THE THING is John Carpenter's personal favorite from among the movies he's made. It's Lovecraft-inspired cosmic horror, it's science fiction, it's body horror, it's psychological horror. Who can you trust? Can you trust yourself?

It's also a landmark in the development of practical special effects for the screen. Much like THE MIST, we find ourselves in a sort of insulated, isolated community — this time, obviously, much further removed than The Food House in Bridgton, Maine. And we see the effects of isolation and mistrust, or distrust, on a community. And much like THE MIST, it flouts audience expectations of what a monster is. It also muddies ideas about what safety and security look and feel like. Also, much like THE MIST, we're watching a film that has been adapted from a novella, and once again, we must contend with the process of adaptation versus translation.

Of course, there was an earlier film adaptation of this novella, involving, in some capacity, Howard Hawks. Whether he produced it or directed it is a matter of debate. It was both made and set in the 1950s. The first cinematic adaptation, which I saw when I was a very little kid, many years before I saw the Carpenter version, because my mom was a big fan of the original.

That film looks at the insidious threat of Communism at the height of the Cold War. I have not read the novella, but from what I understand, Carpenter’s adaptation takes more from that than from the 1951 film, except for the title treatment, which is aggressively reproduced.

Contextually, when this adaptation was made, Carpenter seems to have been influenced by our being in an era of mutually assured destruction with other nuclear superpowers on the planet. And I think, significantly, in 1982, the looming AIDS crisis was being addressed here, albeit obliquely, because here we're looking at a deadly thing that's found out via blood test.

The original novella has been cut down from something like 37 characters to 12 essential characters. I think in focusing in on a reduced number of characters, we get a little bit of the old Agatha Christie “And Then There Were None” concept which of course, inspired other viewing this season. like APRIL FOOL’S DAY. But from the beginning, from about 10 minutes in, the thematic ideas about the dangers of isolation begin to inform narrative choices. We're hearing phrases like “stir crazy” and “cabin fever” as the men of the company are attempting to make sense of what's happening around them. This is also underlined when we learn that the character “Windows” has been unable to make outside contact for more than two weeks.

I think the music by Ennio Morricone has a lot in common with other Carpenter scores. It's very reminiscent of the score for THE FOG; the bump-bump sound is a kind of synthetic heartbeat quality which is very appropriate to the subject that we're exploring. I think Dean Cundey’s cinematography – the way the shots are framed and lit, especially when he is ‘shaking hands’ with Rob Bottin, the creature and effects designer – it really elevates the film.

But ideas like paranoia, mistrust, distrust, isolation, assimilation, loss of humanity, loss of identity, loss of control – as thematic devices, they loom large in the plot and the dialogue of THE THING, and hammer it home pretty frequently. I think that probably now, as a society, we are less trusting and more isolated than ever before. And I think that gives the film a new significance, especially when we see the creature begin to act more human, and the humans in THE THING become more monstrous.

To listen to our episode on THE THING, click here.

Bradford Louryk