I Know I'm Human

An analysis of John Carpenter's The Thing

John Carpenter’s, The Thing is my favourite film.

Regular readers will know that I think it’s also the greatest movie ever made.

In this article I’m going to look at what makes this forty two year old movie such a classic, and how Carpenter took quite a simple premise and turned it into a masterclass of paranoia and fear.

I have briefly talked about the movie before when I wrote, “The Four Horror Movies of the Apocalypse” : -

The four horror movies of the Apocalypse

In that article I mentioned that the BFI Film Classics study by Anne Billson is an essential read for anyone with even a passing interest in The Thing, as it goes into great detail on every aspect of the film making process from special effects to interviews with the cast and crew, as well as chronologically covering the movie from start to finish.

That’s not what I intend to do here. My plan is to look at three (and a half) critical scenes, and explain why they are so important in breaking down a movie that has become such a touchstone in horror cinema even after all these years.

It is based on the 1938 novella, Who Goes There by John W. Campbell which was originally filmed in 1951 as The Thing from Another World. Both are well worth checking out.

I am going to assume a basic understanding of the plot. However, just to set the scene, it concerns a research team of twelve men who are based at a remote US scientific station in Antarctica (US Output #31 if we’re being precise).

Also, for future reference, and to avoid confusion, the names of those men are MacReady, Childs, Nauls, Garry, Blair, Norris, Clark, Palmer, Doc, Bennings, Fuchs and Windows. I didn’t even have to look that up!

And that’s all you really need to know. What follows is 100 minutes of tension and terror, that begins with the simple image of a dog running through snow.

Also, a slight warning before I go on. Plot spoilers, bad language and gruesome pictures all wait within. You have been warned!

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“Get the hell away! It’s not a dog! It’s some sort of thing.”

Ah well. If only any of the scientists had spoken Norwegian then none of this would have happened. Maybe. Anyway, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

We have just watched as the eerie, thumping Ennio Morricone score is interrupted by the sound of a helicopter swooping low as it chases a dog across the snowy landscape towards a collection of vehicles and buildings.

It’s the research station, and inside we see some of the guys are playing table tennis, reading or messing about at the pinball machine. And then, we meet MacReady.

He’s in his own shed, drinking whiskey, playing electronic chess and just looking like a badass. Interestingly the only female character in the whole movie is the voice of the computer played by Carpenter regular Adrienne Barbeau (just as Jamie Lee Curtis is the narrator in Escape to New York) but when MacReady loses, he pours his drink into the machine and puts an end to her, so it’s clear he doesn’t like losing! He hears the helicopter approaching and, just like other members of the team, goes out to investigate.

The dog runs towards the men, seemingly terrified, as the helicopter lands and one of the crew emerge armed with a rifle and a grenade, which he accidently drops. The grenade explodes, killing the pilot, and destroying the helicopter.

As the scientists stand in stunned silence, the gunman shouts the fateful words above in Norwegian, which are importantly not subtitled into English, before opening fire at the dog, but hitting one of the men (Bennings) in the leg. Everyone dives for cover as the mad man chases the dog through the camp firing indiscriminately before being shot through the eye by the camp commander, Garry.

As MacReady looks over the scene of death and devastation, he mutters the brilliant line : -

“First Goddamn week of winter.”

Isn’t that just outstanding! What a scene!

It throws you right into the action with no explanation as to what is going on, so you feel just as discombobulated as the scientists, and, at the same time, leaves you wondering, if you could grow a beard and get away with wearing sunglasses and a cowboy hat, would you look as cool as MacReady? Sadly, the answer is probably not.

However, it does perfectly set up the rest of the movie. These men, through lack of knowledge and understanding, have no clue what is about to happen to them. The warning goes unheeded and they have to deal with the dire consequences.

You can also see, at that moment in time, they’re all quite friendly with each other. From playing games and light hearted banter, to MacReady making sure Bennings is OK by passing him his bottle of whiskey, there is camaraderie and companionship there. But, as soon as things start to go wrong, the cracks begin to show.

This is expertly played by the cast. With each character, Carpenter briefly takes the time to establish a basic personality for them, even if it may be broad strokes in some cases. Longer introductory scenes were shot, and indeed included on a version shown on US network television, but the director disowned these and rightly so. The actors do more than enough with the short time they are given. From the wise old heads of Wilford Brimley (Blair) and Donald Moffat (Garry) to the young bucks of Keith David (Childs) and David Clennon (Fuchs), they all perfectly depict men struggling to hold onto their sanity, never mind their humanity, as things spiral out of control all around them.

And this is exemplified in the next, and probably the films, most notorious scene.

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However, firstly, I’m going to do a little bit of a cheat.

Just like in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, where the famous graveyard face off is proceeded by Tuco running around trying to find the final resting place of Arch Stanton, accompanied by the magnificent Ecstasy of Gold score by Ennio Morricone once again, here we have, prior to this great scene, one of the greatest lines in cinematic history delivered by MacReady as he looks at the remaining scientists, and tries to decide how many of them are now The Thing.

It all starts to go amok after the dog they let into their camp turns out to be an alien creature and Blair works out that it can perfectly imitate any life form it comes into contact with. He knows that many of the men may already not be what they seem, and if any of them make it back to civilization, this would be a disaster for the human race. When Bennings is killed by The Thing and it begins to create a perfect imitation of him, only for the rest of the crew to burn it before it has time to complete the transformation, this drives him over the edge and he destroys all the helicopters and communication systems leaving the men cut off from the outside world.

Then, a blood test suggested by Doc to try and distinguish between “real” plasma and imitation is sabotaged when someone, or something, contaminates all the bags of blood they have in a locked fridge.

Tensions are now running off the scale.

As the remaining men watch MacReady burn the rest of the creature and the contaminated blood bags with the flame thrower, he turns to the group. In a nice bit of visual misdirection some have their faces completely covered, others are just wearing goggles and some have bare faces. Clearly it’s impossible for him to tell who is human and who is an imitation but he makes his stance known to them all : -

“I know I’m human.”

What a line! And it perfectly encapsulates the crux of this movie. What it means to be human and the fight to stay that way.

Of course, there is also the endless question that if The Thing becomes a perfect imitation, would it actually know that it’s not human. However, that might take far too long to unpick for this essay, but we will come back to it later.

The scene is played quite subtly by Russell. He says the words with a quiet determination whilst pointing the flame thrower at them all, before carefully explaining how he’s plans to find out who’s human and who’s not. Out of all Russell’s great performances this stands as the best for me. MacReady is clearly a muscular presence, but in the moments of doubt you can see he is racked with indecision and fear at the leadership role he has inherited and what is happening all around him. It’s a brilliant turn from an excellent actor.

And so now we come to the coup de grace of John Carpenter’s The Thing. The scene that everyone knows and is rightly lauded for its outstandingly gruesome visuals and genuinely jaw dropping special effects. All masterminded by a 22 year old Rob Bottin.

With all that being said, it’s not my favourite. That’s still to come.

Anyway, by this point, paranoia and conflict are tearing the team apart.

Fuchs has gone missing, and whilst some of the team search for him they begin to suspect MacCready is The Thing. In the resulting melee, MacReady pushes Norris to the ground who appears to have a heart attack and stops breathing.

Doc tries to resuscitate him with the defibrillator but as he pushes the paddles onto Norris’s chest, it bursts open and becomes a huge pair of jaws that bite off Doc’s arms. As he falls dead to the floor, the rest of The Thing emerges from the human shell as all the other men watch on in horror.

Luckily, MacReady still has his handy flame thrower to hand and blasts it to kingdom come. Or so he thinks. As the fire consumes the creature, the head of Norris detaches from the corpse, with much ripping of tendrils and explosions of puss, in an attempt to avoid the flames. As it falls to the floor, six legs sprout from its side and it tries to scuttle away, only for Palmer (remember that) to announce upon seeing it : -

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!”

It soon becomes a very crispy spider Thing.

If all that wasn’t bat shit crazy enough, the scene continues on with probably the most gruesome part of the film and it’s nothing do with monsters or people being ripped apart.

MacReady, having now also shot and killed Clark after he tried to attack him, has figured out, that after what happened with Norris, each part of The Thing will try and get away from heat. So, if he takes some blood from everyone, rather it just being plasma as it is in humans, with the creature it will be it’s own individual Thing, and try to escape a hot needle.

Each of the men have to give a sample of blood and do so by cutting their thumbs with a scalpel which is shown in very graphic close ups. I can handle almost everything horror movies can throw at me but that scene always make me feel slightly queasy.

And so, with Childs, Nauls, Palmer, Garry, Windows and MacReady left, they start carrying out the test whilst eying each other suspiciously.

We, as the audience, know The Thing has to be Childs, who has been the aggressor for most of the movie, or Garry, the camp commander who could easily have contaminated the blood.

MacReady is in the same mind set. Windows blood is OK and then he tests his own and shows them that he is also still human. As he goes to test Palmer’s blood, Garry begins to protest and call the whole thing nonsense. In another bit of brilliant misdirection, it looks like, as The Thing, he is protesting too much : -

“I thought you’d feel that way, Garry. You were the only one who could have got to that blood. We’ll do you last.”

He touches the hot needle to Palmers blood and all hell breaks loose again.

In one of the great all time jump scares, the blood becomes part of a Thing and leaps out the petri dish as Palmer begins to shudder and shake before revealing his true form.

His transformation is just as grossly spectacular, with bulging eyes and blood pouring from his splitting skin as the monster forces its way out. MacReady’s flame thrower jams and before Windows can do anything, it’s on him and chewing his face off, then throwing him into the corner.

MacReady gets the flame thrower working and blasts Palmer before finishing him outside with some dynamite. However, upon returning he sees Windows is beginning to become the Thing, as he has now been infected, and he soon goes the same way as Palmer.

The interesting thing here is that Palmer grassed up the spider Thing earlier when it tried to get away. He was already part of the same life form so why would he do that? Like I mentioned early, was he not aware at the time? Could he not tell he wasn’t human until the hot needle touched his blood? An area well worth exploring in another article and one that links to the other great movie from 1982, Blade Runner, with the Rachel replicant not knowing she wasn’t human until Deckard shows the lies behind her fake memories.

Amidst all this chaos, Nauls, Childs and Garry have still been tied up awaiting their test. True to his word, MacReady leaves the camp commander to last, but when he does the test, nothing happens. As the other men look on bashfully, the reaction from Garry is the perfect denouement to this incredible bit of cinema : -

“I know you gentlemen have been through a lot, but when you find the time, I’d rather not spend the rest of the winter tied to this fucking couch!”

So, yes, everything is there. Horror, gore, tension and humour. It’s just spectacular and a scene that rightly made the film famous.

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And then, we come to the end of the movie. An ending that is up there for me with “Tears in Rain” from the aforementioned Blade Runner.

As I said at the start of this article, spoilers ahoy, so you can’t complain about this. However, that’s what great about the ending of The Thing. It doesn’t spoon feed you answers. It lets your imagination do the work. And that’s exactly how it should be.

MacReady has killed the last remaining Thing with a whole lot of dynamite, but has had to destroy the camp in order to do so. Everyone else is dead. Or so he thinks.

As he slumps, weary and wounded, to the ground, surrounded by the burning wreckage of what was once Outpost 31, he hears a noise and turns to see Childs approaching through the dark. As he sits down opposite MacReady the two men warily eye each other before Childs starts to speak.

I don’t need to describe what happens next. I’ll let the amazing script do that for me.

“Fire’s got the temperature up all over the camp. Won’t last long though.”

“Neither will we.”

“How will we make it?”

“Maybe we shouldn’t.”

“If you’re worried about me ….”

“If we’ve got any surprises for each other, I don’t think we’re in much shape to do anything about it.”

“Well, what do we do?”

“Why don’t we just … wait here for a little while … see what happens.”

And, at that point, MacReady passes Childs the bottle of whiskey and both men chuckle ruefully knowing that they could be sitting opposite a monster that’s about to rip them apart but, ultimately, what the hell. The bass of Morricone’s score kicks in and the titles appear.

It’s just the perfect final scene, in a perfect movie. It gives you no answers. It’s not a happy ending. The heroes don’t get to walk off into the sunset. It’s up to you to figure out what happens next.

There have been various theories floated. The most popular being you supposedly can’t see Childs breath in the cold, therefore that means he’s not breathing, so has to be The Thing. However, when he first arrives you actually can see it so that’s easily debunked. It’s the ambiguity that makes it such a strong ending and I prefer to leave it that way.

And, of course, audiences didn’t like that when it was released. In 1982, they wanted happy endings where aliens were friendly, made boys bikes fly and it all happened to a soaring John Williams score.

In neither The Thing nor Blade Runner, which was released on the same day, did that happen. These are bleak, dark, challenging movies that ask necessary questions and don’t need to give you the answers. That’s what makes them classics. It also meant that they both flopped upon release only to be found again on video. Listen, I’m a huge fan of E.T. but there is a strong argument to be made that both The Thing and Blade Runner had a larger cultural impact on science fiction cinema than Spielberg’s behemoth. That’s my opinion and I’m sticking to it!

Anyway, in summary, hopefully you now understand why I hold this movie in such high regard. It is the film that I can watch at any time, day or night and it always cheers me up. Yes, I am that weird.

Whenever, I hear the wind howl or crunch through deep snow, I think of Outpost 31 and those 12 men desperately fighting for survival whilst trapped in the middle of nowhere.

And that is the movies great strength. It stays with you. Whilst you are watching it, you are imbued with the same paranoia and terror that the characters are feeling. Then, once it’s finished, you’re still thinking about what happens next and where the story will go. Within that uncertainty, endless worlds are created.

“Nobody trusts anybody now. We’re all very tired.”

It is a timeless visceral masterpiece of fear, horror and suspense that speaks to our darkest thoughts on how well we, not only know others, but, also, ourselves. A story that all these years later, perfectly addresses our fractured times. Reflecting modern uncertainties of paranoid suspicion that even our closest friends and associates might not be who we think they are, and how trust, that takes so long to earn, can be banished in an instant.

This is a film about what it means to be human in every sense and how, when we are threatened, we will do whatever it takes to preserve that humanity. Even if it means going up against a savage, dog face alien with massive sprouting tentacles that is intent on assimilating everyone in its path. Because, when you’ve got R.J. MacReady and a flame thrower, you’ve still got hope.

The horror genre, particularly in the cinema, is too easily dismissed as nothing more than jump scares and gore. John Carpenter’s The Thing not only has the courage to embrace those cliches, and take them to a whole other level, but also has the audacity and chutzpah to ascend way beyond convention into something far more cerebral that is able to terrify us to the very core of our existence.

It is, quite simply, the greatest movie ever made.