I watched "John Carpenter's The Thing" today for the 1st time in 20 years!

[Big Dick McGee]

It was still pretty damned good. The SFX don't look as dated as you'd think, they're a DAMNED sight better than the crappy CG of early 90's movies. Kurt Russell was good, and it was a great tense psychological thriller.

Plus, you know you love the part where the doctor is using the paddles to revive a guy, and dude's chest becomes a mouth, biting Doc's arms off!

Next on my 80's revisited list: Escape from New York then Aliens.

 

[VKD]

The defribulator scene PWNS.

There's something about those effects that CGI just can't capture

 

[Big Dick McGee]

^^No matter how good the CGI effects are, you can tell that the human actors are not actually in the same space. I think puppet Jabba is like 10 million times better than CGI Jabba. No Doubt.

 

[Tyrant]

I knew it. Old Scifi still owns.

Same as Aliens.

 

[headvoid]

The Thing and Escape from New York are excellent. In particular without CGI the dramatic inferences need to be better. Directors tend to work harder at scenes.

An example might be the Aliens stomach burst scene, if you look at it closely the puppetry does not take up a lot of the screen time - it's all about the actors reaction.

The Thing itself is not shown for a great deal of screen time either - even when it is "free" you are never sure where it is, and the fact it is NOT on screen adds to tension.

Good post!

 

[whisky]

Factoid on that scene, they hired a guy whos arms had been amputated to wear false arms in that scene for extra realism as they get bitten off.

Also with the execption of the stop motion tentical towards the end of hte film, everything we can see, the actors could see, right there on the set.

 

[jack]

It's a great first part of his Apocalypse Trilogy

 

[CaptainWacky]

I'll watch it later.