The Thing (1982) The Thing (1982)

See also: _Index | Plot Structure (The Thing) | Backbeats (The Thing)

Quick Facts

• Director: John Carpenter
• Screenplay: Bill Lancaster (from the 1938 novella Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell, Jr.)
• Starring: Kurt Russell (R.J. MacReady), Wilford Brimley (Dr. Blair), Keith David (Childs), T.K. Carter (Nauls), David Clennon (Palmer), Donald Moffat (Garry), Charles Hallahan (Norris), Peter Maloney (Bennings), Richard Masur (Clark), Joel Polis (Fuchs), Thomas G. Waites (Windows), Richard Dysart (Dr. Copper)
• Cinematography: Dean Cundey
• Editor: Todd Ramsay
• Music: Ennio Morricone (with additional cues by John Carpenter)
• Special Makeup Effects: Rob Bottin
• Runtime: 109 minutes
• Release Date: June 25, 1982 (US)
• MPAA Rating: R
• Distributor: Universal Pictures
• Setting: U.S. National Science Institute Outpost 31, Antarctica

Overview

A twelve-man American research station near the South Pole takes in a malamute that arrives with two Norwegians from a neighboring camp shooting at it from a helicopter; within forty-eight hours the dog reveals itself as a shape-shifting organism that perfectly imitates whatever life-form it consumes, and the station has to decide who is still themselves and who is wearing them. John Carpenter's adaptation of John W. Campbell's Who Goes There? re-runs the 1951 Thing from Another World as a paranoid containment story rather than a monster-attack story: the antagonist's victory condition is to look human, the protagonist's victory condition is to deny it the world, and the film's center is the moment a helicopter pilot improvises a homemade test that any man who refuses to take is the answer. The closing two-shot of MacReady and Childs sharing scotch at the burning camp, neither sure of the other, is one of the most-discussed endings in genre cinema.