Since it's October, that means Theater in the Garage is going through a Halloween Horror Film Fest on Thursdays in lieu of our regularly scheduled line up. The first week was Alien, and this week we watched the 1982 John Carpenter classic, The Thing.
Format: Theater in the Garage
Screening Date: 10/8/2010
Run Time: 1 hr 39 min
Director: John Carpenter
Release Date: 1982
Attendance: Weird Dave, Griffie, Spoonbridge, Killer Wyrm, Dirty Hippie, Wilder, Eric, Matthew
Review At A Glance
Enjoyment 10/10
Presentation 9/10
This is one of my favorite movies of all time. The atmosphere, the pacing, the cast, the sets, the music - it all comes together as one fantastically terrifying cinematic treasure. I think this stands as John Carpenter's best work (though it is beat out by just a nudge on my own personal scale by Big Trouble in Little China). For those not in the know, John Carpenter's The Thing is ostensibly a remake of the 1951 sci-fi film The Thing From Another World, and both are adaptations of a John W. Campbell story from 1938 called Who Goes There? Fun fact.
I'm not going to disseminate the plot, as I'm sure most of you have seen the movie, but for the benefit of the one or two people who haven't here's a quick rundown - Antarctica station, Norwegians uncover spacecraft and unknown alien organism, organism takes over any living entity, wackiness ensues. What gets me every time I watch this movie is how great the effects are. And they're real! There's no CG in this movie, just good old fashioned models and robots. And it works so great.
The other amazing piece of the movie that gets me every time is the music. Composed by Ennio Morricone (of spaghetti-western fame), it serves as the perfect soundtrack to mistrust, paranoia, and horror. If you play any horror-themed RPGs you NEED to have this soundtrack, no questions asked. It creates perfect tension without taking players out of the moment with a more recognizable soundtrack. Eerie and wonderful!
As most of you probably know for the Halloween Horror Film Fest I serve up a tasty mixed drink thematically appropriate to the movie being watched. This movie was difficult to find a suitable one, and I eventually settled on Pina Coladas. Why Pina Coladas? Because they are 1) white like the frozen continent of Antarctica, 2) are cold like the biting winds of Antarctica, and 3) contain a deceptive amount of alcohol. I couldn't find a drink based solely on The Thing, or John Carpenter, or Wilford Brimley, or paranoia, or bodysnatchers. I considered serving straight J&B Scotch as Kurt Russel's character drinks but ... decided against it.
And whenever I see Kurt Russel in his big cowboy hat I think chimichangas. Not sure why.
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