Sunday, January 17, 2010

Sci-Fi Sunday: The Thing (1982)

Is that a man in there, or something else?



I think I liked it.
I'm not sure though. The premise was good, and the sociological aspects of it were great, but it was... a bit slow. At times the slow pacing added to the suspense, making you wonder just how long was left, other times it just felt like they'd run out of script and you wondered how long before you left.

Originally, I'd wanted to do a double-feature comparing this to 'The Thing From Another World', but apparently none of the local video stores have even heard of it. This one I already owned, but never watched. I decided I probably should seeing as there is talk of a prequel being filmed this year.

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. The special effects, while not brilliant in the world of today, with Avatar's giant blue people, I imagine would be quite impressive in the early eighties, and provided a few "Ew" moments, particularly during the dog explosion, which is more than I can say of a lot of the movies I've watched recently.


Once upon a time, this was a husky.

The film follows the basic plot of 'something strange is found, it turns out to be evil, and it tries to kill everyone' which is a storyline we should all be familiar with by now. As the 'thing' takes the form of whatever it kills, there's no way for anyone to know who's the bad guy, and so the crew of the remote arctic outpost turns on each other in an attempt to stay alive, and to prevent it from reaching the rest of humanity.
Luckily the crew know the basic rule of the unknown evil: Kill it with fire.
Flambé anyone?

Also, I've been resisting the urge to make this joke all day;

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