John Carpenter's The Thing is an entertainingly gore-drenched horror flick

Rating: 7/10 (12 October 2009)

Having just rewatched Howard Hawks' The Thing from Another World, I finally decided to see John Carpenter's The Thing on the HD DVD my dad ordered months ago. In this version, the title alien starts to inhabit many of the dogs and people that are stationed in the Antarctic Circle. Among the crew: R. J. MacReady (Kurt Russell), Nauls (T. K. Carter), Dr. Blair (A. Wilford Brimley without his familiar mustache and glasses), Vance Norris (Charles Hallahan), Garry (Donald Moffat), Clark (Richard Masur), Dr. Cooper (Richard Dysart), and others. I'll stop there and just say how fascinatingly weird and gory this movie is. I mean from the dog scene to yet another creature-coming-out-of-someone's-body sequence, there's plenty of entertaining blood-drenched visual effects courtesy of Rob Bottin and Stan Winston. And the pulsating score of Ennio Morricone is positively riveting. I can't always make sense of the dialogue in Bill Lancaster's screenplay but as long as those monster effects come on, I'm never bored. So on that note, I highly recommend John Carpenter's The Thing.