You see, what we're talking about here is an organism that imitates other life forms, and it imitates them perfectly. When this thing attacked our dogs, it tried to digest them, absorb them, and in the process shape its own cells to imitate them. This, for instance. That's not dog. It's imitation. We got to it before it had time to finish. Finish what? Finish imitating these dogs.

You know, I really hate that a lot of Wilford Brimley's incredible career has been reduced to diabetes and the fact that he's younger than Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible when he made Cocoon, you know?

I concur. I think Wilford Brimley is a vastly underappreciated national treasure and pillar of our shared collective cultural consciousness.

So on that note, I want to say, I'm Javier Grillo-Marxuach.

And I'm Paul Alvarado-Dykstra.

And this is...

Multiplex! Overthruster! Summer of 82!

So much appreciation for our theme, as usual. And especially today, I feel like this movie is so sparse, and you were saying, Paul, before we started, that this is literally the least notes you've had on a movie. So should we stretch out our appreciation of the theme? Let's just launch into it, okay?

I think maybe our audience deserves to be spared a little bit of our rhapsodic musings on our own theme this week.

So this is our final trip to the multiplex this weekend, because this weekend we watched Blade Runner, right?

Yes.

The towering classic of human literature that is mega-forced. Not literature, human accomplishment, really. And The Thing, you know, John Carpenter's The Thing there, I say.

A subtle but important distinction.

Yes, indeed. Because as opposed to, you know, Ying Wei Malmsteen's The Thing.

Yes, or, you know, the original classic B-movie.

Do you remember who directed that? The only thing I remember of the original is that James R. Ness, who was in Gunsmoke, played The Thing. Wasn't that a big piece of trivia about that? It was his first role, and he just sort of showed up in The Thing costume and died. I think it was James Arness from Gunsmoke. So Paul, why don't you look that up on the internet and probably recap the plot, but it's gonna take me like a second. So The Thing, The Thing starts with a flying saucer falling into the earth, and then we're at an Arctic research. Is it Antarctic or Arctic? I don't even, Kurt Russell plays this tough guy helicopter pilot who's lording over a group of scientists. Something bad happens in Norwegian station, and one of their dogs gets into our station, and it turns out the dog is infected with an alien parasite that gets into your body and basically kills you, but duplicates you. So the movie is a study in paranoia. It's in an Arctic station. No one can get out because there's a storm, but nobody knows. Antarctic, thank you. You know what? If they'd had penguins, I would have known. See, that's the world building failure of this movie. They didn't have penguins, and that's how I, okay, anyway.

Possessed alien penguins.

Oh, you know what, Paul? We just made a million dollars. Okay, just stop the podcast producer Brad. We gotta go. So basically, it's a study in paranoia. These people all basically kill or don't kill each other until there's only two of them left. Spoiler. And then we have one of the bleakest, yet most hopeful endings of John Carpenter's entire career, which is really bizarre. And I'll explain to you why. Well, I don't have to explain it. You're a cine freak. You know what I'm talking about. So yeah, that's the movie. And how about you and I begin our discussion? Let's throw it to the bell.

Yes. So, The Thing from Another World, upon which this is based, from 1951, was credited to Christian Nibie, but I'm to be also lists Howard Hawks as an uncredited co-director or second director. So, and I recall some story to that, but I do not have it.

Howard Hawks who famously directed the original Scarface, right?

In 20th century, bringing a baby, His Girl Friday, like just one of the great directors of all time, certainly of the period.

But Christian Nibie, one of the great TV directors of the 60s who directed a great many classic Star Trek episodes, I believe.

And Red River and To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep, pretty towery talent.

Yes, well, that's Howard Hawks, not Chris Nibie.

Well, in television, Christian Nibie worked on all sorts of things, Adam 12, Code Jacks, Million Dollar Man, Streets of San Francisco.

Oh, come on. That's a Howard Hawksian career as well.

Very important. But yeah, this film, my first thought was on this weekend, there was no way I was getting away with seeing this as a child. I saw this years later on cable, I'm sure. It strikes me that for this weekend, for audiences for whom Blade Runner is not bleak enough, There is John Carpenter's The Thing.

In case you found Blade Runner to be just too much of a knee slapper, like you just yucked it up the whole film.

Yeah, and there's another interesting sort of parallel or echo because Blade Runner opens with that iconic Los Angeles 2019 title card. Similarly, The Thing has an Antarctica winter 1982 title card right out of the gate. It opens with a exterior space, flying saucer shot of a flying saucer and then heading to earth. And then it looks like maybe there's a malfunction, there's an explosion or something, but there's no sense of time or setting. That is revealed later.

Much later.

Much later. But I find myself questioning whether this opening shot even should be in the film, whether it serves the movie or whether the movie would be better served with holding that reveal back.

I think you're absolutely right, Paul, because also the thing in the movie is this kind of biomorphic, slimy, you never really get a sense for its true shape. Even at the ending, it's still sort of morphing in and out of different shapes. And the ship is very mechanical.

Yes.

And I remember watching the ship going, this doesn't look to me like the technology that a creature that lives and behaves this way would have.

No.

In my encyclopedic knowledge of exobiology.

Exactly. No, I was gonna say that is one of the films, and this is an extraordinary film. It's exceptional craftsmanship, I think, on every level. But there is a very interesting aesthetic disparity between the bio-organic nightmare of the thing, of the alien, what havoc it wreaks on human and animal biology, and the sort of conventional mechanical flying saucer wreckage that they find later in the film.

When the mystery's already been set up and we don't know what the fuck it is and all that.

Yeah, and it feels like it should be more of a bio-organic sort of Giger-esque aesthetic or something, but it feels like maybe those were, and I think this is maybe part of it, is that there were sort of different departments sort of working on those elements. But yeah, I think my only one note or suggestion on the film was that I think they could have saved the money on that opening visual effects shot of the flying saucer and held that back as a reveal because it also telegraphs that, oh, it makes it more of a sci-fi film than it really is. It's a horror movie, it's a monster movie.

So let's just get started with the movie. The first shot is MacCready played by Kurt Russell and he's your standard Kurt Russell character in a John Carpenter movie. He's a badass. Kurt Russell's characters in John Carpenter movies sort of tend to work at varying levels of competence depending on how funny or horrific the movie is, right? This is certainly one of the more competent ones. He's Jack Burton, obviously, or Elvis, because as we know, John Carpenter and Kurt Russell met, John Carpenter directed an Elvis biopic for television and that's how they first worked together.

Right.

I believe this when I have right. As I get older, my movie facts get wronger and wronger, but I believe this. So like by the time we're doing Summer of 98, I'll be like, you know, how would Hux directed The Star Wars, but anyway.

Imagine.

But you know, that opening sequence where they introduce MacCready's character really to me is an encapsulation of John Carpenter's entire worldview, because it starts with he's playing computer chess with one of the many incredibly advanced AIs in this film. We got to have a conversation about how like the real horror in this movie is that artificial intelligence exists and no one understands it or knows it yet.

Yes.

So he's playing chess with a chess master computer and he loses and he grabs a bottle of whatever Scott.

I'm sorry, just chess wizard.

Chess wizard. That's right.

Yes. Chess wizard. Chess wizard.

Wizard. Because in this movie, computers might as well be wizards.

Yes.

And he loses and then he takes his bottle of Scott and pours it. JNB, that's right.

Key product placement that's pervasive in this film.

But JNB is an icon of like 1970s manliness to you.

Oh, yeah.

Your dad drank it, my dad drank it. It was like, before there was like Kraft bourbon and all that shit. You either bought Chivas, Pinch, or JNB, or Cuddy Sartre.

There you go.

Well, explains a great many things. I can't help but think that this film functions as an extended commercial for JNB, as in when shit hits the fan. When your world turns into a freak show hellscape, you need JNB. JNB is there for you. JNB is there for you when you need it.

When you're attacked by a biomorphic creature from outer space and you're in a stew of toxic masculinity, JNB is there for you.

Oh, it's your only friend you can trust.

But here's the thing, that is such the nihilism and the toxic masculinity of John Carpenter's entire filmography in a nutshell. This character who is stuck in an Antarctic research station destroys a piece of equipment that is clearly not just a chess computer, but out of spite because he lost a chess game and calls it a bitch, right?

Yes. Yes. Yeah. I do want to backtrack real quick, and I promise not to do this too much.

We're five minutes into the movie.

We're like, okay, go on. That is not the opening. So the opening is one of many beautiful exterior vistas, I think, shot in the northern wilds of British Columbia, doubling as Antarctica. Yes. And there's really no explanation other than the title card after we have the beautiful, iconic, burned away title logo part of The Thing, which is just a work of art in and of itself. But yeah, there's this chopper that is chasing a husky across the frozen tundra of Antarctica with no explanation whatsoever. And it just happens to be either following or herding the husky towards what the signage indicates is the United States National Science Institute Station 4.

Yes. By the way, after watching this film, I cannot possibly imagine this gang of shemps doing anything for science in this station. They're just the biggest bunch of a-holes I ever saw. What science are these people doing?

Exactly, like what department, how did these guys get hired? What, it makes very little sense.

They don't seem to have labs. I mean, they have a sickbay like everybody does.

They have a pool table, they have like ping pong.

They have all the weed in the world.

Yeah, it's not clear what exactly they do, what they're studying. It's not the most robust Antarctic survival station. There doesn't seem to be a lot of actual science going on, although it's a repository for the most advanced artificial intelligence.

My theory in this movie is that they literally just dropped, like it's just to isolate the AI and keep it from getting out. So they put the most moronic people around it to make sure they never escape.

So the movie opens with this crazy thing that's happening. We don't know why or what's going on. The husky charges into the base and people hear the chopper and the guy and the chopper, we don't know who they are yet, although it is labeled Norse, so we know it's Norwegians.

And he's clearly on a mission. He's not talking to anybody. He is a dude who is singularly focused on these dogs.

He's trying to shoot that dog for some reason. That dog did him or somebody he loved wrong. But he is a bad shot. And I think trying to shoot a husky from a chopper probably, you know, fools errand anyway. But they haphazardly, or maybe the dog is just knows where to go. It comes into the base, the chopper lands, and the man of the Norwegian on a mission is trying to shoot the dog, shoots one of our team members in the leg, then gets shot, amazingly, in the eye.

In the eye.

By, I think, the base commander?

Donald Moffat, who plays the base commander, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

One of the great pleasures of this film, it's a virtual repository of character actors that you saw in everything. It's like-

Gloriously so.

Donald Moffat, right, who played the president in Clear and Press in Danger. How dare you walk in here like a little dog? You hear that guy? Richard Major, who's like still around. My wife watches, what is that show where, it's a show where a woman pretends to be younger. It's called Younger, and God, I forgot her name. I'll remember it soon. He played like George RR. Martin parody in that show.

Yeah, he's a great actor, and I believe a former president of the Screen Actors Guild.

And he's been in everything, and I adore him.

Yeah, he's a wonderful actor.

Richard Dysart, who was one of the leads in LA Law for 11 years. Absolutely.

But here playing a doctor instead of a lawyer, yeah.

Exactly. There's two actors in this. Oh God, I don't have the guy's first name, but Hallahan, who's kind of the chubbier guy who has the heart attack. He's in everything. And TK Carter, and they were both in Space Jam together.

Right.

And the great, great, great Keith David.

The master.

Amazing.

There are no words for the towering awesomeness that is Keith David.

The thing I love about this movie, by the way, is, you know, like, as we all know, not exactly a lot of opportunities for Black actors historically, especially during this period. And yet Keith David and TK Carter are the guys who have the longest running careers. Like, they're still kicking around doing stuff.

And they're both great in this movie.

Kudos to them for the surviving.

And without spoiling everything, and again, listeners of this podcast should know that we presume you've seen the film because spoilers galore. But it really emerges as Keith David in Kurt Russell's movie. And once Keith David cuts loose, there's a great quote, like one of his first lines, when he just sort of frames his attitude and ours for...

I believe that is clip number three, producer Brad.

I don't know. Thousands of years ago, it crashes and this thing gets thrown out or crawls out and it ends up freezing in the ice.

I just cannot believe any of this voodoo bullshit.

You know, and it's interesting because look, I don't want to get into a lot of racial stuff and cultural stuff because you and I are like two middle-aged men talking about the stuff. But there's another line in this movie that I want to bring up with this, which is clip number two, producer Brad, if you will.

Bullshit, Bonham.

Okay, now that's TK. Carter playing, of course, The Cook. That's every movie set in some place that everybody gets isolated with a monster has to have a cook, right?

Yeah.

For example, Deep Blue Sea, LL Cool J, right? Another iconic actor playing this character, pretty much the same character. So the one thing I thought while watching this movie is like these lines for these black actors were clearly written by white men.

Yes.

And it's kind of interesting that they do sell everything. You know, I wonder just what they thought when they read this script by Burt Lancaster's son. And it's like, I got to call this guy Buona, excuse me. But they sell it. I don't know, maybe it's fine.

Choices were made.

Choices were made. But wow. So now this opening scene with the dogs is really effective. It's wonderful. Yes, it is. It introduces everybody really well, even though they're all wearing these suits. And the thing is with this movie is that you have these bursts of action and then you go into long, extended sequences that are sort of character driven, not a lot going on. They're barely shot. You know, the dialogue is very workmanlike. For example, we meet all these characters and they're just sort of like wondering what this Norwegian guy was doing, what his problem was.

Yes. Why are they attacking? Are we at war with Norway?

You know, you're forgetting the great Norrego-American conflict of anyway, no. But it's interesting. We're meeting these people like David Glenn. Oh, David Glenn. David Glenn and we didn't mention, my God.

Yes, yes.

Miles Drentel from 30 something. How do we forget him?

Yes.

And he's the guy who smokes weed. And that's his character is he smokes weed.

Pretty much. We get some really good dog acting.

Ooh, yeah. Yeah, some fine canine thespianism.

And we also get one of the great music cues of Stevie Wonder's Superstition.

Right.

That basically then cues the creepy dog.

Yes.

We started stalking through the base. It could not be made any more clear that something's up with this dog. There's some reason why those Norwegians were trying to kill it. And these guys are being really casual about letting it wander around the base.

It ain't the traditional Norwegian hatred of dogs at work here, by the way. Oh, no. So they're being really casual about the dog. And then we have this.

I think at first though, before all the dog stuff breaks loose, I believe then they go, because Kurt Russell, man of action. Man of action. Besides, we got to go investigate the Norwegian base. Yes. And so they and Dodgy Weather, he and Richard Dysart, our Dr. Future lawyer from LA. Law, head over to the Norwegian base and it has been destroyed. It looks like it's been destroyed longer ago than would seem temporally rational, given the fact that these two Norwegians, we just saw flying around chasing the dog of the helicopter. It looks like this is wreckage from quite a while ago, but whatever. They explore the wreckage of this Norwegian base and they find a freak show of death. And I, at this point, I have to tip my hat to, who I think is arguably the real star of this movie, Rob Boutique.

Oh yeah, yeah, straight up no chaser. There is just no two ways about it. This guy, he is the man.

Rob Boutique, who was startlingly young at this point, it was early 20s still, I believe, was tapped to do the special makeup effects, all the prosthetics, all the monster stuff. And he was born to do this. He is a mad, deranged genius.

It's not just that, it's also, you're talking about a movie that was made in the golden era of latex and caro syrup gore. You've got Rick Baker and John Chambers, kind of like, I mean, Rick Baker's career is towering and it spans the entirety of the era of great movie makeup. Literally, you've got Jack Pierce, then you've got John Chambers, then you've got Rick Baker. And Rick Baker goes from for 40 years, right? But this is like in the 80s, it's this time when you've got all of these movies like The Howling, An American Werewolf in London, which is Rick Baker's magnum opus, Until Grey Stoke, where he did all the apes. And it really is like just the craftsmanship that goes into creating these practical gore effects. And Boteen, who also built, I believe Robocop, right? And who did The Howling.

And Total Recall, like a bunch of crazy shit comes out of this guy's head.

And The Howling. I mean, for a movie as cheap as The Howling was compared to the John Landis production of An American Werewolf in London, like the effects are incredibly great. Like you said, he's a mad genius working at the apex of an entire form of art, you know?

Yeah, the other thing that's striking to me is that he has such a revolutionary aesthetic that is so distinct. And I would put him on a category with Giger, who we mentioned previously. We've got a very specific sort of unique aesthetic. Botin has a similarly distinctive voice as a artist, as a designer, in terms of both being able to conceive and imagine these nightmarish mutations and just horrifying nightmares of flesh and not just imagine them, but then to craft them and bring them to life on screen. It's so startling. And this movie is a spectacular showcase.

Oh, it totally is.

Of his craft. It kind of, I think, steals the movie.

Well, it's interesting also, because I think that, look, there's a lot of, when you're talking about movies from the 80s and you're talking about these practical makeup effects and all that, it's like, they don't always match the realism of it. When you see some of the head, especially when you do human heads, there's just no way. You can tell they're puppet heads. But when I watch it, I don't care, because when I watch it in CGI and it's so realistic, usually it's very effective and all of that, but it's like, there's something to me about being able to appreciate the craftsmanship, the stage magician theatrics of it are so compelling to me. And I'm not gonna get into the Luddite, oh, CGI sucks, practical is better. There's a lot of places in this movie where CGI would have been very helpful. I would have loved to have seen CGI making the practical effects more believable, rather than just doing, because these practical effects have gravity, the drips feel real, the shine of the blood feels real in a way that a lot of digital effects don't. And I honestly think the best of all worlds in our modern world would be a synthesis between this kind of work and that by CGI.

And I would tip my hat to my dear friend Guillermo Del Toro would be the first person to say that and champions that is that seamlessly blending those two is the real magic trick and finding a way to play to the strengths of both sets of tools.

But if you told me you can only have CGI or you can only have practical, I would go practical every day.

Every day.

I wouldn't care if I couldn't have quite the same scope or whatever because I think that things that look real that have weight, I don't know. I don't understand CGI has just yet to figure out the riddle of gravity, much like the people in Interstellar. Anyway.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Kurt Russell and Richard Dysart, Darn Mac and Doc, finished their freak show tour of the Norwegian destroyed base, returned back to our heroes with a body? And that sets up Wilfred Brimley's autopsy from hell.

Yes.

With the recovered body, I believe that is.

Well, there's also the dog body that they look at later, right?

Well, we haven't gotten to the crazy dog mutation yet, but then this is really, I think, the first point that we just started getting the deliciousness of Wilfred Brimley.

Indeed.

And of him playing, like I don't really exactly know what his role is. As a character, he's a scientist and he seems to both be some kind of biomedical person because he has a really interesting range of expertise and interest and is kind of unphased.

He's kind of like Spock in Star Trek where he's just the science officer. So this is science, he's just there to do science. It's physics, he's got it, it's biology, he's got that. It's geology, it's paleontology, he's a science man.

He has a broad portfolio.

And also, as we discussed, he has, well, we'll get into the AI world.

He's also a computer scientist. Yes, he is. Of what should be world renowned.

The great thing about Wilford Brimley's performance in general is that he plays this guy in a way that you never quite can get a handle on psychologically where he is. He's probably got a little bit of ice dementia, you know? And he's very laconic, and he seems to be thinking about everything he says. You don't know whose side he's on. He's just in his own head, and everything that's going in there is a mystery. And Brimley makes that very compelling. And for me, that character sort of encapsulates the paranoia of the film where you just, from Jump Street, you don't know who this guy is and what he's doing, you know?

Yeah, yeah. So they brought this body and there's this autopsy that's just an incredible showcase again for Rob Bautista's work. They also recovered a bunch of notes and some video equipment and recordings. And I do have to say, I feel like there is a missed opportunity for humor in our-

In a John Carpenter movie, you don't say.

In our team of, let's say, questionably qualified Americans on this scientific base rummaging through Norwegian notes and videos. And I kind of wanted to see a scene of them trying to watch this or read this and just be like, it's in Norwegian. Like we have no idea what they're saying or what they're writing. I just, I think that could have been really funny.

I've now developed a theory that these guys are actually the world's worst scientists and they were actually dropped in Norway for our protection.

Maybe. But then night falls, which is never good. You don't want that to happen.

Nope, ever.

And Richard Masur has taken the errant, fugitive Norwegian husky and just like, oh yeah, we'll just put him in the pen with all of our huskies.

Yeah, just have him hanging out with our huskies, this is fine, it's all good.

And there's some very good dog acting in this scene.

Yes, indeed.

And then, holy shit, holy shit.

And then it's warp factor fucking, it's actually, you think it's warp factor nine and then you realize, no, this was warp factor two, because shit's gonna get real, but what a fucking sequence. Can you just describe what happens, please?

I mean, it is a phantasmagoria of Viscera that erupts from the dog as it starts sort of assimilating the other dogs.

The dog's skin splits open like flower petals, right? Like the demogorgon from Stranger Things.

Among other things, yes.

I think the first time I've seen that configuration of a p-loss.

Well, also the reapers in Blade II that have the jaws splitting open. And again, a beautiful blending of physical and digital effects.

And you're seeing basically the first time The Thing takes anyone over. Yes. And it is just horrific. I mean, I fucking, it's amazing. And basically The Thing takes over one of the dogs or tries to, and is interrupted in mid transformation by our characters who.

Yeah. And can we just, I just want to observe. What possessed the designers and planners of this Antarctic base to make sure that its personnel would be equipped with flamethrowers?

Yes.

I just, I'm just wondering what, what is the, and maybe that's to clear snow or paths or to melt stuff.

That's why you have a flamethrower.

I guess there's some plot, but they are, we later see there are at least two flamethrowers that they've got access to and handy. And boy howdy, is this movie a flamethrowing fun house?

It is a Valentine to flamethrowing, to a throwing flame.

And there's no shortage of excuses or necessities to do so because that's the only way to deal with these monstrosities are to kill them with fire.

And to its credit, it is very fair about, you know, flamethrowing, there's times when they don't work and you have to forgive them that. You have to love your flamethrower enough to know it may not function sometimes.

They also seem to have an infinite abundance of fire extinguishers, which is necessary to keep them from just burning their own base down because they're inside their base.

Exactly, oh my God, it's-

Using flamethrowers to kill these monstrosities and then immediately have to put it out with the flamethrowers. And they're just kind of like, yeah, this is just what we gotta do.

This movie has at least five sequences of people showing up with blender extinguishers and they're just working.

But this sequence is terrifying. It is spectacular.

That is the yin and yang of it, man. That is the eros and fanatos. You know, you got the flamethrower, you got the flame extinguisher, you know? That's the duality of man right there.

Yeah, and which one are you in life?

Honestly, in this movie, I think you just literally boiled it down to its essential. Like, what, are you a flamethrower or are you a fire extinguisher?

Yeah.

I'm writing that shit down, Paul, because there's a concept album in this, my friend.

We kind of stumbled into that, but yeah.

No, it's well done.

I'm proud of that distillation of the theme.

So after they flame the creature, but there's enough of the creature left to give Wilford Brimley another autopsy from hell, right?

Yeah, I mean, man's got his hobbies.

He's doing science.

He's got to have stuff to do. But they also, among the Norwegian artifacts that they recovered, they apparently found a map and they've decided, oh, I think we left out. There had been some kind of ice tomb that they found opened in the Norwegian base. And I feel like there are some leaps of deductive reasoning here that are remarkable.

The whole movie is full of them.

Determining that, oh, there was something in this ice block that got loose and out. I don't know quite how they figure that out.

But there's the autopsy. First, the autopsy of the creature that they find in it. And that's the line that Wilford Brimley said at the beginning of the podcast. And then they go to see the ice tomb. If I wrote it down right.

Well, yeah, so they've been to the base. So now after the dog freak show happens, they are trying to figure out, OK, where did this come from? What's going on? Things have escalated.

Right.

And now it's here. And they look on the map and say, well, we're going to go investigate this. And so they take another expedition. And this is where we find the big giant spaceship wreck.

Right.

The big flying saucer in the ice.

I also want to say that when I saw the ice tomb, even in 1981 in Starlog magazine, one of the big promo shots in this movie was that big rectangle of ice with the divot in it. It looked like a hot tub. And it still looks like a hot tub to me to this day. I stand behind that 11-year-old impression.

I feel like there was a failed attempt. They were going to create a Norwegian spa in the Antarctic. And they were in the process of creating a frozen Shangri-La, kind of like the bar in... A Dine of the Day. Yes, yes, that's like carved out of ice. And these Norwegians were just ahead of their time, but then this crazy alien just came and screwed it all up.

You know, Paul, the only thing that is more shameful than the glory of our coming out with the flamethrower, flame extinguisher thing is that we both knew it was dying the other day.

Yes. Tragically, we cannot erase that entry from our site.

We cannot unsee that.

Here's my other big moment where I'm just like yelling at the screen.

Yeah.

Really the one moment where I'm most... not even incensed, but just dismayed, but I get it. It's like, okay, there's a limited budget and schedule and scope. This is a small B movie. We reveal this huge spaceship wreck. They go down into the crater. They walk around on top of it. There is a tantalizing open hatch. Like it has been popped open like your beverage of choice. They don't go in the spaceship.

How do you not go in that?

I mean, it's like the hatch is lost, except it's open. And they don't go in. They don't even look in.

There is a whole genre of movies where at some point they show you a movie that might be a better movie than the movie you're watching. My favorite example is from Dust Till Dawn, where you spend the entire movie at the Titty Twister strip bar. And then at the end of the movie, you show that it's attached to an Aztec pyramid. And I'm like, really? That looks like a really great movie. Why didn't we do part of that movie at least? So anyway, you're totally right.

I would trade that opening VFX shot of The Flying Saucer and let him peek in the spaceship. That to me, as a sci-fi geek, I'm just like, you find a spaceship, you look inside at least, even if you don't go in. But it's like, how do you not go in? But they don't. They climb back out, then they find the carved rectangle where apparently something they surmise had climbed out of the spaceship, gone out onto the tundra, and then froze and perished, they think, in place. They carved out this body and then took it back to the Norwegian Basin. And that's what has escaped and now is haunting them and tormenting them all. So there's dots connecting about all this. Then we get back and they're kind of laying out this theory. This is where then Keith David is like, this is voodoo bullshit.

And this is also where we get line, I believe, quote number four, right? Can we hear that one, producer Brad?

How's this motherfucker wake up after thousands of years in the ice? And how can it look like a dog?

I don't know how. Because it's different, see? Because it's from outer space. What do you want from me?

I love that, Kurt, I mean, there's so much about this that I love. I just want to hear Keith David say things forever. A dear friend of mine, Kevin Beagle, co-creator and showrunner on a very short-lived, wonderful sitcom on Fox called Enlisted. And if you haven't seen it, it is a treasure, and Keith David is the base commander. And it is set on a military base of misfits in Florida. And it is at 13 episodes, it is wonderful. And I've heard so many stories from Kevin about the joy of him living his dream, getting to cast Keith David in the show and work with them. Just he's magnificent. Everything he says is great. And his just can't deal with this. And it's just so like, what the hell on this? The contrast in his energy and attitude to Kurt Russell's, I can't be bothered.

Yeah, yeah.

To really think too hard about this. Yeah, yeah.

I also think as loved as Kurt Russell may be throughout his career, I don't think he's at his appropriate level of fame. I think Kurt Russell is also a national treasure. I fucking love the guy. And I gotta say, like, just I love this character, even though I will go on record that John Carpenter's worldview is repellent to me. He is a nihilist. And literally, he's the guy who destroys the chess computer, even though the chess computer is probably the thing that controls the weather or some shit like that, you know?

I could maybe have saved them all.

Exactly. But Kurt Russell, like, you know, like, he can do this. He can be snake-plissken, right? And I remember when he was snake-plissken, he was just doing Clint Eastwood. I'm like, he's fucking awesome. Leave him alone. But, you know, like even a performance in a movie like Vanilla Sky, where he plays a psychotherapist, when they let Kurt Russell put on glasses and be sensitive, he's amazing. When they let Kurt Russell be this guy, he's amazing. Like, I have yet to see a bad performance out of him. And I think he's just one of those great workmen-like artists and actors who's just always on it. And wherever you put him, he's going to do a great job. And I just don't think he's loved enough.

I feel like Kurt Russell belongs on the same tier as a Harrison Ford.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Straight up.

But for some reason is not quite held in that regard or esteem.

I think that it's all about your luck in casting. Obviously, Harrison Ford is a great actor. No one can dispute that anymore. He's also a matinee idol, and he's somebody whose career is just meteoric in a way that no one's career could ever be.

An icon.

I feel like Kurt Russell, maybe he didn't get Star Wars, so that didn't put him there. But come on, it's like Snake Plissken is an icon. McCready is a character that I love. His character in Sky High is fucking amazing. His character in The Miracle, the movie about hockey, and I don't even like hockey. But I mean, it's like Jack Burton. Jack Burton.

Stargate!

Oh, my God, even in Stargate, like where he literally has no character other than I'm sad.

Yes.

You know, even he makes that work. I want to point out something in the sequence, by the way, because actually, producer Brad, can you just play that clip again? Because I just want to hear that again.

How's this motherfucker wake up after thousands of years in the ice? And how can it look like a dog?

I don't know how. Because it's different, see? Because it's from outer space. What do you want from me? Ask him.

All right. The thing I love about this scene also is that there is an Asteroids video game machine in the Arctic Station. And that is not only resonant to me because Asteroids was huge in 1982. It was the game we all wanted to play. There was an episode of That's Incredible about the kid who beat asteroids, you know. And also, the vector graphics in the Asteroids machine are significantly better than the computer graphics in the sophisticated science station that we're in. Because the next scene is the one where we discover that artificial intelligence exists. Wilford Brimley is somehow running simulations in the computer of how fast this virus could spread. And the computer is saying, well, I don't know, Wilford, if I were to make a guess, I think in 2700 hours the virus would take over the Earth. And you're like, I had a Commodore Vic 20 back then. How is this computer coming up with a shit?

This whole scene blew my freaking mind. So it is an interesting parallel to Alien. Like, Wilford Brimley basically goes into Mother.

Yes.

And we discover, oh, there's this incredible AI at this base that talks.

Well, it types out in the computer, but it's not checked out.

But you can have real time interactive conversations with it.

Exactly.

And it has deductive reasoning powers.

Yes, it does.

It can run doomsday simulations with startlingly deep analysis.

With a shocking lack of actual factual information, this computer can make leaps of logic that boggle the mind.

But what this serves to do is it plants the seed of knowledge in Wilfred Brimley that basically they are now the last line of defense for the totality of the human race against this alien mutating monster invader nightmare that if they don't stop it at this base and it gets loose and out into the world, it will eventually just destroy all of humanity. He does not share this knowledge for some reason, but it also then starts to get very quickly to the point of the whole paranoia of who can you trust, who is real, who's been assimilated. And that's when the movie just kind of starts taking off.

This is what we call the second stage rocket. And the movie really does take in its own laconic, John Carpenterish way, which is very measured, very deliberate. This is really the point when shit goes bananas.

Yes, because soon after that sort of freak show corpse turns out is not entirely death.

Which by the way, if that were actually the case, the movie would end now because it would all be The Thing. Because they've all been exposed to it in some way. I mean, they've all been near, they've all been around it, but whatever. Basically, it's not that every cell of it is an individual organism that protects itself, which is a huge leap of logic that Kurt Russell Macready makes later. And anybody could be the thing. And that leads us to...

Well, first, could I just talk about Wilfrid Bribbley in that scene?

Yes.

His pencil. His pencil.

Yes, yes.

He's poking the corpse, the oozing blood with it. And then a second later, he's tapping his lip with the same pencil.

Well, I guess now we know why Blair was a problem later in the movie, because I was actually wondering when Blair... Because spoilers later revealed that Blair has been the thing for the longest of anybody. But Blair goes nuts and starts hacking at the computers, and then he blows up the helicopter because he realizes the entire world is in danger and everyone in the station is an idiot, and he can't even tell them what's going to happen. He has to just blow everything up. And then Blair gets chained up in the tool shed for a great deal of the rest of the movie.

Yes, which is kind of amusing.

But, Producer Brad, I think you've actually answered a question of mine, which is, I did not realize when Blair got infected. So, presumably, Blair put the pencil in his mouth, and they took him to the tool shed, and then the thing turned into Blair.

That pencil follows him the rest of the movie. It's with him the whole time. Once you see it, you can't unsee it.

Producer Brad, you are godsend because I had been wondering about this all along. So basically, my note on the entire sequence was, the CGI says so, so it must be true. And the other scene goes, I'm more worried about the computer being that smart. So while Wilfred Brimley is going wild, Benning, the red-haired guy, also goes nuts. He escapes. He's actually the only ethical guy here because he realizes he's infected. He runs out of the station, and we find him, and he has tree hands.

Yeah, and of course, the only answer...

Right, flamethrower. So I think, Paul, that clearly McCready is a flamethrower.

It's what he was born to do.

Exactly, exactly. And what's the name of Keith David's character? It's... Childs. And Childs is obviously a flame extinguisher. I think that's the whole thing in this movie.

Yeah, but he's treated like a flamethrower. He's treated like, oh, he's unhinged, he's a hothead, but he's actually trying to cool things down.

Yeah. Well, I mean, he's a black actor in a movie full of white guys. Exactly. Everybody's going to be, you know, like...

Exactly. I want to make another observation because around this time, so we have this sort of alien homage of Wilfrid Brimley and his version of Mother and kind of getting all that. We also then have, I think, a wonderful 2001 homage.

Really?

Of the conversation in the pod.

Yes.

But it's the snowplow.

Yes.

Where Mac and, oh my God, I'm blanking on his name.

It's one of the other guys. It's one of the less remarkable ones of all of them, yeah.

Yeah, they go in to have a private conversation away from the team in the snowplow.

Right.

And it just very much evokes the private conversation between our viewers in 2001, which I thought was really striking. And that's like right before then Bennings is assimilated and, you know, the body bonfire that they throw. Then I don't want to give short shrift to the Wilfred Brimley rampage and just how glorious that is. That he gets to do that and we get to see that because he just goes to town.

I think this and The Firm are two of my favorite Wilfred Brimley performances because when he's not being avuncular, when they let him cut loose and tap into the darkness, he's amazing. And he's so menacing because, you know, it's interesting because in this movie, he doesn't have the traditional Wilfred Brimley beard, which I think actually makes it more ambiguous whether he's good or evil. In The Firm, it's very clear like bearded Wilfred Brimley first sort of plays like, you know, avuncular and then you realize he's the evilest motherfucker that ever lived. In this movie, they don't let you decide whether he's good or bad. And by the way, I've never seen him without the beard other than this movie. It's like a different man.

It is.

And it's very disorienting not just because of who this guy has been culturally, but also just his face is very, there's just a real sort of ambiguousness to his expression, you know, that is terrifying, you know, for most of the movie.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But at this point, the full paranoia is unleashed. It is this sort of cat and mouse game, multi-dimensional. And it's just so effective in terms of suspense and engagement and velocity.

And also, this is also the part where Keith David pretty much says the premise of the movie, and that is, in case you haven't surmised it, we now have, you know, now that we're in the second stage rocket of the movie and shit's going to town, Keith David, God bless him, tells us the entire premise of the film, and that is clip number five, producer Brad.

If I was an imitation, a perfect imitation, how would you know if it was really me?

Ta-da!

Yeah.

So in an extended sequence, Kurt Russell and TK Carter leave the station. TK Carter becomes convinced that Kurt Russell is the bad guy and cuts him loose, which means that in the middle of a storm that's trapping everybody in the station, you have to use these guide ropes to get from one place to another, and McCready has been left out, because the cook has decided that he is the thing. Then, shockingly, McCready comes back.

Yes.

And he's covered in ice, but he's got the flamethrower, and he's got a stack of dynamite, which somehow he also need a lot of that in the Arctic.

They have a lot of dynamite.

A lot of dynamite, a lot of flamethrower. Kurt Russell is so amazing because he's playing, he's basically holding onto this dynamite for the rest of the movie. Later on, it's just strapping him, because he knows he's not the thing, right? And he's really pissed off that somebody thought he was the thing. He works his way back into the station, everybody thinks he's the thing, it's a scene of suspense, and then he basically tells everybody, they figure out that three of them could be the thing, so those are going to be tranquilized at gunpoint, basically, and dynamite point, put on chairs, and tied down, and Dysart has a test. We figure out somebody got into the blood and destroyed the blood, so they get this idea of the three people who could have gotten to the blood who might be the thing are going to get tranquilized, strapped to these chairs, and tested, because honestly, other than Reanimator, than the climax of Reanimator, this is my favorite Splattergore scene in the world. The most mild flame extinguisher guy has a heart attack, and while Kurt Russell is holding everyone at flamethrower point, Dysart and another guy put him on a stretcher. They're about to perform CPR. He puts the paddles on him, and flame extinguisher's chest becomes a giant vagina dentata that fucking eats Richard Dysart's hands, so he's got two bloody stumps, right? Then the body, like fucking some gore-some tentacles start coming out of the body. Kurt Russell flames it. Its head detaches from the body and grows legs like a spider and crawls away.

And eyes box.

Oh, my God. It's like, I mean, literally, look, I don't love this movie. I don't have the reverence for the movie that so many people do, but holy fucking shit, this is amazing. And I can't even do it justice via description. I saw this movie on the movie channel because we couldn't afford HBO. This sequence fucking scarred me when I was 13, 14 years old. It is literally burning my memory. Paul, take it away. I don't even know what I'm to. I can't even.

It's incredible. And again, Rob Boteen is the star of the movie. It's spectacular work. And I can't imagine the relief that John Carpenter must have had when seeing these creatures on set and knowing that, oh yeah, this movie is going to freak people out. This is going to work in a big way. It's such a glorious big swing. And it is beyond the capacity of the audience to imagine.

When that guy's stomach rips open and turns into a giant mouth vagina and eats Richard Dysart's hands, it is just like I literally have not seen anything. I had not seen anything like that until then. And I have with everything that we've seen in Gore and CGI, I've never seen something like that.

It is so sudden and shocking. And then on rewatch, even though you know it's coming, then there's this suspense because they take their time leading up to it. And then you're just like, oh God, it's going to happen. When is it going to happen? I don't remember how many times like before it happens. And then it does. And it's just it's so ruthless. But the escalation and then elaboration of the effects and the monsters of stuff, like it's just like, oh yeah, we could have just done that. And that would have been incredible. But it's like, no, we're going to keep going and going and going and topping ourselves and topping ourselves and getting crazier and crazier and freakier and freakier. And at this point, if it hasn't been clear already from the big dog mutation sequence, now it's gone in this whole other wild direction that it's like, yeah, you have no idea what could happen next at any point. All bets are way the fuck off.

And look, I know that the classic of this type of scene is Alien, is the John Hurt chestbuster. But I got to tell you, this to me was much greater in effect and that controversial maybe, but I mean, I stand by that. So then we get to people strapped in chairs and Kurt Russell has this test he's going to do now because he realizes every part of the thing is a living organism on its own, which is hilarious because how do you figure that out from that? But whatever. So he figures out if you take a blood sample and stick a hot needle in it, if the blood reacts, you're the thing. So there's three guys strapped to these chairs. They actually managed to kind of top the CPR scene because we find out that when he finally puts the needle in David Clennon's blood, stoner, right, the blood goes cattywumpus and then you've got two normal guys strapped to chairs with The Thing, right, and David Clennon is thinking the fuck out, right?

Yeah, I gotta say, it was not really thought through that the idea of strapping them all down. Good idea. Good idea. One of them might be The Thing. Let's be clear.

They're not strapped to chairs, they're strapped to the same couch.

To a couch, exactly. But to strap them all together on the same couch, what? How did no one say, hey, excuse me, probably not a great idea? What if the guy in the middle is The Thing?

Okay, but Paul, Paul, you gotta cut these characters some slack.

I mean, I know they're under a lot of stress and they're sleep deprived.

Yeah, they've been through a lot already.

Yes.

But the sequence where the hands in the stomach with the teeth is just a shock for the ages. But this scene kind of almost tops it. Because you've got the two guys strapped to the couch, and David Clennon is stinging the fuck out. He's literally attaching himself to the roof, and he's grabbing and the other two guys are literally going with him. Sadly, this is the part where McCready's flamethrower conks out on him, because in any great relationship and any great romance in the screen, there's a moment when one member of the couple fails the other, and they're going to reconcile later, of course. But his flamethrower fails. The guy called Windows who has to come in with a flamethrower and do the job.

A little slow on the draw.

Yeah, but I can't even describe what The Thing looks like here, because it's so abstract at this point. I mean, it's nuts. And they get flamed. And then in the aftermath, in the quiet aftermath of the scene, Donald Moffat says a line that I have remembered since I was 12 years old, producer Brad, please give it to me. Oh, wait, wait, wait. Hang on. Before that, I'm sorry, we missed clip number six, which is the one where Kurt Russell further explains the premise of the film and what happens all through the sequences we've been describing. Producer Brad, could you give us clip number six? I'm sorry that I got to it late.

I know I'm human. And if you were all these things, then you'd just attack me right now. So some of you are still human.

Which by the way, really, really makes your point about the couch, Paul. Yeah. So after the great couch debacle of Antarctica of 1982, Donald Moffat delivers, producer Brad just hit me.

I know you gentlemen have been through a lot. But when you find the time, I'd rather not spend the rest of this winter tied to this fucking couch.

You know what? One of the reasons I love that line is not just because Moffat's performance is so great. It's also because I don't know how many people in our audience are married, but you ever had that point in the marriage where you like just literally are trying everything you can to not lose your shit with your kid or your wife or whatever, like, honey, honey, look, if you could just-

Yeah, he finally just loses it.

It's a loss of shit that I think anybody can relate to because you have your best intentions to try to be, and you just can't hold it, and it's fucking great. And God bless my wife, she forgives me every time I lose it like that, but.

Well, I was just gonna say, I think one of the things that this film does so spectacularly well is modulate the ride.

Yes.

Of coping and lack of coping.

Yes.

That these characters go through, and giving them a range of reactions and interactions that are distinct, that really pop as unique characters, even though I couldn't tell you all their names. But the dynamics of them off of each other are so effective and well drawn because of little moments like these that pop and are sold so well, and that keep you engaged and drawn in, and invested in, they're all screwed at this point. Oh, they're fucked, they're fucked, yeah. And I don't know if we're quite at the point.

I think we can safely say that everyone dies, mostly.

Well, but there's a precursor to that, a quote of realization. That I believe Kerr Russell says, We're not getting out of here alive, but neither's that thing.

Right.

And that now becomes the twist, the pivot, towards our home stretch, their mission now, which is that now he knows this is a suicide mission.

Yep, and they have to destroy The Thing.

Yeah.

And what they find out is that, you know, and Wilfred Brimley has had this great monologue where he asked to be brought back into the station and it's so creepy. Yes. And then we realized that he is The Thing. He got out of the shed and he started building a spaceship. So he stole parts from the helicopter that he himself torched. And in the caverns underneath the station, he's been building a spaceship, which big leap, big swing.

It kind of looks like...

Like a dune buggy?

If you're building kind of a toy backyard spaceship fort in your garage for your kids, it's not the most, let's say, persuasively engineered.

No, it's literally, it's a moment in the film that I think they could have done without because you already know Loford Brimley's The Thing. And it sort of, but I think it sort of illustrates the point that we're not getting out and we got to destroy the monster. And we have an extended end sequence where we're chasing the thing through the ice caverns. And because there's so much kerosene in the station, I'll buy that because I have to assume it's for heating.

Right, to get through the winter. Yeah, yeah, sure.

But basically, it winds up being just an orgy of oil drums, flame throwing and the final beast out of the thing.

Yeah, because the only thing that can kill the thing is fire. As we've established repeatedly and gloriously. And they've decided that the thing can survive in cold for hundreds of thousands of years. And so its plan right now is probably to kill the humans and then just wait for a rescue team in spring to come or just lie dormant frozen until it gets found and awoken again, because it's got all the time in the world. And so the only option is they've got to kill it with fire by setting everything on fire, the entire base. Because it could be anywhere and they can't take any chances, but that's going to seal their own fate.

Which by the way is kind of John Carpenter's theme in life is that basically just kill it all with fire. The end of Escape from New York is fuck, it's nuclear war, but I'm a libertarian, so I don't give a shit. The end of Escape from LA is an EMP is about to send us all back to the Stone Age, but fuck it, I'm a libertarian. The end of The Thing is we all have to die, but fuck it, I'm a libertarian. I mean, this guy, this fucking guy, I just don't like his worldview.

Not an abundance of hope or optimism.

He is probably, I mean, look, out of all of mainstream cinema, he is probably next to David Fincher in misanthropy and nihilism. I mean, honestly, the only thing keeping John Carpenter from sort of having the esteem that David Fincher achieved is I think he was always more of a genre and a B-movie guy, and he didn't have quite the visual style that Fincher brought into it. But I mean, these guys are the masters of the feel-bad movie, you know?

Yes.

Now, Paul, when The Thing finally goes up in flames, it becomes this sort of tower of gore, and we realize probably that its favorite incarnation was the dog, because it ultimately transforms back into the dog face and snarls at Kurt Russell. So, faced with a tower, a flaming tower of gore and dog, Kurt Russell delivers the following rejoinder. Producer Brad, could you give it to us?

Fuck you, too!

And now we think MacCready's the only person left alive, and then, surprise, surprise, in a horror movie, the Black character has also survived. And I can't tell you how revolutionary a gesture this is in a horror movie, because as a Latino person, I think, and as Latino people, I think, Paul, you and I can attest that our kind never survives horror films. Minorities do not live in horror movies, especially in the 80s, right?

Yes, although this is the big question of the film. Aha. Did child survive? Is that child's or is that The Thing?

The Thing. So weirdly, for a libertarian, we have now what I believe is actually the most hopeful, I don't know if the guy's a libertarian or not, but it sounds like it to me. We have actually what is sort of a weirdly hopeful ending, because it's kind of the end of Treasure of the Sierra Madre. They're sitting facing each other. The station is pretty warm right now, because of the fire, but it's going to get cold, and they're both going to die. And the question is, are they going to die knowing one is, like one is The Thing, one isn't? If they're both human, they're both going to die from the cold. If one's human, one's The Thing, one of them is going to die from the cold, and the other is going to go dormant, and the world's going to end. But the hope is, because you love Keith David and you love McCready, that neither one of them is The Thing, and that they're both doing the right thing. They're just going to sit there and die together. And at this point, what does Kurt Russell do? He opens his bottle of?

Duster, Evian Brooks, my friend!

And he says, well, let's just see what happens.

Yeah.

And in a weird way, that's hopeful for John Carpenter, isn't it?

Well, I think we can choose it to be.

Because we're libertarians.

And I, no, I choose it to be hopeful that they are both human and have survived.

Yes.

And get to share some fellowship with each other, knowing that they have saved the world, even though they're presumably going to die of exposure pretty horribly and then be found the following year.

But it is my hope. It is my hope that because this movie, as you and I have now realized, in one of the greatest philosophical breakthroughs, that this is a movie about the eternal conflict between the flamethrower and the fire extinguisher as human beings, that what you have here is a flamethrower and a fire extinguisher and that they're both going to do the right thing together.

Yes, and they can be friends.

But really, Chalice is the thing. He's going to go dormant and we're going to have a bunch of sequels, right?

So, Carpenter has been aggressively circumspect in answering the question, other than saying he knows the answer.

But the question is, who is the thing? So he's acknowledging one of them is the thing.

No, not necessarily, not necessarily.

The last quote I heard, he says, I know who the thing is.

Oh, interesting.

Well, maybe it's the dead people. Maybe he knows who the thing is and it's Blair and he's dead.

Yeah, yeah.

My producer, Brad, Nealus Brad.

My reading of the film, my preferred reading of the film is that humanity triumphs and the flamethrower and the fire extinguisher can find friendship and togetherness because, yeah, this is all a commercial for the power of J and B. But my deep fear slash kind of assumption is that knowing Carpenter, Keith Davis probably.

Probably the thing, yeah. So I want to throw something out there. I want to talk about the abiding cultural impact of this film. I was a television executive in 1993 to 1995 and I was the current executive on two shows. One of them was called Earth Two, the other one was called Sea Quest, which I went on to write on. But the interesting thing about that is that that year, X-Files did a thing, did The Thing, did an episode called Ice, which was actually just a straight up rip off of The Thing. They went to the Arctic, but it was the same, same, same premise. Earth Two did The Thing, which was, you know, there's something in the air, nobody knew who the guy was. And Sea Quest did it twice, once with a virus and once with demonic possession because the two showrunners hated each other, didn't talk, so they didn't coordinate what script was which. And then when both of them were published, the network couldn't stop them from doing it because that's a shoot something. And there's a show called The Burning Zone that did The Thing, like literally.

So many genre shows have done their version of The Thing.

It has literally what John Carpenter did here when it's the first time I've seen this because in the original, The Thing is not a shapeshifter and a morpher. The biggest credit I can give is whatever, it's artistic merits and I think there are many and I don't enjoy the film for a number of reasons, but I do think it's a really well-made film and I can't fault it for anything. It's just my personal worldview. Carpenter really created a trope and who can say they did that? That is an amazing feat between this and Halloween. Carpenter kind of created two sub-genres of horror. I think it's incredible. And I'm not saying this irony, it's kind of an incredible accomplishment for a single filmmaker to have created two sub-genres that survived 50 years after these films were made or 39 years after this film was made.

Yeah, no, it's remarkable in terms of its lasting impact and influence. I also think that as a contribution to the legacy of the Universal Monster movie from generations prior, that he finds a way to do a new updated version of what a Universal Monster horror movie is and chart his own path that, yeah, takes the original thing from The Other World, Another World as a springboard, but does something so wildly inventive.

Yeah.

And yeah, it's a really spectacular achievement. And it's very much a B movie, but also to assemble that cast of just amazing character actors.

And look, I think it's also something that you see, a shop like Blumhouse, it's really trying, because they're at Universal, they did Invisible Man. I think they did a pretty good job of that one by turning it into a feminist allegory. Even that movie, which is a pretty effective movie, does not come close to being what Carpenter did. And I think it's just that hard to reinvent the Universal Monsters in any way whatsoever and make them great. Producer Brad, we want to talk about the box office success of this movie. It was the 43rd rated film of that year behind, well, Brad, can you please give us the lineup, producer Brad?

The movie opened, as you know, the same weekend as Blade Runner and Megaforce. Blade Runner opened number two, The Thing opened at number eight, just in front of Megaforce. It made $5,400,000 that first week. For the year, as you said, it ended up at number 43 for the year.

Yeah. And yet, probably, if you had to say, movies that made contributions to the genre, this is, it's definitely in the top 40, if not the top 20, you know, in terms of its contributions, yeah.

Yeah, in terms of being rediscovered later. And I think also benefited from the era of home video in a huge way, in terms of that's how a lot of people discovered it and, you know, and cable, but.

There's a reason why it got ripped off so much in 1993, and it's because that was 10 years after it came out. Presumably, a lot of these writers were teenagers. They saw it in the multiplex, they became writer TV writers, and they went up the edge house and said, let's do The Thing. So kudos to John Carpenter for, you know, like, again, regardless of my differences with him, I do give him kudos for this and many of his other work. It's really influential, so.

Yeah, one thing we, last thing, I don't know we gotta wrap up, but we, I feel we'd be remiss if we didn't mention it. Carpenter is known for scoring his own films, but this is a rare exception where he got none other than Ennio Morricone.

However, he said he did drop in some cues as needed from his own music.

Makes sense.

The interesting thing is Carpenter and Howarth are known for doing this.

Mm-mm.

Mm-mm. Mm-mm.

Mm-mm.

Mm-mm.

And that happens throughout the movie, but what's interesting is one of my favorite Morricone scores, which is also one of the goofiest of his scores, is Mission to Mars, which is not a good movie, but it's a really interesting score. And during the most tense sequence of that movie, the entire underscore for it is eh, eh, eh, eh, eh. And watching The Thing, I kept wondering, as you say this, because watching The Thing, I assumed it was Carpenter, but when you say Morricone did the score, I'm like, was Morricone aping Carpenter later, or did Morricone do that in the movie because that was also his own thing? I don't know.

Well, to me, it feels like it is a musical manifestation of The Thing in that Morricone and Carpenter are assimilating each other musically. Wow. In the score. Wow.

Do you think like in their old age, Morricone and Carpenter were just sitting there holding a stick of dynamite and a flamethrower going, let me have it, bud.

I hope that they got to share a J and B.

By the way, Carpenter is kind of a synth pioneer, and there's a lot of times when his music feels very sort of of its time, but I actually think that's part of its charm, and he did an album called Forgotten Themes, which is music that he wrote for the movies he never got to make. And it's a wonderful record, and if you like 80s synth, analog synth music with a lot of plugs and a lot of switches and toggles, it's a great record. So I don't know if you've listened to it, Paul, but I think it's phenomenal.

It's going on my list.

So producer Brad, what's on the multiplex next week? We've had a banquet.

Well, first, before we get to next week, I just want to quickly drop that. Think of the 80s, this is another film that Alan Dean Foster did the novelization for.

Indeed, indeed.

And I was surprised one of his first novelizations was John Carpenter's Dark Star.

Which is, which by the way, we should just do a side podcast on that because that movie is phenomenal. What a great, I love that movie. So producer Brad, this weekend we saw ET, no, this weekend we saw Blade Runner, Megaforce, and The Thing.

So next week is July 4th, 1982, holiday weekend. Now we are accustomed to July 4th being big tentpole movies, but this wasn't the case in 1982 or in the 80s. For example, in 1980, July 4th was Airplane, 1981 it was SOB, 1983 Stroker Ace, 1984, Bachelor Party, Cannibal Run, and Conan the Destroyer. You have to get to 85 before you get to Back to the Future and you start to see what we're used to. So having said that, for 1982, only one movie was released on July 4th and that is Don Bluese, The Secret of Nim. Boom! Oh boy. It's an animated film released by MGM, not Disney. So here's what I think. We're gonna tell our parents they're gonna buy us tickets for this G-rated film. We're going to the multiplex. We're gonna stand in front of two different doors. One is Conan the Barbarian and one is The Sword and the Sorcerer, both of which are still playing since the spring. They're both in the top 20 in terms of making money right now. Which film do you guys want to see?

Should we do a very special episode where we do both? Or do you want to choose one? Or do you think Milly's Tower accomplishment deserves its own episode?

Oh my God. I was not prepared for this.

Producer Brad, I have an idea.

Go for it.

Let's leave this episode on a cliffhanger. Next week when we release again, then they'll know.

So I'm on a cliffhanger too then.

Okay then, well, I have a feeling, we'll probably end the recording and have a chat.

No, we're not allowed to interact with each other except within the confines of a podcast recording.

So guys, you know, I'm-

First of all, I assume we don't want to see The Secret of NIMH, correct?

Here's the thing, I'm 12 years old and I know Conan has boobs and I, well, I mean, the movie has boobs. I mean, I don't know if something goes very well in doubt, but they're not, they're more like pecs. And I know for a fact, The Sword and The Sorcerer has boobs and I know both of them have a lot of blood. Today, I would say let's do The Secret of NIMH because it'd be really interesting to see what Paul and I would come up with riffing on that movie. But if we're really going to be true to the spirit of the multiplex, we want boobs and blood.

Do you concur?

Wow. I don't know that I ascribe to that philosophical construction.

And on that cliffhanger, my friends, we will see you next week, in line, at The Multiplex.

I know I'm human.