John Carpenter's The Thing: 10 Behind-The-Scenes Facts About The Kurt Russell Horror Movie

[Claude.]

 

As a master of the horror genre with a penchant for politically motivated allegory, there is one film by director John Carpenter that best defines his career. His chilling, highly suspenseful creature feature The Thing follows a group of American researchers in Antartica, led by Kurt Russell, who begin to question who among them they can trust after discovering a hostile otherworldly being with the ability to imitate any living organism. The movie has sparked questions over the years, which we may be able to answer through some The Thing behind-the-scenes facts that are just as fascinating as the film itself.

 

The 1982 sci-fi thriller is lauded as one of the best horror movies of all time for its astoundingly realistic creature effects and unnerving paranoid atmosphere, as well as one of the few horror remakes that actually don’t suck - even surpassing the 1951 original by more faithfully honoring the short story that inspired it, John W. Campbell Jr.’s “Who Goes There?” However, it actually took a long time for the initially panned box office bomb to achieve the praise it receives, which may actually be the film’s most confounding mystery. Perhaps we can figure it out as we unveil many other secrets of The Thing with the following these bits of trivia, starting with a glimpse at the imitation the movie could have been.

 

Tobe Hooper Was Approached To Direct The Thing Before John Carpenter

It is hard to imagine anyone better to helm The Thing than John Carpenter, who coincidentally incorporated a TV broadcast of The Thing from Another World into his original Halloween movie in 1978. However, he had not yet made the hit slasher masterpiece when Universal began considering who should remake the alien invasion movie, which is why Tobe Hooper was their first choice.

 

According to Bloody Disgusting, the studio parted ways with the director of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre when his vision resembled what producer Stuart Cohen described as “a sort of Antartica Moby Dick” vastly different from the source material. Tobe Hooper would go on to direct Poltergeist in 1982, depending on who you ask, that is.

 

The Thing’s Famous “Burned In” Title Card Was A Practical Effect

Thankfully, John Carpenter agreed The Thing should be more like “Who Goes There?” than The Thing from Another World was, but did pay tribute to Howard Hawks’ B-movie by recreating its iconic title card that literally “burns” into the screen. Visual effects artist Peter Kuran described how he achieved the effect 1998’s feature-length documentary The Thing: Terror Takes Shape, which can be found on Shout Factory’s 2016 Collector’s Edition Blu-ray release that Amazon has available. He first drew the ominous design of the title on an animation cell which he placed behind a fish tank filled with smoke and covered with a trash bag that, when lit on fire, revealed the title in all its glory.

 

The Thing’s Interior Scenes Were Shot In A Refrigerated Soundstage

The Thing also resembles the 1951 film's Antarctic setting, even though no shooting took place there, exterior shots were achieved in Alaska and British Columbia and the inside of U.S. Outpost 31 built on a Universal Studios soundstage cooled to an authentically cold temperature. Cinematographer Dean Cundey recalled on the Terror Takes Shape doc how the warmly dressed cast and crew would walk out into the Los Angeles summer heat to the see confused faces of studio tourists. They would eventually grow tired of changing for lunch breaks and opted to endure the heat instead, according to star Richard Masur.

 

Canine Actor Jed Made His Film Debut In The Thing

By starring as resident dog handler Clark, Richard Masur got to spend a lot of time with Jed, whose performance as the titular creature's wolfdog disguise often gets more praise than most of the human cast. This makes it all the more surprising to learn that the animal actor, who would go onto star in both of Disney's White Fang movies, had never been in a film before The Thing on top of having little experience working with people, as Masur claims in Terror Takes Shape. Perhaps that was crucial to the memorably chilling and fittingly "alien" atmosphere of his onscreen presence.

 

Doc’s Arm-Loss Effect In The Thing Was Achieved By Hiring An Amputee

When naming The Thing's most shocking flagship moment, many cite "Doc" Copper's (Richard Dysart) attempt to revive what he does not realize is an imitation of Norris (Charles Hallahan), whose stomach turns into a large mouth that chomps down on Doc's arms. In Terror Takes Shape, Rob Bottin, the man we can thank for the film's stunning practical effects, reveals that, in the following wide shot, the now armless Doc is then played by a man, who had lost his arms in an industrial accident, wearing a mask modeled from Dysart's face. Bottin also mentions how this same double was wearing fake arms made of jello, wax bones, and rubber in the close-up of the grotesque amputation.

 

Rob Bottin Was Hospitalized For Exhaustion By The End Of The Thing’s Production

Rob Bottin, a big inspiration to the special effects designer of 2011's The Thing prequel Alec Gillis, was only 22 when John Carpenter hired him as to design the titular creature and its make-up effects, though you would believe he was an industry veteran by his impeccable work in the film that would prove to be more tiresome than one should really allow. Just take this excerpt from his Terror Takes Shape interview to see why:

 

I was so wanting this stuff to come out so great, I actually lived at Universal for a year and five weeks without taking a day off... I'd sleep on the sets... I ended up working so hard that I ended up in the hospital at the end of the show. John [Carpenter] looked at me and said, 'You don't look well. Someone take this guy to the hospital.' Since then I've wised up and I don't do that anymore

 

Any filmmaker would agree that no one should ever work themselves to threatening levels of exhaustion for their art. Of course, when the result is one of the scariest movie monsters in history, you cannot say it was not entirely worth it.

 

sursa

[D J C]