The skeleton crew of an Antarctic base are terrorised by an unearthed alien life-form!

Rating: Null/10 (5 October 2011)

Very few horror films remain locked under cult favourite status while at the same time being hailed by critics and widespread audiences as possibly the greatest horror film of all time.
While it has been pointed out by movie legends such as George Romero and Stephen King that people love being scared by a good horror movie, it is not specifically the case with majority audiences. Films such as The Exorcist, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween may be classed as the best of all time, they have also proved too much for the mainstream, who like their horror slightly more psychological, less physical and most often promising a happy ending.
This may explain why master filmmaker John Carpenter's 1982 powerhouse science-fiction horror 'The Thing' did so poorly at the cinema box office, besides the unfortunate fact that the darling of Hollywood, Steven Spielberg, had released E.T: The Extra Terrestrial at the same time.
The film is cold, dark, uncompromising, you can cut the paranoid and petrified atmosphere with a knife, but you'd do better to incinerate it with a flamethrower just to feel that little bit safer before you go to bed. There are no warm and endearing characters to care for, every moment this mysterious but absurdly terrifying Thing from another world strikes, you are left with goosebumps, your imagination running scared and out of control and in the end... have you made up your mind how the end will come?
An American Scientific Research base isolated in the Antarctic finds itself witness to an incident where the members of a not too distant Norwegian base have seemingly gone mad. The Norwegians are killed in regrettable circumstances. leaving no answers as to their actions leaving chronically drunk and depressed helicopter pilot MacReady with no choice but to fly a couple of the concerned scientists over to the Norwegian base where they discover a horrific aftermath of grisly death and destruction. The remains of a mutated and seemingly inhuman corpse is found within the cinders of a burned out bonfire and very quickly the tone is set and the scientists' reality turned upside down.
Aliens are amongst us! Very quickly, shock and disgust turn to fear, fear gives birth to anger and paranoia sets in deep as the remaining life-form next targets the American base and secretly multiplies within their ranks in the hopes of outnumbering the remaining humans before it is discovered and destroyed.
Hopes of containing the alien life-form, before it is discovered that it is not only an intelligent life-form but also a very contagious one, fade very quickly as the whiskey and sleep deprived R.J. MacReady - played with literal ice cold awesomeness by the one and only Kurt Russell - and the few men he feels he can trust begin to fall apart under the strain of fear and isolation, setting themselves apart from those they feel will only lessen their chances of survival.
As time grows short and the numbers die off, it becomes clear that nobody can be trusted and the only way of stopping this nightmare is by effectively ending their very own chances of survival.
Carpenter writes possibly his best ever script, the scenes setting the way for a nightmarish Cold War paranoia tale where the fate of the world could very well be put at risk by the fears of a handful of men. There is nowhere to run and hide. Outside, Antarctic Winter is setting in and deadly sub-zero temperatures make it impossible to escape. Where safety in numbers ought to make a man feel safe, the danger is multiplied and to sit alone in the dark is practically suicide. The dog pound is a slaughterhouse, the medical bay is contaminated, people are losing their minds and cabin fever is setting in and the Thing never sleeps...
An eerie theme by musical genius Ennio Morricone sets the tone; dark, depressed, suspenseful and doom-inspired. Master of animatronic special-effects Rick Bottin provides the most ghastly practical horrors ever devoted to film and a craftily untypical and notably mature ensemble cast (Kurt Russell, Keith David, Donald Moffat, Thomas G. Waites and Wilford Brimley) provide a sense of reality that no kid that wants to make yet another slasher/zombie flick could ever hope to.
If you haven't seen this film before and for some reason you have an intolerance to anything outside of CGI, pop music soundtracks, laugh a minute characters and damsels in distress in any shape or form then I dare you to see what a real horror film is and watch this. Call it an education because there is not a director out there who will ever rival John Carpenter or make a film as cold and creepy as The Thing!