Horrifyingly Good - The Thing (1982)

gathering close to the fire dear viewer for we find ourselves once more in the season of death when the veil between this world and the next grows thin and the spirits walk the earth once more a time when the days grow short the nights close in and the long darkness of winter approaches well unless you live in [ __ ] australia bunch of upside down arseholes anyway the point of this fascinating monologue is that we're into october now and while it hasn't exactly been an eventful summer movie season we at least have halloween to look forward to particularly the people who complain about cultural appropriation while conveniently ignoring that the entire concept of halloween is culturally appropriated from gaelic harvest festivals who is the [ __ ] now hey what's a wonderful world we live in anyway it being the season of spooky stuff and whatever it seems like a good enough time as any to talk about some of my favorite horror movies and what better place to start than this little gem you gotta be [ __ ] kidding picture this you're stranded in an isolated settlement in the middle of a bleak icy snow-covered wasteland hundreds of miles from anything approaching civilization with a bunch of guys you thought you could trust but slowly you begin to realize that some of them are hiding a horrifying secret that threatens to destroy you all it's a bit like that stag weekend in avimore a few years ago we lost a lot of good men out there believe that but in this case i'm talking about the thing john carpenter's 1982 horror classic about a group of american scientists in an antarctic research base who get infiltrated by an alien life form that can infect and consume a host body mutating it into a horrifying parody of a human being as the tension and the body count rises the groups start to turn against each other as they desperately try to figure out who if anyone they can still trust it's a classic combination of science fiction claustrophobic paranoia and disgusting body horror sit in a hostile isolated environment in short it was a [ __ ] great movie weirdly though it was actually a critical and commercial failure when it first released critics hated the excessive gore and creature effects and the movie flocked as a result but it found a new release of life on home cinema and its gradual rise to the status of beloved cult classic eventually caused it to be re-evaluated as one of the best horror movies ever made what is this you say professional movie critics getting it totally wrong and later being forced to eat humble pie not like that could ever happen today anyway let's talk about why the thing is so [ __ ] awesome shall we so the movie kicks off in antarctica where a helicopter is chasing after the world's most laid-back dog and trying to gun it down but i guess their aim is worse than your average stormtrooper because the dog makes it all the way to an american research outpost so everyone there heads outside to see what all the commotion is including kurt [ __ ] russell and his epic beard so the chopper lands and a norwegian dude gets out and tries to lob a grenade at the dog but he [ __ ] it up in what may be the most epic fail of all time nami you're supposed to pull the pin and throw the grenade towards your target anyway the chopper blows up and he dies from shame and bullets so the americans are left behind to ask what the [ __ ] was that all about kurt russell and his beard want some answers so they tracked the chopper back to a norwegian research base to find out what happens looks like things didn't go too well there though damn this really does remind me of that stag weekends they recover some intel from the ruins which leads them to a dig site where they discover an alien spaceship buried under the ice it seems like the norwegians uncovered something that probably should have stayed buried anyway they bring back the charred remains of a burned corpse that they find at the base and discover that it used to be a human whatever could have happened to turn it into this well we soon find out the dog that escaped from the norwegians mutates into a giant monster thing that absorbs all the other dogs in its kennel even kurt russell and his beard can't take it down damn man this is scary [ __ ] but then this [ __ ] legend shows up with a flamethrower and sorts that [ __ ] right out nice work chaps clearly this thing has the ability to infect and absorb other life forms around it so you should definitely incinerate the remains that you brought back from that norwegian camp don't waste any more time and definitely don't leave anyone alone with it otherwise they'll totally get infected and ah never mind i love this guy's reaction right here it's bennings really that's all you're giving them no explanation of what's actually happening to him so they can arm themselves and take relevant precautions anyway it doesn't matter too much they catch benning's mid transformation and luckily kurt russell and his beard are on hand to burn him up but that's not good enough for this guy who destroys their radio and transportation to prevent anyone leaving the camp after his awesome 1980s computer warns him that the alien could infect the whole planet if it spreads to populated areas how exactly is the general purpose pc even able to compute something like that i mean i guess the movie is trying to be like mother from alien but that movie was set like a hundred years in the future and mother was a super advanced flight computer that basically ran the entire ship this thing has got less processing power than a [ __ ] super nintendo ah whatever kurt russell and his beard have got the right attitude to computers but the real question here is who else might be infected by this thing that question becomes the central premise of the movie from here on as one by one the group start to succumb to the alien infection and the increasingly paranoid survivors turn against each other it's a brilliantly tense setup as characters move around the base's claustrophobic corridors and dingy storerooms never quite sure if they can trust the guy next to them they even turn against kurt russell in his beard at one point forcing him to take matters into his own hands what makes the alien such an interesting threat is that you never really get to see it in its true form or learn its motivations where did it come from what does it want here is it trying to return home did it build that crashed spaceship or did it just infect the aliens who did we don't know because there's never a chance to communicate with it to figure out what it wants or why it's just this weird unknown presence taking people down one after another existing only to spread and multiply and consume and the effects are pretty obvious every time a character disappears off screen you're left to wonder if you'll ever come back or if the alien got the better of him the all-male cast do a great job selling the fear and confusion of their predicament while offering just enough suspicion to make you question and doubt their explanations and i love how they got a diverse range of actors here unlike the 2011 prequel where everyone is so young and generically attractive that they look like they rolled off a [ __ ] assembly line these guys actually look and act like real people stuck at the ass end of nowhere they're scruffy and old and out of shape because that's what you'd look like if you couldn't go out and exercise and there was no reason to keep up appearances any longer but of course the thing everyone remembers this movie for is the gore and god damn rightly so rather than showing us some goofy unsatisfying original form for the alien what we get instead is to see the effect it has on other creatures the way it mutates and corrupts and destroys things that should be familiar and reassuring is one of the fundamentals of a good horror movie whether it's the cute dog slowly turning into some horrifying monster or a man that appears human at first and so you look closer and see his true nature the imagination and work that went into the creature effects is nothing short of incredible the thing was made long before cgi was a viable option so everything had to be done with practical effects puppets and prosthetics and slime and it's so much more satisfying to look at it makes for some properly unnerving situations as well like the scene where potentially infected members of the group are tied up together while kurt russell and his beard try to figure out which of them has the virus when one of them gets rumbled he starts to mutate right in front of the others as they desperately try to get away from him like imagine being this dude tied up next to him and watching him disintegrate before your eyes while your mates just [ __ ] around and waste time they also had to get pretty damn creative to make certain shots work like this scene where a character tries to use a defibrillator and it all goes a bit wrong nice little jump scare there but instead of giving the guy fake arms to wave around they took her real life amputee and had him wear a face mask to resemble the original actor and the results are so convincing that i genuinely didn't realise what they'd done until years later and i couldn't end this review without praising the ending of the movie which delivers neither a heroic escape nor a cheap stinger to try to get one last scare out of the audience without spoiling it too much i'll just say that it's a perfectly ambiguous finale to a film that's been all about making you question who you can trust overall i just can't say enough good things about well the thing it's a smart tense claustrophobic and thoroughly entertaining horror film with a solid cast that deliver great performances and creature effects there are some of the best in the business if you're looking for a classic scary movie to watch this halloween then kick back with a few glasses of whiskey and give the thing a watch just don't go on your computer afterwards oh one more thing before i go those of you that follow this channel regularly will probably know that when i'm not tearing apart shitty movies and drinking until i throw up my own spinal column i like to tell stories of my own specifically a series of action thrillers known as the ryan drake series and the latest one called something to die for is now available to pre-order look there it is now i'm actually pretty excited about this one it basically marks the culmination of a story that i began almost a decade ago and i can honestly say that i've written it to the best of my ability and if you've ever felt like supporting the channel in some way but didn't want to get bogged down with patreon or whatever then well perhaps you'd consider buying a copy it would really help me out and i'd be grateful for anyone that's willing to do it and who knows you might even find it halfway entertaining stranger things have happened believe me either way i'll drop a link to the amazon page in the description and you can do with it what you will anyway that's all i've got for today go away now

Channel: The Critical Drinker

Views: 769,717

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Id: 6eFAgnFmHUE

Length: 11min 29sec (689 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 07 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/treysove]

Beyond God tier imo

[u/[deleted]]

Love the Drinker. My favorite Youtuber. Great analysis as always from him.

[u/Reniemik]

John Carpenter's "The Thing". The only "The Thing" that matters. Way ahead of it's time. The casting was perfection itself

[u/paradise_demise]

I love how everytime he mentions MacReady he also includes the beard lol

[u/fike88]

Brilliant brilliant film. Must be one of the best horrors ever?

[u/claudi_buhen]

My boyfriend and I literally watched this last night!

[u/coachbchen]

I miss good practical effects in horror movies.

[u/ThatpersonKyle]

The Thing good post number #2343

[u/chubchugger420]

Needs to come on Netflix. That and It Follows.