Sci-Fi Horror Classic Was Once The Worst Film Of All Time
When a film becomes a classic, one of the very best ever made, it’s easy to forget that when it was first released in theaters, it could have been a box office disaster. The Shawshank Redemption, Fight Club, even Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, were all disappointments in theaters and are now considered to be amazing works of cinema. Yet no film has been re-evaluated to the extent of John Carpenter’s The Thing, which, when it was first released in 1982, was panned by critics and considered, by multiple trade publications, to be the worst movie ever made.
Too Bleak For Critics
The Thing is a remake of the 1951 film The Thing From Another World, which showed the alien as a large, blood-sucking monster, and other than the very basic parts of the plot and setting, the two films have nothing in common. John Carpenter’s 1982 film is bleak and depressing, and even the hero, Kurt Russell’s MacReady, is a damaged, world-weary veteran who doesn’t fit the classic action hero mold.
Carpenter’s nihilistic worldview, which seeps into every frame of the film, was too much for the early 80s, but by the turn of the century, audiences embraced the dry, dull dialogue as being realistic and capturing the feeling of men trapped in the edge of the world.
The Special Effects Got All The Attention
When it was first released, the themes, environment, and solid performance of the actors as defeated men, even before the alien shows up, were overlooked because of the special effects. Roger Ebert wasn’t even as harsh as other critics, and yet his mildly positive review described the film as “The Thing is a great barf-bag movie, all right, but is it any good?” And then later, “The Thing is basically, then, just a geek show, a gross-out movie in which teenagers can dare one another to watch the screen.”
Vincent Canby, writing for The New Yorker at the time, didn’t hold back in his assessment, “Sometimes it looks as if it aspired to be the quintessential moron movie of the 80’s – a virtually storyless feature composed of lots of laboratoryconcocted special effects, with the actors used merely as props to be hacked, slashed, disemboweled and decapitated, finally to be eaten and then regurgitated as – guess what? – more laboratory-concocted special effects.”
Practical Effects Using Every Trick In The Book
Part of what hurt The Thing was the special effects, which look spectacular even over 40 years later. The “spider-thing” is disturbing, and then the alien’s final form is the type of body horror that David Cronenberg would approve of. Best of all, the talented special effects team used practical effects, and in fact, they used every practical effect technique that existed at the time and helped innovate a few more.
The Thing does not look like a film from 1982, which is why all the critics overlooked the actual plot and characterization; their minds were blown.
Competed With Another Alien Movie
Bad timing also hurt The Thing, as it hit theaters right after another alien film you may have heard of, E.T. The Extraterrestrial, which was the complete opposite of John Carpenter’s dark and dour ode to a grim men’s evening. Spielberg’s film was, at the time, the most successful movie in history.
Speaking of history, June 25, 1982, wasn’t only the release date for The Thing, but also another underrated sci-fi classic: Blade Runner with Harrison Ford. Both films underperformed, and both of them are now considered to be some of the finest movies ever made.
One Of The Best Movies Of All Time
REVIEW SCORE
I didn’t get around to watching The Thing until much later, and by then, I had already seen countless shows do episodes based on the film, most notably The X-Files episode “Ice.” Once I finally sat down to watch it, I couldn’t believe that it was in theaters in 1982. It was so far ahead of its time that the 2011 prequel looks worse in comparison.
You can watch The Thing, arguably John Carpenter’s best movie, on Peacock and Amazon Prime Video.
