I re-watched John Carpenter's The Thing (1982) this weekend and have been dreaming of dogs in my sleep ever since, hah. So, I thought, if a work has affected me on such an unconscious level it deserves to be discussed here, and the fact that it is based on a little novella written by John W. Campbell provides a perfect frame to pack this under Based on Books.
I also just now finished reading the science fiction novella Who Goes There?, the original book to The Thing which was first published in 1938 in William Clayton's Astounding Science Fiction. It wasn't necessarily surprising that the original text provides more philosophical discussions and is written in an almost didactic tone, making it clear that thawing a frozen alien life form has serious medical, biological and social consequences, not always of the pleasant sort. These discussions attain a much wider extent than the film ever tries to reach, like the lack of females in the plot being mentioned in the book. This isn't surprising at all for a story written in the thirties but Campbell gives a reason beyond your usual historical misogyny, and implicates the presence of a female would mean for the creature Thing an augmented reproducibility (and thus lethality) once it finds a host who can host life. A dangerous idea, which better stays on theoretical level. On the other hand, it was very interesting to see that despite some minor changes which can be attributed to artistic choices, Carpenter stayed pretty true to the original text and where those changes have been made, they made for true assets and signature scenes characterizing the movie.
The main point film and book differ in is the nature of the Thing, which, in the book is so much more intelligent, sinister and skilled. Carpenter completely discarded the Thing's telepathic abilities and even though there are small points which hint that his alien wasn't all that stupid or clueless either, Campbell creates a much more impressing villain who can read minds and can manipulate all beings on Earth. The Book-Thing also has a certain bulk, a certain capacity. So, let's say it shifts into a human being, it still has the capacity to slip into a dog. If it reaches the ocean, it can become one or maximum two seals. I'm not one hundred percent sure if this aspect was neglected in the movie, since there were moments where two people were simultaneously "infected" by the alien, but never three.
Because the films based on this story ("The Thing from Another World" 1951 and "The Thing" 1982) both connect the predominant paranoia to the Red Scare, McCarthyism and anti-communist sentiments, albeit in different ways, this is the general impression of this story, although the real background is a much more personal and in my opinion a much much scarier one. Campbell's mother Dorothy had an identical twin who, according to Wikipedia, visited them often and who disliked little John. So he couldn't tell them apart and felt rejected by what he thought is his mother. I can't even imagine how that affects a child, especially if his real mom was a kind woman he must have felt totally messed up by the lack of consistency. I think I would write a horror story about that too.
Anyway, let's look at Carpenter's glorious work now. The crew has been cut down from 37 to twelve men, a much better and manageable number, which for me, gave the story a locked-room mystery atmosphere, strengthening the "whodunnit" character.
Unlike the book, the film makes the alien come into the US Antarctica camp, come running into their clueless, animal-loving arms. What a genius decision as an opener! I can't remember a time in my life in which I didn't know The Thing, so I can only imagine and guess the relief of the unassuming audience once the crew "saves" the Norwegian sled dog.
In a wonderfully eerie scene played by Jed the Husky, Husky-Thing is led into the dog shed where all the other dogs are chilling. I personally kept on waiting for the other dogs to get a whiff, but despite superior dog senses, they aren't able to sense anything wrong with this new dog and keep on chilling. Until Husky-Thing shows its true face and they are savaged... This is very important, the Thing is so successful, so perfect at shape shifting that even dogs aren't able to tell the difference. This scene gives advance notice of what will happen to the humans.
One of the things in life which can genuinely excite me are special effects in 80s movies, even if they're in bad taste or cheesy or plain bad. So I won't even try to express how much I appreciate Rob Bottin's superior work here. His creations perfectly convey the feelings of disgust, abnormalcy and fear of transition which are described in the novella.
One of these creations and my favorite by far is the Spider-Head. The Spider-Head consists of Norris' head and spider legs, and is born as a result of a series of utterly paranoid events. This series of events in turn contains plenty of the secret hints concerning the Thing's level of intelligence and its skill in disguising that I mentioned above. In a scene where the crew turns on MacReady, as the cook Nauls accuses him of being occupied by the alien, we have Norris and Palmer looking at each other in incredulity, and we think they can't believe MacReady could be the alien. In reality they both are already infected and their looking at each other could be interpreted as "What? No, he's not one of us?"
Same thing goes for Spider-Head whose birth alone showcases the Thing's resilience and will of survival. In a hilarious scene where Spider-Head tries to escape the wrath of MacReady, Palmer throws his arachnoid companion under the bus with the unforgettable words "You gotta be fucking kidding..." These words can be interpreted differently when we know that Palmer is already infected and snitches on Spider-Head, thus directing attention away from himself and to someone else, apparently proving his innocence. The Thing in the novella plays similar mind games.
It was a blast to both re-watch this masterpiece on the big screen and to read the novella for the first time, but in my final verdict of course the movie is the winner. I don't want to compare Campbell and Carpenter, as they're both geniuses in their respective fields, it's just that Carpenter's work speaks to me on a different level that feels closer to myself.
To finish this post, here are some "best of"s from the movie adaptation:
- The best jump scare scene ever is the jumping blood scene which comes during the hot wire blood test, there's absolutely no build-up whatsoever, it comes mid-conversation and scares shitless.
- The best mood change from suspense to hilarious is when Spider-Head tries to weasel out the door with his little feet, tap tap tap.
- The most over the top death is Dr. Copper' death by defibrillator, having his arms torn off while resuscitating Norris-Thing.
and finally
- The best acting performance is by Jed, the Husky-Thing; that dog was so creepy and acted so much like a human it was uncanny. It was also good to see in the end credits that they took the help of the Humane Society for the training of the animals and they didn't come to harm.
On a last note - do you guys think that one the last two surviving people, Childs and MacReady, was the Thing? I was thinking of a scene where they found someone's glasses the Thing threw into the snow (I can't remember who they belonged to) and because of that as well as the hot wire test I was speculating that The Thing can't take the shape of metals. And since Childs has an earring, he can't be the Thing or else his earring would be missing. So it has to be MacReady, right?
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