Rakesh's movie talk
Thing, The (1982)
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Rakesh's movie talk
Thing, The (1982)
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The movie is set in Antarctic. It is white everywhere, and what ensues in
the film is darker than what you can imagine will ever happen to humanity. The film starts with a shot of a chopper chasing a nice-looking dog.(a Siberian
Husky, I learned) Can't be the good guys right? Anyway, the dog makes its way to an American Research station and the chopper
continues to chase and actually attempt to shoot the dog. The gunman even drops grenades. What's going on? I was told that
it is a sci-fi horror movie. And here you have a freakin' helicopter chasing a dog, trying to kill it in the middle of Antarctica. Anyway, the inhabitants of the research station comes out, and the chopper
pilot and gunman lands the chopper and gets out to continue shooting the dog. The dog goes to the American and in the shooting,
one of the American gets it in the leg. The other reacts by shooting the gunman, who accidentally drops a live grenade. It
explodes and so does the chopper. The Americans puts the fire out and investigates. What's going on? Somebody told me that
this is a sci-fi horror in the tradition of Alien. Yeah, so what? So what? The Americans goes to the Norwegian's (the chopper) place and finds
it after destruction. They find a lot of cans of kerosene. Also, they find a burnt body, an almost human figure in some sort
of transformation. That's it. I was hooked. What follows is a sense of Paranoia that enshroud the research centre which
inhabits 12 men. There is this 'thing', an alien, which can get into any other body and imitate them. You get various corpse
in various shapes as they are killed during the transformation. The special effects, for a film made in 1982, is amazing.
It still is. I don't think that computer can do an amazing job like this. As I said, what scares more is that the 'Thing' could be in any of the inhabitants,
most of whom are scientists. The films hero is Kurt Russell, and you just hope that he is not one of the 'Thing', but the
ending leaves you with doubt. A few word about Kurt Russell. He is easily the most under-rated actor in
Hollywood. The best thing about him is his ability to fit comfortably into any genre. In fact, he is best known for his collaboration
with John Carpenter; Escape From New York, Big Trouble in Little China and Escape From LA - all my favourite
Russell films. His chopper pilot MacReady is not your usual brainy hero. You see that in the first scene where he loses in
a game of chess to the computer. With that and the knowledge that any any of the crew could be the alien, we could only relate
to and rely on MacReady and Russell lends that much needed heroic charm amongst the otherwise, soulless characters surrounding
him. Which brings us to the weakest part of the movies. I understand that Carpenter
is pretty weak on characterisation and it shows in this film. A couple of guys goes dead (torched) and you don't really care
about him. You only worry about MacReady. Who are the rest of the bunch? You don't really know. The opposing camp with the
Norwegians, who were chasing the dog initially, are all left dead. There is a finding of an alien ship and nothing is done
about it. Some detractors called this film Alien clone. I beg to differ. The
creature in Alien is a Jaws like monster which stalks one character after another, building up suspense and horror.
The 'Thing' in here is not an external physical stuff. It gets inside whoever it encounters, good or bad, and becomes them.
You don't really know what they are capable of. The only thing you can do is torch. It is very primitive. Living in Antarctica,
isolated, desolated, MacReady claiming, "Trust is hard to come by these days" and keeping a bottle of Jim Beam as company,
any strangers are not welcome. And worse, what if the stranger is not a human. I liked the movie a lot. It gets a slightly lesser mark than Alien,
but they will be up there together. Check out the special effects. It is one of those rare effects that can stand the test
of time. Oh yes. You will now know why the hell the guys in the freakin' chopper were
trying to kill that damned dog. Damned dog now, ey?
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