John Carpenter's Undisputed Masterpiece!!!

Rating: 10/10 (15 October 2011)

Anybody who knows anything about horror director John Carpenter knows how much he idolizes not only Howard Hawks but also the 1951 sci-fi chiller "The Thing from Another World" about an alien that tangles with a group of scientists who accidentally thaw out the creature out. Unlike the Hawks produced original, Carpenter and writer Bill Lancaster went back to the premise of John W. Campbell, Jr.,'s novella "Who Goes There?" (1938) where the creature impersonates various member of the colony while they struggle to destroy it. No, this horror movie is not for the squeamish. The eponymous monster is a slimy, creepy, critter that imitates the physical characteristics of anybody that it consumes. "The Thing" is the best film that John Carpenter ever directed and probably his most expensive. Rob Boktin's creatures are hair-raising, and the scene when the guy gets his arms bitten off at the elbow while he is administers CPR to a dying man is terrific. This tense, humorless, all-male yarn takes place in Antartica in 1982 and opens with a Norwegian chopper pursuing a Husky across the snow-swept terrain. The dog manages to reach another community of scientist before they can kill it and the Americans kill the insane, trigger-happy Norwegian. In other words, the dog survives and is taken in. Before long things start to happen. Kurt Russell stars a MacReedy, a rough and tough helicopter pilot who nurses Jack Daniels throughout the movie and wears a hilarious Yosemite Sam Stetson. Not to be missed. Lots of suspenseful situations.