I've never seen The Thing before,
despite it being many years old but it's one of a few HD-DVD discs I've got, and yes, I know it's technically a dead
format but you can get still a HD-DVD player for an Xbox 360 for less than £20 and the discs themselves start at only a
few quid on Amazon, so they're often cheaper than the DVD version itself, and if there's a Blu-ray version also available
then you'll find the quality indistinguishable.
It's the winter of 1982 in Antarctica and something has crash-landed onto Earth, but the residents of the U.S. Antarctica
Research Program outpost have got more to worry about first as a Norwegian helicopter has just landed, after taking pot-shots
at their dog along the way. One of the pilots died as a result of a grenade mishap which also took out the chopper, while
the other one went crazy-ape with his rifle until he was put out of their misery by Garry (Donald Moffat).
It turns out they were 2 men from another outpost, of ten men, leading MacReady (Kurt Russell) and Dr Copper
(Richard Dysart) to go and check out what happened to the rest of them. They find the place seemingly abandoned
until they find one man grossly murdered, something that looks like a massive block of ice from which they must've
chipped out the fossil of something or other and some charred remains outside but of what exactly? Either way, they
bring it back home.
Before it can be identified, strange things are afoot in the dogs' kennel, for sure, as one of them has just grossed out
in the most unpleasant way possible, then part of it escapes just prior to the host being torched. Not good for morale
in a place a thousand miles from anywhere!
The Thing is a film I hadn't seen before but had always heard good things about and I was not disappointed.
The special effects show off some very inventive gross stuff and it's refreshing to see a total lack of CGI, although no
doubt if the film was being made today that's all it would use. Still, here it manages to play on the tension by not
showing the 'thing' too often, almost like the original
Alien.
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