Who Goes There?

The Thing was first and best of a series of films with similar themes.

Based on the story Who Goes There by John W. Campbell, this movie has some truly terrifying moments, mainly because the creature appears only fleetingly from behind doors and out of shadows.

James Arness of TV's How the West Was Won played the thing and he was so embarrassed at the way he looked in his makeup that he refused to eat with the rest of the cast.

The film is now scheduled for a remake.

A film that maybe people don't see now because the Carpenter one, which was much derided at the time as having been an unnecessary remake of an absolute classic, is now very well regarded because it's seen as a a landmark in special effects and a classic for a whole generation of people who saw it on video and then couldn't wait to tell their mates in the playground the incredible stuff they'd seen.

This is the original version of the thing.

It's definitely the same story.

You know they're related because it opens with the same logo.

Right.

Clive Barker's The Hellbound Heart, John W. Campbell's Who Goes There, and Stephen King's The Shining.

See, that grouping is incredibly instructive-

Right

Yeah, talk about misreading the room.

The source text here is John W. Campbell Jr.'s 1938 novella, Who Goes There.

Right.

Howard Hawks and Christian Nyby adapted it first in 1951 as The Thing From Another World, but the 1951 version fundamentally altered the threat.

It was a standard monster movie.

And Carpenter viewed the 1951 adaptation as a betrayal of the novella's core psychological terror.

The true horror of Who Goes There is assimilation.

Yes.

Okay, let's get into the thing and where this film came from.

So The Thing, a lot of people don't know this, or if they do, it's not really widely talked about, but The Thing is a remake of... of the 1951 sci-fi thriller, The Thing from Another World, which was based on the 1938 novella, Who Goes There? by John W.

Campbell Jr.

The novella, widely ahead of its time, I've read the novella and I've seen the 51 movie.

No, actually, the expression golden age is kind of an accident that took place in the history of science fiction.

The expression came about because in 1938, John Campbell, who was the writer of Who Goes There, which was made into the movie The Thing, became the editor of Astounding Stories.

It became Astounding Science Fiction.

And when Campbell became the editor in 1938, He drew in a set of new writers that became very famous, like Asimov and Heinlein and other people, Van Valk, the Canadian science fiction writer.

Before the reader even fully comprehends the specific antagonist, they must understand that running away is just not an option.

A perfect example from the text is John W. Campbell's 1938 sci-fi thriller Who Goes There,

which is the legendary novella that eventually became the basis for John Carpenter's film The Thing.

Yes.

You are bringing your own psychological baggage into the haunted house.

That's a great way to put it.

A perfectly crafted 10-page opening for a sci-fi fan, like the freezing isolation of who goes there, might completely bounce off a reader who prefers the slow, romantic, character-driven dread of Dracula.

Because they're looking for different trigger.