John Carpenter: God’s Answer to the Eighties
“First goddamn week of winter.”
When critic Roger Ebert reviewed The Thing in 1982, he was not happy with the film and its “superficial characterizations and the implausible behavior of the scientists on that icy outpost.” With all due respect to Mr. Ebert, watching The Thing is a process of rejecting plausible behavior, of accepting unreality and submerging completely in it.
Throughout his career, John Carpenter (director of The Thing and Halloween amongst other films) has stomped into the realm of Hollywood and reflected it back with bold and satirical stories. What makes these festering images so perverse yet loveable? They fall into everything that’s known about Hollywood but ramp it up to the max, soaking in needlessly gooey special effects, filling every appropriate moment to the brim with brooding tones, and whittling perfect one-liners at every opportunity.
The Thing is no exception to Carpenter’s carpentry, a film which wins audiences over because it knows that it is “the party.” It doesn’t revel in its own creativity or try to be anything it is not; it exists shamelessly to the fullest extent. In this vulgar, honest filmmaking, a new diction emerges, one that can only have come from the ruffian and sardonic environment of the early eighties. One which laughs in the face of itself and lets everyone laugh with it — a brave gag.
To look at The Thing, along with other works of Carpentry (can you tell I’m having fun with this pun?), have changed the language of film. Coming into an era where New Hollywood, a brash and bawdy movement of filmmakers, had just been crushed to smithereens, Carpenter and his films turned the movement on top of itself conceptually. Instead of uncommon stories, he chose the classics. Each story has the ambiguous and constant presence of danger, like something is lurking around the corner, waiting to strike.
Like most filmmakers from the latter half of the twentieth century and beyond, Carpenter is not shy about sharing his inspiration. The Thing was a story adapted from a 1938 novella, one which had been previously transformed into a film by Howard Hawks in the 1950s. While this remake was not solely Carpenter’s idea, it shows a trend in his stories which speaks to their legacy. This classic tale, one which has found itself told and told again by generations of American masses, meets technologies so visually and aurally overreaching that audiences can’t help but see the story in a new light.
Comparing the pseudo-Europeanism of New Hollywood to the foot-in-mouth drunken cheers of Carpenter’s and later filmmakers’ films reveals the breadth of American filmmaking. There is something punky in Carpenter’s stories as well, but in the same way as wearing a Polo to a mosh pit. It dares to take what has been accepted as conservative and liberate it, throwing it into new contexts and letting a rougher, more complete image of the ideas emerge. In liberating these stories, the viewers are freed, in a sense. Being able to see beloved stories get modernly marred breaks the idea of what can and can’t be made, it pushes the ceiling of creativity.
The Thing is a film worth discussing further, but there’s nothing more human, nothing that can make you feel more, than going to see it. Take your friends, take snacks and drinks, laugh, yell, anything-- just watch the movie and see what happens. Contort yourself as the visual effects hiss and chop, cheer with Kurt Russell, and be left agape by the entirety of it.
The Thing (1982) will play at the ASLC at midnight on 10/22/2021.
Written by: Rory Donohue
Art by: Max Klavon | Instagram
