detail about the eyelight is too neat.
Turbo Button
Absolutely, I never consciously picked up on that (which is the point)
wonderguardstalker Yeah that's the only scene it works for. Even later in the film when the Blaire thing kills Gary you can clearly see a glint in its eyes.
new video when?
Turbo Button I told my friends about that after they watched it for the first time and they immediately wanted to see it again
Vanilla Sky did something similar in the close-up of Tom Cruise's face as he dies at the end, you can see his eye light slowly fade away, spooky
Jay, don't sell yourself short on never doing anything. You made everyone say "Very cool" for nearly two weeks
VERY cool
And I always make remarks about THe hOrsEy SauCe when I go to arby's!
Update from the future. We are still saying Very Cool
I thought he would have been more famous for everyone spouting off his line of "Don't ask questions. Just consume product and get excited for next product."
@@sirquaffler542 Me personally, I believe it broke new ground.
Edit: Which is very cool
One thing that always killed me about the 2011 version was the use of modern tools in the film. At the beginning she is using a probing camera to examine the mammoth remains, the Norwegians are using cordless drills. All in a film that is supposed to be a prequel to a film that is clearly set in the winter of 1982.
Lil' Connor Peterson so the groups working in the harshest possible conditions would get new unproven and potentially unreliable equipment? Makes sense to me!
Endoscopes are at least 1,940 years old.
...I mean, okay, but I think it's probably the script and the story and so on that "killed" it for most people, not the minutiae of hand tools.
@@MegaZeta Wasnt even the effect that killed the 2011 one. Like they showed in the video. The Thing is more like a wild animal and doesnt really care much most of the time if it is sneaky or not. (I wanted to like it to the Xenomorph but that is also more sneaky then the 2011 Thing)
@daskampffredchen9242 it's more confrontational in the prequel because it's never been around humans before, it has no idea what we are capable of (thinking wise) therefore it starts to opt for stealth and secrecy as much as it can in the original
I love that Guillermo del Toro said how The Thing was well received in Mexico, the audiences would go nuts at the gore effects.
Oh yeah. It was on TV every year around October. "La Cosa". My mom liked watching all this horror movies when I was little but she never let me watch them.
The pinnacle of horror movies. What a small team of artists achieved here with practical effects hasn't been surpassed by rooms filled with CGI artists on computers. Much like Rich Evans, it gets creepier every time I watch it. :-D
moniek And The Thing is pretty creepy too! 😉
Andrew K - why shouldn't every comment mention Rich Evans?
Truth!
yea the more I watch Rich Evens, he get creepier XD
Michael Mercy Couldn't be said any better. Every bit of The Thing is thoroughly unsettling and visually nothing short of breathtaking.
Between this and The Shining, I think it must have been illegal to give horror movies any respect.
Mostly the critics are right.
nah critics are conceited shitheads about those genres.
It's always the movies that affect you in some way that makes or breaks it for critics. When it came to these films, the content of them disturbed people so much that they just wrote it off as 'shock value', which is stupid.
It's like what Stephen King said about The Shining. "This is a movie made to hurt people," or something. If the movie succeeds at what it's aiming for, then that's a good thing! Movies that invoke real emotion in the viewer are good, damn it!
'Mainstream critics' are just pretentious jerkoffs that don't actually appreciate films they watch. Art direction, scores, shot composition, it doesn't matter to them. But that's what you should expect from the mainstream itself.
It's because horror is a very niche appeal. A lot of people don't like feeling scared or disturbed, so they pan movies that are actually scary while praising movies that are labeled 'horror' even if they actually aren't. The recent trend of horror movies over the past decade has been much more horrifying in how it's happened than any of the movies themselves.
@Bobby Peru To be fair, all you need to do is watch BOTW to kind of understand why. Horror and action are really open to exploitation, so I can kind of understand why critics might think this movie is just trying to capitalize on shock value and gore effects.
They saw those, which are typical of exploitative b-movies, and made assumptions about the intent of the director rather than judging the film on it's own merits. But you know what happens when you assume...
The fact that people still debate who, if anyone, was the Thing in the end scene means that scene worked, not that those people are missing the point. The intent of that scene was to sum things up while showing that there's still that same paranoia even then, and the fact that people debate it means they were so successful in showing it that it infected the audience as well. The people that debate it come up with theory after theory as to how they could tell who's human or not, and that's the _point_ After all, that's what the characters spend a good part of the movie doing, so getting the audience to keep theorizing this far on just means they did an excelent job setting up viewers to empathize and connect with the characters.
Brilliantly put
Agreed, though I think the point they mean is about people forgetting that there is no answer to that question (who if anyone is a Thing at the end of the movie). You can have a pet theory, but there is no actual answer.
I mean, thats exactly what they said tho "the fact that the paranoia is still there means that it worked" they just take it a step further and restate what carpenter himself has said about the scene: he intentionally made it ambigous. You'll never truly find out who if anyone was the thing, and its on purpose. Theres enough hints that could go either way but not enough to fully prove anything. The fact that peole still talk about it means it worked, sure, but the point was never to really figure out who is or isnt the thing. The paranoia was the point. People who make the theories have to take them with a grain if salt because the dierctor himself has said the answer is ambigous
@@eldenlean5221 Exactly. It's fun to come up with theories and follow their logic. It's the people who thing they know as a fact...well, they're doing it wrong.
@@Ocrilat yeah I just rewatched it yesterday and its amazing how well executed that ambiguity is. Its brilliant how its set up so that you have equally good reasons to believe one or none of them are the thing.
When the biologist is trashing the radio/vehicles and going "crazy" he is still human. He is then locked in the cabin and goes to kill himself (as a noose is seen dangling from the rafters).
However before he could, someone went to the cabin and infected him - when the group visit he is suddenly happy to see them, says he feels fine and ignores the noose completely (as if he no longer remembers what humans use nooses for).
My money is on Palmer-Thing infecting him, because interestingly the doctor starts talking _very_ much like Palmer does in this scene. He starts saying "Hey man" repeatedly in the same way Palmer does, whereas he spoke very formally when he was human.
SerMattzio I agree that the sequence of events you stated is correct, but I want to point out that the Thing perfectly copies its victims including skills and memories, so the Thing would know about the purpose of a noose, and it wouldn’t confuse Palmer with Blair. I think the noose might be an attempt to convince the rest to take him back into the base (to stop him from killing himself).
@@omegastar19 Well, the characters _say_ it perfectly imitates other life forms but that's their best guess at the time. I'm not sure the consciousness itself is perfectly imitated. Note Palmer is half-listening to his headphones during the argument over the blood bank. He looks very confused and dazed, staring into space as if he's trying really hard to understand what he's listening to, but he no longer understands the concept of music. Any human would of course know immediately what the headphones are.
The suicide-risk ruse is interesting and equally plausible IMO, though I would expect the Thing to try and show off some depression symptoms instead of cheerfulness if it was actually doing this.
Also interesting to note that at no point (IIRC!) do we see Things using sophisticated human combat tactics. Palmer at one point picks up a flamethrower but he never attempts to actually use it. They stick to using their natural hard-coded ambush and imitation strategy, almost as though they do not copy all of their host's memories or mentally adapt in the same way humans do.
No offense, but _The Thing_ would suck if scenes like that one were as unambiguous as you seem to think they are.
@@MegaZeta I think its a possible valid interpretation of the scenes using clues provided by the story/shots. Weirdly hostile reaction to a fan opinion and equating it to their directorial debut/fanfic of The Thing. You both like The Thing so shut up. lmao
I agree he wasn’t infected or fullly infected when he was isolated. But his pencil did hover (touch) the thing during his investigation. The shot leaves it ambiguous. He then touches the pencil to his lips.
Jay and Canadian Jay have great chemestry together.
José Hunter yes
It's Jay and "The Thing Jay"
It's actually Jay and Susan
Shipping jay jay. Fuck Plinkett.
@@Woopywomp I thought he already did
*checks jay for eyeshine*
"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown"
― H.P. Lovecraft
- a dude afraid of everything, especially anything with a darker skin tone.
@@aerthreepwood8021 well he definitely didn't want to know any black people
@@aerthreepwood8021 he wasn't scared of black people he just didn't like them
@@tastycookiechip He would also rant to his half Jewish wife about Jewish people, in which she would have to remind him he shouldn't disparage his own wife's race. lmao And his cat's name means he might not be afraid of black people, but he didn't mind using a popular slur for them.
Whatever buddy, Junji Ito did it better...
The film should have been released "the first goddamn week of winter".
No.
well it was released in Northern Hemisphere summer, which is Southern Hemisphere winter (aka where Antarctica is) so they did do this in a certain sense
We needed a The Thing prequel about as much as Kurt Russell needed that Chess Wizard.
But I wanted that prequel. And it was made by true fans of the original. Very awesome effort ruined by the suits who replaced much of the awesome practical effects with CGI.
I'll admit that the ending was a little weak, though.
@@jna6246Learning that they created ACTUAL practical props for the scenes of The Thing for that prequel movie, including that scene were you see the guy start getting assimilated, was depressing. I don’t understand why higher ups dont realize that practical effects will look better and hold up for YEARS. CGI effects look extremely dated within a couple years while practical effects stand the test of time
@@jna6246 The practical effects were great but a lot of problem arent caused by the effects. It was pretty much a campy monster movie in Antarctica
@@daskampffredchen9242
Just rewatched the prequel. I noticed the CGI the worst when it jumps through the ceiling. It really lacked the subtlety of the original. The female lead is too prominent in being the only thinking character while everyone else is either antagonistic or doesn't have much to do. They don't develop the other characters and there are too many of them, so when they get killed off a bunch at a time, you just don't care. I did feel like it got better at being creepy later in the movie and closer to the original. Having the female character survive felt kind of empty. I realized after that there didn't seem to be too much stupidity from the characters, so there's that. The movie feels too clean and modern for being a setting based in the 80's. They should have shot it in film to give it that vibe. My only other major gripe is that it was a remake instead of being a well crafted prequel with a more original script. I suppose the nature of the problem is this prequel did not need to be made. Just from how the Norwegian camp is discovered this scenario clearly played out somehow, but that is best left to the imagination. Seeing it played out just feels repetitive and it's boxed in to the things we already know about the monster and 80's Thing.
What about a prequel movie ABOUT the Chess Wizard???
The delay in filming really forced Carpenter to spend more time evaluating characters and considering the story than he normally would, which is I think why it came out so much better. I imagine if Alaska had been clear at the time, we may have gotten a much more typical Carpenter film.
PlagueOfGripes draw some thing lewds
Woah, never thought I'd see you here plague
thanks daddy gripes! is there any new creppy trivia about farm animals that you can share with us?
But how strong is the Thing, Plague?
Red Sparrow Not stronger than Paige
As mentioned in the Predator re:View Jay had a problem with the alien ship flying in at the beginning.
When I first saw The Thing I was just flipping through channels and saw a guy in a helicopter shooting at a dog, which I thought was hilarious, so I just had to watch it. I didn't see the damn ship scene! I had NO IDEA what I was watching and it made everything way more impactful! It became my #1 favourite movie of all time and I have to wonder if I would have had the same reaction had I seen the movie from the very beginning.
Made-up story.
To be honest I think my first viewing of this was similar, the helicopter shooting the dog is where I first came into the movie.
@@5K1ZZ same, I have a bad habit of skipping production company logos so I just skipped to the opening credits, that spaceship scene is only a few seconds so I didn't even know I'd missed anything until rewatching it with friends.
Hey same thing sci fi channel used to be amazing with there film picks
@@MegaZeta sounds a bit specific to be made up
Through it all, I think what warms my heart the most about the film is that Carpenter finally got to see his favorite movie get the respect it deserved. It took a couple of decades, but he's alive to see and know just how beloved The Thing's become over the years.
True. Must feel good. The money would have been nice though of course.
@@theeternalnow6506 they wrote him a fact check every time they remade one of his movies. he's doing fine making music with his sons.
@@namelesswalaby True, but The Thing flopped hard in its day, commercially and critically, and it wasn't particularly profitable for him either, so he was actually pretty bitter about all that for a long while.
There was some other director, or a writer, who had lunch with him back in maybe the 80s or 90s, and the wanted to mention how much he loved The Thing and what an excellent movie it was, and how Carpenter should be so proud of it, but Carpenter kind of just dismissed that praise because it bombed, he felt that it didn't really mean much.
I can only imagine that it must have felt extremely cathartic and vindicating that the movie gradually grew to be rightfully recognized as the masterpiece that it actually is, especially with how everyone else on the film crew really put their best effort in too.
That kid took that knife like a champ!
Ben Phillips what movie is that?
Enya Rodriguez The Thing. Jay even said it right before the scene.
Can someone timestamp the exact moment that the baby gets stabbed in the head and walks away in the film, I must’ve missed it. Guess it must only be in the director’s cut🤔
"Didn't even need a bandage!" x 2
I saw this comment out of context.
My favourite film of all time. I always go back to watch it whenever its freezing cold, leave a window open, get myself fully immersed. Its so good
Clemps! What a pleasant surprise.
Nice!
First Plague and now you.
The Thing analysis when?
Shouldn't you be playing Octopath right now?
Oh God! That scene with the Bennings-thing kneeling just kinda defeated in the snow with all of the crew standing around it and it just looks at MacReady and howls but in a really melancholic way like it's own death doesn't even matter. Then it just kinda sits there and screams while the flames engulf it and the dark winter of the antarctic is lit up only slightly around them as it burns. Jesus, it gets me every time.
Just the noise it makes alone is truly terrifying.
That grating painful scream always makes me think of Body Snatchers too
My first bottle of alcohol that I ever purchased was a bottle of J&B, because of this film and the fact that Kurt Russell is such a badass. So I guess the advertising worked!
lol...that was funny, ahgodamit...yeah, my first legal booze was a bottle of scotch because I saw some actor drinking it in a movie
Smirnoff is more pronounced in this film
Honestly, while this movie has so many good things in it, one thing I think is worth mentioning is that dogs performance. I'm watching it and I'm just wondering what kinda training they put it through to give that performance. Every moment it's on screen, it just feels like it's planning something, it feels like a highly intelligent creature.
If you watch the film alongside John Carpenter's commentary track, he says that the wide shots of that dog were fake plastic replicas, while the close-ups were an actual trained canine.
The dog was a half wolf/half husky hybrid named "Jed." He had a bunch of film experience, the most notable other role was "White Fang" in 1991 where an older Jed co-starred. I had heard that when Jed was on set of The Thing (they may mention it in the special features doc of the movie), the cast and crew had to be down to the bare minimum people, because as with most hybrid wolf dogs, they tend to be unpredictable and they didn't want to spook him, which I think only added to the eerie performance Jed gave in the movie. In closing, I think I know too much about a dog that passed away in 1995.
I dont remember where I read/heard it, but the cast said that it was like the dog exactly knew what to do on set, which is kinda worrying:P
I totally agree, you can just see intelligence in its eyes, it's very strange
For real, the dog felt like it had the autonomy of a highly intelligent creature, probably the best animal acting I’ve ever seen
Not sure how you got Eminem on the show but I look forward to seeing him in future episodes!
@@Jack_Stafford Nobody is going to mistake this dude. Hes clearly a flaming homosexual.
ancient122 He looks like Eminem if Eminem were white.
Wait...
Mom's spaghetti?
Jay has powerfull conections
that's his cousin, skittlizzles
Mr. Carpenter said he takes every failure hard... this one hurt him the most. The movie failed on arrival. E.T was in theatres at the time, and a bunch of other reasons. But its went on to be one of the finest horror movies ever made. I hope he can see that!
Drew Maria Yea. Very true. Travesty. He's said it in an interview. He even says this is his own favorite movie he made. He was never the same after the reviews and Box office performance. I don't understand Universal Studio's opened it so close to E.T., another Universal movie?? Bad decision and dumb critics..
@@joeymerk3706 fox did the same thing with big trouble in little china. releasing it a week after aliens of all films killed any momentum that film could’ve had
@@joeymerk3706 It must feel vindicating for him to see the movie become recognized as the actual masterpiece that it is. Back in its day, it just got shit, but today, The Thing is known as one of the best horror movies ever made.
The practical effects in _The Thing_ are straight up ART
I CLAPPED, WHEN I HEARD MIKE STOKLASA CAMEO!
IT BROKE NEW GROUND!!
Very cool
"He forgot his insulin, in a diabetic freakout, raaargh!" - Unrelated picture of Rich Evans
The Thing From Another World was pretty amazing too. The scene in that where they're all throwing buckets of gasoline at a stuntman on fire and the shot goes on for like 60 something seconds is hardcore as fuck.
Agreed, that scene when the lights dim and the door smashes open to reveal the creature's silhouette is masterfully done and the flames sequence looks so dangerous, but they seem to pull it off with utter ease.
Nice to see you here, Sonny Jim!
As a kid of the 70's the '51 version was one of my favorite movies - then I saw the remake as a teenager in '82 and was blown away.
Yep. I think that's the scene where they're all in a dark room waiting for it to come through the door, and suddenly it swings open and they throw gasoline on it. This scene is surprisingly effective even today, and I can only imagine the effect it had on the early 50s audience! Considering what was available back in the early 50s, they did a fantastic job on that movie.
I think that 'man on fire' scene was a stunt first.
I love the scene with Blair and the noose. I always took it as he was planning on killing himself before the Thing took over. The noose is still there when the group visits him because the Thing had no concept of suicide so just left the noose hanging because it didnt understand that it would be suspicious. It's just so creepy seeing it try to convince them that it's fine and not acknowledge the noose at all.
The Thing produces perfect imitations so that doesn't make much sense. In all honesty Blair-Thing left it there probably for pity so he could be taken back inside.
@@elansleazebaganno I mean, we don't know that. The characters *think* it can make perfect imitations, but that's never actually proven.
@@vorbo01 The Norris imitation literally had a heart attack because the real Norris had a weak heart. If the imitations weren't perfect, even by a little, a close friend of the victim could probably identify that their friend was being imitated, or at the very least that something was up
Love almost everything about this movie, the tones, moods.... the cold, dead environment... a fantastic horror movie
Love me some colin on re:View.
WIll do.
"These fucking prequels can fuck off!"
Nothing against Colin, but I kinda would have liked to see Mike on this one. He has said before he isn't a big John Carpenter fan so it might have been interesting to see him reviewing the best Carpenter film with that bias in place.
I ship 'em.
Was he that knowledgeable Russian sailor who had some friends in the industry?
I like the interpretation of the ending where they're actually both the thing, and after sitting in the snow for a few hours, they have an awkward moment where they realize it. Then it turns into an Odd Couple style sitcom.
The Antarctic base is simply the best man cave ever. Classic Video cabinet game, vhs system, pool table every room sound system and flame throwers 🔥 😍
@@digitalwayfarer7404 I suppose you might think that if your reaction to seeing pussy is to run away screaming.
😂😂😂 Not sure why you admitted that about yourself! 😂😂😂
digital wayfarer maybe a metaphor for a dominant woman--a maneater perhaps...?
unlimited J&B...
@@PeacefulJoint actually think it holds the record for the largest all male film cast. Not 100% sure 🤔
I think the reason critics didn't like it is simply: it was too ahead of its time and too extreme.
It probably scared the living shit out of these critics, but in a way that made them dislike the movie, it was just too intense for them.
readordiefanatic I think the critics didn't actualy watch the movie
I disagree, i can easily see them making it to the kennel scene, and feeling pranked almost. This movie was a quantum leap in gross-out scares
My mum & dad rented this film & bought in some pizza to eat while they watched, to this day my mum tells me she regretted buying that pizza.
It was completely unlike anything they'd seen.
Zerofightervi Tell your mom to grow up. Pineapple can be on a fucking pizza.
I just only now watched the movie.
And for some background I love Alien, and The Thing really hits the same notes.
But in the end The Thing never felt tense or extreme. I liked how all hints to solve the movie were subtle, but in the end I could never get tense on the movie. After Blair goes crazy, firstly as a wise move to destroy comms so no-one finds the Thing, but after Windows drops the keys and it's clear the blood was destroyed by a replacement Blair all tension was lost for me.
After that I could only enjoy the scenery and sets that fueled my sense of adventure, and the satisfying practical effects making for some praise worthy gore, the plot was still lost. It felt pointless to see the people suffer through when their chances of survival are 0.
I want an entire video of Mr. Plinkett just reading bad reviews.
No.
INSTANT TRAAASSHH
@@MegaZeta Yes.
The music is perfect for the tone of this film. That it got a Razzie only shows how serious the Razzie's should be taken.Time is the true critic.
Steven Delaney
Nobody gives Ennio Morricone a razzie!
Holy shit, you're suggesting the Razzies shouldn't be taken seriously? Holy shit, what a Eureka moment. Holy. Shit.
Stanley Kubrick was nominated for a Razzie their first year for The Shining. Was there a movie in the '80s critics DID like?
The Razzies are a fucking joke, they've made so many ridiculous nominations that I can't even be bothered to list them all.
@@thecheese4960 nope, greatest horror movie of all time my friend, that’s all there is to it
26:29 interesting bit of trivia about that scene, everyone except Wilford Brimley nearly threw up during filming. Wilford Brimley had been skinning animals all his life, so it didn't bother him so much.
Jay and Canadian Jay! My favorite duo :D
"Test screenings really changed the shape of this film... I can say going through this experience that no studio would make a film like 'Alien' or even Carpenter and Lancaster's version of 'The Thing' today."
-Eric Heisserer, Screenwriter (on why we can't have nice THINGs)
what movie was he talking about, I'm curious?
Interview regarding the 2011 prequel.
Oh of course, duh. I remember watching a really good video on all the practical effects that got changed after the producers shot that idea down...
"We got a group of about fifty people from the same area with similar interests and they're going to dictate the future of your film for thousands of others. Don't worry it's foolproof."
Test screenings are an awful concept.
Questionable Object a lot of test screening are done in Vegas, entirely to get a diverse group of people because people from all over the country come to visit the strip. Test screenings still ruin artistic visions, but they do attempt to get a representative group of people for the American population.
I love the bit where they mention you root for Kurt Russel's character because he's Kurt Russel when in the source material short story, McReady is described literally as a "bronzed god."
Colin has some serious movie knowledge. I love hearing him and Jay discuss movies.
I didn't realize music in the Hateful 8 was leftover Thing music. No wonder I got the same feeling of isolation when I watched it.
the best part of intellectual theft is when it doesn't exist, since Morricone composed the score for the film.
The menu music from The Thing DVD is in hateful 8 as well and it gives me flash backs to falling asleep to the DVD at age 15 and having it play all night. That shit is not good to wake up to.
John Carpenter's The Thing is the best horror film I've ever seen. The drama of not knowing who is or who isn't a monster, the music, the special effects, the acting. Everything works so fucking well with one another.
I agree, the pacing, the editing, the cinematography. I love this movie.
A lot of films nail either the creative, gross-out effects or the suspense, but none combine both better than this one.
Alongside ALIEN, the finest sci-fi shocker ever made.
Perfect cast ☑️
Perfect setting ☑️
Perfect visuals ☑️
Perfect score ☑️
Perfect effects ☑️
A genuine 10/10 masterpiece
I'm really surprised you didn't bring up the screams of the thing. It's one of the more unsettling parts about the film, especially with the severed head the way it cries out as it's set on fire. Reminds me of the scream from the 70s Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
You're not surprised, you just wanted to use this channel's popularity to boost your banal opinion
Absolutely. The scene where they catch Bennings half-transformed, and he opens his mouth to just scream still gets me every time.
@@MegaZeta What?????
@@MegaZeta Bruh what planet are you living on?
@@epochpilot9404 I found that so unsettling even though it was the least grotesque scene with “the thing” I grabbed my bf’s arm and said “nope, don’t like that, I’m out!” And then I had my eyes glued to the tv the whole movie.
oh I love it when john carpenter's thing gets attention
Which is exactly what John says on date night.
ThePitofSidLord
It's so big! And has a red spot on it!
How could you ignore it? It's enormous
I legit thought he may have died when I saw this upload. Had to frantically check Twitter.
This is probably the last movie that REALLY scared me. When I was a kid I was scared of any horror movie, and then I got less sensitive as time went on. I specifically remember being in the bathroom after I watched this movie at my friend's house, and freaking out when his cat started sticking it's paws under the door like it was trying to get in.
When I'm asked about the good remakes, I answer The Thing, The Fly and The Blob. Also, True Grit.
Alien is a remake of a film called It The Terror From Beyond Space.
Scarface
luigi ventroni REMEMBER SCARFACE!?
Also, the new version of suspria is actually good... like the thing, it was critically booed, and I have a feeling it may go on to be well liked. It's a completely different movie, beat wise, which is exactly what a remake should be, but it also kept to the spirit of the original well. They did it on re:view later and I know Jay likes it more than the original film.
@@lawrencescales9864 Yeah Suspiria is a very interesting one for me. I didn't even know there was an original until an hour or so before I saw it I was just interested in it and I remember not knowing how to feel after I watched it. I admired the filmmaking and thought very highly of some aspects but it wasn't until a little while later when it finally settled in how much I truly loved it. It's an incredible movie that I don't blame people for not enjoying due to the nature of it but I hope it gets the recognition it deserves in the future.
I have never finished this video. Every time, I get to about 10 minutes in and then just watch The Thing. I'm so sorry
The Thing is definitely my favorite horror movie! Such a shame it didn't do so great initially.
Probably my favorite scene was when Kurt Russel turned to the camera and said, *"Body horror."*
It was not a huge hit, but it was definitely not a flop. It made money.
It's not your fave horror movie.
I liked when he threw the dynamite at The Thing and said, "hail to the king, baby." John Carpenter is the king of coining catch phrases.
DrJuice1 Well then, _I guess it's not~_
Well it made money eventually, but it had a 15 million dollar production budget and 19 million dollar box office take, so once you take out the theaters' cuts plus the ad budget it definitely lost money at least initially.
Best horror movie ever made.
I think it would be perfect with a sophisticated dance number in the middle of the film. But as it is...it's a good film (one of my favourite films)
Tales from the Hood
Couldn't agree more everything was perfect!
The Shining?
The Thing or the Shining is the choice I will never be able to make.
The Thing is my favorite horror movie, my favorite Carpenter movie. So tense, so paranoid, fucking amazing and classic.
Possibly the greatest horror film ever made. So smart. So well acted. You couldn’t drill a pin sized hole it the plot. The screenplay is rock solid.
Even when i know it's a semi mechanical rubber puppet covered in fake blood, it still is a discusting puppet that i would hesitate to even touch. CGI does not come close to creating that level of creeped-out-ness in me.
Also most of the time cgi things somehow manage to look like they dont have mass. Sometimes they over animate/over physics simulate and that just ruins it. Its a really fine line. The worst parts are when cgi has to interact with real things and its almost always obvious that cgi is a slave to real objects or actors motions.
"You may not have noticed this, but your brain did."
A buddy of mine lend me his un-cut version and I made the mistake to watch it at night, while I was alone in the house. That night and the following nights I couldn't really sleep......My mind always thought that there is a weird dog monster sticking in the corner, reaching out for me.
And when RLM showed parts of the dog transformation scene I felt this awful sickening punch in the gut. The effects are probably the best of it's genre. It still leaves me reeling every time to the point where I want to close my eyes. The images of this movie just burns into your mind. This is far away from modern jump-scares horror movies.
Unless it's unintentional. CGI Leia in Rouge One made me recoil in horror, no joke.
You know what's really weird? Is that this could actually happen. Now that's scary.
"INSTANT THRASH". Oh my god, I couldn't stop laughing for at least 2 minutes straight. Holy hell, how can you be so wrong about something and yet so confident about your assessment?
I would love to have someone hunt down those critics and see what they have to say about those baffling posts.
@@psychosociety7910 I wish someone would hunt down their emails and post them here so we can all spam them to death about how shit they are at their jobs.
@@jbsquare3672 They're literally all dead you moron
@@psychosociety7910 They all have been fucking dead for many years
Critics are paid to promote or demote a movie. They are hired goons for the corrupt movie industry
Such an amazing film. Even today. I think “The Thing” still stands up today for the same reason Hitchcock films do. Suspense.
John Carpenter's The Thing. The visual pinnacle of practical effects.
They're good effects, but no, not really.
Mega Zeta bro wtf are you doing😭 I respect the troll game but you are literally commenting on every single post bro get outta moms basement, get a job or hobby or a girlfriend, something bruh Jesus
@@Lucky-sh1dm I know right. It's hilarious.
I remember when I first watched this, I was in grade school and I was expecting to be bored (I was born in '96 so the SAW movies were the horror standard when I watched this), I was blown away by how good and how scary it was.
Lol, I was born a the same time, but The Thing is first horror movie I ever watched, way before grade school. I believe my dad had left the tv on starz/encore and passed out while I stayed up.
I'll admit I didn't watch a whole lot of horror movies from the time, but I remember the few I did watch were like gross-out/gore shit like the Hills Have Eyes remake from that time and 30 Days of Night
Think Big Trouble in Little China can get a little love on re:View soon?
Patrick Boyda how about Kung Fury ?
Then ,They Live, basically anything Carpenter did in the 80's was awesome.
Seen this movie in theaters when it first came out in the 80s with my (RIP) Pops. A classic that holds up 🍿
Having seen & loved this movie on its initial release in '82, it has been gratifying to see public opinion of The Thing evolve over time, to where it is now rightly regarded as a masterpiece.
I wonder if Jay knows there's The Thing video game which is a sequel to the movie, that Carpenter deemed to be canon. MacReady actually survives, but you can find frozen corpse of Childs. Game was fine.
I MENTIONED IT FIRST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Good for you, I don't read all comments.
I dunno, The Spoony One's video review of it always made me stay way clear of it. It's not that bad then?
Forsete Spoony overdid it, it is hillarious review and some points are spot on, but it's not bad as he is making it to be... It's actually pretty good in my opinion, you should give it a try.
I played it over a weekend, was a fine game that actually managed to build up some paranoia.
Werner Herzog's Nosferatu remake is stunning.
agreed, but the original is still better
Klaus Kinski was the perfect casting choice for the remake, but Max Schreck was - and is still to this day - iconic. The fact that fans can have a clear favorite, but totally understand how anyone could favor the other is a testament to the quality of both films!
how about ben hur from 1959
There are definitely two camps as to which one is better. I prefer the remake, which is rather daft, since the original is a groundbreaking landmark in cinema (despite Gustave von Wangenheim's hammy acting), and without it, the remake wouldn't exist, but the remake (for me, at least) is an objectively better film, but I think it boils down to whether you like your horror straight up or more folk/fairytale.
Not daft at all. Like I said, its easy for anyone to see how either could be anyone's favorite!
the Police Squad thing was beautifully hilarious hahaha
I saw The Thing 2011 and then The Thing 1982. I couldn't believe how much better the latter was; it has aged superbly for a horror film, particularly a nearly 40 year old one.
Ironically now the CG of the prequel is dated and looks like shit, thanks hollywood producer.
my theory; it boils down to framerate. film had it relatively low, so the true nature of practicals never stuck out. now that everything is cgi and nothing is practical, ultrahigh fps and clarity actually works against stuff like this. it stands the fuck out.
It is more than just framerate, it is also the lighting and actors reacting or beeing surprised by some effects that are actually happening in front of them. Don't get me wrong, there is great cgi around nowadays, but if it's done wrong it just has a totally diffrent kind of eeriness than any practical effect. Bad cgi is just scarily laughable, while even bad practical effects can cause some real dread and fright, even if it's not a horror flick 😅
@@intergalacticspacecanoe4659 movies still don't play at higher than 24 fps what are you on about
I think we can all agree that the VFX in Dune are pretty goddamn amazing.
"IT'S JUST A GODDAMN COMMERCIAL FOR J&B!"
Hahahaha I love how perfect it is that THAT'S Howard Hawks' takeaway from The Thing.
Cornelius Augustus Von Meyerbeer III thank you!
Christian Nyby to be exact. I suspect there were some sour grapes over the fact that John Carpenter's The Thing was actually a better adaptation of the novella. Not to mention that Carpenter actually 100% helmed his 1982 version.
One of my favorite of all time as well. Classic.
I think this movie gets better through time as well. The fact that all characters behave rationally is a major plus and the effects only get better through time as well. Like Colin said, your brain doesn't even have the time to process what horrifying stuff you're seeing before something even more disgusting happens.
It looks absolutely great as well.
I really REALLY like Colin. We need more of him!!! He knows what he's talking about!
The Thing 1982 : I remember and care for ALL the characters. The Thing Prequel : I could not remember a single one of them or give a damn if they died.
Hands down one of the best movies of all time.
Film has more influence on culture, and therefore the public mood, than most people realise. E.T. was a hopeful feel good movie that audiences went back to see again and again, because they wanted to 'stay in Pandora' (yes Avatar also falls into this category). E.T. took over social consciousness in 1982. It's difficult to understand from here and now, outside the giddying influence of E.T., outside the hype of the time. E.T. had a genuine effect on people, and one of those effects was a kneejerk reflex to dark and depressing stories. E.T. was responsible for The Thing being a flop in my humble opinion.
I completely agree. For a solid year after it was released, ET was a cultural phenomenon. There were so many tie-ins with product placement, and follow on advertising, that the character of ET became something of an actual celebrity. I feel like the masses were so horrified by the audacity of "The Thing" to be so blatantly bleak and nihilistic, that they just recoiled from it. It was simply too ugly to look at. As a child of those times, and a huge fan of "The Thing", I can honestly say that this movie would have been FAR better received, and probably gotten the recognition it deserved, had ET never existed.
Mass-audience film is a _product_ of culture, and usually trails shocking innovation in other parts of it by a few years, not the other way around. There is absolutely no way that _E.T._ did what you think it did. What it did was speak to a preexisting appeal as mediated by advertising and marketing.
And here we are now, The Thing is a horror classic and E.T. has faded into the background.
@@mittycommitspizzatime92 Couldn't have said that better. Love The Thing and love E.T. but sometimes hold a grudge that one is being talked about and not the other.
In the '70s movies were auteur-driven and reflected the societal feelings of malaise and paranoia. In the '80s, people went to heartwarming family blockbusters, snorted cocaine, and voted for Ronald Reagan. Twice.
As a freshman in high school in 1982, this movie was indeed enthralling and terrifying and remains a favorite to this day. Excellent job by Carpenter and the cast.
This is why RLM is one of the very best movie channel on RUclips. Great work.
"It reminds me of star trek deep space nine season 3 episode 26, the adversary"
I have a giant, unyielding love for this film.
The 2011 prequel to The Thing really upsets me because if you look into the making of said prequel, you'll see that its one of those movies that has a very decent movie within it....ruined by, of course, executive meddling. It so pisses me off because it really could have been a proper prequel :(
Otherwise known as: The Best Horror Movie Ever
This, and Alien.
I wouldn't say the best horror film up there but certainly up in the top 10. I still think Halloween is Carpenter's best work.
William James I would agree, it's my personal favourite at least.
William James - The Shining, The Exorcist, The Thing, Alien - all of them more or less on equal footing.
Evil Dead it is not.
Classic! The effects hold up superbly and the suspense is intense.
Fun fact: Scarface is a remake so add that to the list of good remakes
You know what I love of this show? Those awkward silence moments
I will attest that I only ever drank j&b because of Kurt Russel in The Thing
The Blob remake is very underrated and it shows how much Frank Darabont is a genius.
Good call
Jw Nj, SERIOUSLY!
Jw Nj Effects are amazing, one of the best remakes ever in my opinion!
Another great practical effects extravaganza much like Carpenter's "The Thing".
I give a thumbs up to that sir
Just watched the 40th anniversary yesterday at the theater, it was great to see it on the big screen with my daughter who had no idea what she was in for!! She liked it as well had a lot of good questions to ask...
I saw this movie on release when I was 18 and there was just one other person in the auditorium. It blew me away and still does. Plus I’ll never forget the glance we shared over the seats as we stood up to leave after that ending, properly creeped out!👌
John Carpenter's The Thing is one of my favorite movies of all time. I love it.
The main theme is absolutely by Ennio Morricone (pronounced 'Morri-coney' not 'Morri-cone') and it sounds just like Carpenter because Carpenter asked him for something 'simpler and spookier' and 'not to do so many notes' and he came back with basically an impersonation of a Carpenter theme - which I think is kind of fitting, due to the subject matter. If you listen to the original soundtrack album (which features only the music Morricone composed), the theme is featured in ‘Humanity Pt. 2’ and he also uses the same melody in a slower orchestral arrangement in the track ‘Humanity Pt. 1’, which is also used in the film. Carpenter and Howarth maintain that they only created some moody, interstitial cues - great ones at that - including the music that plays during the reveal of the title. I totally understand why people assume Carpenter must have written the main theme -- I thought the same thing! -- but Carpenter says the theme is Morricone's (he even said so before he performed the theme in his live shows a couple years back) and Morricone says it's his, and both men have no reason to lie about it, so... it's his.
What are you talking about. As an italian, it is pronounced Morri-con-e, with the e pronounced like in "end" and the double r it is pronounced like actually saying r two times in a row.
Shut the fuck up, nerd
Have you guys seen Pingu's The Thing, a recreation of most of the iconic story beats from The Thing with children's show claymation penguins? It's actually pretty amazing.
Thingu is amazingly well made.
Ha! Thank you for introducing this to me 😂
My favorite movie of all time! I remember seeing the dog scene as a young boy by accident and it scared the living shit out of me. Didn't watch the full movie until I was a teenager. It was so amazing!
My will to live has been extended for another 42 minutes!
I love this film. It's a classic. And the director's commentary with John Carpenter and Kurt Russell is incredibly enjoyable and insightful.
I love everything about the thing. The soundtrack is great because it does such a good job of setting the tone and feel, while drawing you in. The movie feels cold, and you feel like you could actually freeze to death if you where there. The characters and fear it creates is perfect. The practical effects are both beautiful, haunting and sort of look a little unreal but fits whats going on so perfect. Ive watched this movie so many times, and that dog cage scene always scares and unnerves me so much, even just the noise of the thing.
this film terrified me when I was a kid, still to this day no other film has disturbed me more, the characters are so unsympathetic and the movie is so relentlessly bleak it seemed to have none of the normal tropes I was comfortable with as a kid and i found that made it more scary. honestly i think it suffered critically because it was just too good at its job of scaring the shit out of everyone.