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.

a weirder little question than eg WHAT HAPPENS TO NAULS OMG!!11 is this: macready says "there's a storm hitting us in six hours" and then a couple of scenes later "the storm's been hitting us hard for 48 hours" -- what did they get up in between to for two whole days??!!

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

I had always assumed that Childs is infected, given that he appears not to be conventionally alive (no plumes of breath, unlike MacReady) - but looking at the Wiki page just now, I see that this "has been explained as a technical issue with the filming."
I have also always assumed that the reason that the saucer crashed on Earth in the first place was that the Thing had killed its crew. Its flight path in the prologue sequence suggests that it's out of control, I think?

i read a thing that posited that Childs is a thing based on the fact that he drinks from the bottle Macready passes to him, since previously been careful to prepare their own meals so a human would have balked at sharing a bottle with a potential Thing, and Macready's knowing chuckle at seeing him drink is Mac realizing that... which is interesting, but i also can easily see Childs being human and just doing it bc hes tired and dying and dgaf

watching childs actor keith david right now in an old law and order, playing a rival DA refusing to help unconvict an innocent man and quoting scalia = he is clearly a THING

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrZ7PnolbQ4

https://c.tenor.com/aLora3YAfDYAAAAC/pingu-noot.gif

Just grabbed tickets to see this in a local theatre - so pumped!!

nice. i guess once upon a time one would have said “hope it’s a nice print” but now i guess… hope it’s a recent blu-ray?

or at least hope it's better than this

I just got back from seeing John Carpenter's masterpiece at the Fathom Events 40th anniversary screening at the Universal Citywalk AMC... and I will never EVER see a Fathom Event again, and I recommend that you avoid them like the plague. pic.twitter.com/FQbkp1OjV9

— Mick Garris & The Post Mortem Podcast (@MickGarrisPM) June 20, 2022

I saw it and didn’t notice any of the issues that guy talks about - maybe they fixed it after he kicked up a fuss

lol this thread is 20 years old, anyway merry xmas ilxors whatever yr cells are up to

pic.twitter.com/wNrVs3not9

— Caligula (@TheHolyKnife) December 19, 2022

watching christian nyby's version for the first time in 40 yrs

it's p good but it's no THE THING

in conclusion: watch the skies!

clear up a debate for me re: this dialogue exchange

Macready: Blair, have you seen Fuchs?

Blair: I don't wanna stay out here any more. I wanna come back inside.
I hear funny things out here.

Macready: Have you come across Fuchs?

Blair: It ain't Fuchs. It ain't Fuchs.

to me it's obviously saying "the guy you think is Fuchs isn't Fuchs anymore" (either paranoia from real Blair or misdirection by Thing Blair, depending on if he's been turned yet.) The flipside to that argument goes, Blair is saying Fuchs isn't a "thing".

a shocking number of people online believe the latter.

anyway, a GREAT movie.

Just came in #3 in an '80s critics' poll:

https://www.indiewire.com/gallery/best-80s-movies/the-thing-1982directed-by-john-carpentershown-kurt-russell-2/

xp You're right.