The terrifying film John Carpenter calls “the daddy of all science fiction monster movies”
Throughout his phenomenal career, John Carpenter has delivered some of cinema’s most terrifying and captivating moments. He practically invented the indie horror moving with his 1978 classic Halloween, which has since proven to be one of the most influential works in the genre.
Elsewhere, Carpenter greatly advanced the action movie category with efforts such as Escape from New York, Assault on Precinct and Big Trouble in Little China, proving his unique vision of genius deep within his mind. Carpenter’s legacy and impact on the movie industry will live long after he passes, and he’s well deserving of his acclaimed stature and place in the annals of cinema history.
One of the most fascinating parts of Carpenter’s wildly impressive filmography, though, is his 1982 science fiction horror movie The Thing, which tells of a band of American scientists who come into contact with a strange extra-terrestrial life form that imitates other organisms in Antarctica and enter a paranoid lockdown in which their trust in one another is put into severe doubt.
Kurt Russell stars as the group’s helicopter pilot with the likes of A. Wilford Brimley, T.K. Carter, David Clennon and Keith David, amongst others. The movie was based on John W. Campbell Jr’s novella Who Goes There? and also 1951’s film The Thing From Another World by Christian Nyby.
Nyby’s movie was the first attempt at a cinematic recreation of Campbell Jr’s novella, but Carpenter’s version, written by Bill Lancaster, was more of a faithful adaptation. Also attached to the 1951 film was the director and writer Howard Hawks, who ended up being one of Carpenter’s biggest cinematic loves.
Carpenter had actually been sceptical of taking on The Thing as he didn’t want to do a Hawks work injustice. He’d watched The Thing From Another World on several occasions but was convinced after he read Campbell Jr’s novella, and in the end, it became one of his best movies.
In a feature with The Fader, Carpenter once picked out the top eight scariest movies of all time and named The Thing From Another World, calling it “the daddy of all science fiction monster movies.”
He said, “That was back in the early ‘50s, but I saw it a little later on. That is an absolutely terrifying, fabulous, classic movie.”
Check out the trailer for The Thing From Another World, one of the most important movies in John Carpenter’s life, below.
