p e n g u i n d e v i l

Another one of those films that I always feel like I’ve recently watched, seemingly not though. I finally sat down to watch The Thing, a wondrous classic, and the film that really makes me wonder how on Earth John Carpenter could have made all of those crappy films!

The Thing is very similar in my mind to that even greater classic, Alien, and when watching it I had to keep in mind what I realized when I watched The Thing From Another World last summer… Alien is more another take on the same Campbell story as these Things, then the other way around. Regardless, like Alien, The Thing is both one of the best horror movies of all time, and also a great science fiction film! With an alien, and a big body count and a rather hopeless ending… All because they didn’t let that poor Norwegian fellow kill that “dog”. It all could have been avoided if only everyone spoke the same language (highlighting one of the tragic aspects of the failure of Esperanto). Here we join a dozen fellows locked away in an Antarctic base who get some rather unexpected and confusing visitors, in the form of two Norwegians in a helicopter chasing a dog across the landscape and shooting at it. Something that is a bit unusual around those parts. One good thing about this film is that, for the most part, these victims aren’t oblivious at all. They immediately begin looking into the evidence they are presented with. When the “crazy” Norwegians come through camp and shoot things up, they realize that they need to go and check out their base. Then once there, they take the strange things that they find quite seriously: a melted humanoid blob, an old spaceship in the ice and bodies everywhere, it doesn’t take them long to realize that something not so nice may be about to happen to them and they start preparing for it.

Really, the only weak point in their behavior is that once they realize what they are up against, it would be wise for them to stay together as a group, yet they continually put people off by themselves or in groups of two, which in this case isn’t much safer. Regardless, the movie is hands-down great, firstly it has a great ensemble cast, though it features Kurt Russell in yet another role that seems written for him…

But it also stars Donald Moffet, and f’n Wilford Brimley! The sets are great, really delivering a good atmosphere and the creature effects are brilliantly disturbing… More of those greatly crafted ones that really make me long for the days before CGI when people physically made films. And speaking of atmosphere, there is a great score by Morricone and the psychological feelings are quite apparent in this claustrophobic place… The tension, distrust and paranoia are palpable.