Impressively time-tested

Rating: 9/10 (25 November 2006)

"The Thing" has come a long way from being virtually ignored in the theaters in 1982 because it was released within two weeks of "E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial," (I lobbied hard to see this instead, but my parents overruled me because I was 9 at the time and they felt "E.T." was just a LITTLE more age-appropriate) to making its way onto the IMDb Top 250 Movies of All-Time list. For that remarkable comeback alone, you have to give "The Thing" and its resiliency some mad props. Myself, I ended up finally seeing this in the early 90s when I was in college. Definitely worth the wait. Its based on the old 1930s sci-fi novel "Who Goes There?" and is essentially a remake of the 1950s "The Thing From Another Planet." Aside from being based on an old novel, it is derivative of many before it the sci-fi/monster movie genre. Think "Alien" but in the Antarctic instead of outer space. But this movie still works on so many levels. First of all, it was one of the few movies in the late '70s/early '80s sci-fi genre that actually had a decent cast (such as Kurt Russell, Richard Dysart and that old geezer -- forgot his name -- who used to do Quaker Oats commercials and always mispronounced "diabetes"). Secondly, the special effects are amazingly good for an '80s sci-fi movie; better than a lot of the crap that passes off as CGI special effects on SciFi Channel. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, this movie takes a somewhat complex plot (in addition to the "monster runs amok" theme, there's quite a bit of plot and character buildup and mistrust amongst the main characters, weaved in with the "in addition to fighting an unknown monster, we're kind of stuck in Antarctica too" claustrophobia) and does it without affecting the pace of the movie whatsoever. I guess that must be the John Carpenter influence. Whatever it is, this was a great movie to watch, giving you the sci-fi scares without any of the laugh-ability of bad, low-budget shockers. I'm shying away just a bit at giving it the highest possible rating because I wasn't 100% on board with the ending (leaves a little too much to interpretation of what happened to the final two survivors), but I give "The Thing" a very solid 9.