The Thing

On the data. Three films, one title used twice, and a reputation that completely reversed. The 1982 film was a commercial and critical failure. It opened two weeks after E.T. into an audience that wanted a friendly alien, and reviews attacked its effects as disgusting and its ending as nihilistic. John Carpenter has said it cost him work for years. It is now on most lists of the best horror films ever made. Rob Bottin was twenty-two and did the creature effects, physically, with no computer work. He reportedly collapsed from exhaustion and was hospitalised before the film was finished. The 2011 film is a prequel and shares the title exactly, which has confused audiences and catalogues since. Its creature effects were built practically and then largely painted over with computer animation in post-production, against the wishes of the crew who made them, and comparison footage has circulated since. All three come from John W. Campbell's 1938 novella Who Goes There?. The 1951 version keeps very little of it; the 1982 one keeps the premise that the creature imitates. Ennio Morricone scored the 1982 film, which is an odd pairing, and Carpenter has said he wrote some of the music himself anyway.

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