(Originally posted April 2, 2008)

Growing up in the early 1980s, cable televisionwas a boy’s best friend. The cable networks seemed to have endless film libraries and showed new movies nearly every night; boxing and football received extended coverage on HBO and ESPN thanks to shows like “Inside the NFL”; and “parental control” was still an oxymoron, consisting of basically a small gold key that was easily replicated using a paperclip. And few phrases are as universally understood by the male children of the 80s as”Late Night Cinemax.”

It was through cable television that I was introduced to most of the films that bludgeoned my mind into its current shape: Psycho, The Blob, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Alien, Jaws, Blow Out, The Brood, Body Double, The Omen, C.H.U.D., Zapped… And the great thing about cable – you knew the movies would be on again. And again. And again. We couldn’t pause or rewind, but it didn’t matter when you could watch a movie enough times to commit every scene, every line, every gratuitous axe-to-the-face or werewolf transformation or shower scene to memory. And there were always those movies that, no matter where you came into them, once you flipped them on, you had to watch until the end credits. I still get sucked in like this.

One of the films I could never escape and watched a dozen times or more was John Carpenter’s The Thing. A loose remake of The Thing from Another World and based on the short-story “Who Goes There?” by John W. Campbell, Jr., the story involves a group of researchers in Antarctica who are menaced by a shape-changing alien that can assimilate and impersonate other life-forms (full synopsis on Wikipedia). So, why is it a great foray into the dark divide?

• Incredible SFX. Rob Bottin’s work on The Thing is among the best of the decade. The monster’s transformations are genuinely gruesome and disturbing. The SFX also introduced me to Fangoria magazine, my generation’s Famous Monsters of Filmland— I bought my first issue after seeing an image from the film on its cover.
• A relatable cast. Though you learn very little about the characters and their pasts, they all still manage to seem real and tangible. Like the “truckers in space” in Alien, the research station’s crew are likable, flawed, and human. There are no superheroes here, and they all seem as terrified by the situation as the audience, which only makes the film more gripping. And yet, you still wanted to grow up to be a guy like Kurt Russell’s chopper pilot, MacReady.
• Paranoia punctuated by genuine scares. Tons of other movies have featured a monster that can imitate, possess, or replace humans, making it impossible for the characters to trust one another. But I’d argue that few do it as masterfully as The Thing. The “blood test”scene is particularly effective, as MacReady tests each crew member’s blood sample by jabbing a petri dish with a hot wire. During this, the crew members that haven’t been “cleared” are tied up next to one another, angry and afraid. The tension in the scene is almost unbearable, and when the inevitable happens and one of the petri dishes erupts, the room goes nuts.
• Best. Ending. Ever. Two guys drinking in the middle of the Antarctic, with no hope of escape, not knowing if the other is infected… Has yet to be matched.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 24th, 2009 at 9:32 pm and is filed under Bad Influences, Monsters. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.