The Thing (1982) Review and Summary

                                                               

This movie was awesome!  Its a must see.  Even if you aren't into sci fi, its a great movie.  There aren't any slow parts, it builds up pretty quickly to the action.  It also has pretty good effects (especially for the 80's).   There are explosions and betrayals and pretty blue eyes (Kurt Russel).  This movie makes you think.  Its kind of really scary because if it was happening for real, you might not know about it. 

Summary:

It starts with showing a base in Antarctica.  It looks really cold and snowy.  Its an American research base.  Then it shows this dog running in the snowy nothingness and then a helicopter with guys trying to shoot the dog.  The dog runs to the American base and the helicopter lands.  One guy comes out and accidentally  blows up the other guy in the helicopter then runs up still trying to shoot the dog.  The Americans see him yelling in Norwegian and shooting at things, so they shoot him.

We find out there are 11 guys living on the American base.  They haven't been able to communicate with anyone in weeks, and two of them decide to go check out the Norwegian base about an hour away.  These two are kind of the leaders, MacReady and Blair.  MacReady's job title isn't actually explained, but Blair is the head scientist. 

They make it to the Norwegian base, which is deserted and destroyed.  In one of the rooms they find a huge hollowed out block of ice.  They also take some of the research papers and videos and return back to their base. 

They keep the dog and decide to put in the room with the other dogs.  The dogs don't really react at all until the guy walks away.  They start whining and the new dog turns into this big ugly pink monster alien thing.  The dogs' barking and whining make the guy come back and open the door, letting two of the four normal dogs out.  The two other dogs are getting eaten and dragged by the creature's pink spaghetti like tentacles.  The guy sounds the alarm and tells them to bring the flame thrower.  They torch it, but not to ash.  They think its dead so they bring it up to examine and dissect it (never goes well).

Blair discovers that it eats a creature and is able to imitate it perfectly.  So people won't be able to tell it's any different.

They watch the footage from the Norwegian camp and see that they found a giant space ship in the ice.  So the Americans decide to go check it out.  They find the big ship, decide its been there for over thousands of years.  Then they find the whole where the big hollowed out ice block came from.They figured out that the Norwegians cut the frozen creature out and brought it to their base and when it melted out, it caused chaos.

Blair does his own calculations about this thing.  He comes up with some pretty scary statistics.  He is 75% sure that at least 2 of the men on base are just imitations.  He projects that if the creature makes it to civilization, it would only take 27,000 (about 3 years) for the whole world to be replaced.

They find out that the alien is still alive when it tries to imitate one of the men.  They end up burning him to ashes.  Blair then has a break down and destroys the helicopters, all communication devices, and kills the remaining 2 dogs.  They end up locking him in a small room on base that isn't connected to the main part.

At this point everyone is paranoid and accusations start flying around.  They find out another guy was really a monster, and it kills the doctor.  Another person is discovered and killed.  Then they burn all the bodies. 

They come up with a system to figure out who is real or not.  Almost everyone is tied up and they do a blood test.  They find another alien, blow him up.  But before he dies he tried to imitate another one, and they blow him up too.

Three of them go to check on Blair and he's not there anymore.  They find this snow fort underneath where they find this weird ship he was working on using pieces from the helicopters.  When they start walking back they see someone running out of the building.  They figure the thing imitated the guy at base that was on guard duty and was trying to escape and hide.

The last three decide to blow almost the whole base up.  This is when Blair returns and kills 2 and becomes a big huge alien thing with multiple heads.  The last guy (MacReady) blows him up and most of the base. 

He finds a partial building to escape the wind when the guy that was on guard duty comes in and joins him.  They are stuck there til spring with no power, transportation, or communication.  The movie ends with them drinking together.