I can't believe you edited out the best line in the movie! "I know you gentlemen have been through a lot, but when you find the time, I'd rather not spend the rest of this winter TIED TO THIS FUCKING COUCH!"
Sometimes that happens from coincidence, sometimes it's intended to entice viewers to their Patreon for the full uncut reactions. But yeah, that line hits hard.
It's pretty funny Carpenter basically bet on the stereotype that Americans are stupid and aren't known for being multilingual even back then 😅..and yes..I am American😅I'm not trying to disrespect anyone I'm just making an observation.😅
@@kevinslayzak1214 im pretty sure there are very few people in the world outside Norway who actually speak Norwegian. Also, of all the countries with bases in Antarctica, the only one with an actual base and a rare language is Norway. So it wasnt really much of a choice.
@Cifer77 Make up effects master Rob Bottin is responsible for that and this has got be his Magnum Opus [fancy way of saying it's his masterpiece ] 😄 Check out his work on The Howling as well another horror classic . Cheers and Happy Holidays 🎄🙏
If you don't immediately recognize Keith David, then that means you've never seen the film "They Live". Which means you need to see the film "They Live" immediately.
@Otto42 They Live is awesome another John Carpenter classic and much like ''The Thing '' wasn't very well received on it's release in fact The Thing was torn apart by critics at first but has gained a cult following since . who needs to listen to critics anyways damn culture vultures . Merry Christmas !! have a good one mate !
Yeah, I’m kind of surprised she didn’t recognize any of the quite popular character actors from this film. It’s ok because she’s a little younger than I am, so I expect someone from her generation wouldn’t know them unless they watched movies regularly
Tarantino also used several unutilized pieces of the score that Ennio Morricone (The Good Bad and the Ugly) composed for The Thing in his 2016 film "The Hateful 8." (The score won Morricone the Oscar....34 years late.)
@@miller-joel I have to disagree with that. The colors and color grading are similar, they both have a lens flare esthetic with a central singular silhouetted figure with outstretched arms. They have more in common than things that are dissimilar. So, I don't think it is a reach for someone to confuse the two.
@@miller-joel Well, aren't you amazing and perfect! It doesn't change the fact that you were being hyperbolic in your original statement. I get it, you are suffering from conformation bias by attempting to dismiss any correlation between the art work for these two films and pathetically defend you erroneous first statement. Now, you are just being disingenuous by saying it is impossible to have these two movie posters/covers switched in one's mind. Ego is not your friend.
Quentin Tarantino was inspired by The Thing when he made The Hateful Eight. You'll understand if you ever watch it. Kurt Russell is even in it. Carpenter filmed the Norwegian camp scenes after the end scenes, using the damaged American base as a stand-in for the charred Norwegian camp. So like an eerie foreshadowing since it was really their own camp (for the film)
I think the opening scene is needed because it depicts the alien ship being out of control. So the Thing was on that ship attacking the aliens who were flying that ship. That explains a lot. Like why does the Thing have so many forms it can transform into? Well, it's been traveling through the universe. That means all the forms you saw, that weren't of Earth life forms, are of real creatures that live out there somewhere. That ship in the beginning is not the origin of the Thing, it was merely the latest way it was getting from one place to another. That ship Blair was building was not meant to fly it home. It has no home. It was meant to fly it to a more populated area on Earth.
Something everybody always gets wrong. When they brought the body back from the other camp and unwrapped it, everyone says it's smoking. Let's think about it. It's not smoke. It's steam/fog. The body was frozen solid and they brought it into a warm room.
I don’t think so. Are you claiming it was also steaming out on the ice when the chopper arrived? It was still in the process of burning. The smoke was residual. If it were frozen, there’s no way Blair would’ve been able to do the autopsy he did.
@@NemeanLion-i have had company fire safety training; smoke is a sign that an object is still in process of burning. Yes, they found it at the base still burning. After packing it and transport, i doubt it i till smoking and has become considerably cold. The temperature difference is still enough to form fog. It is not probable that the tissue and moisture froze completely within the time it took to transport. But some of the outer moisture would freeze
@@woeshaling6421 “Company fire safety training” doesn’t exactly make you a PhD in thermodynamics. If you don’t want to believe the director was implying the creature was still warm and “smoking”, you’re entitled to do so, but I personally don’t think that’s what they were intending. Cheerio.
24:52 : you came here for that moment, I know it 🤣 For a more serious note, Carpenter wanted to make an horror movie with an alien, but he wanted to create his alien lifeform so "un-human", so "un-earthling" so to speak (I don't find a word in english to express that), it will be scary even in plain broad light. Even the xenomorph from Alien or the Predator for example have 2 legs, two arms, so, unlike the original movie from the 50s in B&W (which is plant-based if I remember), Carpenter chose to make his alien as an adaptative virus-like species, the most inhuman lifeform you can imagine, to the point there is no word to describe it : it's "the thing". This movie is not a conventional slasher movie with a big scary monster killing everyone in poorly-lit rooms with flickering lights. The horror is built on paranoia and suspicion. That's why it's so good even after decades.
Blair touched the Thing with the eraser on his pencil, then touched it to his lips. Benning's scream is supposed to be the scream of every alien life the Thing ever absorbed. BTW, John Carpenter's "Prince of Darkness" is almost as good.
You can tell who's who by their actions. Mac's willingness to blow everything up is a human response, as is Clark's going to check on his dogs after Childs says that Blair killed them. Same with Windows going for the guns when he realizes that suspicion is about to fall on him or Clark going after Mac with a knife. Contrast that with Norris and Palmer. Palmer tries to stoke the paranoia by seeming reluctant to go with Windows, but mostly they both just hang back and bide their time.
There are usually 3 reasons someone votes for a movie in a reactor poll: 1) Because they genuinely love the movie. 2) Because they think the reactor will enjoy it / it is an important movie for the reactor to see. 3) Because they get a perverse pleasure out of discomfort shown by a reactor. (This is why war and horror films do so well.) When all three coalesce you get a runaway or landslide movie poll.
one of the best and greatest movies ever, not just scifi and/or horror, it's timeless at this point, so many of the rising generation are coming across this film and their minds are blown away at how well made this is still to this day.
THE FACT THAT FILM WAS MADE WITH PRACTICAL SPECIAL EFFECTS BEFORE THE INTERVENTION OF CGI IS A TESTEMENT OF THIS FILM !!! A MODERN HORROR FILM PIECE MASTERPIECE FROM JOHN CARPENTER !!!
My older brothers took me to see it in the Summer of 82' when I was a kid. The creature effects were so outstanding and how the audiences, along with me and my brothers, jumping out of our seats. Women were running out of the theater with their boyfriends trailing behind them. You could actually do that with a horror movie was in the immortal words of Reese Witherspoon: "It's beyond, beyond." The movie's effect are still lasting after 42 years later is a tribute to Rob Bottin's artistry.
Watch the scene where Nauls comes in and say that Mac is "one of them". Palmer and Norris, who are both things by this point give each other quizzical looks, like: "I didn't do it, did you do it?"
!!!!! A lot of people miss that! And it's one of my arguments AGAINST those who say that those who were assimilated did not know they were. Of COURSE they knew...the dog knew!
The actor for Childs is the same actor that played Mary's stepfather in There's Something about Mary. Blair is mostly famous for his role in Cacoon and the Quaker Oatmeal commercials
The one thing I noticed Coby does is think of old movies backwards. "Its like Predator" Yeah we had no idea what that was. This was actually a remake. The Thing is more typical of 1950s 1960s Sci Fi. It honestly was all about space back then. The space race was in everyone's mind and it was the middle of the Cold War. All that influenced writing and the movies.
A bit about Mac's backstory that didn't make it into the final cut, in the original script he was intended to be a former army helicopter combat pilot who served in Vietnam and saw a lot of bad shit, and that's why he never gets fazed, but is also very gruff and dour, and spends a lot of his time alone and drinking, because he has PTSD.
30:20 Thank you for figuring out what’s logically obvious, but what few people who watch this seem to notice. Yes, when they locked Blair out there by himself, they essentially hung a sign saying “Free meal, absorb this guy whenever you want, no one will be around to see it”. You can tell that, between the time when he’s first locked in there, and later when he suddenly wants to come back inside the main compound, his demeanor completely changes.
Blood would freeze in seconds being exposed to Antarctic winds, the lowest air temperature recorded was −89.2 °C (−128.6 °F). Also the "doggo" might not have travelled straight to the US base, the Norwegian's might have been tracking it for days before it ended up there.
Not in a helicopter they weren't. That base was trashed and I don't think there were set up for maintenance and refueling anymore. So that whirly bird had to fly on whatever fuel it already had in the tank and then that was it.
@@hackerx7329 I didn't say they were tracking it with the chopper the whole time, they may have been tracking with sleds at first, lost track of it and decided to use the chopper to search for it. The point I was making was that we have no idea how long they were chasing the dog as there was no scenes showing it.
One of my all time favourite horror movies, tense, suspenseful, atmospheric with awesome practical effects & a great cast. Wonderful charismatic reaction Coby, I seen this film on VHS at my cousins he plugged headphones into the TV & put them on me which made it all the more terrifying.
Every reaction i've seen starts off with: "Ahhh, look at the puppy. He's so cute! Is he shooting at the dog?!! Don't you dare hurt that puppy !!! Thirty seconds into the kennel scene, they're like: "KILL IT !!! TORCH IT !!!!".
The greatness of the film is that uses in a sci.fi horror setting to give us a story related to the era of paranoia related to what was referred to as the cold war between us and ussr. whi can i trust. the people next to me could be my enemy.
@@Boomer_Power I know that but first the film is a loose remake of the 1950s film by Howard Hawks which by the way he use a scene of the film during his halloween film, but Caroenter use this version to explor paranoia and fear related to the cold war.
@@fernandomendez2709 I have always resisted the assertion that this is a remake of Hawks version, mainly because they have almost nothing in common. Carpenter's version is much more faithful to the original novella, where as Hawks version is nothing like it at all.
I saw The Thing when I was 10, it was rated R so I tricked my Mother into seeing it who didn't like the movie btw, but I loved it, I must have rented the VHS at least ten times when it came out and of course if we add all the other formats in which it was released, I probably watched this movie at least 30 times.
The Thing (2010 movie) - isn't remake it's a prequel about Norwegian base. And if you want to know about what's happened next to ending of original movie... Well the SEQUEL of Carpenter's "The Thing" is video game "The Thing" (yeah, main problem in The Thing universe is that every product in it has the same name), if you're gamer you should check this on, recently was released remake of this game. :)
The Thing replicates everything about you, your memories, your flaws, your strengths. It essentially IS you. From an existential standpoint, it’s a terrifying prospect.
Saw the movie with two friends from work when it to our small town fall of 1982. We started out watching the movie sitting straight up in our seats. By the end of the movie we had sunk down as low as we could, watching the movie over the top of the row of the seats in front of us, we were that scared. The black and white scenes of the discovery the space ship, etc, are from the origin 50s The Thing From Another World.
This is one of the best Carpenter films ever made. The practical effects won an academy award. I saw an interview where they said they waited to the last day and actually blew up and destroyed the sets and filmed it for the movie. OH, and what's the dog's name?
Remember, this is 1982! It still looks better than most horror movies released today. Practical effects by the legendary Rob Bottin is what made this work so well. Add to that a fantastic story with well developed characters, and a great director, and you have a guaranteed hit. Except it wasn't... Because it was released the same summer as E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Blade Runner, Rocky III, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and Poltergeist.
This film still doesn't get all the credit it deserves, especially with the remarkable dog sequences as just one example. They pulled off one hell of a film here.
This was awesome, it went just as I expected! Coby’s best reaction yet I think. And Cash coming to the rescue was adorable! One interesting thing to note (and apologies if anyone has already pointed this out) is that Norris has a heart attack because he has a pacemaker. The thing cannot replicate anything non-organic, so doesn’t replicate the pacemaker, and inherits Norris’s heart condition as a result.
There were tricks that they used in certain scenes in order to give away who was supposed to be a thing. Sometimes it was a musical queue (Childs putting Mac's liquor bottle to his lips), or a certain person not having a reflection of light in their eyes (Palmer during blood test).
I think everyone in this movie got infected by The Thing included MacReady. His J&B Bourbon bottle got passed around and every drinker got infected after the dog licked the guy who was shot. No one survived this movie, although there are theories to suggest MacReady heroically stays human and he had to kill Childs off-screen. Another theory is the exact opposite.
Your observation about Reservoir Dogs is on point, as Tarantino has cited this movie as a massive influence on him. He said that his movie ‘The Hateful Eight’ was a love letter to this movie. He wanted to evoke the same paranoia. It might well have also influenced Reservoir Dogs. And I agree that the movie didn’t need the flying spaceship at the start.
Blair was infected when he examined the first "corpse". Remember that pencil of his? He taped the corpse and Blair has a habit of taping the pencil eraser against his lips. The minute that eraser touched his lips the first bit of the thing got into blair.
I like that you picked up the Reservoir Dogs link! Tarantino has said that Reservoir Dogs was him trying to get the same tension he got watching The Thing! You might like Howling V: The Rebirth; it's a similar sort of paranoid thriller involving a bunch of trapped people, but in that case, one of them is a werewolf! It's not the greatest of movies, but it's always been one of my favorites because of that very non-standard take on being a werewolf movie that doesn't just follow all the same tropes as every other werewolf movie!
The Thing (1982), directed by John Carpenter, is based on the novella Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell Jr., initially published in 1938 in Astounding Science Fiction. The story centers around a group of researchers in Antarctica who encounter a parasitic alien lifeform capable of perfectly imitating other organisms. This leads to paranoia and distrust as they try to figure out who is human and who is "the Thing." The novella was later expanded into a novel called Frozen Hell, published in 2019. This novel revealed additional context about the alien and the Antarctic setting. The 1982 film also serves as a loose remake of the earlier movie **"The Thing from Another World"** (1951), based on the same novella but with significant changes to the story and tone. Carpenter's version, however, is known for being more faithful to Campbell's original vision. The Thing (2011) is a prequel to Carpenter's.
There was a wonderful short story written a decade ago called THE THINGS BY Peter Watts that retells the whole film from the point of view of the actual Thing, it really adds a lot to the film like it’s belief system (it believed taking over another creature was an act of benevolence) and who exactly was infected and how it works in general. It changes the whole film in a fun way.
I never knew. THANK YOU FOR THIS. Found it and reading now, half-way through. It's truly engrossing. The only reason I'm stopping now is that I need to sleep.
There are loads of reactions to The Thing and i reckon yours is the best! "I think it's a thriller…”. Ya do, huh? “As long as no dogs die…". Oh, this is gonna go well 🤣 Thanks, that was great. The second film is a prequel. Many don't like it but i love it. Carpenter's original has some gapping plot holes that the prequel fixes. It doesn’t have the impact of the sequel, nothing could, but that doesn't stop it from being a great watch. I hope you get 'round to it :)
This isnt like "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" in which the aliens duplicate their victim and destroy the original. When a living thing gets a few cells of the alien in them, it eventually converts your cells into its own. The "Thing" doesn't become you. You become the "Thing".
But do you know that you're the Thing? And do you KNOW that you know that you're the Thing? For forty years I've been pondering if anything of the original could survive. Brain replication can't be 100% because then there'd be no instinct to kill people, and certainly no ufo-building. So the new brain has to be human enough to control a human body but Thing enough to maintain its instincts and agendas. Would that leave a gap somewhere for your original mind and if so could you "accidentally" blow yourself up to save humanity? Hey, forty years is a lot of sci-fi pondering.
"Subtle compare to the others" and then Blair casual walk with gary's face litteraly in hands. This movie is genious you can compare the thing to any deadly disease and you can imagine how hard it is to see your friends be contamined by it. Not only art wise its good near perfection with the ressources they had back then but the story and the mysteries are so good and ahead of it's time it's crazy. One of the first movie ever to make me scared, i was like 8or 10 when i saw it for the first time. Top 3 movies in my heart along with Aliens.
I'd actually agree that this film and Predator didn't need the scenes with the ship at the beginning. I feel that these days they wouldn't have been included.
Everyone freaks out when the fleeing husky is fired at at the beginning of this great horror movie. Later, everyone freaks out when the husky transforms into “The Thing” in a bestial manner. 😱 A great thrilling moment, just as John Carpenter's entire science fiction horror film is a single masterpiece. The movie is over 40 years old and still shocks today with its magnificent effects as it did in 1982 ...
You underestimate how cold antarctic is. Its the coldest place on the planet. It's a place where humans can feeze to death in under 5 minutes in without proper gear. Blood would freeze on minutes in the open.
Also fun fact! You mention thumbs in the exploratory autopsy. Our thumbs have exceptional nerve receptors compared to other fingers and it’s true that those forced to dig into dead bodies do actually use their thumbs in exactly that manner. An instance of truth in television.
Several times you suggested that a "thing" could not learn our memories, or that testing memory would find out who is a "thing". Probably not. Given what we know about this alien, it mimics our cells. All of them. Even our brain cells. Our memories are IN those brain cells, or the synapses that exist in our brain made up of those cells. So if the alien copied ALL of our cells, it would copy the ones that store our memories too, so it would have our memories. What is more impressive is that it retains its own memories, which means, it has all the memories of EVERYTHING it ever assimilated. That is why when one of them defends itself, it grows big claws and teeth, or insect legs, etc. That is also how Blair, a biologist, builds some kind of flying saucer under his jail - the "thing" that assimilated him may have assimilated the crew of that alien ship from the opening scene, and some of those crew members must have been engineers, because Blair was not an engineer.
Great catch on the continuity question of the abandoned Norwegian base and the immediacy of the helicopter chase. Seen this dozens of times and that never occurred to me. Such a good movie it doesn’t occur to you.
This film is an adaptation of the 1938 novel 'Who Goes There?' Written by John W.Campbell jr. The 1982 film sticks very close to the original book story. It was first adapted as a film in 1951, which was called The Thing from Another World, and is well worth a watch. The 2011 prequel film shows what happened at the Norwegian camp and although its not as good, it's definitely worth watching.
Hi Coby, sorry I missed this! The National Science Foundation has a base in Antartica, Amundsen-Scott Research Station. From February to October it's too cold for transportation, so only a few people stay there to maintain the place. After the last plane leaves for the winter, the first film they play is this one. As was mentioned in chat, this movie didn't do well on release, partly due to E.T., but also because of bad reviews. The term "gorn" (gore porn) wasn't coined for this movie, but the majority of critics cited the gore as a detractor because they didn't understand the body horror was a necessary part of the story. Carpenter lost work and had to deal with depression because of those reviews. Today it's considered a classic (not just a cult classic), and a lot of horror directors cite this movie as inspiring them. This movie is based off of the novella "Who Goes There" by John W. Campbell. There are two other movies based on this story: the 1951 film The Thing From Another World (no gore, probably due to both aesthetics and effects technology back then, but it's still a good movie), and 2011's The Thing, which depicts what happened at the Norwegian station. There's also a video game from 2002 that's a sequel to this movie; NightDive Studios remastered it and released it in Nov2024 for current systems. There are also comics sequels to this movie. Also, Peter Watts wrote a short story called "The Things", which is narrated from the Thing's perspective. While a lot of theories have been made as to who became a Thing and when, I've seen one about Childs. When the others leave him to give Blair the test, he's wearing a blue overcoat, with three other coats hung up on the wall. After Childs leaves to go after Blair, we see a different arrangement of coats in that empty room. When Childs finds Macready, he's wearing a white overcoat. To me, that indicates that Childs was a Thing. Hope you have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
When they left Childs to guard the door, later there's a camera pan from the basement door up towards where Childs was; the jackets are different and the door is open. I always took that to mean Blair came from the basement and infected Childs. Also at the end Childs should know better than to share the Whiskey if the Thing can infect you from one particle, which is why Mac laughs.
When you know that mostly scientific crews are in Antartica doing all kind of experiments and you see someone shooting a dog, you should trust he knows what he is doing. 😅
Great reaction to a great movie :) It really is great for people like me who know the movie off by heart to get to enjoy it again vicariously through someone awesome like you :)
Jed, who played the dog/wolf coming from the Norwegian camp, actually was half Husky and half wolf. He was in several movies during his lifetime. He had been born in an animal shelter.
There are two similar films to this that are definitely worth watching. "VIRUS" (J.L Curtis) 1999 And "HARBINGER DOWN" (Lance Henriksen) 2015 MERRY CHRISTMAS 🎅
When Mac underscores to the group (outdoors) that, "Someone in this camp ain't what he appears to be," ...Coby asks: How does he know that? He knows it, because he's connected two pieces of information: 1) Someone dumped their dirty drawers (long underwear) in the kitchen trash can (discovered by Nauls.) 2) Info from Blair, that this organism imitates other life forms - perfectly. A normal human wouldn't possess ripped-up underwear, and wouldn't discard the remains that way - but an imitation would. Why don't other team members either connect these two facts... Or in Blair's case, why does he SEEM TO BE worried about Clark, but then dismiss it? Because the implications that the thing can imitate people... and that maybe some people in the American camp have already been assimilated... are so horrifying, and the consequences for the remaining humans so dire, that their psyches opt for emotional safety of denial, rather than the much more difficult path of dealing with the horrid reality. •••• My theory is that Blair was assimilated shortly after he ran the computer simulations. We're led to think that what wrecks the radio room is HUMAN Blair attempting to ••prevent a rescue•• (and a contamination from reaching the outside world. But actually, it's more likely that it was BLAIR-THING, acting to ••prevent a warning•• from reaching the outside world. (If the warning were believed, the U.S. could have perhaps responded with nukes on missiles, or a much larger number of missiles with conventional warheads, to destroy the entire two camps and prevent a spread. After wrecking the radio room, Blair-Thing could then take advantage of the isolation in the tool shed to build the escape craft and maybe do additional tunneling to wherever it wanted.) •••• The craft that Blair-Thing was building, wasn't a spaceship. (Among other things: not enough available fuel to achieve orbit or escape velocity, unless you posit that it has alien knowledge to assemble a 'magic' fuel out of the camp's supplies.) It was some sort of alien flying craft intended to get it from the local area to either another camp or to civilized areas outside Antarctica.
I'd say that when one guy starts trying to kill a dog with a rifle and grenades, he's probably gone insane. When two people together decide to do this, they must have a damn good reason...
@24:35 _He just stopped breathing. Was it a heart attack?_ *Norris* (the geologist) has a *prosthetic heart-valve* which obviously wasn't cloned when the thing attacked him. The "Thing" can only *immitate cells (biomatter)* & never inanimate objects such as a prosthetic limb, tooth retorative filling or a glass eye. Therefor the Norris thing-clone frequently got *heart attacks.* Btw. the immitate "only bilogy" may give us a *clue* as to who might be a copy or not, like for instance *Child's earring.* Edit: 1. corrected the spelling of "stopped", 2. replaced "constantly" with "frequently".
That doesn't make sense. The thing can also transform it's body into any shape or any weird attacking creature - But you're saying it cannot fix it's own little heart problem when it is able to mimic the entire rest of his body???
@@spiritconsumer Yes that's what I wrote. Where in the cells or the genetic code can the thing learn how to fix a defective heart or copy a sythetic valv???. What weird attacking creature did it transform to?? All the "shapes" as you call them were creature cells the thing copied along its history. Please go & revisit your common sense for it doesn't make sense at all.
@@spiritconsumer Yes that's what I wrote. The thing can't transform into "any weird attacking creature". It copies from the genetic material it previously have met and assimilated.
Great catch, Tarantino said Reservoir Dogs was his version of the thing. He also used unused score from the thing in The hateful 8. Kurt hated the Sombrero when wardrobe showed it to him and wasn’t gonna wear it but they had already used it in b roll in helicopter so he had to use it.
Another awesome reaction from Coby The Thing is a serious intense ride into Horror and paranoia with some of the best practical effects put to film . You called it right Coby when you made the comparison between Reservoir Dogs and the Thing because Quentin Tarantino did mention that this was an influence in how he wrote RD and the scenes in the warehouse where no one knows who to trust . I Just loved your expressions at each THING reveal moment !😆 Merry Christmas to you and yours Coby !!🎄🙏 ❤💚
The Thing imitates you perfectly including your flaws. The movie doesn't make it clear but according to the original story Norris had a heart condition. So in a time of stress The Thing had a heart attack.
This was John Carpenters' remake of a 1951 film The Thing From Another World. The effects were all practical and were done by effects genius Rob Bottin. Bottin also worked on effects for the Star Wars cantina scene and played one of the members of the cantina band (look for the tallest one in the band, and that's Bottin).
I can't believe you edited out the best line in the movie!
"I know you gentlemen have been through a lot, but when you find the time, I'd rather not spend the rest of this winter TIED TO THIS FUCKING COUCH!"
Sometimes that happens from coincidence, sometimes it's intended to entice viewers to their Patreon for the full uncut reactions. But yeah, that line hits hard.
U GOTTA BE FUCKING KIDDING ME - is my fav line
I always laugh at that line; the delivery was perfect!
yea love how calm he is when he first starts talking
one of the best lines in all of cinema! Gets me every time.
The norwegian guy at the beginning shouts "get away from it! It isnt a dog! Its a thing!".
Norwegians...always spoiling movies.
@@miller-joeldon't you mean the swedes?😜
@@BADforlyfe Is that you, Mac? Where were you, Mac?
It's pretty funny Carpenter basically bet on the stereotype that Americans are stupid and aren't known for being multilingual even back then 😅..and yes..I am American😅I'm not trying to disrespect anyone I'm just making an observation.😅
@@kevinslayzak1214 im pretty sure there are very few people in the world outside Norway who actually speak Norwegian. Also, of all the countries with bases in Antarctica, the only one with an actual base and a rare language is Norway. So it wasnt really much of a choice.
Almost 2025 and this movie is still the King of practical effects
always will be
@Cifer77 Make up effects master Rob Bottin is responsible for that and this has got be his Magnum Opus [fancy way of saying it's his masterpiece ] 😄
Check out his work on The Howling as well another horror classic .
Cheers and Happy Holidays 🎄🙏
I guess you haven’t seen a lot of movies.
It's a classic. But I think 1986's The Fly gives it a run for its money.
Geee, I wonder why
The best part about The Thing reactions is watching people go from "You better not kill the dog!" to "Shoot it! Shoot it!"
If you don't immediately recognize Keith David, then that means you've never seen the film "They Live". Which means you need to see the film "They Live" immediately.
"They Live", is one of the best films ever made! Is it a documentary, or Sci-Fi??
@Otto42 They Live is awesome another John Carpenter classic and much like ''The Thing '' wasn't very well received on it's release in fact The Thing was torn apart by critics at first but has gained a cult following since .
who needs to listen to critics anyways damn culture vultures .
Merry Christmas !! have a good one mate !
Another John Carpenter mind fuck
Yeah, I’m kind of surprised she didn’t recognize any of the quite popular character actors from this film. It’s ok because she’s a little younger than I am, so I expect someone from her generation wouldn’t know them unless they watched movies regularly
I've always liked his role as Spawn in the HBO animated series best
Mac and Windows working together to solve the problem
Yea!! Imagine that! 😂🤣👍
@@hwplugburz Happened in real life! Mac Office was MSFT's biggest seller for a while... until Gates decided to create his own GUI operating system.
Arrgh! Missed that connection! 42 years has gone like a dream, and still had to rely on pure chance, because the old brain was not going to cooperate!
Damn good one i watched this movie for 30 years never made the connection he had some foresight i think !
Well, most wouldn’t make the connection being before those platforms were even developed.
It WASN'T their dog, the dog was from the other camp.
I get so excited seeing people who have never seen The Thing wishing no harm being brought to the dog before the shit goes down lol
Tarantino has said that he used this film as inspiration for the claustrophobia of Reservoir Dogs.
Tarantino also used several unutilized pieces of the score that Ennio Morricone (The Good Bad and the Ugly) composed for The Thing in his 2016 film "The Hateful 8."
(The score won Morricone the Oscar....34 years late.)
Also, Predator paid homage to it in the opening scene.
The Hateful 8 is basically a soft remake of Carpenter's The Thing. He even re-used bits of Morricone's score from this film.
"I get [The Thing] and The Abyss confused..."
That will never, ever happen again. 🤣
The only thing the posters have in common is, they are rectangular.
@@miller-joel I have to disagree with that. The colors and color grading are similar, they both have a lens flare esthetic with a central singular silhouetted figure with outstretched arms. They have more in common than things that are dissimilar. So, I don't think it is a reach for someone to confuse the two.
@sandman_says_runrunner4701 So they are rectangular with a humanoid figure in a blue light. I would never get them confused.
@@miller-joel Well, aren't you amazing and perfect! It doesn't change the fact that you were being hyperbolic in your original statement.
I get it, you are suffering from conformation bias by attempting to dismiss any correlation between the art work for these two films and pathetically defend you erroneous first statement.
Now, you are just being disingenuous by saying it is impossible to have these two movie posters/covers switched in one's mind.
Ego is not your friend.
@@sandman_says_runrunner4701 I'm dismissing the correlation by pointing out the correlation? Aren't you a bright bulb? 🙄
Quentin Tarantino was inspired by The Thing when he made The Hateful Eight. You'll understand if you ever watch it. Kurt Russell is even in it. Carpenter filmed the Norwegian camp scenes after the end scenes, using the damaged American base as a stand-in for the charred Norwegian camp. So like an eerie foreshadowing since it was really their own camp (for the film)
The original score by Ennio Morricone that was written for this but not used was used in Hateful Eight.
I think the opening scene is needed because it depicts the alien ship being out of control. So the Thing was on that ship attacking the aliens who were flying that ship. That explains a lot. Like why does the Thing have so many forms it can transform into? Well, it's been traveling through the universe. That means all the forms you saw, that weren't of Earth life forms, are of real creatures that live out there somewhere. That ship in the beginning is not the origin of the Thing, it was merely the latest way it was getting from one place to another. That ship Blair was building was not meant to fly it home. It has no home. It was meant to fly it to a more populated area on Earth.
Something everybody always gets wrong. When they brought the body back from the other camp and unwrapped it, everyone says it's smoking. Let's think about it. It's not smoke. It's steam/fog. The body was frozen solid and they brought it into a warm room.
Can I ask are or were you a teacher?
@@bentucker2301 No. I'm not and never have been ;)
I don’t think so. Are you claiming it was also steaming out on the ice when the chopper arrived? It was still in the process of burning. The smoke was residual. If it were frozen, there’s no way Blair would’ve been able to do the autopsy he did.
@@NemeanLion-i have had company fire safety training; smoke is a sign that an object is still in process of burning. Yes, they found it at the base still burning. After packing it and transport, i doubt it i till smoking and has become considerably cold. The temperature difference is still enough to form fog. It is not probable that the tissue and moisture froze completely within the time it took to transport. But some of the outer moisture would freeze
@@woeshaling6421 “Company fire safety training” doesn’t exactly make you a PhD in thermodynamics. If you don’t want to believe the director was implying the creature was still warm and “smoking”, you’re entitled to do so, but I personally don’t think that’s what they were intending. Cheerio.
"Maybe we're at war with Norway." Well, not _yet._
Now you’re ready for Kohn Carpenter’s “Prince of Darkness”.
Who's Kohn Carpenter, is he one of the New, upcoming Directors?
24:52 : you came here for that moment, I know it 🤣
For a more serious note, Carpenter wanted to make an horror movie with an alien, but he wanted to create his alien lifeform so "un-human", so "un-earthling" so to speak (I don't find a word in english to express that), it will be scary even in plain broad light.
Even the xenomorph from Alien or the Predator for example have 2 legs, two arms, so, unlike the original movie from the 50s in B&W (which is plant-based if I remember), Carpenter chose to make his alien as an adaptative virus-like species, the most inhuman lifeform you can imagine, to the point there is no word to describe it : it's "the thing".
This movie is not a conventional slasher movie with a big scary monster killing everyone in poorly-lit rooms with flickering lights. The horror is built on paranoia and suspicion.
That's why it's so good even after decades.
Blair touched the Thing with the eraser on his pencil, then touched it to his lips. Benning's scream is supposed to be the scream of every alien life the Thing ever absorbed. BTW, John Carpenter's "Prince of Darkness" is almost as good.
You can tell who's who by their actions. Mac's willingness to blow everything up is a human response, as is Clark's going to check on his dogs after Childs says that Blair killed them. Same with Windows going for the guns when he realizes that suspicion is about to fall on him or Clark going after Mac with a knife. Contrast that with Norris and Palmer. Palmer tries to stoke the paranoia by seeming reluctant to go with Windows, but mostly they both just hang back and bide their time.
There are usually 3 reasons someone votes for a movie in a reactor poll:
1) Because they genuinely love the movie.
2) Because they think the reactor will enjoy it / it is an important movie for the reactor to see.
3) Because they get a perverse pleasure out of discomfort shown by a reactor. (This is why war and horror films do so well.)
When all three coalesce you get a runaway or landslide movie poll.
one of the best and greatest movies ever, not just scifi and/or horror, it's timeless at this point, so many of the rising generation are coming across this film and their minds are blown away at how well made this is still to this day.
THE FACT THAT FILM WAS MADE WITH PRACTICAL SPECIAL EFFECTS BEFORE THE INTERVENTION OF CGI IS A TESTEMENT OF THIS FILM !!! A MODERN HORROR FILM PIECE MASTERPIECE FROM JOHN CARPENTER !!!
Don't mean to be crude but FART CGI bro. Old school special effects all day long for me
Carpenter doesn't always write the best stories, but he shows them expertly. He does a lot with a little.
I’m super excited to watch you react to this. I saw it in the theater at like 14. It has remained the gold standard since.
My older brothers took me to see it in the Summer of 82' when I was a kid. The creature effects were so outstanding and how the audiences, along with me and my brothers, jumping out of our seats. Women were running out of the theater with their boyfriends trailing behind them. You could actually do that with a horror movie was in the immortal words of Reese Witherspoon: "It's beyond, beyond." The movie's effect are still lasting after 42 years later is a tribute to Rob Bottin's artistry.
Watch the scene where Nauls comes in and say that Mac is "one of them". Palmer and Norris, who are both things by this point give each other quizzical looks, like: "I didn't do it, did you do it?"
!!!!! A lot of people miss that! And it's one of my arguments AGAINST those who say that those who were assimilated did not know they were. Of COURSE they knew...the dog knew!
The actor for Childs is the same actor that played Mary's stepfather in There's Something about Mary. Blair is mostly famous for his role in Cacoon and the Quaker Oatmeal commercials
Childs also had a prominent role in "Armageddon" and Wilford Brimley had one in "The Firm".
The one thing I noticed Coby does is think of old movies backwards. "Its like Predator" Yeah we had no idea what that was. This was actually a remake. The Thing is more typical of 1950s 1960s Sci Fi. It honestly was all about space back then. The space race was in everyone's mind and it was the middle of the Cold War. All that influenced writing and the movies.
Many people do that. It's annoying for sure. They'll compare the older thing they're watching to newer films repeatedly.
A bit about Mac's backstory that didn't make it into the final cut, in the original script he was intended to be a former army helicopter combat pilot who served in Vietnam and saw a lot of bad shit, and that's why he never gets fazed, but is also very gruff and dour, and spends a lot of his time alone and drinking, because he has PTSD.
I love how your take on the situation is changing in real time as you're describing it, perfect way to cover this insane film.
30:20 Thank you for figuring out what’s logically obvious, but what few people who watch this seem to notice. Yes, when they locked Blair out there by himself, they essentially hung a sign saying “Free meal, absorb this guy whenever you want, no one will be around to see it”. You can tell that, between the time when he’s first locked in there, and later when he suddenly wants to come back inside the main compound, his demeanor completely changes.
Coby your reactions to each transformation was just priceless, thank you for that one.
On another note, this film is relentless with guts and grossness. Everyone was waiting for that chest bursting scene reaction
Yep, voted on this one just for you, Coby. This Carpenter movie is his best and one the best horror movies of all time.
I really enjoyed your reaction, your facial expressions are amazing, love your dog too!
Blood would freeze in seconds being exposed to Antarctic winds, the lowest air temperature recorded was −89.2 °C (−128.6 °F). Also the "doggo" might not have travelled straight to the US base, the Norwegian's might have been tracking it for days before it ended up there.
Not in a helicopter they weren't. That base was trashed and I don't think there were set up for maintenance and refueling anymore. So that whirly bird had to fly on whatever fuel it already had in the tank and then that was it.
@@hackerx7329 I didn't say they were tracking it with the chopper the whole time, they may have been tracking with sleds at first, lost track of it and decided to use the chopper to search for it. The point I was making was that we have no idea how long they were chasing the dog as there was no scenes showing it.
“ It looks like a dog l’orange “ has to be the quote of the week!😃
One of my all time favourite horror movies, tense, suspenseful, atmospheric with awesome practical effects & a great cast.
Wonderful charismatic reaction Coby, I seen this film on VHS at my cousins he plugged headphones into the TV & put them on me which made it all the more terrifying.
28:33 Aww, the puppy came to help you, to provide emotional support!
That was adorable!
No, the puppy came to check if he's been discovered. :)
@@TheMule71
So devious!
The Thing learned that adult wolves can still be suspicious, so it chose to be a puppy in order to trick us with its cuteness!
Every reaction i've seen starts off with:
"Ahhh, look at the puppy. He's so cute! Is he shooting at the dog?!!
Don't you dare hurt that puppy !!!
Thirty seconds into the kennel scene, they're like: "KILL IT !!! TORCH IT !!!!".
The greatness of the film is that uses in a sci.fi horror setting to give us a story related to the era of paranoia related to what was referred to as the cold war between us and ussr. whi can i trust. the people next to me could be my enemy.
The original novella was written years before the Cold War.
@@Boomer_Power I know that but first the film is a loose remake of the 1950s film by Howard Hawks which by the way he use a scene of the film during his halloween film, but Caroenter use this version to explor paranoia and fear related to the cold war.
@@fernandomendez2709 I have always resisted the assertion that this is a remake of Hawks version, mainly because they have almost nothing in common. Carpenter's version is much more faithful to the original novella, where as Hawks version is nothing like it at all.
Coby’s smile is EVERYTHING! 😍
I saw The Thing when I was 10, it was rated R so I tricked my Mother into seeing it who didn't like the movie btw, but I loved it, I must have rented the VHS at least ten times when it came out and of course if we add all the other formats in which it was released, I probably watched this movie at least 30 times.
The Thing (2010 movie) - isn't remake it's a prequel about Norwegian base. And if you want to know about what's happened next to ending of original movie... Well the SEQUEL of Carpenter's "The Thing" is video game "The Thing" (yeah, main problem in The Thing universe is that every product in it has the same name), if you're gamer you should check this on, recently was released remake of this game. :)
13:42 'It must get into a new host...by just like, smaller, breakaway cells? Like, how?'.
25:15-25:50 John Carpenter: 'Here. Let me show you'. 😂😂
The Thing replicates everything about you, your memories, your flaws, your strengths. It essentially IS you. From an existential standpoint, it’s a terrifying prospect.
But some comfort may be found in that if, for example,
you have hemroids.
@torpedoboy4
But there's some comfort in that
if, for example,
you have hemorrhoids.
Saw the movie with two friends from work when it to our small town fall of 1982. We started out watching the movie sitting straight up in our seats. By the end of the movie we had sunk down as low as we could, watching the movie over the top of the row of the seats in front of us, we were that scared. The black and white scenes of the discovery the space ship, etc, are from the origin 50s The Thing From Another World.
This is one of the best Carpenter films ever made. The practical effects won an academy award. I saw an interview where they said they waited to the last day and actually blew up and destroyed the sets and filmed it for the movie. OH, and what's the dog's name?
Probably the best carpenter movie. Halloween comes close imo
I may not be remembering it right, but I think the dog was named Jake, and he was actually a wolf-dog hybrid. A gorgeous beast.
"You saw some THINGS puppy dog..." Not exactly, but that's how it starts 🤣
Remember, this is 1982! It still looks better than most horror movies released today. Practical effects by the legendary Rob Bottin is what made this work so well. Add to that a fantastic story with well developed characters, and a great director, and you have a guaranteed hit. Except it wasn't... Because it was released the same summer as E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Blade Runner, Rocky III, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and Poltergeist.
This film still doesn't get all the credit it deserves, especially with the remarkable dog sequences as just one example. They pulled off one hell of a film here.
This was awesome, it went just as I expected! Coby’s best reaction yet I think. And Cash coming to the rescue was adorable!
One interesting thing to note (and apologies if anyone has already pointed this out) is that Norris has a heart attack because he has a pacemaker. The thing cannot replicate anything non-organic, so doesn’t replicate the pacemaker, and inherits Norris’s heart condition as a result.
There were tricks that they used in certain scenes in order to give away who was supposed to be a thing. Sometimes it was a musical queue (Childs putting Mac's liquor bottle to his lips), or a certain person not having a reflection of light in their eyes (Palmer during blood test).
I think everyone in this movie got infected by The Thing included MacReady. His J&B Bourbon bottle got passed around and every drinker got infected after the dog licked the guy who was shot. No one survived this movie, although there are theories to suggest MacReady heroically stays human and he had to kill Childs off-screen. Another theory is the exact opposite.
Childs does leave at the end and eventually becomes Cameron Diaz's step dad.
Already went to the prom with her boyfriend, Woogie.
God damn it, that's the happy ending Carpenter didn't have the BALLS to show. Merry Christmas!
"bloody spider cicada thing"
a great description
Your observation about Reservoir Dogs is on point, as Tarantino has cited this movie as a massive influence on him. He said that his movie ‘The Hateful Eight’ was a love letter to this movie. He wanted to evoke the same paranoia. It might well have also influenced Reservoir Dogs.
And I agree that the movie didn’t need the flying spaceship at the start.
The reaction to the defibrillator scene 😂
It's everything, everywhere, all at once, with this creature.
Blair was infected when he examined the first "corpse". Remember that pencil of his? He taped the corpse and Blair has a habit of taping the pencil eraser against his lips. The minute that eraser touched his lips the first bit of the thing got into blair.
+🔥
★ *Alien* (1979)
★ *Event Horizon* (1997)
★ *The Fly* (1986)
BONUS TRACK
Directed by *John Carpenter*
★ *Christine* (1983)
★ *Village of the Damned* (1995)
★ *Vampires* (1998)
BONUS TRACK
(Underrated Practical FX)
🔥 *Fright Night* (1985)
🔥 *The Witches* (1990)
🔥 *Demon Knight* (1995)
,
Great list! I'd add Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) myself, but it's all subjective
@michaelschwartz8730
I haven't seen that one.
Thanks for the recommendation!
yes please !
i agreed !!
+2
Event Horizon is a stone cold classic.
oh mah gawd. The reactions here are truly epic. Sorry for your suffering, but know it was for a good cause.
I like that you picked up the Reservoir Dogs link! Tarantino has said that Reservoir Dogs was him trying to get the same tension he got watching The Thing! You might like Howling V: The Rebirth; it's a similar sort of paranoid thriller involving a bunch of trapped people, but in that case, one of them is a werewolf! It's not the greatest of movies, but it's always been one of my favorites because of that very non-standard take on being a werewolf movie that doesn't just follow all the same tropes as every other werewolf movie!
The Thing (1982), directed by John Carpenter, is based on the novella Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell Jr., initially published in 1938 in Astounding Science Fiction.
The story centers around a group of researchers in Antarctica who encounter a parasitic alien lifeform capable of perfectly imitating other organisms. This leads to paranoia and distrust as they try to figure out who is human and who is "the Thing."
The novella was later expanded into a novel called Frozen Hell, published in 2019. This novel revealed additional context about the alien and the Antarctic setting.
The 1982 film also serves as a loose remake of the earlier movie **"The Thing from Another World"** (1951), based on the same novella but with significant changes to the story and tone. Carpenter's version, however, is known for being more faithful to Campbell's original vision.
The Thing (2011) is a prequel to Carpenter's.
This is a remake of The Thing from Another World ftom 1951 which is a great classic movie.
There was a wonderful short story written a decade ago called THE THINGS BY Peter Watts that retells the whole film from the point of view of the actual Thing, it really adds a lot to the film like it’s belief system (it believed taking over another creature was an act of benevolence) and who exactly was infected and how it works in general. It changes the whole film in a fun way.
I never knew. THANK YOU FOR THIS. Found it and reading now, half-way through. It's truly engrossing. The only reason I'm stopping now is that I need to sleep.
Sounds awesome, thanks for the info
I am putting together a vanity for my daughter’s Christmas and you are totally keeping me company with your commentary. Thank you!
I will never get tired of these practical effects - and of the reactions to them!
The doc looked like he had Diabeetus ;)
There are loads of reactions to The Thing and i reckon yours is the best!
"I think it's a thriller…”. Ya do, huh?
“As long as no dogs die…". Oh, this is gonna go well 🤣
Thanks, that was great.
The second film is a prequel. Many don't like it but i love it. Carpenter's original has some gapping plot holes that the prequel fixes. It doesn’t have the impact of the sequel, nothing could, but that doesn't stop it from being a great watch. I hope you get 'round to it :)
This isnt like "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" in which the aliens duplicate their victim and destroy the original. When a living thing gets a few cells of the alien in them, it eventually converts your cells into its own. The "Thing" doesn't become you. You become the "Thing".
But do you know that you're the Thing? And do you KNOW that you know that you're the Thing? For forty years I've been pondering if anything of the original could survive. Brain replication can't be 100% because then there'd be no instinct to kill people, and certainly no ufo-building. So the new brain has to be human enough to control a human body but Thing enough to maintain its instincts and agendas. Would that leave a gap somewhere for your original mind and if so could you "accidentally" blow yourself up to save humanity? Hey, forty years is a lot of sci-fi pondering.
"Subtle compare to the others" and then Blair casual walk with gary's face litteraly in hands.
This movie is genious you can compare the thing to any deadly disease and you can imagine how hard it is to see your friends be contamined by it. Not only art wise its good near perfection with the ressources they had back then but the story and the mysteries are so good and ahead of it's time it's crazy.
One of the first movie ever to make me scared, i was like 8or 10 when i saw it for the first time. Top 3 movies in my heart along with Aliens.
The fact that this was all practical effects was amazing and ahead of its time. One of my favorite horror movies
After all these years, it's still weird to see Wilford Brimley without his signature mustache.
LOVED this reaction, you had me laughing so much, Love to you always and Happy Holidays ❤
I'd actually agree that this film and Predator didn't need the scenes with the ship at the beginning. I feel that these days they wouldn't have been included.
If you notice at the end Keith David has no breath....
And Bennings outside in the snow does. Besides Childs does have visible breath at the end you just have to look.
What's your point?
Everyone freaks out when the fleeing husky is fired at at the beginning of this great horror movie.
Later, everyone freaks out when the husky transforms into “The Thing” in a bestial manner. 😱
A great thrilling moment, just as John Carpenter's entire science fiction horror film is a single masterpiece.
The movie is over 40 years old and still shocks today with its magnificent effects as it did in 1982 ...
It wasn’t their dog. The dog was from the Norwegian camp or somewhere else.
This was the feel good movie of 1982😊. Merry Christmas.
Puppy coming up to save you was adorable!!
You underestimate how cold antarctic is. Its the coldest place on the planet. It's a place where humans can feeze to death in under 5 minutes in without proper gear. Blood would freeze on minutes in the open.
Also fun fact! You mention thumbs in the exploratory autopsy. Our thumbs have exceptional nerve receptors compared to other fingers and it’s true that those forced to dig into dead bodies do actually use their thumbs in exactly that manner. An instance of truth in television.
Several times you suggested that a "thing" could not learn our memories, or that testing memory would find out who is a "thing".
Probably not.
Given what we know about this alien, it mimics our cells.
All of them.
Even our brain cells.
Our memories are IN those brain cells, or the synapses that exist in our brain made up of those cells.
So if the alien copied ALL of our cells, it would copy the ones that store our memories too, so it would have our memories.
What is more impressive is that it retains its own memories, which means, it has all the memories of EVERYTHING it ever assimilated.
That is why when one of them defends itself, it grows big claws and teeth, or insect legs, etc.
That is also how Blair, a biologist, builds some kind of flying saucer under his jail - the "thing" that assimilated him may have assimilated the crew of that alien ship from the opening scene, and some of those crew members must have been engineers, because Blair was not an engineer.
The people at the Norwegian camp knew what this thing was capable of.
Great catch on the continuity question of the abandoned Norwegian base and the immediacy of the helicopter chase. Seen this dozens of times and that never occurred to me. Such a good movie it doesn’t occur to you.
This film is an adaptation of the 1938 novel 'Who Goes There?' Written by John W.Campbell jr. The 1982 film sticks very close to the original book story. It was first adapted as a film in 1951, which was called The Thing from Another World, and is well worth a watch. The 2011 prequel film shows what happened at the Norwegian camp and although its not as good, it's definitely worth watching.
Hi Coby, sorry I missed this!
The National Science Foundation has a base in Antartica, Amundsen-Scott Research Station. From February to October it's too cold for transportation, so only a few people stay there to maintain the place. After the last plane leaves for the winter, the first film they play is this one.
As was mentioned in chat, this movie didn't do well on release, partly due to E.T., but also because of bad reviews. The term "gorn" (gore porn) wasn't coined for this movie, but the majority of critics cited the gore as a detractor because they didn't understand the body horror was a necessary part of the story. Carpenter lost work and had to deal with depression because of those reviews. Today it's considered a classic (not just a cult classic), and a lot of horror directors cite this movie as inspiring them.
This movie is based off of the novella "Who Goes There" by John W. Campbell. There are two other movies based on this story: the 1951 film The Thing From Another World (no gore, probably due to both aesthetics and effects technology back then, but it's still a good movie), and 2011's The Thing, which depicts what happened at the Norwegian station. There's also a video game from 2002 that's a sequel to this movie; NightDive Studios remastered it and released it in Nov2024 for current systems. There are also comics sequels to this movie. Also, Peter Watts wrote a short story called "The Things", which is narrated from the Thing's perspective.
While a lot of theories have been made as to who became a Thing and when, I've seen one about Childs. When the others leave him to give Blair the test, he's wearing a blue overcoat, with three other coats hung up on the wall. After Childs leaves to go after Blair, we see a different arrangement of coats in that empty room. When Childs finds Macready, he's wearing a white overcoat. To me, that indicates that Childs was a Thing.
Hope you have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
When they left Childs to guard the door, later there's a camera pan from the basement door up towards where Childs was; the jackets are different and the door is open. I always took that to mean Blair came from the basement and infected Childs. Also at the end Childs should know better than to share the Whiskey if the Thing can infect you from one particle, which is why Mac laughs.
When you know that mostly scientific crews are in Antartica doing all kind of experiments and you see someone shooting a dog, you should trust he knows what he is doing. 😅
Thankiuu ! Nice review !
Great reaction to a great movie :) It really is great for people like me who know the movie off by heart to get to enjoy it again vicariously through someone awesome like you :)
Jed, who played the dog/wolf coming from the Norwegian camp, actually was half Husky and half wolf. He was in several movies during his lifetime. He had been born in an animal shelter.
My buds and I dropped acid an hour before we went to see this after School. Whoa Nelly!!😲😲
Glad to see it's not another christmas movie being reacted too.👍
There are two similar films to this that are definitely worth watching.
"VIRUS" (J.L Curtis) 1999
And
"HARBINGER DOWN"
(Lance Henriksen) 2015
MERRY CHRISTMAS 🎅
You have failed the thing challenge, never trust the dog.
When Mac underscores to the group (outdoors) that, "Someone in this camp ain't what he appears to be," ...Coby asks: How does he know that?
He knows it, because he's connected two pieces of information: 1) Someone dumped their dirty drawers (long underwear) in the kitchen trash can (discovered by Nauls.) 2) Info from Blair, that this organism imitates other life forms - perfectly. A normal human wouldn't possess ripped-up underwear, and wouldn't discard the remains that way - but an imitation would.
Why don't other team members either connect these two facts... Or in Blair's case, why does he SEEM TO BE worried about Clark, but then dismiss it? Because the implications that the thing can imitate people... and that maybe some people in the American camp have already been assimilated... are so horrifying, and the consequences for the remaining humans so dire, that their psyches opt for emotional safety of denial, rather than the much more difficult path of dealing with the horrid reality.
••••
My theory is that Blair was assimilated shortly after he ran the computer simulations. We're led to think that what wrecks the radio room is HUMAN Blair attempting to ••prevent a rescue•• (and a contamination from reaching the outside world. But actually, it's more likely that it was BLAIR-THING, acting to ••prevent a warning•• from reaching the outside world. (If the warning were believed, the U.S. could have perhaps responded with nukes on missiles, or a much larger number of missiles with conventional warheads, to destroy the entire two camps and prevent a spread. After wrecking the radio room, Blair-Thing could then take advantage of the isolation in the tool shed to build the escape craft and maybe do additional tunneling to wherever it wanted.)
••••
The craft that Blair-Thing was building, wasn't a spaceship. (Among other things: not enough available fuel to achieve orbit or escape velocity, unless you posit that it has alien knowledge to assemble a 'magic' fuel out of the camp's supplies.) It was some sort of alien flying craft intended to get it from the local area to either another camp or to civilized areas outside Antarctica.
I'd say that when one guy starts trying to kill a dog with a rifle and grenades, he's probably gone insane. When two people together decide to do this, they must have a damn good reason...
@24:35 _He just stopped breathing. Was it a heart attack?_
*Norris* (the geologist) has a *prosthetic heart-valve* which obviously wasn't cloned when the thing attacked him. The "Thing" can only *immitate cells (biomatter)* & never inanimate objects such as a prosthetic limb, tooth retorative filling or a glass eye. Therefor the Norris thing-clone frequently got *heart attacks.* Btw. the immitate "only bilogy" may give us a *clue* as to who might be a copy or not, like for instance *Child's earring.*
Edit: 1. corrected the spelling of "stopped", 2. replaced "constantly" with "frequently".
That doesn't make sense. The thing can also transform it's body into any shape or any weird attacking creature - But you're saying it cannot fix it's own little heart problem when it is able to mimic the entire rest of his body???
@@spiritconsumer Yes that's what I wrote. Where in the cells or the genetic code can the thing learn how to fix a defective heart or copy a sythetic valv???. What weird attacking creature did it transform to?? All the "shapes" as you call them were creature cells the thing copied along its history. Please go & revisit your common sense for it doesn't make sense at all.
@@spiritconsumer Yes that's what I wrote. The thing can't transform into "any weird attacking creature". It copies from the genetic material it previously have met and assimilated.
Great catch, Tarantino said Reservoir Dogs was his version of the thing. He also used unused score from the thing in The hateful 8. Kurt hated the Sombrero when wardrobe showed it to him and wasn’t gonna wear it but they had already used it in b roll in helicopter so he had to use it.
Another awesome reaction from Coby The Thing is a serious intense ride into Horror and paranoia with some of the best practical effects put to film .
You called it right Coby when you made the comparison between Reservoir Dogs and the Thing because Quentin Tarantino did mention that this was an influence in how he wrote RD and the scenes in the warehouse where no one knows who to trust .
I Just loved your expressions at each THING reveal moment !😆
Merry Christmas to you and yours Coby !!🎄🙏 ❤💚
The Thing imitates you perfectly including your flaws. The movie doesn't make it clear but according to the original story Norris had a heart condition. So in a time of stress The Thing had a heart attack.
This was John Carpenters' remake of a 1951 film The Thing From Another World. The effects were all practical and were done by effects genius Rob Bottin. Bottin also worked on effects for the Star Wars cantina scene and played one of the members of the cantina band (look for the tallest one in the band, and that's Bottin).
Carpenter's movie adapts the original story, "Who goes there?" significantly more faithfully (the story ending is a total win for the humans though).
😢 Poor Coby, poor, Poor Coby!
Some icky boys just handed her a Slimy Dead Frog … 😅
She’ll never be the same.