It says a lot about John Carpenter’s “The Thing” that it could generate a prequel almost 20 years after its release. A critical and commercial failure when released back in 1982, it has since been justly revered as a true horror classic and remains Carpenter’s masterpiece as it proved even more terrifying than “Halloween.” It also holds a special place on my top ten favorite movies of all time (so far) list.

Now we have Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.’s version of “The Thing” which is a prequel to Carpenter’s movie which explores the events leading up to it. Remember that Norwegian camp Kurt Russell and Richard Dysart visited which had been almost completely burned down? Now we get to see how it got that way. But therein lies the problem; knowing the events precede those of the 1982 movie, much of the potential suspense and tension gets drowned out almost immediately.

Frankly I would much rather see a sequel to “The Thing” instead of this. The original was effective because we never had a clear idea of who to trust. But here we know the characters on display will eventually bite the dust, and it becomes a question of when these characters turn into the thing. After awhile, it becomes more shocking when a character dies without turning into a gooey alien. What spoils it even more is that we know of at least one character who will survive what happens very early on.

Heijningen is respectful of Carpenter’s movie and pays homage to it throughout. Things however get to where you wonder if this is a remake more than a prequel. Various scenes are clear imitations of the 1982 movie’s most classic moments, and I wish the filmmakers worked harder at distinguishing the prequel from it instead of just repeating scenes. Heijningen does wring some suspense and strong tension at different points, and the unique on the blood test scene is very clever. But he is unable to sustain the tension that made Carpenter’s movie so eerily effective.

The special effects are very good, but they still pale in comparison to the genius of Rob Bottin. Audiences are always quick to tell when CGI effects are overused. As for the performances, they are generally good even though the characters could have come out of any monster movie.

The best performance comes from Mary Elizabeth Winstead as paleontologist Kate Lloyd. So good in “Scott Pilgrim vs. The World” and “Live Free or Die Hard,” she holds our attention throughout and is one of the best reasons to see this prequel. While Lloyd is predictably inspired by Ellen Ripley from “Aliens,” Winstead makes the character her own and more than just another tough chick which movies like these typically rely on.

“The Thing” prequel is not a terrible movie, but it will be of interest more to those who haven’t seen the 1982 film which itself was a remake (made back when remakes were rare and good). But this version of John W. Campbell’s “Who Goes There?” feels like a lost opportunity and gets caught in the prequel trap of busily matching everything up to the film it leads into. It sucks when you can see a movie’s ending long in advance of it. I did admire the ambiguous ending before the end credits though as it leaves you wondering if the alien really infected the last character standing. Not knowing is always more unnerving than knowing.

* * ½ out of * * * *

Trailer courtesy of Universal Pictures.

Antarctica: an extraordinary continent of awesome beauty. It is also home to an isolated outpost where a discovery full of scientific possibility becomes a mission of survival when a creature is unearthed by a crew of international scientists. In the thriller The Thing, paranoia spreads among a group of researchers as they encounter something inhuman that has the ability to turn itself into an exact replica of any living being. Paleontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) has traveled to the desolate region for the expedition of her lifetime. Joining a Norwegian scientific team that has stumbled across a ship buried in the ice, she discovers an organism that seems to have died in the crash eons ago. But it is about to wake up. When a simple experiment frees the thing from its frozen prison, Kate must join the crew's pilot, Carter (Joel Edgerton), to keep it from killing them off one at a time. And in this vast, intense land, a parasite that can mimic anything it touches will pit human against human as it tries to survive and flourish. The Thing serves as a prelude to John Carpenter's classic 1982 film of the same name. Directed by Matthijs van Heijningen, the thriller is produced by Strike Entertainment's Marc Abraham and Eric Newman (Dawn of the Dead).

"The Thing" hits theaters on October 14th.



Trailer courtesy of The Bubble Factory.

An ex-Navy seal (Mehcad Brooks), his girlfriend (Serinda Swan) and their friends head out on a road trip to New Orleans. The group decides to stop at a roadside convenience store owned by Chopper (Sid Haig), who tells them the tale of Lockjaw, a fabled god-like creature who is half-man, half-alligator. The legend has it that an inbred local man by the name of Grimley (Daniel Bernhardt) lost his family to a monstrous white alligator, which then drove him to madness and some believe he was transformed into that very creature that now haunts the depths of the swamps. Their curiosity peaked, the group decides to play along with the local tourist trap and journey deep into the backwoods to find the old dilapidated cabin which is supposed to be the birthplace of the creature. As they set-up camp for the night, their faith is put to the test when Lockjaw turns out to be more than just a myth and they realize the locals are hiding a horrifying secret that jeopardizes them all. Directed by Fred M. Andrews and starring Mehcad Brooks, Serinda Swan, Amanda Fuller, Dillon Casey, Lauren Schneider, Aaron Hill, Daniel Bernhardt, and Sid Haig, CREATURE introduces a new monster legend into the horror film lexicon.

"Creature" hits theaters in limited release on September 9th.



Trailer courtesy of Indomina Entertainment.

A period epic from genre master Tsui Hark (Seven Swords), DETECTIVE DEE is an action-packed, visually breathtaking Sherlock Holmes-style mystery starring some of China's top acting talent: Andy Lau, Bingbing Li, Carina Lau, and Tony Leung Ka-fai. Nominated for Best Special Effects at the 2011 Asian Film Awards and stunningly choreographed by master Sammo Hung, this intricately plotted whodunit is set in an exquisitely realized steampunk version of ancient China. On the eve of her coronation as Empress (Carina Lau, 2046), China's most powerful woman is haunted by a chilling murder mystery: seven men under her command have burst into flames, leaving behind only black ash and skeletal bones. Recognizing this threat to her power, she turns to the infamous Dee Renjie (Andy Lau, Infernal Affairs, House Of Flying Daggers): a man whose unparalleled wisdom is matched only by his martial arts skills. As he battles a series of bizarre dangers, he unveils a chilling truth that places his life, and the future of an entire dynasty, in peril.

"Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame" hits theaters in limited release on September 2nd.

Many of you probably know the story behind “John Carpenter’s The Thing;” It came out in the summer of 1982, two weeks after Steven Spielberg’s “E.T,” and while the alien from that movie was warm and cuddly, the one in Carpenter’s movie was cold, ugly, and utterly vicious. As a result, the movie was unceremoniously smashed by both critics and fans alike, and they never tried to hide their disgust towards Carpenter for what they saw as pornography of movie violence. In all fairness though, the movie was released at the wrong time of the year. To release this movie during what Carpenter had called the “summer of love” opposite not just “E.T.,” but also “Star Trek II” and “Tron” among other movies was a big mistake on the part of Universal Pictures, and they would have had more luck with it had it been released during the winter instead.

Years later however, “The Thing,” like many of John Carpenter’s movies (“Big Trouble In Little China” is another perfect example) ended up finding the audience it deserved through home video and later DVD. Perhaps it was ahead of its time, but it is now considered (and rightly so) one of the best horror and sci-fi movies ever made, and it is easily the best horror remake in a sea of horrendously crappy ones. I think plays better today than it did when first released, and it is still utterly terrifying 25 years or so after its initial release.

Unlike the original Howard Hawks version of “The Thing,” Carpenter’s movie hews much closer to the short story it was based on called “Who Goes There?” by John W. Campbell, Jr. The movie takes place at an American scientific research outpost in Antarctica, perhaps the coldest place to be on the entire planet. We are introduced to a bunch of men who are studying the surrounding area, and they look bored and listless as they pass the days smoking, drinking scotch, watching “Let’s Make A Deal” reruns, and playing ping pong. Then they are met by a wolf that is being shot at by a Norwegian for no discernable reason. This later leads to events that make them realize that they have encountered an alien of unknown origin that has been unearthed from the ice after thousands and thousands of years. It then proceeds to imitate every creature it comes in contact with, however imperfectly. Soon, they come to realize that anyone of them could be the thing, and they have to destroy it before it reaches the civilization and infects all living things on this planet.

The premise of this movie is genius because it allows for an unending escalation of tension and suspense throughout. Like the characters, you have no idea who to trust and of who is the thing. The paranoia that closes in on these characters puts them in an airtight cage that gets smaller and smaller as it heads to its inevitable climax. There are no women to be found in this movie which eliminates any sexual tension that might have added an unnecessary element to the movie. Many say that this makes the movie sexist, but that’s a ridiculous charge. There’s no hatred of women to be found here, unless you count how Kurt Russell’s character treats the Chess Wizard computer with a female voice.

This movie also came out when the whole world was starting to become aware of the AIDS virus. The idea of any sort of virus infecting us completely and rearranging our body to the point may have seemed unreal to us back then. But today, it is a reality that is more horrifying than ever, and it still presents itself with no real cure. This makes “The Thing” all the more scarier to take in when watching it now. The scene where Dr. Blair (Wilford Brimley) observes a computer image of the virus infecting a human host is one of the movie’s scariest moments, and seems all too real a possibility when watching it today. The only thing truly dated about that scene is that the computer graphics look like they are from an old Atari game, but it doesn’t change the frightening concept that it is. Other movies like “Outbreak” have used imaging like this, and it is still an incredibly effective way of conveying the danger of an uncontrollable disease.

“The Thing” also marks one of several collaborations between director John Carpenter and actor Kurt Russell who started working together on the TV movie “Elvis.” After all these years of being a movie star, Kurt can still make you believe that he is a down to earth guy like the rest of us, and his role as helicopter pilot R.J. MacReady is one of his most underrated. You never get the feeling that Kurt is acting in this film. Instead, Kurt inhabits the character he plays, and you follow him every step of the way without any doubt of who the hero (or in this case, the antihero) is.

Carpenter cast the movie perfectly with such actors as future SAG President Richard Masur, Richard Dysart, Donald Moffat, and David Clennon among others. But one of the best performances to come out of “The Thing” was from Wilford Brimley as Dr. Blair. In the past, we have been exposed to Mr. Brimley through countless oatmeal commercials and roles as the grandfather we had or wished we had in our lives. But his role in “The Thing” offered him one of the few opportunities he had to go completely against type. As Dr. Blair, Wilford goes from curious to utterly horrified by what this unknown creature can do, and he ends up wreaking havoc in a way that you would never see in any oatmeal commercial (except maybe for the ones with not enough fiber). In a movie where no one can trust anyone around them, Dr. Blair becomes the one that people want to trust but don’t dare to all the same.

One of the other truly great actors in this movie is Keith David (not to be confused with actor David Keith) who plays Childs. Keith has a “don’t mess with me” intensity, and he matches Kurt Russell’s intensity every step of the way. The tension between the two is almost as frightening as is waiting for that alien to make its next horrifically gory entrance. Keith was later cast in John Carpenter’s “They Live,” and he remains one of the most underrated actors working today.

But c’mon! Let’s talk about who the real star of “John Carpenter’s The Thing” really is, other than the director himself. That would be Mr. Rob Bottin who designed the movie’s horrifically brilliant special effects and makeup designs. Long before the advance of computer technology and CGI, Rob had to make all these designs from scratch, and what he came up with is now considered a benchmark in the field of special makeup effects. This is not your typical slasher movie where the murders are bloody but not altogether creative. The thing mimics everything it touches, and this must have been a pure inspiration for Bottin to let his imagination run amuck with what he could come up with. You never know what’s coming next in this film, and that makes it even scarier than it already is.

Some have called the movie a “geek show” that was only made with the intention of grossing people out. Granted, a good case could be made for that, but “The Thing” is a lot more than that. It explores a theme that is commonplace in many of John Carpenter’s movies; the struggle to maintain one’s individuality. Of never letting go of who you see yourself as, because that allows you to survive in a world that keeps finding new ways of robbing it from you when you least know it. The threat of that loss is ever so real in this movie, and the characters have the unfortunate disadvantage of being stuck in one of the most remote and desolate places on the face of the earth.

I also imagine that a big complaint people have about “The Thing” is that we never learn much about the alien or where it came from. Basically, we know it’s from outer space (the spaceship crashing on earth during the opening credits pretty much spells that out), that imitates whatever it comes in contact with, and that it deals with the cold better than any of these men do. Here’s the thing, do we really need to know everything about this creature? Maybe not knowing is more terrifying than knowing. It leaves a lot of things to the viewer’s imagination, and I love that because it leaves open so many possibilities for how this horrific situation is going to play out. Your worst fears come out of your unconsciousness, and you find yourself experiencing the movie more than watching it.

The ending of “The Thing” is quite ambiguous as we never come to know which of the remaining characters is human and who is not. In an age where people need to have everything explained or spelled out for them (especially if it involves math), this drives people nuts. I dig these kind of endings sometimes though, as it leaves a lot to the imagination. It also leaves you with an unsettling feeling that stays with you long after the movie is over, making it a very unforgettable experience. Maybe we are lacking completely in the imagination if we have to know what happens at the end of the movie. It’s one of the fill in the blanks endings, and we can only assume what happens. Not knowing can be more truly terrifying than knowing.

I still think that this movie is really John Carpenter’s masterpiece, even over the classic “Halloween.” With this movie, he proves to be one of the true masters of horror and suspense as he endlessly generates unbearable tension throughout the movie’s running time. Just when you think the movie has peaked, you quickly realize that it has not. Carpenter’s goal here is not just to make us jump out of our seats (he does get some serious ones in though), but to make us feel the terrifying isolation and complete lack of trust that these scientists cannot escape from. What the hell would we have done in that situation?

Carpenter has said that this movie was the first in his apocalypse trilogy (the other two were “Prince of Darkness” and “In The Mouth of Madness”), and the movie does have an unrelentingly bleak tone which made it seem completely out of place back in 1982. As time goes on though, many of us keep thinking the world is coming to an end (the economic crisis we are currently in seems to enhance this feeling all the more strongly). Plus, with more deadly diseases like the Ebola Virus among others, the scenario of “The Thing” feels all the more frighteningly real.

The popularity of “The Thing” still does not seem to have reached its peak just yet. Its influence on popular culture is felt more and more to the point where as we speak, Ronald D. Moore (executive producer of the new “Battlestar Galactica”) is working on a prequel. “South Park” even spoofed the blood test scene in one of its episodes as Cartman tests his friends for head lice. Stan even tells Cartman that he knows he stole this idea from Carpenter’s movie. There was even a video game that acted as a sequel to the original movie released a few years back. “The Thing” is clearly on people’s minds then when it was first released.

Some movies are robbed of their greatness through the passage of time, and some now seem horrendously stupid in how stylistically dated they are. We watch some things from the past, and we wonder why we liked them so much in the first place. What the hell were we thinking anyway?! But “The Thing” is an exception to this case as time has made it seem all the more effective. You can’t help but think that this movie may have been ahead of its time when it was originally released in 1982. It remains one of those movies that I never ever tire of watching and it more than it deserves its place as one of the greatest movies to come out of the 1980’s.

**** out of ****

Last night in Santa Monica was the start of “Escape Artist: A Tribute to John Carpenter” at the Aero Theater. In addition to being treated to a double feature of “The Thing” (widely regarded as Carpenter’s best film to date) and “The Fog,” the writer/director/composer also showed up in between the screenings of both films to give us more insight on the films, and took questions from the audience. Even though these movies are 20 to 30 years old now and have been available on DVD for quite some time, they still resonate deeply for movie fans all these years later. This was proven true by the fact that the screenings were sold out and packed with biggest of all John Carpenter fans.

The show started off with the emcee announcing to the crowd:

“Are you ready to view the new M. Night Shyamalan movie “The Happening?” That’s right, you thought you were here to see some John Carpenter movies, but this is all part of the Shyamalan twist!”

Of course, he was just kidding as he knew the crowd was about to partake in the “Citizen Kane of horror movies” with his 1982 remake of “The Thing.” The emcee indicated that the print they had for tonight’s showing was the best they could find and that the film itself has faded a bit and did have scratches here and there, but that never took away from the enthusiastic response of the crowd as the lights went down, and the credits came up to thunderous applause every time Carpenter’s name came up. A few other names got applause as well like Kurt Russell and Dean Cundey among others.

John Carpenter’s “The Thing” is 7th on my list of my top ten all time favorite movies, and it remains to date the best horror film remake ever. That’s an especially high mark in cinema considering that today’s film market is overflowing with horror remakes, most of them being sacrilegious crap. While the movie was not a big hit when it was first released, it has since developed a huge cult following thanks to home video and DVD and has finally been recognized as the masterpiece it has always been. 80% of the audience there that evening has probably seen this movie at least several dozen times, but even if they have lines memorized and know everything that happens, they still jumped in surprise during the movie’s most shocking moments.

After the movie ended and the end credits were all finished, John Carpenter was brought out into the audience and was met with a standing ovation and thunderous applause from all those who came out to see him. Once the audience sat down, he immediately thanked them for coming on out to see this movie when they could have just watched it at home. One fan in turn thanked him for coming on out to visit with us as he has millions of fans all over the world, and yet he chose to hang out with us.

Today, as the emcee pointed out, many are surprised to hear that “The Thing” was not a big hit when it was first released back in 1982. Carpenter put it all the more bluntly:

“It tanked! 1982 was supposed to be the summer of love. It was the summer of “E.T.,” and it was the summer of freedom and hope, and “The Thing” was about as bleak a movie as any that could have been released that year. People hated it for that, and all the sci-fi fans out there absolutely hated it and trashed it when it first came out.”

As Carpenter pointed out to actor and friend Kurt Russell on the DVD commentary of the movie:

“We came out two weeks after “E.T.” And while there’s was all warm and cuddly, ours was ugly and hideous.”

Universal Pictures, which released both movies that summer, attempted to make it the summer of the extra terrestrials, but the timing did not work at all in Carpenter’s favor, and it later cost him the job of directing a Stephen King adaptation, “Firestarter.”

One fan pointed out that this film was unique in a sense in that this is one of the few John Carpenter’s that he did not compose the score for himself. While it does indeed have that Carpenter sound that we have come to recognize in his movies, the score was actually composed by Ennio Morricone. Carpenter replied that Morricone is one of the greatest composers of ever in film, and this was met with loud applause from the audience. John did point out that there is one synthesizer piece of music played in the music that was not composed by Ennio. Now he wouldn’t say who did it, but for those of you who did see the movie, I’m sure we can all say who it was.

Someone asked if it was possible for John to talk the powers that be in to getting the soundtrack to “The Thing” re-released, as it has been out of print now for several years. John replied that unfortunately he has no juice with the powers that be, so it looks like fans everywhere will still have to shell out an obscene amount of money in collector’s market to get the Varese Sarabande release at conventions or online.

Another guy in the audience pointed out that several of his movies have been remade such as “Assault on Precinct 13,” “The Fog,” and “Halloween,” and that a remake of “Escape From New York” is in the works. This guy said he found these remakes blasphemous, and he asked John how he felt about them. John replied:

“I actually find it flattering. They also have to pay me a lot of money when they do that!”

Dean Cundey, director of photography on “The Thing,” has worked on several of Carpenter’s movies including the all time classic “Halloween.” John has actually not worked with Cundey for a long time now, and one man asked why that was the case, and if there had been some falling out between the two of them. Carpenter replied that there has been no falling out between the two of them, and that he recently caught up with Dean at a movie shoot in Canada. John did however point out why they haven’t worked together in a long time:

“Dean wanted to be a director. And when you have a director on a movie, and a director of photography who wants to be a director, that’s just not gonna work out.”

Everyone who knows John Carpenter knows that he himself is a big fan of westerns, and he recently recorded a commentary track for the special edition DVD release of the John Wayne classic, “Rio Bravo.” Many wonder why he has never get around to doing a western of his own. John replied that he honestly didn’t know, but that he did come close several times. The closest he said that he had ever come to doing one was when he wrote the script for “El Diablo” which was made into a cable movie (he won a Cable Ace Award for his script that year). If you look closely at his film work, all of his movies do have western elements to them. The closest he has ever gotten to making a western is arguably “Vampires” with James Woods.

Carpenter also made it official that “Masters Of Horror,” the Showtime network’s original anthology series, is now dead. John directed two of the series’ best episodes with “Cigarette Burns” and “Pro-Life,” and he said that the show has now turned into an NBC show called “Fear Itself” which is being worked on by the same people. While this incarnation of the horror anthology series may open itself up to a bigger audience than it found on cable, Carpenter said that there is not much to be feared about it.

John Carpenter has not actually directed a full length feature film since “Ghosts of Mars” which came out back in 2001. Many are wondering, and it was asked, what future projects he has on tap, and of what his current passions are. His reply:

“Current passions? I’m playing Ninja Gaiden, I just got Metal Gear Solid 4 for Playstation 3… No seriously, I have a couple of things I’m looking at doing, so we’ll see what happens.”

Before he left, he did have some things to say about “The Fog” which start showing a few minutes later:

“I have heard that the print for this movie is not in the greatest shape, and that it is pretty faded. But keep in mind that when we made this movie, we made it for only $1 million dollars… So, please be kind.”

Rising again to a big standing ovation, John thanked everyone again for coming and strode out of the theater. He did however stick around outside of the theater for a bit to take pictures with the fans and sign autographs. I’ve seen John do many different showings of his movies, and of him talking with the audience after the movie ended. With this one, he seemed to enjoy himself a lot more than he usually does. I can imagine that he gets sick at times of talking about the same movies over and over again, and he has probably discussed them to death in different arenas, but he still shows up to meet with the fans. You have to figure that he has had the last laugh on the critics and audiences who tore his movies apart when they first opened years ago. Many of his movies were way ahead of their time, but people eventually did catch on to his work, and they love it just like they should have in the beginning.

John Carpenter will be back tonight for a double feature of “Escape From New York” and the vastly underappreciated “Escape From LA.” Hopefully, we’ll see John make another big screen film at some point again in the future.

Written by Ben Kenber