Review: John Carpenters The Thing (1982)

Stars: Kurt Russel, Kieth David

Budget: 15 Million

Directed By: John Carpenter

Well what can i say about this film, John Carpenters master piece, possibly the best film he has ever made. Yes i know he has other corkers of films such as escape from New York and Halloween but this just hits ALL the right notes and ALL the right times.

Now enough praise lets get on with the film, it is believe it or not a kind of remake or at least based upon a much much older film. The Thing from Another Planet in the 50's both of these though are based on the book/novella Who Goes There. This film is based around fear and paranoia and does it so well, here is my review of the film:

We have an opening where some people are chasing an Alaskan Malamute through the snow, them in a helicopter the dog running for it's life below.
They seem to want to kill the dog for some unknown reason. When they land one of the men accidentally drops a thermite charge destroying the helicopter and it's driver. An American expedition catches wind of the gun shots and goes to investigate the disturbance, they stumble across the dog and when the language barrier prevents them from understanding the Norwegian gunner. Forced to kill him when he doesn't put his gun away the Americans take in the dog and put it with their dogs.
MacReady played by Kurt Russel and Dr Copper go to the Norwegians base and find the place in ruins. Burnt, blown up and half destroyed the two men find some charred corpses out in the snow, unusually one of them is two headed. Dr Copper bags it up and the two return to the American base.

Blair performs an autopsy on the creature and finds that it has all the human organs this puzzles the men and starts the initial fear in them all. When the kenneled dog metamorphoses into a terrifying creature and starts assimilating the other dogs MacReady alerts the others. They destroy the creature with fire and think its done. Though and autopsy on the dog tells them it was some kind of creature able to imitate other life.

More paranoia and fear sets in when they discover the Norwegians found a spaceship out in the ice that had been buried there for many thousands of years.
Blair becomes very paranoid as he believes this organism could assimilate the whole human race if it were to escape and reach civilization. His research shows that the creature they killed was still barely alive.

Windows manages to stop the creature which has almost assimilated Bennings, MacReady burns him to a crisp with their flamethrower. They think about escaping unfortunately Blair has sabotaged all the sleds and the remaining dogs. While Blair is destroying their radio the others capture him and lock him in a store cupboard. Since the creature is afraid or at least really effected by fire/heat, they devise a test to see if any of them are infected. This unfortunately doesn't work as all their blood has been sabotaged.

Further paranoia and fear sends the men a little crazy and they start to turn on each other, some ending up dead and even making Nauls cut MacReady's rope leaving him stranded outside. He does this because he thinks he's found evidence he's been infected.
MacReady breaks back into the base and threatens to blow everyone up if they don't do as he says. In some commotion Norris appears to have a heart attack and when Copper attempts to give him cpr he is killed when his chest bursts open into vicious giant teeth. MacReady once again toasts them both, then makes Windows tie everyone up.

MacReady devises a new test of dipping a super heated length of copper wire into samples of their blood. Palmers blood leaps out of the petri-dish when he dips the wire into it proving he is infected. He then transforms and ends up attacking Windows and MacReady the ever burning flames them both to death. He then remembers about Blair and sets out to test him, they find he has tunneled under the supply shed. Then the others discover that he has building a small space craft under there.

They try to stop it all with explosives and a bunch more get killed. I'll spoil the ending because this film is so much more than this review or explanation its so worth watching if you've never seen it before. MacReady ends up destroying the alien and his form of escape, thinking he is the only one left then Child's appears. Both paranoid of each other realize the futility of it all since they are going to freeze and die anyway. They end up laughing with each other and drinking a bottle of scotch and the movie ends.

This is such an ambiguous ending too some people believe that MacReady gave Child's a bottle of fuel to drink, since the alien wouldn't know any better. Whatever the ending and however you want to take it, this is by one of the most perfectly made films you could ever watch which is why THN awards this film the highest 5/5 stars with a heavy emphasis to watch it.