John Carpenter's The Thing (1982)

Just started watching this and it seems to have a lot of eldritch/lovecraftian themes, would Sup Forums agree with that or no? Should I watch the other two films in the "Carpenter trilogy"?

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please respond Sup Forums

I'd love to but I haven't seen either of the other films. All I know is that The Thing is really good.

>Just started watching this
how about you finish it without interruptions

the thing is pretty much a ripoff of the mountains of madness final creature , so yeah

I watched both the classic and the remake. I really like the Lovecraftian themes. Id also like to know if the other films are just as good?

The Dunwich Horror.

Yes, they are both good but not as good as The Thing. Prince of Darkness is probably the weakest of the three.

Maléfice (french movie about prisonner finding a necronomicon-like book in the wall of their cell)

>eldritch/lovecraftian themes

these are far more prevalent in In the Mouth of Madness, even though it's not nearly as good as The Thing. But it's pretty cool and worth a watch.

Prince of Darkness is a fucking waste of time, don't watch it unless you just find John Carpenter's career fascinating.

In the Mouth of Madness is definitely the most Lovecraftian of the three, in fact, I'd say it's the closest thing to a succesful Lovecraft adaptation out there.

It's not nearly as good as The Thing, but it's definitely a Carpenter movie and it has Sam Neill doing what he does best, so it's certainly worth watching.

The shoggoth? They can both shapeshift but that's about it

Yes, they're both great. Don't shitpost on Sup Forums though, watch them in one go. I took several breaks while watching Prince of Darkness and I regret it, great film

what the fuck? guys, prince of darkness is fucking terrible

Prince of Darkness and In the Mouth of Madness are very good horror films although they aren't as fantastic as The Thing. Ignore the plebs who don't like Prince of Darkness.

I wish there was a good Carpenter bluray collection. I'd rather have a single box with all of his movies and I was surprised no such collection has been released yet.

Prince of Darkness was made to be mostly atmospheric and if you weren't able to watch it in the 80s, it's lost a huge chunk of its charm.

I personally really enjoy it.

So apparently they made a remake I forgot about.
Should I, Sup Forums?

You mean the prequel? It's awful, don't bother. Instead, you can examine my repeating digits.

1. The Thing
2. Big Trouble in Little China
3. They Live
4. The Fog
5. Starman
6. Escape from New York
7. In the Mouth of Madness
8. Halloween
9. Christine
10. Dark Star
11. Escape from LA
12. Vampires
13. Assault on Precinct 13
14. Village of the Damned
15. The Ward
16. Memoirs of an Invisible Man
17. Prince of Darkness
18. Ghosts of Mars

It's a prequel. I would give it a 5/10, it isn't awful but it's so heavily flawed and steals so much from Carpenter's film that it's only worth a watch if you're a hardcore fan of The Thing who wants more of the same.

the ending scene is the only good thing about it

>prince of darkness that low

It's literally his third best kino

Top 3 are definitely certified kino. Haven't seen The Fog or Starman. How badly have I missed out?

>Prince of Darkness was made to be mostly atmospheric
We already had The Fog though.

Prince of Darkness is a boring pseudo-intellectual version of The Thing. It feels like you're watching John Carpenter jack off in public.

>"Well, the initial plan – slightly naïve, maybe – was to build everything practically," director Matthias van Heijningen Jr told this very site in a 2012 interview about his prequel to John Carpenter's The Thing. "Although we shot the film practically, at the end of the day, it didn’t hold up. It looked a bit like an 80s movie, actually, which for some people is really special, but perhaps not in 2010, 2011. So we enhanced it with CG."

Disgrace
youtube.com/watch?v=OH3VeUiud7c

1. The Thing
2. Halloween
3. Escape from New York
4. Christine (it's a God tier Stephen King adaptation and a God tier John Carpenter film. I don't understand why I'm the only person on the planet who rates it so highly.)
5. They Live
6. Assault on Precinct 13
7. The Fog
8. Big Trouble in Little China
9. Starman
10. In the Mouth of Madness
11. Prince of Darkness
12. Dark Star
13. Escape from L.A.
14. Vampires (decent horror/action movie. It doesn't deserve the shit it gets.)
15. The Ward
16. Ghosts of Mars

I haven't seen Village of the Damned, Memoirs of an Invisible Man or his TV movies.

>prince of darkness is fucking terrible
It's not terrible, its one of his weaker movies but thats almost all because of the lackluster second act where it just gets confused and muddled.
Its got a wonderful set up, and i fucking love the end, but about the time the green goo vanishes the movie stumbles and becomes a mediocre zombie movie for like 30 minutes.
Its worth watching... Just temper your expectations or you'll be disappointed, especially compared to mouth of madness and the thing.

>eldritch/lovecraftian theme

"No!"

just put this on, what am I in for?

The Fog looks beautiful and has fucking incredible establishing shots. Not very scary but it has stood the test of time better than Halloween.

Starman is pretty much his only movie that doesnt have any action or horror elements to it yet it's surprisingly good. Jeff Bridges is terrific and it has a very nice score.

Probably hard to do since his movies don't really belong to one studio or distributor.

youtube.com/watch?v=fBzpT7VmSaU

Better one but pretty sure everyone saw this already.

youtube.com/watch?v=MWbFni6_25Y

>So we enhanced it with CG.
A true enhancement would've subtly fixed the fake looking parts of the practical effects. Instead they smothered everything in CG. Fuck the director and the studio, it's such a con that after months of hyping up fans with "WE'RE DOING EVERYTHING PRACTICALLY" they CGed everything.

>Halloween that low
what the fuck

>Village of the Damned
I really like it. Its a good and mostly faithful remake and plays everything really low key. I love the final confrontation.

I don't think The Fog is actually that good. I would unironically sooner rewatch Ghost of Mars.

>(it's a God tier Stephen King adaptation and a God tier John Carpenter film. I don't understand why I'm the only person on the planet who rates it so highly.)
yeah despite the dumb premise it really doesnt have any glaring issues. It's good but I don't love it like I do most of his other stuff.

>haven't seen Village of the Damned
It's interesting only because it's Christopher Reeve and Mark Hammil in the same movie. It's pretty bad though.

Not that user but I love The Fog. The atmosphere and score are incredible.

>I would unironically sooner rewatch Ghost of Mars
why would you do this

I'm sure I would like it more if I came to it sooner but I had already seen dozens of other slasher flicks before I finally saw it so it just kinda fell flat on me. Not really a fault of the movie though, I just find some of his other stuff more interesting.

thanks, user

I would disagree.

It has no "Lovecraftian/Eldritch" themes, one; and, two, those terms have become quite meaningless due to how often people use them.

but muh tentacles

This blew my mind when I watched it. I didn't expect it at all

>despite the dumb premise
One of the few things i like about king is his ability to take incredibly dumb premises and play them entirely straight.

If you look at In the Mouth of Madness, then both the story structure and the themes are what I understand to be Lovecraftian:

Story structure, in the sense of starting out with an unreliable and mad narrator, who has retracted from society because of the horrors he has encountered, with the story being told in flashback.

Thematically, because of the way it deals with the hubris of the search for deeper truths, and how certain forms of knowledge are ultimately too dark and complex for humans, i.e. the unknowable/unnameable.

In the Mouth of Madness is Lovecraftian, I agree with that; The Thing, however, is not.

Also, kudos to actually understanding what Lovecraftian is instead of "It has a monster from space; therefore, Cthulu!"

thanks, I absolutely love his work so I'm glad to hear I'm not entirely lost in it.

You're absolutely right about it being thrown around too much. It seems to mean anything from cultists, to ancient aliens to tentacles.

horrorkino

>implying anyone has the attention span to finish a film in one go anymore

Smartphones completely ruined mine.

>start watching a movie
>5 minutes later make a thread on Sup Forums about it

Kill yourself, seriously, you literally cannot get more pathetic than this.

Scariest scenes: The Fuchs scene and especially the scene with Mac stopping mid-sentence to realize it's all over, it finally hit him, the reality's never been closer. I'd also like to add the ominous tracking shot of the hallway/basement steps/Childs' door, with the score playing in background. Then there's also Mac alarming the station, Blar-Think jumpscare on Garry, poor dog chewing his way out of the terror, Windows creating horrific slurping sounds while covered with goo, Bennings-Thing's hands and scream, Splitface moving the blanket, the insanely weird sinister laughter in the last scene (???), those bonechilling screams of past victims during the kennel scene.

Grossest scenes: Entire kennel scene, Windows in the middle of transformation, Bennings being mouth-raped, Blair-Thing (shame they could only afford a mid-range shot).

In the mouth of madness is pretty good and lovecraft heavy

Something doesn't make sense:

a) Dog-Thing comes to the station, consumes Palmer or Norris and thusly creates a replica of the aforementioned Palmer or Norris. And then Palmer/Norris-Thing (probably) infects or assimilates Blair. Now we have two (three with Blair) Things + Splitface.

b) Mac and Doc bring Splitface-Thing from the Swedish camp (fatal mistake), for some reason Blair doesn't destroy it despite knowing it's still active, he stashes it instead, and thusly it kills and tries to imitate Bennings. But if we know how The Thing works, didn't it "eat" Bennings and then create the copy of him? If so, where's the original biomass, aka Splitface? And how the fuck could Bennings-Thing put on the jacket on with those damn hands?

The Thing is complete garbage. Bad practical effects to the point where it feels comical, bad acting from everyone except Mac and Childs.

No wonder the critics and the audience disliked it when it came out, but now it got a following and "cult movie! was always good! it's kino!".

Trash like every other Carpenter movie.

Yeah, it's a little bit of a plodding movie, but you can't beat the atmosphere. I've always had a soft spot for The Fog (and Adrienne Barbeau).

Was Childs infected or eaten by Thing and then replicated? Why are the coats and boots so messed up for those two eerie tracking shots of the hallway and Childs' position? If it was just one coat missing, then I'd say Childs was definitely duplicated, but the coats are just all over the place compared to the previous shot. Was it a continuity error and hiw did is slip by Carpenter in editing and post-production, considering it's probably meant to be a key clue. Why the goof?

In all the brutal honesty, Carpenter sacrificed a lot of of logic, continuity and "rules" in order to create paranoia and dread. The fact there's so many theories, options and schools of thoughts on various topics and details means some things simply don't add up. The fact that even after 34 years we know jackcrap is the result of both careful writing/directing/editing and deliberate omissions where (IMO) Carpenter just said "fuck it" during the editing and post-production.

TLDR, it's still one of my very favorite films ever simply due to the unmatched isolation terror atmosphere, but it's not some high-end masterpiece where just about every puzzle is carefuly put there.

>Was Childs infected or eaten by Thing and then replicated?

No. Stop with this fanfiction shit.

Trips observed

MEW is really easy on the eyes, the CGI isn't though.

I'm assuming most people have never read any of Lovecraft's work when they throw that around. Cthulhu got boiled down to 'oh he's a giant monster like Godzilla,' when there was so much more to Lovecraft's stories.

>Bad practical effects to the point where it feels comical
user, bait is supposed to be believable.

In the original script Childs is infected. Mac has a flamethrower under the blanket he has on and the reason he laughs is because he gave Childs (The Thing) a molotov cocktail, Childs drinks it and because The Thing doesn't know any better it reacts like a person would if they drunk a normal drink. There's also the scene with the coats changing.

There is also a book from The Things perspective that also states that Childs is infected.

The Thing video game is canon and in that Childs is infected and Mac escapes.

Take from that what you will.

>Childs drinks it and because The Thing doesn't know any better it reacts like a person would if they drunk a normal drink.
Doesn't the Thing learn everything you know when it assimilates you or am I just making that up?

If the book is anything to go by whatever it assimilates with becomes part of its own consciousness but it can only learn so much from an unwilling 'host'.
Childs actually has a conversation with The Thing once it fully assimilates, it is confused about why everyone is attacking it.

I think it can basically mimic your personality due to this and it can behave normally but I think the various intricacies escape it (such as something being 'tasty' or not) it is just aware that the humans drink from bottles like that and enjoy it so it simply mimics the behavior. There's also the fact that in the prequel the Thing is caught out by not knowing which ear its host was wearing a ring on, so presumably it doesn't know everything.

>Prince of darkness rank 17
I don't understand why people don't like this movie. I feel like because it's part of a very good trilogy, and people like the other 2 more, they scrap it but in reality it's still much better than most of his other films.

I've wondered about the biomass aspect of this, too. Does the thing "infect you", causing your own body to become a thing? Does it "eat you", and then spit out an imitation?

>There is also a book from The Things perspective that also states that Childs is infected.

That's fucking garbage fanfiction. Quit bringing it up. You have no proof of that "original script" either... because there isn't one.

What I'm getting at is that if it can mimic you well enough that it's indistinguishable with you (and thus it knows all that you know), it would remember the taste of booze.

Still can't ignore that the game is canon. I mean, I have no idea if the book is considered canon or not, user asked and I just listed the most common theories.
Regardless what you want to say, the fact is that Mac escapes, Childs dies and then some guys have a massive fight with a giant Thing and kill it with exploding barrels.

The prequel proves that it doesn't know everything the host knew since it didn't know which ear the pilot had an earring on.

Original script means nothing in the endgame as in how things come off on the screen. Besides, you said "original", god know how many times they rewrote it.

Book from The Thing's perspective... Fuck that.

Video game canon? Carpenter is a troll for shekels.

user you can't just ignore whatever you don't like.
If Carpenter says X is canon then it is, that's how it works.

I'm afraid I haven't seen anything but the original movie, so I can't argue against that.
It seems a little convenient that an alien can learn the whole English language from eating you, but not remember a flavour.

>inb4 muh death of muh author

This.

Blair is dissecting a Thing, and pointing out normal organs

>"heart, lungs.... but that's not a dog"

If it's mimicking a human body as almost perfectly, it'll have a very negative reaction to drinking gasoline.

>The prequel proves that it doesn't know everything the host knew since it didn't know which ear the pilot had an earring on.

The prequel is not a canon, you can't apply post mortem rules on a film that was made 30 years earlier.

Prince of Darkness is easily better than In The Mouth of Madness for Satan alone.

Perhaps it doesn't know the flavour of gasoline because the guy has never tasted it, so he doesn't know how to react.
How would the thing know how the host reacts to a completely new situation? Sure for us humans acting disgusted and puking it out seems normal even without having been put through that, but it doesn't have such notions of common sense.

Halloween is easily top 3. It's one of the greatest films of the late 20th century.

>pausing a film to post on Sup Forums
I think that you should end your shitty life.

How does the blood know to react to the hot needle? It obviously still reacts to volatile stimuli, and gasoline is going to "burn" the insides just like heat does.

The game is the only 100% confirmed canon that I know of. The book I honestly have no idea about since it doesn't generally match up to the movie very well (The Thing states that it has never encountered any life form that attacked it which is stupid since it clearly had encountered other intelligent life forms).

Eh, I'm just going off the films. If it doesn't know that the host had an earring then its safe to assume it doesn't know other things also. Like I said, my guess is that it can just imitate basic behavior. We have zero idea of knowing if any of the internal organs of whatever it mimics actually function at all since it can shapeshift almost at will.

Why isn't the prequel canon? It seems like people just want to ignore anything that sheds some light on The Thing.

>Why isn't the prequel canon? It seems like people just want to ignore anything that sheds some light on The Thing.

Why it is a canon? Because they said so?

That's an instinctive reaction because heat is harmful to it, but perhaps gasoline is not harmful to the thing organism, only to humans.
Sure gasoline will fuck with the host' stomach, but perhaps the thing doesn't feel the pain derived from the human biology it's replicating if it doesn't know from the host memories that it should be harmful.

In this case it wouldn't know how it should react, it's host doesn't know the flavour of gasoline, so the only information it has is that a human gave it a bottle of drink with an unknown flavour, if it doesn't register painful nervous instincts derived from the replicated biology then the safest bet would be to act as if it's normal.

Because The Thing is now a movie series with a video game sequel.
Its safer to say that it is canon than isn't at this point.
And also, yeah, if they make it and say that it's canon because they have the rights to it then it is canon...no matter how shit it is. That's the way it works.

It's not just the taste, it's the chemical reaction from drinking gasoline. Gasoline acts just like a burn on your throat. It fucks you up. If a hot needle does that, then gas will. The Thing also replicates a heart attack, so I don't think it has control over what it deems "pain". It reacts to what we do.

>If Carpenter says X is canon then it is, that's how it works.

So if Carpenter said it was all a dream you would believe that? Wew lad.

Yeah, because that won't stop me from still enjoying the movie the same as always.
I don't know why you people get so butthurt about canon, yeah the author has the final say on it and that changes absolutely nothing.

>Yeah, because that won't stop me from still enjoying the movie the same as always.

That's my point. Enjoy the movie and take from it what you will. Fuck Carpenter, he put it out there now it's up to the autists, manbabies and you to interpret it.

You'd have no choice since its his story. You can't just ignore it because you don't like the decision.
You can't just watch a movie and go "I didn't like the end so I'll just say everything up till the final 20 minutes is canon".
The videogame is confirmed canon. Mac shows up in a helicopter to help save the trooper from the giant Thing monster and once its dead they fly off into the sunset. That is the official ending to the story.

Yeah you can take whatever you want from the movie, but whatever Carpenter says happens it's what happens.
You can say it's shit and he's a hack, but he's the one that made it so he gets the final say, ignore whatever you want but the canon is what he wants it to be.

>The videogame is confirmed canon.
This sentence you wrote interested me. Then you wrote the one after (maybe you're making it sound bad, idk). To me, the video game isn't canon and that's based solely on what you wrote about it (which is all I know).

Beethoven didn't get the final say on Romance No 1 and Munch didn't get the final say on The Scream. If film is art then Carpenter doesn't get the final say on The Thing. Simple as that lad.

The Thing > Big Trouble In Little China > Prince of Darkness > Escape From New York > Ghosts of Mars > They Live > Halloween > Escape From LA > In The Mouth of Madness > Assault on Precinct 13 > Christine > Somebody's Watching Me > The Fog > Vampires > Cigarette Burns > The Ward > Village of the Damned > Starman > Memoirs of an Invisible Man > Body Bags > Pro-Life

Only Pro-Life is bad.

>tfw they try to convince you that the whiskey wasn't guzzaline

Neither of those examples have absolutely anything to do with the concept of "canon" discussed here.
Carpenter gets to say whatever takes part of the story because he's the author.

But those are not the arts.

He sure does. I get to ignore his decades-later-revised-canon because I'm the consumer. I get to ignore whatever he says because I can think and enjoy for myself.

The game is confirmed to be canon but if I remember the game correctly here is a brief rundown of it (With no exaggeration)

>SF squad is sent to the outpost to see whats up
>Find Childs, they wtf a little
>Look around the camp
>A member of the team gets infected
>Hero kills him
>Hero is now aware that shit is going down
>All the SF squads are getting fucked
>Massive infection of Things
>Hero now needs to escape
>Meet other surviving SF members
>They get infected or kill themselves
>Hero meets Boss SF
>Turns out they want to contain The Thing
>Use it as a weapon or some shit
>Hero dislikes this
>Hero gets arrested and taken to mega secret base underground
>Hero wakes up in room
>Shit, The Thing can't be contained
>Mega secret base is now infected
>Hero needs to escape/kill Thing
>Hero gets to helipad
>SF Boss comes out, he's infected
>He turns into some giant Thing monster
>Oh fuck
>Mac shows up in a heli
>Hero gets on it and uses the attached machinegun
>Kill big thing
>They start flying away into the sunset
>Hero asks for pilots name
>"RJ Mcready"
>THE END

Yeah, and that doesn't change the fact that what you're ignoring is still canon.
What happens is that when you enter a discussion, and you decide to put your hands around your ears and scream "NOT CANON" when people start to discuss about things officially recognized by the author, it goes from a respectable stance to an autistic one.

I have never once said something is 'not canon' (that was someone else earlier ITT). My argument is that when someone makes something and releases it for public consumption, it is no longer theirs.

>if I close my eyes and plug my ears and sing loud enough, it will go away

You make a valid point.

But then you can't have a conversation about it since anyone can just go "Nu-Uh, in MY version X doesn't happen". I mean, fair enough if you want to have a personal fanfic about the events of the timeline but you're objectively wrong about them.

I've got nothing against going "I'm ignoring it because it ruins my enjoyment of that universe" but people can't pretend like their version of events trump the creators version during a discussion of the film/book/whatever, especially when people are talking about theories that stem from the universe.