Blu-ray Review: The Thing (1982)

"One of the greatest Horror movies ever made."

(aka Who Goes There?)
Release Date: June 25th, 1982.
Country: USA.
Rating: R.
Written by: Bill Lancaster and John W. Campbell Jr.
Directed by: John Carpenter.
Starring: Kurt Russell, Keith David, Wilfred Brimley, Richard Dysart, Richard Masur, T.K. Carter, Peter Maloney, and Donald Moffat.

This review is based on the Universal Blu-ray of The Thing that we own, which is a solid disc in its own right. However, with Scream Factory's announcement that they're giving the John Carpenter classic the Collector's Edition Blu-ray treatment this September, it's probably best if you pre-order that one, and skip the Universal disc.

We just really wanted to review the movie, as I can't believe that we haven't done before now.

In the vast frozen tundra of Antarctica, a terrified Malamute runs for its life from a gang of angry Norwegians in a helicopter who are they're trying to kill the poor dog for unknown reasons. The dog makes it an American research station, and the bumbling Nords blow up their own helicopter, and end up shot for their efforts. Evil bastards! 

AMERICANS WILL KILL FOR THEIR DOGS.

Wondering what in the hell that was all about, the Americans venture to the nearby Norwegian research station, where they find everyone dead, burned to death along with some sort of mutated, human-like creature. They also find a massive flying saucer buried in the ice, which the Nords were apparently trying to dig up like any good group of scientists would do. Conversely, any rational group of human being would leave that shit buried in the ice, because nothing good can come of digging it up.

YOU SHOULD REALLY JUST COVER THAT THING BACK UP AGAIN...

So they put the dog in the kennels with the other dogs, and then decide to do an autopsy on the twisted mutant corpse, and they basically find out what was inside of that massive space ship when both of them mutate into horrific creatures which tries to assimilate everyone in camp, all in the name of survival.

SCIENCE CAN BE A TERRIFYING THING SOMETIMES.

Lead by helicopter pilot R.J. MacReady, the crew of the research station band together to destroy The Thing, even though it's impossible for them to tell who amongst them has already been taken over by the alien thing.

Mistrust and excellence ensues.

THEY REALLY SHOULD HAVE JUST SHOT THE DAMN DOG AND CALLED IT A DAY.

Intense, terrifying, and wonderfully gory, The Thing is not only an excellent movie, but it's probably the best remake (re-telling is probably more accurate) of all-time.

This is a claustrophobic movie with a very grim tone, and Carpenter used the isolated Antarctic setting to amplify those aspects to a level of intensity that few other Horror movies have been able to match since. From the opening shot, The Thing lets you know that what's happening is urgent and potentially dire for all involved, and it doesn't miss a beat until the end credits roll.

Carpenter has always been a director who sticks with what works, especially early on in his career; The Thing marks the 3rd time that Kurt Russell was his lead actor (he acted for the man 5 times), and the 4th time that cinematographer Dean Cundey ran the camera for the director. He had a formula back then (which included talent on both sides of the camera, score, tone), and it worked perfectly. The guy seemed to be able to catch lightning in a bottle over and over again, and The Thing stands with Halloween as the best examples of that.

The cast in this one is perfect. Kurt Russell was the man back then, as he still is today, and although Snake Plissken may be his most iconic character, he kills it here as MacReady. He really takes the movie to another level with his presence alone, and the fact that he's surrounded by guys like Wilford Brimley, Keith David, Richard Dysart, Richard Masur, and Peter Maloney doesn't hurt things either. It's one hell of an ensemble cast.

We also have to tip the hat to the Special FX work of Rob Bottin. The work he did on this film, which was all practical (CGI was a rare beast back then), is a thing of twisted, gory brilliance which still impresses today. The score by Ennio Morricone is perfect as well.

BEST MOVIE BEARD OF ALL-TIME?

So who was the damn Thing at the end: MacReady or Childs? Or was it neither of them? And did they freeze to death, or did the thing kill them both and escape? We need answers!

IT WAS ONE HELL OF AN ENDING THOUGH.

Why this movie flopped when it was released in 1982 is beyond reasoning. I guess it might have to do with E.T. being released a few months prior, and maybe people wanted sweet, heartfelt movies about aliens, instead of something that was bleak and filled with a bunch of twisted Body Horror grotesqueries, but come on. This is EVERYTHING that a Horror movie is supposed to be.

Maybe it just took years and years of mediocre to bad Horror movies for people to say "You know, John Carpenter got it right with The Thing." At least they finally came around, I guess.

WE FEEL YOU, KURT.

Rob Bottin's work on The Thing set the benchmark for Special Effects, and it's full of bloody, nasty, gory transformations and deaths.

'

"YOU'VE GOT TO BE FUCKING KIDDING."

Nope.

PLENTY OF BLOOD ON DISPLAY THOUGH.

• Just like Blade Runner, which was released on the same day in 1982, The Thing was a failure at the Box Office. Neither film was loved by critics either. Both movies have since gone on to become classics of their Genres. 
• The Thing is cited by many as a remake of the 1951 movie, but it's actually a more faithful adaptation of the novella on which both movies are based. 
• An alternate ending was filmed in which MacRready is rescued, and is revealed (via blood test) not to be The Thing. We're glad they didn't use that one though. 
• Nick Nolte turned down the role of MacRready. Thank God. 

PRACTICALLY BRILLIANT.

When filmmakers sit down to figure out how they're going to structure their Thrillers, Horror or otherwise, I have to imagine that The Thing is a movie that a great many of them look at to show them the way. People may say that Halloween is John Carpenter's best movie, and they may be right, but it's hard not to give The Thing serious consideration for that title.

This movie is a mandatory addition to any Horror Collection, and one that we'll re-visit over and over again for the rest of our lives.

A+

The Thing is available now on Blu-ray, DVD, and VOD, and the 2-Disc Collector's Edition from Scream Factory will be released in September. You can Pre-Order it below.

Since there's no female presence in The Thing, let's take a minute to admire Kurt Russell's fantastic beard game, which was truly on point in this one.

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DVD Review: Clown (2015)

*This is our review of Clown from March of last year. We're reposting it because it's finally out in the U.S.  

(aka The Little Short Film That Could.)
Release Date: June 17th.
Country: USA/Canada.
Rating: R.
Written by: Jon Watts.
Directed by: Christopher D. Ford and Jon Watts.
Starring: Andy Powers, Laura Allen, and Peter Stormare.

While most people seem to find clowns creepy to one extent or another, there are actually a lot of folks out there who are deathly afraid of them. Like us. *After surviving the bizarre and terrifying "We're never going in the woods behind our house again!" incident when we were 12, we've been reasonably afraid of clowns; especially when they try to get us to crawl into a drain pipe to drink some Mad Dog 20/20 and have a shirtless tickle fight. "Mr. Jingles" didn't get us that day, but he's haunted our dreams ever since...

Anyhow, having just watched IT  (review HERE), we thought that it might be fun to see if the Eli Roth-produced Clown could fill us with that same sense of terrifying unease... which it kinda did, albeit in an entirely different way.

A loving father going out of his way to dress up as a clown for his kid's birthday is a sweet notion, especially when he knows it will mean the world to that kid. Conversely, it's a creepy notion when that same father finds the clown outfit while sifting through a bunch of old clothes in someone else's basement (attic?), because you just don't know where that stuff has been.

YEAH, YOU SHOULD GO SEE WHAT'S IN THAT CHEST.

After donning the outfit he found in the trunk, Kent uses it to play Dummo the Clown, and give his son the birthday that he deserves. Then he tries to take the costume off, and can't. Embarrassed at having to wear the getup while taking his son to school, and then to work, Kent even goes so far as to try and cut it off with a Sawzall, but to no avail. His wife eventually helps him to get the nose off, but he ends up bleeding like a sieve in the process.

HER DADDY ALWAYS SAID SHE MARRIED A CLOWN...

Realizing that he's in some serious trouble, Kent then decides to track down the previous owner of the clown suit, which leads him to Peter Stormare, who explains to him that the costume is actually made from the skin of an ancient Demon. This Demon, called The Cloyne, eats kids, which is apparently why Kent has been so hungry since putting the suit on. Once Kent understands what is happening to him, Peter Stormare tries to behead him, but he escapes and goes into hiding.

THE CLOYNE.

From here on out, it's a battle of wills between Kent and the Demon, which can really only end with Kent eating a bunch of kids to appease the monster inside of him. Far be it from us to spoil what happens next, but suffice it to say that we'll never look at a ball pit in the same way again.

AWW, WHY ISN'T ANYONE PLAYING WITH HIM?

For something that started out as a fake trailer and then became a feature-length movie, Clown is pretty impressive effort. It may not have pushed the boundaries as far as we thought a movie produced by Eli Roth would, but it certainly had enough dark and disturbing content to appease us, at least for the most part.

Clown does a good job at creating and maintaining an effective feeling of dread throughout, even during its darkly funny moments. The idea of a guy putting on a demon-infused clown suit and not being able to take it off because it's become a part of him, is a truly terrifying concept... especially when it leads to him killing and eating children.

The last 15 minutes of the movie were pretty effective, and had us a bit unnerved. 

HE JUST WANTS TO JUGGLE, HONK HIS HORN, AND EAT KIDS.

When I sit down to watch a Horror movie called Clown, I want a movie that is about a killer clown, not a movie that spends 75% of its runtime showing us a guy turning into a killer clown. Some of the "pre-clown" bits were really good, but every time this movie got going, it slowed down again to remind us that Kent was still a man who was fighting against the Demon inside of him, and it just killed the momentum.

Clown would have been much better served by going all out with the clown carnage, and never looking back.

KILL MORE!

If you're going to have the balls to make a movie about a clown that kills kids, at least go all out with it, and leave me horrified. I'm not necessarily saying that seeing kids killed on-screen in a movie is the apex of entertainment or anything, but in the case of Clown, that exact sort of terrible imagery is supposed to be a part of the payoff.

A METAPHOR FOR WHAT'S ABOUT TO COME?

There's a fair amount of blood & gore in Clown, but most of the kills happen off-screen. We do get lots of blood spatter though, and even a decapitation or two. The part with the dog was pretty great.

DOGS WILL EAT JUST ABOUT ANYTHING.

Clown is a dry county, sex & nudity-wise.

No one likes clowns. Also, Peter Stormare is still awesome.

DOES ANYONE DO ODDBALL/CRAZY BETTER THAN PETER STORMARE?

Clown will no doubt terrify anyone who genuinely fears clowns, although those people probably wouldn't be watching it to begin with. For the average Horror fan though, Clown will most likely prove to be a mixed bag of great ideas and plodding executing. This Eli Roth-produced effort is definitely worthy of a watch, just don't expect it to be as shocking as Hostel or anything.

C+

Clown is available now on VOD.

Laura Allen doesn't clown around when it comes to looking good.

VOD Review: Bite (2016)

"Way more bark than bite."

A good many Horror critics out there seem to really dig Bite, and we can understand why, as it's fairly reminiscent of 80's Body Horror classic, The Fly.

Of course Bite is nowhere near the film that the Cronenberg gem is, and aside from the fact that the girl in this movie slowly transforms into some sort of insect-thing, there's really nothing else to link the two movies together.

I don't know, Bite just didn't do it for us, and I guess I'm not sure how it garnered so many 4 and 5 Star reviews. Maybe this is just one of those times where we didn't get what everyone else did.

After accepting a marriage proposal that she probably shouldn't have, Casey and her friends head off to Costa Rica to have themselves a bachelorette getaway. While in full party mode, the girls decide to head off the beaten path to some secluded lagoon to have themselves a swim, where Casey gets bitten by something under the water.

RELAX. IT'S PROBABLY NOTHING.

After returning home, Casey's bite gets worse and worse, oozing and growing in its infected splendor. On top of that, she has to deal with the fact that she doesn't want to marry her fiance anymore, and she's not exactly sure how to break the news to him. We're not sure which plot point was more uncomfortable to watch unfold.

 Sticky Body Horror craziness ensues.

FEMALE BRUNDLEFY.

Bite annoyed us more than it thrilled us, but it did look pretty impressive on the visual front, offering up some pretty impressive gore gags. If I were a bit less jaded than I am, then its lame story, bland characters, and predictable B.S. probably wouldn't have bothered me too much, and I would have really dug it for the B-grade gorefest that it is.

I am jaded though, so things like story and character mean more to me now than they used to, so...

• While filming their friends swimming in a murky lagoon, one girl notices some jellied eggs all around the shore, and says nothing. Any country like Costa Rica has its share of venomous and dangerous wildlife, so why not even a "Hey guys, maybe we should go back and swim in the pool at the hotel" or "I found some creepy shit that looks like eggs over here!"?
• After the bite that she got on vacation begins to fester and grow, Casey doesn't take herself to the hospital? "I've got some cream for it" is about the extent of her concern. 
• Speaking of Casey, her relationship drama made up the bulk of the middle of the film, and nearly killed the whole thing for us. We didn't care about the characters enough to have to witness so much of their bland drama. 
• The dumbest shit of all was once Casey was totally taken over by whatever infected her, and her apartment looked like the dirtiest, stickiest slaughterhouse that's ever existed, not one of the people who stopped by to check on her took one look at the nastiness covering everything, backed out of the place, and went to get some sort of help?
• Friend stops over, sees entire place covered in scummy viscera, says "Casey, are you here?", searches for Casey, meets a grisly fate, repeat. Come on.

For us, it seemed like story, character, and logic took a backseat to the movie's visual nastiness, and that kinda killed things for us. It was like the movie was just biding it's time, waiting until it could show us the good stuff.

THAT BEING THE GOOD STUFF.

This movie is all kinds of gooey and gory, and should more than satisfy the gorehounds amongst us. Maybe don't eat dinner while watching it though.

GORE. GORE EVERYWHERE.

There's a sex scene in a car, but even that was mostly skin-free.

YEAH, WE'RE SORRY THAT YOU WEREN'T NAKED TOO.

Bite is a movie that many people will probably dig more than we did, as it's visually impressive, it's got some great gore going for it, and it will probably freak people out like it's meant to. For us though, and me in particular, everything else that surrounded the impressive gore felt weak, familiar, and at times, dull.

It's probably worth a rent for less picky Horror fans though. 

C

Bite is available now on VOD.

The gorgeous ladies of Bite.