Cinema's Darkest Vision: Looking Into the Void in John Carpenter's the Thing (1982)
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Journal of Popular Film and Television ISSN: 0195-6051 (Print) 1930-6458 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/vjpf20 Cinema's Darkest Vision: Looking into the Void in John Carpenter's The Thing (1982) Heather Addison To cite this article: Heather Addison (2013) Cinema's Darkest Vision: Looking into the Void in John Carpenter's TheThing (1982), Journal of Popular Film and Television, 41:3, 154-166, DOI: 10.1080/01956051.2012.755488 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/01956051.2012.755488 Published online: 02 Sep 2013. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 837 Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=vjpf20 Figure 1. Blair confronts the horror of the Thing as he performs an autopsy on its apparently dead remains. (Color figure available online.) N ALL OF CINEMA of laboratory-concocted special effects, a short volume on The Thing published with the actors used merely as props to by the British Film Institute, praised HISTORY, perhaps there has be hacked, slashed, disemboweled, and the film for preserving her “faith in the Inever been a more unfortunate decapitated,” and Desmond Ryan of The movies” and referred to it as “one of the release date than the one suffered by Philadelphia Inquirer sneered, “This is greatest horror movies of all time” (12– director John Carpenter’s The Thing, a monster movie of incredible ferocity 13). She glibly attributed The Thing’s an apocalyptic horror film about a hos- and graphic gore that asks no more than poor reception among 1982 critics to a tile alien with the ability to absorb and utter passivity and a strong stomach. A “generation gap”: they were simply too imitate any organism it encounters. The walk through a slaughterhouse has as old to appreciate a cutting-edge film. In Thing reached theaters in June 1982, much point.” Invoking a direct com- a 2004 essay for The Cinema of John just two weeks after Steven Spielberg’s parison with E.T., Linda Gross of The Carpenter: The Technique of Terror, Ian blockbuster E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial. Los Angeles Times declared, “Instead Conrich points out that the “apocalyptic Carpenter recalls the moment: of providing us with love, wonder, and all-consuming threat posed by Carpen- So E.T. came out ahead of us and it delight, The Thing is bereft, despairing, ter’s indiscernible Thing” simply could was this huge, sensational hit. And and nihilistic. It is also overpowered by not compete with the friendly E.T. (97), its message was the exact opposite of Rob Bottin’s visceral and vicious spe- and he calls attention to the film’s stay- The Thing. As Steven said at the time, cial makeup effects.” ing power, especially on the Internet: ‘I thought that the audience needed an uplifting cry.’ And boy was he right. Ironically, though the gore and para- “The films of Carpenter . have been Our film was just absolutely the end of noia it offers elicited derision when it extended over an astonishing number of the world and was centered on the loss was initially released, The Thing has fan sites. The Thing, in particular, of humanity. What I could perceive gradually earned the admiration of appears precious to many fans” (103). before The Thing was released was that horror film fans, critics, and scholars. It regularly appears in “best of” lists. the audience was not interested. (qtd. (Blade Runner, another dark science On the Internet Movie Database, The in Boulenger 171) fiction film, was released on the same Thing is ranked as the fifth best horror Critics lined up to denigrate the film, day as The Thing in 1982 and suffered a film ever.1 In a recent compilation of the especially its excessive violence and similar fate at the box office, though its “Top 50 Scariest Movies of All Time,” bleak perspective. Vincent Canby of The critical recuperation proceeded rapidly; BostonGlobe.com gives John Carpen- New York Times called The Thing a “vir- within a decade, it was acclaimed as a ter’s The Thing the number one spot, tually storyless feature composed of lots cult favorite.) In 1997, Anne Billson, in offering this rationale: “What makes Abstract: The aim of this essay is to account for the uneven critical trajectory of John Carpenter’s 1982 film The Thing—the hostility that it faced in the early 1980s and the growing fascination it has engendered in subsequent decades. Keywords: apocalyptic vision, John Carpenter, deconstruction, horror, The Thing 154 Cinema’s Darkest Vision: Looking into the Void in John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) By Heather Addison Copyright © 2013 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC DOI: 10.1080/01956051.2012.755488 this the top fright fest? Could it be the In Campbell’s tale, thirty-seven men had always admired Hawks’s mov- fear of complete isolation in the face of stationed in the Antarctic find an alien ies, especially The Thing from Another disaster? Or the invisible enemy in sub- with red eyes and worm-like blue hair World. When Universal acquired the zero temperatures? How about the ter- frozen in ancient ice. It awakens and rights to Campbell’s story and turned rifying feeling of not knowing which of wreaks havoc on their camp by imi- to Carpenter as a potential director, he your supposed friends are who they say tating humans and undermining trust eagerly accepted the project. Though they are, and not a shape-shifting alien? between team members. Yet there is he appreciated the 1950s film adapta- Yeah, all those things.”2 a clear, upbeat ending: the men devise tion, he was also intrigued by the no- The Thing originated as a short story a clever blood test that allows them to tion of a creature that could imitate called “Who Goes There?” written by “out” those among them who have be- any organism it encountered, so he and John W. Campbell. It was published in come Things, and they also prevent screenwriter Bill Lancaster decided to Astounding Science Fiction in 1938, the Thing from completing work on hew much more closely to the original under the pseudonym Don A. Stuart. an anti-gravity machine that would al- story. Their film presents a Thing that low it to reach civilization. More than can absorb and mimic living beings. It a decade later, director Christian Nyby is identifiable only during moments of and producer Howard Hawks released transformation, when it morphs, twists, a film adaptation of Campbell’s story, shakes, and erupts, oozing mysterious Ironically, though The Thing from Another World (1951). fluids. In addition to its emphasis on the gore and (Though Nyby directed, Hawks is usu- carnage, the 1982 film has a much more ally credited with creative control of ominous ending than either of the first paranoia it offers the film.) In this version, the alien that two versions, leaving viewers outside a breaks out of the ice has a humanoid burning, abandoned camp with two lone elicited derision appearance and is played by a guy in a survivors, either or both of whom may monster suit (James Arness). Scientists be aliens. when it was determine that the Thing is an “intellec- The Thing has experienced an un- initially released, tual carrot” that needs human blood to even critical trajectory, from hostility in nourish seeds that will mature into more the early 1980s to growing fascination The Thing has creatures. It does not have the ability to in subsequent decades. Both reactions imitate humans, however, and when the derive from the film’s darkness: The gradually earned men—and two women—stationed in Thing is arguably one of the grimmest the Antarctic camp band together, they motion pictures ever made. It is apoca- the admiration of hatch a successful plan to electrocute it. lyptic, but it is also much gloomier than horror film fans, Director John Carpenter, who pro- other “end-of the-world” films because duced three popular horror films during of the scope and depth of its destructive critics, and scholars. the period from 1978–1981 (Halloween, vision. It presents a complete disinte- The Fog, and Escape from New York), gration of the status quo, prompting us 155 156 JPF&T—Journal of Popular Film and Television and The Thing was out of sync with the changes. In the 1970s, the era of Viet- Cinema scholars nam and Watergate, anti-government have argued sentiment, paranoia, and conspiracy theories abounded. In Hollywood, there that horror films was a cycle of popular conspiracy films, including The Conversation (1974), The are inherently Parallax View (1974), Three Days of the Condor (1975), and All the Presi- conservative in dent’s Men (1976). It was a time “when their reinforcement the dominant ideology almost disinte- grated” (Wood, qtd. in Jeffords 15). In of dominant his analysis of that period, Decade of Nightmares: The End of the Sixties and ideology, but the Making of Eighties America, histo- rian Philip Jenkins argues that there was The Thing a “sense of imminent apocalypse” (16). “conserves” This atmosphere might seem well suited to a film like The Thing, which nothing. brought both creeping paranoia and an apocalyptic vision to the screen. Yet the seeds of its repudiation were sown in the mid-1970s, when the national mood to “look into the void.” It provides no reached a nadir, “bringing with it a reassurance or foundation for belief, much deeper pessimism about the state attacking or undermining nearly every- of America and its future, and a growing thing that we may find comforting about rejection of recent liberal orthodoxies” our system(s) of meaning: the body and (Jenkins 4).