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Upon its theatrical release in 1982, John Carpenter's reworking of the 1951 sci-fi classic The Thing from Another World took a drubbing from some outspoken genre devotees who thought it deviated too much from the original and sported unnecessarily gross special effects. In fact, writer-director Carpenter deliberately avoided paying obeisance to Christian Nyby's 1951 film and instead went back to the source material, John W. Campbell's 1938 novella "Who Goes There?" for inspiration. He retained the story's central conceit, making the alien a shape-shifter capable of perfectly mimicking any life form it ingests. The basic premise was the same: a research team working in a remote Antarctic outpost comes across the body of a frozen alien and brings it back to the base, where the creature thaws out and begins killing the men one by one. Kurt Russell, who had felicitously teamed with Carpenter on the preceding year's Escape from New York, is rather subdued as the fatalistic hero R. J. MacReady. The supporting performances of Wilford Brimley, Richard Dysart, Richard Masur, Donald Moffat, and T. K. Carter are similarly restrained and lend believability to a patently unbelievable situation. The special effects, while certainly on the repulsive side, are extraordinarily convincing by 1982 standards, although they won't seem quite as impressive to younger viewers weaned on the CGI effects of the last decade. In retrospect, Carpenter's The Thing was a lot better than some of us thought, and it has taken its place among the masterworks of sci-fi cinema. This Collector's Edition includes a commentary by Carpenter and Russell, a making-of documentary titled "Terror Takes Shape," and a host of extras including work-in-progress special effects footage, conceptual art and storyboards, and even some stop-motion animation that didn't make the movie's final cut. Ed Hulse

All Movie Guide

John Carpenter's The Thing is both a remake of Howard Hawks' 1951 film of the same name and a re-adaptation of the John W. Campbell Jr. story "Who Goes There?" on which it was based. Carpenter's film is more faithful to Campbell's story than Hawks' version and also substantially more reliant on special effects, provided in abundance by a team of over 40 technicians, including veteran creature-effects artists Rob Bottin and Stan Winston. The film opens enigmatically with a Siberian Husky running through the Antarctic tundra, chased by two men in a helicopter firing at it from above. Even after the dog finds shelter at an American research outpost, the men in the helicopter (Norwegians from an outpost nearby) land and keep shooting. One of the Norwegians drops a grenade and blows himself and the helicopter to pieces; the other is shot dead in the snow by Garry (Donald Moffat), the American outpost captain. American helicopter pilot MacReady (Kurt Russell, fresh from Carpenter's Escape From New York) and camp doctor Copper (Richard Dysart) fly off to find the Norwegian base and discover some pretty strange goings-on. The base is in ruins, and the only occupants are a man frozen to a chair (having cut his own throat) and the burned remains of what could be one man or several men. In a side room, Copper and MacReady find a coffin-like block of ice from which something has been recently cut. That night at the American base, the Husky changes into the Thing, and the Americans learn first-hand that the creature has the ability to mutate into anything it kills. For the rest of the film the men fight a losing (and very gory) battle against it, never knowing if one of their own dwindling number is the Thing in disguise. Though resurrected as a cult favorite, The Thing failed at the box office during its initial run, possibly because of its release just two weeks after Steven Spielberg's warmly received E.T.The Extra-Terrestrial. Along with Ridley Scott's futuristic Alien, The Thing helped stimulate a new wave of sci-fi horror films in which action and special effects wizardry were often seen as ends in themselves. Anthony Reed

Product Details

• UPC: 025192543722
• Source: UNIVERSAL STUDIOS
• Region Code: 1
• Aspect Ratio: Cinemascope (2.35:1)
• Presentation: Wide Screen
• Sound: Dolby Digital Stereo, Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
• Language: English, Français
• Subtitles: Français
• Time: 1:49:00
• Sales Rank: 1,302

This DVD is also available as part of a box set:

• Blu-Ray Hi-Def Horror Starter 3-Pack
• John Carpenter: Master of Fear

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