Movie #185 The Thing *1982*

I recently bought a book called "1001 Movies to See Before You Die".  I expected to see Fellini and Kubrick on there.  I expected to see silent greats as well as a few contemporary movies that could generate some debate.   I expected to see Citizen Kane and Seven Samurai.  What I didn't expect to see was The Thing.

John Carpenter's The Thing is the story of a team of researchers living in Antarctica.  Their camp is visited by a strange dog from a neighboring team of scientists.  Upon the arrival of this dog strange things start to unfold that leads to tense emotional Mexican Standoffs.

I liked the way this film built tension between the characters.  They were forced to question each other in order to survive.  Not exactly a revolutionary idea, but is was executed in a fresh way that kept my interested.

What didn't keep me interested was the effects.  It is sort of unfair to judge special effects of movies made nearly 30 years ago.  Maybe at the time these looked convincing or "real", but I found them to be stagey and sort of hokey.  The movie didn't seem to be making any commentary on the nature of state of the horror film, so I figured that the effects guy was lacking in skill or budget.

Kurt Russell.  What more do you need to say?  His character in this film is like a hairier version of Snake Pliskin from Escape From New York.  He is a total loner / bad mutha.

Outside of Kurt (and even including Kurt in some scenes) the rest of the cast is pretty stereotypical.  Haggard old doctor, stoner, angry black man, nerd, ect.  But then again, the script didn't give these actor much to work with.  I thought it was very formulaic.  You could have made this film by color in the numbers.

Overall I thought this was a mildly entertaining film with nothing to chew on.  I enjoyed it while I watched it and forgot about it before I went to bed.  I will have to read why this is in my book.  Great, now I am one movie closer to dying and I only enjoyed it about ★★★.