Directed by John Carpenter, starring David Clennon, Keith David, Kurt Russell, T.K. Carter, Wilford Brimley (add more)
Comments made in brackets are corrections from other visitors. As such, any aggressive/abusive corrections (and I get quite a few) written as if they're comments I've made myself will be ignored. To submit your own corrections for mistakes, just click the edit icon under an entry, then choose "correct entry". Some entries have "duplicated entry" after them - these are entries which were already listed on the main page, but were submitted again. I occasionally leave these online for a while, just in case they were moved in error, so don't worry about pointing them out to me.
MacReady is checking each team member's blood to see if its alien or not. When he gets to Palmer's blood (which leaps out of the petri dish) he makes a face anticipating the special effect. [He makes the face because he doesn't know who is human and doesn't know how the blood will react to the hot wire.]
In one snow and ice-filled scene, one of the "icicles" is actually swinging back and forth a little, obviously fake. [The icicle is hanging off a chunk of partially collapsed roof, making swinging perfectly possible.]
Corrected by Grumpy Scot
What we first learn from "The Thing" is place and time: "Antarctica, Winter 1982". This, however, makes the several day- and night-sequences depicted in the movie impossible. At the poles, the sun keeps above the horizon for 6 months and below it for another 6 months, so you have exactly one day (the Polar Day) and one night (the Polar Night) per year. [MacCready says in the film "First Goddamned week of winter", indicating it is not long into the winter cycle. The cycle does not happen instantly. It is not Polar Day, then instantly Polar Night, it is a gradual process, with the days becomeing rapidly shorter, lasting less then an hour at the end. MacCready flys to the Norwegian camp, and arrives back in the dark, meaning that the daylight was probably not long at all.]
If the crew had been trying to contact someone for 2 weeks without success, surely the TV would struggle to receive a signal as well but it appeared to be working fine. [They only watch their VCR collections.]
"There is still cellular activity in these burned remains - they are not dead yet." This hypothesis of Blair turns out to be the horrid truth (when Bennings is the first of the team to be caught by the "Thing"). So, if incineration is no solution, why do the crew members, although being aware of this, keep on torching their "infected" mates? MacReady even blows up Palmer and the final "boss creature" with explosives. Wouldn't this just spread the infection instead of keeping it contained? [Burning was the best they could do. Guns, knives and clubs would be useless. Most likely they planned to burn every bit of the Things after finding out who was who, but events got out of control with Blair being a Thing. And when the big creature at the end showed up, MacReady did the only thing he could.]
Corrected by Grumpy Scot
In the TV edit, when they are examining the dead Norwegian on the table, he is blatantly blinking his eyes and looking around. Edited out of the normal and DVD versions for obvious reasons. [Originally, this scene was cut from the movie. Several scenes were cut and then readded in the TV edit, to replace the running length (time). This scene was never supposed to be in the final movie and was not endorsed by the director.]
Corrected by Bruce Minnick
When MacReady and Copper go to the Norwegian base, they find a man with a slit throat. There are icicles of blood hanging from his arms. The guy is frozen solid. How come then, the icicles are more than 6 centimetres long? Surely the blood would have frozen before it gathered up? [he didn't die from freezing. Obviously, he cut his wrists, or even more likely cut from his wrists all the way up his forearm. Since he didn't 'flash-freeze', the blood began to gather at his arm as he was freezing. Blood is very warm and would've taken longer to freeze than his outer body. As the body was freezing in the extreme cold, the blood gathered and iced over until he was completely frozen.]
At the end of the movie there are only two survivors. They are discussing if either of them is the "thing." Although they are both outside in the frigid cold you can only see Kurt's breath. I assume this makes the other the "thing." [No because it is demonstrated that a "Thing's" breath is perfectly visible in the cold when the Bennings-Thing moans just before MacReady burns it.]
Corrected by Grumpy Scot
Blair shoots 7 times from a 6 chambered revolver. [Some .32 and .38 revolvers can hold 7 or 8 shots.]
Corrected by Grumpy Scot
When Dr. Copper is trying to revive Norris with the defibrillator, Norris becomes a 'Thing' and his entire chest caves in, becomes a mouth, and rips off Dr. Copper's arms. Watch closely. When Dr. Copper initially breaks through Norris' chest, the teeth on the sides are white and thin, resembling almost canine or shark teeth. When the scene cuts back to Copper's arms being ripped off, the teeth have become large, rough and jagged. [Everytime we see the Thing, it is constantly changing right before our eyes. Why couldn't it make its teeth bigger?]
Corrected by Grumpy Scot
You may also like: The Thing From Another World | The Terminator | Apocalypse Now | Titanic | Braveheart
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