The classic horror Roger Ebert called a “great barf bag movie”
Vomiting in the aisles isn’t the ideal outcome of a trip to the cinema and spare a thought for the person sitting on either side, but it can often be taken as a sign of praise when applied to stomach-churning horror. Roger Ebert may not have unanimously approved of a horror classic, but he gave it props nonetheless.
Now inarguably regarded as one of the most famous, iconic, and frightening horrors in the history of cinema, it took a while for John Carpenter’s The Thing to achieve legendary status. Not only was it a box office disappointment that barely recouped its budget, but reviews from critics at the time were scathing.
Voicing his disappointment to Time Out, Carpenter was adamant that “my career would have been different if that had been a big hit”. What stung him more was the response from audiences, with the filmmaker rattled by the fact that “they thought that I had betrayed some kind of trust” by maintaining the darkness, bleakness, and borderline nihilism right up until the final scene.
Releasing two weeks after Steven Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial definitely didn’t help, either, with the whimsical and family-friendly tale of a visitor from another planet becoming the highest-grossing release in the history of cinema, right before Carpenter’s The Thing came along to shock people to their core with its haunting practical effects and deranged escalation of the titular creature’s hostile takeover.
Of course, time has been very kind to the movie, with the frosty tale of rampant suspicion and paranoia amidst the remote wilderness arguably Carpenter’s best-ever effort from behind the camera and a true titan of scary cinema. It took a long time to reach that point, with even one of the most noted critics in the industry failing to be won over by its unique charms.
Even though Ebert began his assessment of The Thing by calling it “a great barf-bag movie”, he immediately followed it up by stating his overall disappointment. Continuing to weigh in, he surmises the icy terror as not just “a geek show” but “a gross-out movie in which teenagers can dare one another to watch the screen”.
As Ebert notes, “there’s nothing wrong with that”, but it still ended up with The Thing earning unwanted comparisons to Alien as material that “has been done before, and better” in both Ridley Scott’s classic haunted house in space story and Christian Nyby’s 1951 forebear The Thing from Another World.
It’s full of faint praise and backhanded compliments, but Ebert does at least appreciate the artistry on display when all hell breaks loose, and the creature begins morphing into all sorts of ungodly creations. If anything, it stands out as one of the most positive reviews The Thing received upon its initial release.
