The Thing

if that's how the podcast phrased it, the podcast is wrong: once snake plissken had rebooted the diminishing returns of his disney stardom, he was absolutely a known and enjoyed cult-level quantity, and by the thing (the following year) carpenter was unavoidably signalling "he's my guy" to all who were paying attention

however "the thing" was NOT a break-out movie in its own day -- on the whole it was critically dismissed at the time and only gradually recouped its subsequent massive cult rep via video

in conclusion you can be "known" for quantities other than "box-office bankability"

Well, KR has cult appeal, that much is true, mostly for his John Carpenter films. But those films (by definition) were not really hits. Yet nonetheless, Kurt Russell is afaict without a doubt a movie star/more or less household name, but imo not for those Carpenter films (which all became cult/cultural touchstones after the fact). It could just be the Goldie Hawn connection.

Mostly Captain Ron afaict

also wikipedia tells me he had a baseball career of sorts

i have no idea what role this played tho, i have no idea what baseball actually is and will never change this

Kurt Russell is afaict without a doubt a movie star/more or less household name, but imo not for those Carpenter films

top of the head I'd say Tango & Cash and Backdraft are his only blockbusters until a Marvel sequel and some Fasts & Furioi, thirty years later.

But the whole point of T&C is that it was teaming up two beloved action stars of the decade, and Backdraft is an ensemble picture. He really does seem to be a movie star on osmosis from VHS

Id guess he didn't break out of cult status until the 90s when he was in Backdraft, Tombstone, and then Stargate... and then Tarantino started showcasing him in the late 2000s. Although I definitely knew who he was in the 80s! But really his career doesn't seem like one where he was gunning for the big time.

Yeah, given his p undeniable star quality, he could've been way huger than he is.

i have no idea what baseball actually is

*fires up slide deck*

and will never change this

Ah! well nevertheless,

Was Overboard a hit?

Whether KR was a cult star, action star, or mid-level star in 1982, still seems obvious that none of the cast was the specific kind of famous enough that youd assume they wouldnt get eaten by the thing. Tbh when The Thing came out Wilford Brimley might have been just as well known to audiences if not more, he had some memorable supporting roles in hit Hollywood stuff in the years just prior

Wilford Brimley was 48 when The Thing was released.

These guys were so relatively under the radar that the podcast noted Carpenter briefly considered Donald Pleasance for Brimley's role, but decided even he was too well known and people would expect him to make it to the end of the movie in one way, shape or form.

Man, one of the most remarkable things about The Thing is the way people are constantly disappearing for long stretches or getting (apparently) killed off screen. Just such a fascinating rhythm, especially for a movie whose contemporaries were tons of "And Then There Were None" slasher riffs that relished on-screen kills.

I have to admit I'm *meep* not a podcast guy, I'm probably more receptive to the vlog format (like those nerdy guys who pick apart how bad the Star Wars/every JJ Abrams movies are), tell me there exists something like that on the 'tube?

(aside to Mark S: Kurt Russell's youngest child played the lead in the Lodge 49 TV show which I'd love to hear your thoughts on if you can find it where you are!)

theres an official making-of vid on youtube thats like 90 minutes long thats pretty interesting. lots of war stories from the effects guys about dealing with different kinds of prop slime and whatnot, as youd expect

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSFXYKl_rf0

I generally don't have time for podcasts, either, it's just kind of happenstance that I listened to the Unspooled on The Thing.

Overboard was a flop by Garry Marshall standards - made 26 million on a 22 mil budget, vs 57 million on 20 for Beaches, his next project, and $467 million on a $14 million budget for the one after that.

Oh, another observation made in that podcast was how when the movie starts it's more or less from the POV of the (excellent) dog actor, who, as a shapeshifting monster in disguise, knows to run to a human and lick his face for sympathy/protection from the Norwegians, who know better.

Thanks Josh! I bookmarked that and will view during my next bout of insomnia.

The flying saucer opening is good partly because it leads you to believe that you're about to watch something relatively routine, whereas the body of the film turns out to be rather more WTF

you could take it as Carpenter signaling the stakes, saying "REMINDER: treat this as seriously as you would any movie that begins with a flying saucer crash landing on earth". Which could be good or too bad, depending on your take. (I forget the exact quote but I once read a critic describe Carpenter as something like "hes good, but he settles for too little".)

some historical links that need to be posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhgJ82sDDuU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jURaHXAPbPQ

you can hear carpenter light his first cig before the 2 minute mark on that commentary, ha

Another favorite detail comes during the infamous blood test sequence. After they slice the finger open, they have a shot of the small wound being disinfected and pressure being put on it to stop the bleeding, just like when donating blood.

it's on my tv again

Horror Channel? Awesome.

seems to be carpenter week on the only good terrestial channel

never entirely convinced that explosives are a helpful device round a THING: surely not all the little bits are going to be burnt beyond regeneration ??

Even setting them on fire and dumping the body in the snow to extinguish the fire seems un-thorough once they know that any wee giblet contains the full consciousness of the thing

full capability anyway

if it's full consciousness then THINGS have also to be somewhat telepathic IMO (which it was in the original story) (this is discussed upthread iirc)

One of the most unsettling images in the film imho is the drops of blood on the floor all moving around in unison when macready drops the dish during the blood test

I get the impression that the rampaging Thingses don’t have similar thought / consciousness to humans — it takes a good while after an absorption for a Thing to be able to pilot the speech and memories of a biped, and the way the doggie thing scopes out the base and picks a human to thingify might be a hint of telepathy too.

(Does the film specify whether the saucer was piloted by the Thing, by a Thing, by another species or class that was transporting the Thing, or was a drone?)

in campbell's version the ship is straightforwardly a THINGship: the one they dig out (no norwegians involved) had frozen within minutes of stepping beyond the crash 20 million years ago

presumably the thing that stepped out of the crash would have been in whatever form it had assumed the last time it took over a host, that of an e.g. alpha centauran given that to our knowledge there is no stable, ur-thing form

at least that's how i've always pictured it

ah reading back in the thread i can see we've already excavated this assiduously

https://i.imgur.com/jFDAlFF.jpg

Can the Thing spaceship change its form?

so what's the cons of being thingified? That guy who was thingied built an entire spaceship, seems like pretty neat skill to me.

quotation from campbell (note how he writes dialogue):

"I wonder if we ever saw its natural form. " Blair looked at the covered mass. "It may have been imitating the beings that built that ship ­ but I don't think it was. I think that was its true form. Those of us who were up near the bend saw the thing in action; the thing on the table is the result. When it got loose, apparently, it started looking around. Antarctica still frozen as it was ages ago when the creature first saw it ­ and froze. From my observations while it was thawing out, and the bits of tissue I cut and hardened then, I think it was native to a hotter planet than Earth. It couldn't, in its natural form, stand the temperature. There is no life­form on Earth that can live in Antarctica during the winter, but the best compromise is the dog. It found the dogs, and somehow got near enough to Charnauk to get him. The others smelled it ­ heard it ­ I don't know ­ anyway they wwent wild, and broke chains, and attacked it before it was finished. The thing we found was part Charnauk, queerly only half­dead, part Charnauk half­digested by the jellylike protoplasm of that creature, and part the remains of the thing we originally found, sort of melted down to the basic protoplasm.

this question is not resolved afaicr and plus i don't consider blair a reliable narrator-explainer: he's not yet thingified i dont think but it has telepathically got into his mind and is directing-confusing him; we are already guessing that it bewilders its prey telepathically and hypnotically

Blair's dialogue sounds like Campbell talking to one of his writers.

it's here if you want to enjoy the rest of the "conversation": https://wp.nyu.edu/darknessspeaks/wp-content/uploads/sites/3674/2016/09/who_goes_there.pdf

(i mean it's a good story but the expositionmeter is off the charts)

I watched this at the cinema on Sunday (part of a Morricone season) - was great to see on the big screen. We'd all seen it before loads of times but none of us could remember who was assimilated when they were testing everyone's blood so it was still pretty suspenseful.

Was just reading some theories about whether Childs was a Thing at the end - apparently not as John Carpenter has said the computer game is canon and in the game he is a human when he freezes to death.

anybody got a flamethrower suitable for use in an antarctic research station? it's for a thing

— mutable joe (@mutablejoe) June 23, 2022

it's very good at getting you to forget who is and who isn't bcz imo carpenter cheats lol: the spreadsheet will never clear!

haha xp

i've read a handful things over the years where people plausibly solve for X re:who is & isnt a Thing, when they get turned, etc, and theres never been one that has convinced me more than others, but i've also become convinced that carpenter made the movie with a clear blueprint in his head about who was human and what was happening.