Rating: 
Summary: Frozen In Slime...
Review: THE THING is the slimiest, oozingest, drippingest horror / sci-fi movie ever made! It is also one of the finest. Kurt Russell is cast in the role of his career (yes, better than his role as escape from new york's "Snake") as Macready, a no-nonsense helicopter pilot with an arctic research group. The opening scene shows an alien craft crash-landing on earth in some distant past. The next scene is the eerie "doghunt", where the world's weirdest husky is saved from it's norwegian (scientists from another research facilty a few miles away) pursuers by our unsuspecting heroes. Of course, the poor doggy is taken back to the base, where bizarre things begin to happen right away. It seems that our canine friend was not a dog at all, but an extraterrestrial entity with the ability to attack, assimilate, and assume the identity of any living creature. Like a monster virus, it jumps from person to person, becoming an almost perfect copy of it's now dead victim. Put this together with the fact that this takes place in a totally isolated location, and you've got the best paranoid nightmare ever filmed! The tension, suspicion, and terror are palpable (In fact, aside from the arctic setting, THE THING has more in common with INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS than it does with the original classic film THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD). The alien transformation scenes are as awesome as they are disgusting. This is John Carpenter's magnum opus of slithery goo! THE THING is a downright disturbing frightfest. Even Wilford Brimley is scary! HIGHLY RECOMMENDED...
Rating:
Summary: The mother of all horror flicks, unbelievably scary!!!
Review: This movie is the scariest one that I have ever seen!!! In all seriousness I am a huge horror flick fan, but this one tops them all. Say what you will about "The Exorcist" and "Halloween." This one makes them look like Mr. Roger's Neighborhood. I use to own a copy of this movie, and watched it enough to warrent keeping it. But one day something hit me, I got rid of it in a yard sale. I know this sounds kinda odd, liking the movie so much and then getting rid of it. But the principle is this, "The Thing" is so disturbing from its gore and darkened no-win conclusion. I just couldn't keep it around the house anymore. The scene with the sled-dogs is unreal, I watch this scene and I get goose-bumps and the hair stands on the back of my neck, and it makes my eyes water (not from sadness but being scared senceless). Trust me it is an excellent movie. If you can handle it and enjoy a maximum dose of scary-gory-horror. Then grab this one. I don't refuse to watch it, I do however stop short from bringing it home again. Not for the faint of heart.
Rating: 
Summary: nostop gorefest doesnt really add up
Review: lost in the cold regions of some other country..Russell and co. battle evil aliens that..when the horror begins the killings are gruesome but icky and they leave this movie a bore..Russell and Keith David surviving at the end was a good idea but we couldve did without the blood pussing out..a head crawling on roots and all that junk...a john carpenter dissapointment really
Rating: 
Summary: A great, classic horror film
Review: Of all the early 80's horror movies, John Carpenter's 'The Thing' is perhaps my favorite. For its time, The Thing had amazing special effects and a gritty atmosphere that other horror movies could only barely touch upon.Kurt Russell stars as R.J. MacReady, a helicopter pilot for a team of researchers in the Antarctic. When an encounter with crazed and panicked Norwegians ends in bloodshed and a 'new pet', the team makes an emergency flight to the Norwegian's research base to find out what happened, and discover horrors beyond their belief. Amidst the carnage, it becomes clear that the Norwegians have found an ancient ship buried deep in the ice, and its inhabitant has awakened. A great concept, Carpenter pulls off the Thing rather nicely. The haunting soundtrack, which is actually the part about the movie which creeps me out the most, and gloomy setting help set the mood of the film perfectly. The Thing transformations are excellent and were groundbreaking for their time. The special effects were all done through puppetry and similar forms, so there is no cheesy early 80's computer animation to ruin the effects. A word of warning: this movie is absolutely gruesome. When I first saw this movie years ago, I had to turn it off. It took me about 3 or 4 more tries to sit through the entire movie, but eventually I managed to do it, and now it has become one of my favorite Sci-Fi/horror flicks. But if you are naturally squeamish about excessive gore and bizarre body mutilation, then you probably won't be able to handle this movie. The characters all have their own personalities, but they aren't really developed enough. While some of the characters are just generally likeable, such as MacReady and Childs(Keith David), the others just aren't really explained or have enough real impact or screen time to matter. But one of the movie's strongest points is the the tension and the fear of wondering who the 'Thing' may be. Overall this is one of Carpenter's best movies. While it probably isn't one of the best movies of its time, it definitely had enough groundbreaking effects to set it apart from other special effects-laden movies of that particular generation. This Collector's Edition DVD has some interviews and outtakes and a few other extras, and while not anything spectacular, it is a fairly decent DVD considering that it was an early generation dvd, from around 1999-2000, when DVD was only just becoming popular. The picture and sound quality are both great, and I highly recommend this DVD to any horror fan.
Rating:
Summary: Another great Carpenter/Russell film!
Review: I like this movie a lot and it's one John Carpenter and Kurt Russell's best films. The dvd is great, It has so many extras and if anybody's a fan of Carpenter and Russell as I am, this is the film to have.
Rating:
Summary: Classic Carpenter!
Review: A classic. Full of terror and suspense. Very highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Thriller to the max!
Review: This is a film worth every penny you spend on it. An unnatural ride that goes to the edge of human fear. The Thing bases on the two things that most humans fear: the inability to trust the people living around you, and the isolation that comes from being miles away from civilization. When things in the film begin to get gory, the thrill only intensifies. Kurt Russell and John Carpenter tore up the movie industry with Escape from New York, and didn't change their reputations at all with The Thing. The high rating should tell you that I recommend this movie.
Rating:
Summary: Very Scary movie
Review: I just recently bought this movie last month from my work along with "in the mouth of madness" and i watched it on the same night. Holy Sh!*, i got so scared that night, i ended up staying up all night. I even tryed to watch something funny but i still couldn't get calmed down. I had nightmares for a while, then in the same week my dad watched it on our entertainment center, and i could hear it through the walls as i was trying to map (make levels for a game). And it made me think of all these ideas for the map i was working on, i made some really interestingly scary stuff. Also since i'm a avid game player, i noticed that one part where that guys head becomes a spider-like creature, have you ever seen the doom 3 creatures, they look exactly like it. Coincidence, I think not.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful DVD - Amazing Horror / Sci-fi Flick
Review: This is John Carpenter in his prime. Recently he has made nothing but garbage. It is sort of strange: Give Carpenter a few thousand dollars, a snapped shoelace and a used car radiator and he will make HALLOWEEN, or THE THING. Give him twenty million and he will make films that look like a snapped shoelace or a used car radiator - VAMPIRES, GHOSTS OF MARS. Admittedly, the first time I watched "The Thing" I turned it off after twenty minutes because it was just taking too long to get started. The second time I watched it, I gave it a bit more time and it changed the way I would view horror films forever. "The Thing" is a re-make of the original classic, but almost changes the story completely and is far better! John Carpenters "The Thing" is original in its own right and has spawned countless other imitations (pun intended). It is also one of the very few films that does not have a woman in sight - the story is driven by an all male cast. Essentially the story is set in the Winter of 1982 in the Antarctic at a US research station. A Norwegian science team disturb the Americans by flying around them with a helicopter trying to shoot and kill a husky dog with disastrous consequences. No one seems to know what is going on and so the men set out to visit the Norwegian research station only to discover a frozen slaughterhouse and what looks like the recovery of an alien spacecraft and an alien corpse. Back at the camp the science team discover that all is not well when the husky dogs start acting strange. Following this horrific scene (the animal cruelty is a bit hard to watch, dog lovers beware!), the movie is all suspense, action and horror right up until the very end. Basically the "alien" is able to imitate people and other living things by consuming them and reproducing itself. Sure it has all been done before with "Invasions of the Body Snatchers" but believe me... not like this it hasnt. So as you can guess everyone is suspicious of each other but the tension in this film is like nothing you have ever seen before. All of the characters are not fleshed out much in terms of their backgrounds or what they do, but they are developed very psychologically. There is also a lot of realism in the acting and even bit-actors, who are just cannon fodder, have their own unique edge. These where the days before computer generated graphics and the special effects are on top form, except for the final scene which looks too much like stop-frame animation and almost kills the realism entirely (They cut some of this from the DVD but it is in the extras - good choice). Apart from that disaster the rest is eye-popping stuff, and so it can be forgiven. Whoever thought that a blood test could be "on the edge of your seat" kind of suspense? Carpenter does that in aces. Other memorable scenes involve a heart attack (and it will give you one - literally), a monster autopsy, and a deranged head. When all is said and done the movie is just as much about the characters as it is about the monsters (by the way just in case you have not heard - the special effects are 21 years old and totally blast away anything that even tries to imitate it today). The final scene is brilliant and even after the film is over you are still sitting there in suspense. How many films can claim to do that in a satisfactory way? When all hell starts breaking loose in the research station you will be hard pressed to find yourself pushing the pause button to go to the toilet. Thoroughly gripping stuff indeed and one of the best suspense movies ever. The DVD is crammed pack full of extras.
Rating:
Summary: Another fine offering from Carpenter
Review: Following up his then cult hits Halloween, the Fog, and Escape from New York, John Carpenter unleashed a brilliant re-imagining of the classic movie the Thing, going back to the original novella from the late 30's. A study in isolation, paranoia, and severe distrust the story pits the crew of an Antarctic research facility against an amorphous, deadly enemy from space. Like many of his films, I'm always amazed at how well the soundtrack contributes to the overall eerie effect, the pulsing heartbeat tones set against the howl of the winds makes for some very creepy moments. There is also typically no announcing swells in the music when things are happening or going to happen, just the incidences in real time with their own sound effects. The pacing in this movie is tight and just right, as action progresses from Kurt Russell and Dysert poking around the Norwegian research facility that the Thing escaped from, to the inevitable take over and slow disintegration of the crew. The effects hold up pretty well after 20 plus years, partly because they're so organic in nature. The Thing in its various forms with it bulbous human parts and rubbery effects dripping in KY jelly is still believable as it was then [although I didn't care for the stop-go-animation of the tentacles at the end as it grabs the plunger]. The cast is marvelous, and the extras in the DVD chronicle how they held together and bonded in the remote BC filming location, near a glacier. This is a story that can scare on many levels, and the question of identity as horror is one that Carpenter would return to again with Prince of Darkness. I think if it hasn't already, this film will eventually be in the pantheon of classic sci-fi horror, I certainly bought the DVD on that conclusion. Recommended.
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