May 7, 2009

The Thing

Title: The Thing
Year: 1982
Director: John Carpenter
Writer: Bill Lancaster; story by John W. Campbell Jr.
Starring: Kurt Russell
Music: Ennio Morricone
Distinctions: currently #173 on IMDb's Top 250
Synopsis: a shape-shifting monster in Antarctica
Length: 109 minutes
How I saw it: on video (rented from Netflix), February 2009
Subjective Rating: 7/10 (Good).
Objective Rating: 7/10 (points off for characters, dialog and cinematography) c. 2.5/4 (Okay).

Occasionally unintentionally funny, but I don't care, I liked it. You have to heckle this sort of movie, anyway. It seemed like the special effects were good, when they could be bothered to light things well enough to see what's going on.

2 comments:

  1. Rent the original. Short, sweet, black and white and scary. It had all the essentials, low budget, b/w, nutty professor and what's his name before Gunsmoke. I saw it first run and it scared me and my buds pants off.
    Suggestion, see Night of The Living Dead the original. I saw it at the drive-in in 1970 as the third movie, around midnight, with my new bride. I could pull the quick eye opening reanimation bit and scare her for the next ten years! Like your take on most of your reviews I've read. "I'll be back". Jim

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  2. I'm not usually big on horror movies, but yeah, I seem to recall Night of the Living Dead being a good one. It's been quite a few years since I've seen it.

    The original Thing is now in my Netflix queue.

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