IMDb #166 Review: The Thing (1982)

Source: Wikipedia

An alien parasite systematically kills the brilliant idiots stranded in an Antarctic base. What'st here to say? Roll credits. Directed by John Carpenter, music by Ennio "I Did More Than Westerns, You Know" Morricone, starring Kurt Russel's beard and some other guys.

What's a gore-fest doing on the IMDb Top 250 alongside glacier-paced navel-gazing black-and-white European experimental film d'art and every half-decent war movie ever made?

Because the oppressive atmosphere, dazzlingly elaborate puppetry, decent stop-motion, and subversive undercurrent of antisocial paranoia -- these elevate the glorious blood-and-guts to the brink of ART.

The cold open plops us in at at the American science base. Population: boredom, and zero women, not a coincidence. When not overworking, the guys indulge in ping pong and booze and old-school chess simulators and more booze.

Then comes the Norwegian helicopter, sniping at a lone dog fleeing across the tundra. The pilot runs at the Americans, waving his rifle, babbling spoilers in his native tongue. The monolinguals gun him down. The dog becomes their buddy, no questions asked.

Sure, they find some weird shit at the Norwegian camp, but they shrug it off. Just another charred monster corpse to autopsy. The geniuses don't notice anything amiss with their canine companion until -- SWEET MUTANT BABY JESUS -- it sprouts tentacles and starts consuming the other dogs in the kennel.

Sorry, nightmare fetishists, but the practical effects have gotten campy with time. Horror movie featherweights, rest easy. For all the hype, I expected worse. But the real horror takes place in the scientists' heads. They're sleep deprived, scared out of their minds, and now they have guns and grenades and flamethrowers at the ready. Any one of them could be infected and not know it until his chest bursts open.

The slaughter continues unabated, up till The-End-Meaningful-Question-Mark and the unfulfilled promise of future installments.

But the deft pace is as forgivable as the small cast and shaky-cam. Antarctica is frigging cold.

109 minutes.