The Thing (Collector's Edition)
by John Carpenter
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: David Clennon, Donald Moffat, Kurt Russell, T.K. Carter, Wilford BrimleyDirector: John Carpenter
Brand: Universal Studios
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; French (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround
Format: AC-3, Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Collector's Edition, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 109 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-10-26
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Universal Pictures
Product features:
- Condition: New
- Format: DVD
- AC-3; Anamorphic; Closed-captioned; Collector's Edition; Color; Dolby; Dubbed; DVD; Subtitled; Wides
Movie Reviews of The Thing (Collector's Edition)
Movie Review: "Who Goes There?"
Summary: 5 Stars
There are some movies that just never lose their ability to evoke a response from their viewers. Those films are destined to become instant classics and develop a longevity far past their initial screening. This is one of three horror movies that actually scared me the first time I saw it.
John Carpenter's remake isn't a remake of the original 1950s movie than it is a more faithful adaptation of the short story that it was based on by 1930s science fiction guru John Campbell. The science behind the enemy was a little more technical (well, for it's 1982 time period anyway), but the theme behind the movie stayed the same as the story: Do you really know who you can trust? The twist in putting the crew up against an alien menace just added that little extra bang to the paranoia, and it hit a lot harder as a result.
For those of you who prefer the first movie to this one, all well and good, but I would advise you to think about WHY you really like that one better. If it was because this one was too gory, okay. If it was because the scientific team was more antagonistic toward each other in this version, okay. If it was because the 50s are looked at as the 'golden age' of science fiction and no other film past that point can really measure up, okay. But 'The Thing from Another Planet', starring James Arness as the creature, was a simple monster movie through and through, made for a different class of audience. Times have changed and all things have to be expected to change along with it.
STORY-5 Stars
Fair warning for those that haven't seen this movie that this section contains some spoilers, so you might want to skip over to the next section if you don't wanted it ruined for you.
The Antarctic, 1982. There's a... dog... running over the tundra, apparently away from something, as it keeps on looking back over it's shoulder. It comes upon a small research station just ahead of a helicopter carrying Norwegian nationals, who just happen to be taking pot shots at it with a sniper rifle. It lands, disgorging its occupants, and things get hectic when they whip out the grenades. The American base's team is forced to kill them, after which they take the dog in.
Some of the members are intently curious to find out what exactly drove the Norwegian team to go to such great length to kill a simple dog. Two of the crew fly out to the Norwegian base to find it a smoking ruin. Inside, they find one corpse sitting frozen in a chair, wrists slashed and bloody icicles trailing from the cuts down to the floor. In a storage shack, they discover a slab of ice that's been pulled up; a hole in the middle gives the distinct impression that something's been encased in it. Some tapes are found; what appears to be a video documentary of the discovery and the events both preceding and following it. Back outside, they discover the burnt remains of what appears to be a man, but the corpse is twisted and deformed, almost as if it was half-melted. They take both it and the tapes back to their base camp.
Watching the tapes reveals that the Norwegian team had discovered a derelict craft buried in the ice and detonated charges to uncover it. The craft is of extraterrestrial origin and estimates determine that it crash-landed about 150,000 years ago. The pilot was found frozen a few yards away. It was soon after the pilot was taken back for study that their base went silent.
Things are calm after a while. There's a storm blowing in, the signalling station can't get a line out to anyone else and the dog is eventually put in the kennel with the current pack that's already there while the crew settles back into its normal routine.
Noises coming from the kennel draw the team back to see what's going on. They find the other dogs trying to tear their way through the fence. The reason for this is that the canine newcomer is in the process of doing some very un-doglike things, indeed, some very un-Earthlike things, like digesting the other dogs of the pack and sprouting tentacles. "I don't know what's in there, but it's wierd and pi$$ed off, whatever it is!!" The team torches it with a flamethrower as part of the creature splits off and attempts to escape by slamming through the roof.
Studying the pilot and the remains of the dog creature, the team finds that the cellular structure of both are of an assimilative nature. The cells overtake foreign ones and thereafter mimic them. Selective differentiation.
This creature is a shapechanger. And what's more, there is still cellular activity. Neither body is dead yet. The decision is made burn both.
Wierd things start to happen afterward, and suspicions flare up among the crew. Is anyone still who they say they are? How can they be sure?...
And how can they make sure that the creature doesn't escape and infect the rest of the world?
VISUALS-5 Stars
There was no concept of CGI effects back when this film aired in 1982. There were live effects, masterfully done by Rob Bottin (and I didn't know his last name was pronounced 'bow-teen' until I watched the 'making of' documentary in the Special Features). Yes, they were gruesome, but they were designed to showcase the fact that the enemy was in NO WAY human. In my opinion, they were necessary. The way the film was shot also successfully captured the isolation of the crew and elevated the fact that they were truly on their own with an unfathomable adversary stalking them.
SOUND-5 Stars
Ennio Morricone's score for this movie was simple, but it was dark and foreboding, and in that simpleness, fit exactly the moodiness the theme broadcast for a research team with the unenviable situation of being stranded in the middle of nowhere with a hostile entity.
SPECIAL FEATURES-5 Stars
The 80 minute documentary is exactly the same as on the previous dvd edition, but it's still entertaining to watch how the cast and crew came together, both on the set and off of it (there was this one occasion where they were all travelling to the set late at night on a bus down an icy road when the bus slid into the ditch; they all got out and managed to push the bus back onto the road to keep going). The explanation of the trials and tribulations of Rob Bottin in setting up the effects shots also go a long way in explaining why the move has largely been toward CGI effects now in movies. The Special Features add a welcome depth to this story.
OVERALL-5 Stars
I remember having a nightmare after the first time I had watched this movie of everyone I knew having smiling, happy faces and cheerily saying hello, until they reached up and ripped their faces off to reveal this snarling, slimey, drooling creature underneath -still happily saying hello- and then they would begin chasing me, and then every other person I saw when I was running away started doing the same thing. It was not a pleasant night. I was about sixteen at the time. That dream never repeated itself, but every time I watch this movie I still get an uncomfortable twinge and I'm 39 now. I guess that's the highest compliment you can give to a horror movie.
Also, this movie has collected enough of a cult following to prompt the publishing of a video game (also called 'The Thing') as a continuation of the story. It came out for both the original Xbox and the Playstation 2. It was a pretty good game in its own right.
Two Thumbs Up.
Summary of The Thing (Collector's Edition)
THING COLLECTOR'S EDITION - DVD MovieHoward Hawks's original 1951 production of The Thing from Another World can be glimpsed playing on a TV that fateful October evening in John Carpenter's blockbuster hit, Halloween (1978). A few years later, Carpenter reteamed with his Escape from New York star Kurt Russell to do a remake. But while the first movie version of The Thing was in atmospheric black and white, Carpenter's 1982 version is in widescreen, full color, and features some of the most revoltingly explicit, surreally imaginative special effects (courtesy of FX-meister Rob Bottin) that have ever been seen on the screen. Researchers in the remote Antarctic dig up the remains of a spacecraft that has long been frozen in the ice. But the alien life unthaws and infects the living (not only humans but sled dogs too), living and gestating inside them. (This horrific concept was also explored in the two versions of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and the Alien movies.) This Thing is chilling in every sense of the word, with plenty of terrifying, adrenaline-pumping moments that build it to a powerful and shockingly nihilistic conclusion. It's a harsh and uncompromising movie (hewing more closely to the original 1930s story "Who Goes There?")--so much so that it probably never would have been given a green-light by any studio in the more cautious and doggedly upbeat 1990s. --Jim Emerson