Much has been made of “The Thing,” John Carpenter’s 1982 box office bomb-turned-genre darling.
Whether it’s Bill Lancaster’s adapted script of John W.
Campbell Jr.’s 1938 novella “Who Goes There?,” Rob Bottin’s gnarly special effects (with an assist from dog-Thing creature designer Stan Winston), or Carpenter’s meticulous direction that’s light on the jump scares and heavy on the dread, the result is now considered one of the great gargoyles in the horror movie pantheon.
Though the story is about an alien organism infiltrating an Arctic research post, and though there are plenty of tentacles about, the narrative is largely character-driven as paranoia and mistrust grow among the isolated cadre of men, led by Kurt Russell’s pilot, R.J.
MacReady.A 2016 LA Weekly interview with the cast and crew yields insights from the film’s production.
Therein, Carpenter called the shoot “intimidating,” as he had to wrangle multiple accomplished actors — some of whom,
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