I went to the Portage Theater last night (I’m going back tonight) to catch back-to-back versions of The Thing. The 50’s version pits the mad scientist - advocating a gushing, scientistic approach to dealing with the alien- against an airforce pilot who immediately recognizes the levity of the situation and deals with it accordingly. Instead of listening to the Nobel prize winner and trying to reason with the creature, he firebombs the shit out of it. An ironic solution for a script that repeatedly associates the scientist with the horrors of the atomic bomb. You can guess who gets the girl in the end, right? Ef you, science.

The blanker (although much more entertaining) Carpenter re-make offers little in way of character development, as the primary conflict is actually between the alien and the humans. On the other hand, it is much more entertaining, and gives us one of the seminal badasses in sci-fi/horror film history: R.J. FUCKING MacReady.




Kurt Russell’s character has absolutely no interest whatsoever in… well… anything, really. Except drinking. It could be argued that his survival in this film is primarily due to the copious amounts of J&D that he consumes, instead of over-thinking every situation and becoming a paranoid psychopath like the rest of his co-workers. The bottom line is that if you haven’t seen either of these movies, now is the time to rent them.



Best scene in the Carpenter re-make is embedded below. Poor pup.



Photos from the trip: