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DVDfever.co.uk – The Thing HD-DVD reviewDom Robinson reviews
Universal Pictures UKHD-DVD: 
Blu-ray:
DVD:
- Cert:
- Running time: 109 minutes
- Year: 1982
- Cat no: HD DVD 8248585
- Released: June 2007
- Region(s): 2, PAL
- Chapters: 37 plus extras
- Picture: 1080p High Definition
- Sound: Dolby Digital Plus 5.1, DTS 5.1
- Languages: English
- Subtitles: English, Japanese
- Widescreen: 2.35:1 (Panavision)
- 16:9-Enhanced: Yes
- Macrovision: Yes
- Disc Format: HD30
- Price: £4.99 (HD-DVD); £19.99 (Blu-ray); £9.99 (DVD)
- Extras: Inadmissible: Deleted Scenes, Outtakes, The Fuzzball Rally: Uncut, The Man Who Would Be Fuzz, Hot Funk,Danny’s Notebook: The Other Side, Additional Video Blogs: VW Blogs, Trailers, Storyboard Gallery,Five Audio Commentaries, U-Control: Storyboards and Fuzz-o-meter
- Vote and comment on this film:View Comments
Director:
- John Carpenter
(Assault on Precinct 13, Big Trouble in Little China, Dark Star, Escape from L.A., Escape from New York, Ghosts of Mars, Halloween, In the Mouth of Madness, Memoirs of an Invisible Man, Prince of Darkness, Starman, They Live, Vampires, Village of the Damned)
Producers:
- David Foster and Lawrence Turman
Screenplay:
- Bill Lancaster
(from the story “Who Goes There?” by John W. Campbell Jr.)
Music:
- Ennio Morricone
Cast :
- R.J. MacReady: Kurt Russell
Dr Blair: Wilford Brimley
Nauls: T.K. Carter
Palmer: David Clennon
Childs: Keith David
Dr Copper: Richard Dysart
Norris: Charles Hallahan
Bennings: Peter Maloney
Clark: Richard Masur
Garry: Donald Moffat
Fuchs: Joel Polis
Windows: Thomas Waites
Norwegian: Norbert Weisser
Norwegian passenger with rifle: Larry Franco
Computer voice: Adrienne Barbeau (uncredited)
Norwegian (video footage): John Carpenter (uncredited)
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 deadformat but you can get still a HD-DVD player for an Xbox 360 for less than £20 and the discs themselves start at only afew quid on Amazon, so they’re often cheaper than the DVD version itself, and if there’s a Blu-ray version also availablethen 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. AntarcticaResearch Program outpost have got more to worry about first as a Norwegian helicopter has just landed, after taking pot-shotsat their dog along the way. One of the pilots died as a result of a grenade mishap which also took out the chopper, whilethe 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 abandoneduntil they find one man grossly murdered, something that looks like a massive block of ice from which they must’vechipped out the fossil of something or other and some charred remains outside but of what exactly? Either way, theybring 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 outin the most unpleasant way possible, then part of it escapes just prior to the host being torched. Not good for moralein 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 nodoubt if the film was being made today that’s all it would use. Still, here it manages to play on the tension by notshowing the ‘thing’ too often, almost like the originalAlien.
Director John Carpenter is a master at filling the 2.35:1 widescreen frame perfectly and this movie shows noexception. That said, there’s bit of a gritty picture in the bright outdoor scenes, which is disappointing, but seeingas the rest of the film is fine I can only assume this is a problem with the original print.For the record, I’m watching on a Panasonic 37″ Plasma screen via an Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive.
The sound is in Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 and DTS 5.1, although I only have access to the latter. However, it sounds perfectfor the moments when the monster does appear, along with explosions and DTS 5.1 and is well-used not only during shootouts but for the aforementioned whizz-pan shots, variousother split-surround effects and dialogue is clear throughout.
When it comes to the extras, the main one is an 84-minute documentary (in 4:3), entitled The Thing Takes Shapeabout the making of the film with comments from Carpenter, plus many key cast and crew members. Oddly, given its length,this isn’t chaptered at all.
Most of the rest of the extras are endless text screens and occasional photos, but three brief segments containsboth frame-by-frame and full-motion content:
- The Saucer (2:20): several versions of the huge spaceship coming towards the camera at the start,followed by various blue-screen shots of it post-landing.
- The Blairmonster (0:58): just showing the monster at the end.
- Outtakes (4:06): a few scenes in 4:3.
Finally, there’s a Trailer (1:53) in 4:3.
The menu plays against a a short piece of incidental music playing over and over. No scenes from the film, just a dullUniversal logo. Chaptering is spot-on with 37 throughout the movie and subtitles are in English and Japanese.
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS
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Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.