The Thing - Collectors Edition

In my opinion, The Thing is one of director John Carpenter's crowning achievements, and judging by his recent flop horror Vampires, he's unlikely to reach the same creative heights again.

After hitting big with the smash independent film Halloween in 1978, and scoring points again with 1981's campy classic Escape From New York, Carpenter had freedom to do pretty much whatever he wanted. A fan of the director Howard Hawks since childhood, he chose to direct a remake of the 1951 classic The Thing From Another World (incidentally, the original holds up very well even today, and I highly recommend that you check it out). The project had been fruitlessly bouncing around at Universal for several years before Ridley Scott's Alien made a bucket of money and convinced the execs that the public were hungry for more angry space nasties.

The story follows the original short story ('Who Goes There?') on which the first movie was based more closely than the original, which changed the concept of The Thing into more of a plant based creature. In Carpenter's version, though, thanks to breakthrough Rob Bottin-created special effects, the creature behaves as it does on paper, able to take on the form of its victims and walk among its prey!

The story begins with a small research team in the Antarctic, who are surprised when a Norwegian team from several kilometres away pursues a dog into their camp by helicopter, then open fire. Killing the Norwegians in self-defence, the research team slowly realise they have made a terrible error, as the dog certainly knows more tricks than rolling over and shaking hands...

From here we're in a classic Room of Death scenario: the team become trapped in the facility, unable to trust each other. Any one of them could be The Thing! Kurt Russell gives a very believeable performance as MacReady, the helicopter pilot who fights through his fear to attempt to take control of the situation. Carpenter directs wonderfully, capturing all the tension and paranoia of the screenplay with flair. This is gripping stuff, and shouldn't be missed.

(Note: After some deliberation and reading many other reviews of this DVD, I have decided to change my rating for the video transfer. I originally gave the picture an 8, but had assumed the aliasing I noticed at several points in the film were due to my decoder card. This is evidently not the case and has been taken into account with the new rating - Paul)

The Thing has been available in an NTSC Region 1 Collector's Edition for quite some time (it's one of the first DVDs I bought), so I took the time to compare the NTSC and PAL versions. Both transfers appear to have been taken from the same print master, which is reasonably good, but has not been exhaustively restored and shows some wear and tear at times. Unfortunately, like the US disc, the PAL release has not been anamorphically encoded (it was originally transferred several years ago for a planned laserdisc special edition), but has more natural colour and better detail than the Region 1. It also shows a smidgeon more side information than the US disc, which is good to see.

Shadow detail is decent, allowing us to enjoy those wonderfully sticky special effects and Dean Cundey's evocative cinematography. Cundey worked with Carpenter on Halloween right on through to Big Trouble in Little China, before moving on to a more glossy and hyperreal style as seen in The Flintstones and Jurassic Park. I greatly prefer his work from this period of his career, where his love for cold blue tones matched perfectly with Carpenter's dark (and in this case, freezing!) locations.

Anamorphic enhancement would have improved the rating, as would have the elimination of the one video flaw which makes me prefer the NTSC version, despite the lower resolution. The PAL version suffers noticeable and distracting aliasing on many scenes which is simply not present on the US disc.

The supplements generally look worse than the R1 edition due to video standards conversion, but are still passable.

For this Collector's Edition, Universal remixed the original 4-channel printmaster into spanking 5.1 channel Dolby Digital, and while I generally disagree with the concept of meddling with films to 'update them' (Star Wars, anybody?), this soundtrack simply rocks. You won't confuse it with a modern mix, as the fidelity sounds dated, but the surrounds are used very aggressively in places and there's plenty of deep bass and opportunities for the subwoofer channel to get a workout. Considering the age of the film, this is a great soundtrack.

The score is by Ennio Morricone, who composed the famous themes to Sergio Leone's classic spaghetti Westerns and has managed to continue working for Italian productions while also adding his distinctive touch to American productions such as De Palma's Untouchables. Here, his score is far more synthesized than usual, and it wouldn't surprise me at all to discover that Carpenter had lent a helping hand to steer the music towards his usual territory.

Oh God, the extra features. Where to begin? They just don't seem to stop! As far as I could tell, everything from the US disc is here.

You've got an entertaining running commentary with Carpenter and Russell, which manages to deliver quite a lot of information amongst the laughter (for example, the interiors were actually shot in LA during summer in a highly airconditioned studio, so the actors had terrible culture shock stepping out for a cigarette break!). There's also an 80 minute documentary called 'Terror Takes Shape' which is far more than the usual useless ad disguised as a 'making-of' special, plus outtakes, the trailer, photographs, concept art, stop motion cut from the film, and, and, and!

THIS is what a special edition should be. Other studios please take note!

Leonard Maltin doesn't like this film. Then again, Leonard Maltin doesn't like Blade Runner either. Sometimes, Leonard Maltin can be a dick.

Get this disc.