And here's yet another in my unofficial "Why Haven't I Reviewed This Yet?" series.
I mean, seriously: John Carpenter is one of my favorite directors of all time, and probably my favorite director during the 80's along with Steven Spielberg and Richard Donner. I've already reviewed Prince of Darkness and In The Mouth of Madness here, as well as Big Trouble In Little China as a guest on another blog. It should be a foregone conclusion that I'd review Carpenter's first entry in his "Apocalypse Trilogy" from 1982, The Thing. Hell, I should've reviewed this one before reviewing the not-so-bad 2011 prequel...um...The Thing. Yeah, I know, that's a lot of linkage there.
Carpenter's The Thing was a juggernaut in the VHS era. I can't begin to tell you how often I rented/borrowed it. It had that "oh, man, you gotta SEE it" vibe years after it came out. Its reputation preceded it when I first settled in to watch it in 1984 (the turnaround for movies was a little slower back then, plus I'd spent a year in Sweden as an exchange student, limiting my renting abilities). Plate of beefy nachos in hand, I was enthralled and filled with adrenaline. This movie was going to GROSS (according to my friends) and filled with groundbreaking practical effects by the legendary Rob Bottin (with significant input by another legend, Stan Winston), it definitely filled that quota.
Now imagine this friendly fellow hanging from your ceiling as you fall asleep. You're welcome.
U.S. Outpost #31 is a research facility in the sunny locale of Antartica. A lone dog, chased by a pair of frantic Norwegian men, seeks refuge and as a result of crazy desperation and a language barrier, its pursuers are killed. You just know the dog is hiding something, and if you translate what one of the Norwegian men shouts, you get much of the plot right there. Strange things begin happening when the the dog reveals its true nature, assimilating several dogs before apparently being stopped. R.J. MacReady (Kurt Russell) leads an expedition to the Norwegian outpost, finding evidence that something had ravaged the researchers there. And hey, if you watch the 2011 prequel, you get to see how it all happened.
Back at the camp, Blair (Wilford Brimley) deduces that the creature can assimilate other living beings. That's when the paranoia really kicks in. Who can trust whom? Things (slight pun intended) get really crazy from here on out, and if you haven't seen the film, what are you waiting for? You've got a creature that is comprised of individual creatures in a conglomerate building possessing a modified hive mind. It can be separate creatures, but with one purpose and drive. MacReady and his colleagues go from guys who work together to guys who don't know who's going to assimilate them at a moment's notice.
You get to see a guy suddenly grow a mouth on his belly while trying to be revived. You see a blood test like no other - hey, even the blood is a freakin' "Thing." You see guys who you think are just fine change into bloodthirsty alien demons while tied to a couch. You just don't know who is who, right down to the final frames. One of the biggest mysteries of Carpenter's film is the ending. Are we seeing who we think we're seeing? The answer is given somewhat in the prequel, if you know where to look, but even that is up to interpretation.
Carpenter used a classic novella ("Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell Jr.) and the classic 1951 sci-fi film (The Thing From Another World from directors Christian Nyby and Howard Hawks) as inspiration and stirred them up with the earmarks of a closed-room mystery to create what has become a true cult classic. The Antarctic itself stands as the "closed room," with escape not an easy option. Hell, it's practically impossible with the weather and terrain. Then add to that the fact that if anyone actually leaves, he may be carrying the Thing with him. The creature can appear as anyone, so there's your "it can be anyone" trait that the classic whodunnits and closed-room mysteries have.
Kurt Russell is a standout among intense performances, adding another to his list of great tough-guy heroes that he portrayed during the 80's like Snake Plissken and Jack Burton. He's steady and reliable, but still paranoid enough that he isn't superhuman. He makes mistakes just like anyone else, as Clark (Richard Masur) finds out.
The Thing is a classic, with tight direction from Carpenter and a moody soundtrack from Ennio Morricone. It is, as my subtitle suggests, a classic from a classic - similar but different enough to stand well on its own. If you've never seen it, take it in the way I did when I first saw it: full of anticipation with a plate full of beef nachos. And hey, if you can fully recreate my experience by seeing it on VHS, I tip my Phillies cap to you.
I'm just glad it wasn't a remake...of a retelling.
As horror classics go, it would be considered sacrilege to remake John Carptener's The Thing from 1982, which in itself, was a retelling of The Thing From Outer Space from 1951 which was film version of John W. Campbell's 1938 story "Who Goes There?" Yeah, it's got a long pedigree, but Carpenter's version is considered hands-off. But when a prequel was rumored, then confirmed, to be in the works, I have to say I was intrigued. As anyone who has seen Carpenter's film knows, there's a whole story to be told about the Norwegian guy trying to kill an "innocent" dog and the Norwegian outpost that the characters visit in the early parts of the movie.
In Carpenter's 1982 classic, a frantic man shouting in Norwegian pursues a dog into the American camp and is killed as he begins firing his rifle wildly. Later in the movie, the Americans, led by Kurt Russell's McReady, discover the leftovers of carnage at the Norwegian outpost. 2011's version aims to tell the story of what led up to the opening moments of the 1982 movie. Got it?
Written by Eric Heisserer (based on Campbell's story) and directed by Matthijs van Heijningen Jr., The Thing finds paleontologist Kate (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) being drafted for her expertise as something has been discovered - quite by accident - in the Antartican snowfields: a bona fide spaceship. Not only that, one of its occupants has been found nearby, encased in ice. They bring the extraterrestrial popsicle back to camp where it eventually thaws and that's when the fun starts.
This creature doesn't just rampage through the camp, cutting down humans left and right. Well, it does do that, but this is a crafty little bugger. It gets into a person, assimilating them cell by cell, until you can't tell the human from the alien. Or can you? There is a way, and right when I thought they might completely copy how it was done in the 1982 film, they go in a different, actually quite interesting direction. Paranoia still reigns as poor Kate is numbered among the dwindling survivors.
The creature has plans of its own, heading back to the spaceship from whence it came. Its intentions aren't quite clear, but anyone can guess what could happen if this little cell-changing puppy gets out into the world. It wouldn't be a street party, I can tell you that much. There's a showdown on the ship as it nearly takes off, explaining how it's just below the surface when the American team finds it later. There's a sigh of relief as it all over. Ahhh. Oh, wait, this isn't an uplifting type of movie. Kate and Carter (Joel Edgerton) still have a few issues to work out.
It isn't really a spoiler to say that the film ends by blending nearly seamlessly with the beginning of Carpenter's movie. One could watch this film, then pop in 1982's classic and the story just keeps on going. Although I expected much less from this movie, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I didn't dislike it. It's not the same nail-biter as the other, and the aura of paranoia isn't quite as palpable. However, as a setup to Carpenter's movie, it's enjoyable and quite respectful to its source material.
Events that happen in this movie show up in the one we all know and love. The ice block...an axe in the door...the guy with the slashed throat...the specimens in the snow. It's all there, and this is the story that explains how it all came to be. A lot of it is very much the same as the other film, but one could argue that the choices of actions that a group could resort to would be limited. If it was a standalone movie, I'd be much more lukewarm about it. As a companion piece, it's not all that bad. It provides some subtle answers to long-asked questions about the 1982 version, and still leaves things open for interpretation.
And now if you'll excuse me, it's time to pop in that 1982 movie I keep telling you about. In the meantime, here, watch the trailer for this one...
When John Carpenter wants to end the world, he does it in such interesting ways.
In The Thing, he hinted that a parasitic, all-consuming alien life form would spread to the rest of the world unless it was stopped at that lonely Antarctic outpost. The son of the Anti-God would usher in its unholy father in Prince of Darkness unless several desperate people ended the threat in a run down old church. However, with In The Mouth of Madness, it's reality itself under assault from the Old Ones made famous in the literary world by H. P. Lovecraft. And what can one man played by Sam Neill do?
In short: nothing.
Lovecraft was known for penning tales of unseen horrors, monsters so vile and so primed to crack reality at its seams that to glimpse them would cause instant madness. The whole Cthulhu mythos? That was him. Casting shadows over Innsmouth? Lovecraft. The fish people who worship the mad god Dagon? Yep. He even had a story called "At The Mountains Of Madness," so it's a pretty fair bet that In The Mouth of Madness is a tip of the cap to his writing genius.
But Lovecraft isn't the only prolific, talented writer showcased in the film. There are several obvious nods to my own longtime favorite, Stephen King: the northeast region, the small town, the name of the antagonist author (Sutter Cane = Stephen King). In truth, the entire film is about fiction, about the written word and its power over reality. Words guiding us to believe anything, then using that power to fuel...well, in this case, the return of the Old Ones. And that's not a good thing, dear readers.
See, Sam Neill plays John Trent, insurance investigator extraordinaire. When we first meet him, he's a little on the...nutty side. He's locked up in an asylum when he's visited by Dr. Wrenn (David Warner), who wants the lowdown on what brought him there. So John tells him the whole, horrifying story...which begins when he's called in by a publisher (Charlton Heston) to find their missing cash cow, the eccentric mega-superstar writer, Sutter Cane (Jurgen Prochnow), who has a final, blockbuster novel to get into the stores. The name of the book? "In The Mouth of Madness." After reading some of Cane's horrific novels, John has bad dreams, weird feelings, and a sudden revelation: the covers of Cane's books can be manipulated into a map of New Hampshire, revealing the location of a fictional town called Hobb's End. Accompanied by editor Linda Styles (Julie Carmen), John sets out to find Hobb's End. After a very trippy...er...trip, he finds it.
Hobb's End is like a ghost town with some eerie little residents, like the strange old lady up at the hotel bearing the name of a real Lovecraft character (Pickman from "Pickman's Model"). Discovering a menacing-looking church on the outskirts of town, John and Linda investigate and find Sutter Cane, that's for sure.
From there, things get really freaky in the little hamlet of Hobb's End. Linda goes after Cane, but she's helpless against the new, vast power that the Old Ones have granted the author. Then it's down to John, and his role in what is essentially the end of all that is. John slowly discovers the truth about Hobb's End, its residents, and Sutter Cane, and give the man credit, he stands up to it the best he can. But despite his obvious strength, Cane is far, far too powerful. John is meant to deliver the end of the world, typed just as Cane envisioned it, and there's nothing he can do.
The ending doesn't present any in-your-face world destruction scenes. In that Carpenter never shows you out-and-out chaos, he's making it even more frightening. John Trent may be the last sane person on Earth, and we're hanging on to that final unraveling thread with him. We know something's going on in the world, but just like Lovecraft did in his stories, we don't see it. The knowing is terrifying enough.
In The Mouth of Madness isn't linear in its storytelling. Much of the story is a flashback controlled by John's memories. But there's a bit of meta-storytelling going on here as well. Sutter Cane goes on and on about controlling reality, and he may be controlling what we see in the movie as well. During a fun little scene on a bus late in the movie, he proclaims that he "is God now" and asks John, "Did I ever tell you my favorite color is blue?" When John snaps awake, everything is indeed blue. But throughout the movie, the color blue shows up, especially in peoples' eyes. Has Cane not only been controlling what John sees, but what we see as well? Possibly. Something to think about. I love when movies play outside the sandbox, and Carpenter has never been afraid to do that.
What a fun movie In The Mouth of Madness turns out to be. It's the third in Carpenter's loose Apocalypse Trilogy and it can be argued that it's the most dire of circumstances - certainly it's the most bleak in terms of ultimate endings. The little nods to Lovecraft and King are a kick to uncover. Sam Neill does a fantastic job as a true "omega man," part detective, part skeptic, all victim. Definitely a great closing to the Apocalypse Trilogy, and a great way to spend a movie-watching evening.
In fact, get a hold of all three movies and watch them back-to-back. It'll put a little sunshine in your day.
Atmosphere. That's what really counts. You can throw buckets of blood and gore at me, but what can really give me that unsettled feeling is the right atmosphere. The way a film looks or feels, how the characters are made to look or how we perceive them as they react to what's happening to them. The environment or setting of a film can be a character all in itself.
There are lots of characters in John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness - some of them actually make it through to the end. But one of the best characters is the atmosphere - it's almost a living thing in itself: heavy, confining even in outdoor shots, a weight on the human characters as they move through the mystery of St. Godard's Church. I'll talk more about what I call a "heavy" atmosphere in a setting a little later, but first let's get into the movie itself:
When a priest dies before a big meeting with the higher-ups, an unnamed Priest (Donald Pleasance - the character is actually known as Father Loomis - Carpenter fans do the math) is called in to retrieve his personal effects, which include a small metal box containing a key. What the Priest discovers shakes him to his bones and leads him to call upon someone he considers a friend and rival, Professor Howard Birack (the great Victor Wong), who teaches doctorate-level physics theory.
That's right. Science and religion are tagging up in a cage match against...a tube of pure evil.
Now, don't get me wrong. It's fun to say "tube of pure evil." Go ahead, try it. See? But everything about that tube is no laughing matter. Even science man Birack is rattled after seeing the swirling goo. The Priest tells him it has been influencing the outside world for about a month, changing everything on a molecular level even as the sun and moon align in the daytime sky.
In the meantime, insects and worms are getting agitated and the homeless around St. Godard's begin acting strangely in unison, watching the visitors to the old church with robotic menace. Also, handsome young student Brian (Jameson Parker of Simon & Simon and his mustache) first innocently creeps on then legitimately courts fellow classmate Catherine (Lisa Blount). He's all googly-eyed over her, but she's mostly guarded.
Birack gathers his best students along with other specialized departments to investigate the entity and translate an ancient text that is in the room with it. They load equipment into the abandoned church despite not a single one of them knowing what the whole she-bang is about. Finally, the restless crew is summoned to the basement to witness the Big Ol' Tube of Evil for themselves. Their mission becomes clear: find out what the hell is in there and prove what it is.
A long night ahead of them, the students get to work. One of them is cleared to leave, but meets a throng of the homeless outside. After "admiring" a blasphemous pigeon-based sculpture, the unlucky guy is stabbed with half a bicycle by the lead homeless dude (Alice Cooper). The games have begun.
The students put the clues together and find out that the tube itself is millions of years old, had once been buried in the Middle East about 2,000 years before it ends up in the USA, and that the text in the old book is a literal warning from Jesus Christ Himself that it is indeed Satan inside the tube...and that the tube was buried by Satan's father, dubbed the Anti-God.
And Junior is waking up in preparation to bring his Daddy into our world. *shudder*
Things start happening, small at first. One student bangs her arm, which seems innocent at first, but that changes later. When she goes to take a nap, that's it for her, as we'll soon see. Another, Susan ("radiologist, glasses" becomes a running line of dialogue about her), falls victim to a stream of water that carries the evil one's essence. She becomes possessed, then breaks the neck of another student before moving on to infect the theologist translating the text. They, in turn, infect the very tall, very deep-voiced student Conor with juicy, devil-juiced-filled kisses. Susan and Lisa, the theologist, bring the canister to the sleeping, Blue Oyster Cult-bruised woman and pretty soon the essence of evil is flowing into her. Seriously, the symbol that the bruise on her arm forms looks exactly like BOC's infamous symbol.
Apparently, the Tube of Evil is a big fan.
Another student tries to leave around this time, citing that the whole thing is ridiculous. He glimpses the possessed Susan just before he's stabbed multiple times by a homeless woman. But don't fret, minor character fans, the guy they call Wyndham comes back with a strange, foreboding message:
Things break down after this, as Conor fights the possession long enough to cut his own throat with a piece of wooden banister. The homeless have barricaded everyone inside and the woman once known as Kelly has completely absorbed the essence and has become the living vessel for Satan. The dreams of a possible future - sent from 1999 via tachyon transmissions - show shaky, grainy, and eerily understated pictures of something emerging from the church. Everyone in the church experiences these dreams, but we only see a couple snippets of them. Just enough to creep us out.
During a huge skirmish, everyone is separated, with the Priest ending up in the boiler room, where a huge mirror sits on a wall. You see, Satan needs the mirror to bring the Anti-God into our dimension. Reaching into the huge mirror, she...er, he...um, it grabs hold of a horrible, grasping hand and begins to pull. No one is there to stop it...no one except Catherine, who tackles Satan into the mirror just as the Priest smashes it with an axe. The image of Catherine on the other side, fading into a flickering blackness, is heartbreaking. Like someone disappearing into cold, dark water under broken ice.
The survivors emerge, and move on sadly with their lives. Brian has one last dream before gazing hopefully/fearfully at the bedroom mirror and reaching his hand out to...
And cut to black and end credits.
If this movie doesn't make you fear mirrors, I don't know what will.
John Carpenter made this film as the second part of what he called the "Apocalypse Trilogy," after 1982's remake of The Thing and before 1995's H. P. Lovecraft/Stephen King tribute In The Mouth Of Madness. In each movie, the world is threatened on a level experienced only by a small group of people. The rest of the world is pretty much clueless for two of the movies - they learn the hard way in the final one, but I'll discuss that one at another time.
The threat in Prince of Darkness begins on a conceptual level, and I find that fascinating. Sure, big, blatant threats can be fun from the masked killers of Friday the 13th and Carpenter's own Halloween to the monstrous threat in Cloverfield. But the hidden dangers, the ones that lurk behind our own perceptions of reality...that's where real terror lies. You don't see it coming. You feel it, but it's one of those "corner of your eye" nudges until it's too late. Things in this movie happen not only on an outwardly physical level, but as Professor Birack states, "on the subatomic level" as well. The Priest has a similar quote when he said Satan hides "between the atoms," which is how he sneaks his slimy little way into peoples' hearts. The world around the characters is changing: ants and worms spaz out and climb windows, the homeless (or possibly only those homeless with mental illness) act in unison to carry out the will of something unseen, moon and sun align in space, the sky and the air appear...heavier.
In one subtle scene...blink and you miss it...main character Brian discusses the weight of thing as they have been occurring. He's messing around with a playing card, as he loves card tricks and it's a neat character quirk that he has to do that to busy his hands (maybe he's an ex-smoker). As he makes his point, he performs a pass to make the card look like it's disappearing. Simple sleight of hand, really. Only...the card actually disappears. No one has time to comment on it as events then spiral towards the conclusion. But I thought it was a well-timed, tiny little aside that shows the world is literally sinking into something unexplainable and not quite so obvious.
Here is the scene of which I speak, with the first few minutes setting it up:
Subtle and spooky.
And yes, because it is my blog, I will compare the heavy feeling to - I know it's getting old, but bear with me - Grant Morrison's Final Crisis from DC Comics. When evil Darkseid finally manifests himself in regular reality, it tears a hole in everything we know. Earth is pulled into a black hole singularity created by Darkseid's fall from The Fourth World's reality. In Prince of Darkness, I think something similar would happen. If the Anti-God forces its way into our reality, it will rip and tear the universe at the point where it happens: our world. Wrap your mind around that concept as you fall asleep. You're welcome.
Carpenter was always a master of atmosphere. I mean, look at Halloween, with its minimal blood spray yet sheer terror. The Thing is a study in claustrophobia and paranoia. Even Big Trouble In Little China provides an air of high adventure and magic that happens just beyond the streets and buildings of Chinatown. Prince of Darkness is mostly lesser-known than those three films. Horror fans and aficionados are very familiar with it, and most do agree that it is underrated and among the most chilling horror films. It is certainly among my favorites from the 80's or any decade, for that matter. This Halloween, do yourself a favor and check it out if you haven't before. It's a great popcorn chiller, nostalgic for those of us who grew up in the 80's and saw it then, and still has weight for those just now discovering it.
Now, here, enjoy the final dream sequence/message from the future:
Oh, and here's what the voice says: "This is not a dream...not a dream. We are using your brain's electrical system as a receiver. We are unable to transmit through conscious neural interference. You are receiving this broadcast as a dream. We are transmitting from the year one, nine, nine, nine. You are receiving this broadcast in order to alter the events you are seeing. Our technology has not developed a transmitter strong enough to reach your conscious state of awareness, but this is not a dream. You are seeing what is actually occurring for the purpose of causality violation."
Brrr.
OK, I'm off to deal with zombies. They're not a threat on the conceptual level. They're just undead and hungry. Until next time, fellow survivors...
