Supertastic.

Rating: 10/10 (23 November 2006)

John Carpenter was probably the man to beat during the late 70's and early 80's in terms of horror flicks, and ranking as his greatest film, is most certainly the Thing. This is a creature horror, a genre that rarely hit's the mark, but most memorably perhaps with this film, and Ridley Scott's Alien, a few years previously (for the best recent example, check out The Descent). The Thing also ranks as Kurt Russell's greatest cinematical moment. This came shortly after Carpenter himself had helped Russell expunge himself from his longstanding Disney poster boy image (In Escape From New York). Indeed the collaborations of Carpenter and Russell always hit the mark, and established Russell as one of the coolest, cultest, action guys of the 80's.
Here the story centres around RJ MacReady (as cool a name as you'll get in cinema, perhaps seconded only to Snake Pliskin) and his workmates stationed out in a remote scientific research station in the Antarctic. When a chopper carrying Norwegian's from a nearby station fly's over their airspace, while shooting at a husky, something seems amiss. The Norwegians seem intent on destroying the seemingly innocent dog, and after inadvertently blowing up their own chopper and wounding one of the American men, the remaining Norwegian is shot down. When MacReady and Co take a look at the remains of the Norwegian camp they discover it all but destroyed with no survivors and only a hideously mutated carcass, and a huge crater. As the film progresses we soon discover that the camp was destroyed by an alien shape-shifter, that absorbs the bodies it contacts and takes over that form (the dog, and then down the line the crew members). The genius in The Thing is, from a certain point on, Carpenter builds up the tension between the American crew. No one trusts anyone, and sanity is pushed to the limit. One by one they all get killed by the Alien, or by each other. Above the amazing special FX in this film it's the human interaction that creates the most tension. Kudo's to JC for creating a really intelligent horror.
As mentioned the FX are amazing. All the creature FX are top class, and of course done long before CGI came and reared it's ugly head. The FX in this, by Rob Bottin, and also Stan Winston, outdo anything I've seen done in a computer with creature makeup etc. The film is pretty creepy and gruesome at times with some nightmarish imagery, and Carpenter pulls off some brilliant jump scares in the film, some of the most perfectly set up and timed scares ever committed to film.
The cast are excellent. There's a host of characters and in the support of Russell, Wilfred Brimley and Keith David are particularly good. Kurt Russell though is the man, playing his role superbly as an actor and as an action man. People seem too quick to remember Willis, Stallone and Schwarzengger as the 80's action gods, when Russell preceded them all. Russell is after all one of the few people to ever successfully pull off the mullet.
Carpenter has never exceeded his work here. It's brilliantly paced, shot and edited and Carpenter has a control over proceedings that exceeds all his other work. Aided also by a fantastically uncharacteristic score by Ennio Morricone, who does a very Capenteresque score, and something that is fully of eerie menace. This is without doubt one of the best of its genre. *****