"The Thing"

Today I'm summing up a wonderful little John Carpenter gem from 1982 called "The Thing"
It's got Kurt Russell AND Wilford Brimley in it sooo...
During the opening credits of this film we get a glimpse into the amazing wonder of special effects before CGI. A beautiful model spaceship goes spinning past, heading toward the earth. It rushes away from view and, reaching the earth's atmosphere, bursts into a brilliant red ball of hand painted flame.
With the credits over, our film opens on a snow covered landscape in Antarctica. A helicopter is chasing a dog and firing at it from above, conjuring images of a wide eyed grinning Sarah Palin wielding a sawed off shot gun and a clay jug of moonshine. The dog runs toward an American Science camp stationed on the frigid island and the helicopter lands, throwing grenades and firing wildly at the doggy. The pilot of the craft accidentally drops a grenade in the snow under the helicopter and hurriedly tries to recover it. Too late, he goes kablooey along with his copter, but the other passenger manages to escape. He chases after the cute little pup firing his gun like a maniac. The dog runs toward the American camp and the gun wielding lunatic accidentally shoots an American scientist in the leg and misses the dog. The other men scatter and one man manages to shoot the unidentified mad man before he can harm anyone else.
The scientists realize that the helicopter came from the Norwegian science camp stationed nearby. Two of the men, one being Kurt Russell- called Mac in the film, hop in their helicopter to go find out what is going on. The other men take the poor innocent dog inside with them and prepare for a quiet evening. At the Norwegian camp Kurt Russell and his companion discover the building is completely destroyed. There are holes in the facade of the building, the power has gone out, and the inside of the camp is covered in snow and ice. They find several frozen mangled corpses along with the smoldering charred remains of a horrific plastic sculpture that looks almost like an anguished set of siamese twins.
Later that night with everyone home they decide to stick the traumatized dog into the cage with all of their dogs. The moment they step away from the cage the dog stands up and his head splits open like a gross bloody flower. The dog sprouts insect legs and shoots out stringy tendrils that look like blood soaked crazy straws. He tries to kill the other dogs, who all start barking like mad. The whole team runs in and discovers the hideous monster and start shooting at it. One of the men runs in with a flame thrower and finishes the creature off. The leader of the camp orders Wilford Brimley to perform an autopsy on the anguished monster and he decides that its some sort of shape shifter that can take over other creatures bodies.
Kurt Russell and a buddy go to investigate an area they know the Norwegians have been frequenting lately to find out if it may have anything to do with these strange goings on. They find a huge spaceship buried in the ice and see that the Norwegians used explosives to blow off the layer of snow covering the ship. They go back to camp and tell their cohorts what they've found.
Good ol' Wilford runs some numbers through his computer and determines that the likelihood of the creature infecting one of his cohorts is 75%. He asks one of the men how long he was alone with the dog before they put it in the cage. He says he was only alone with the dog for an hour or two but nothing happened. Some other men in the group go out to a supply shed, where the creepy remains of the siamese twin kabob they found at the Norwegian camp is stashed. One of them pops into another part of the shed to look for something, while the other looks around in the same room as the dead body. The first man returns to the room to find his friend has been sucked in toward the half burnt remains and they're surrounding him with bloody tendrils. He runs back to the camp to get Kurt Russell and when they return their friend has escaped through a window. They manage to hunt him down rather quickly because he hasn't fully transformed and has difficulty running. He falls to the ground to reveal gory unhuman arms. Kurt Russell knocks over a barrel of kerosene at the monster and fires a flare into it, setting him ablaze. They all decide to drag the other half charred alien corpses out to the blaze and finish them off as well.
At this point Wilford Brimley goes loony and starts bustin' up the joint. He gets it in his head that they can't kill the aliens so he needs to make sure no one can escape to infect the rest of the earth. He rips out all the controls in their helicopter and their snow tractors. Then he goes inside and takes an axe to the radios. To prevent him from doing any more damage they tie him up in a storage shed outside.
As if by magic a ferocious snow storm settles in over the camp. Great. At this point no one in the camp trusts anyone else, everyone suspects that everyone else is an alien. One of the men find Mr. Russell's uniform torn to shreds and covered in blood out in the snow. He himself is not aware of being infected, but all the other men are sure that he is. Who's to say? All the men rush to kill him but when they try he insists he's not infected, that he's been framed, and threatens to blow up the whole compound if they go near him. He throws one of the men into a storage shelf so violently that he dies. The camp doctor tries to revive him using the electric defibrillator paddles, but once he does, the man's chest splits open to reveal a lovely plastic mouth equipped with "terrifying" plastic fangs. The doctor falls forward as the chest cavity he was leaning on opens up, and the chest fangs bite his arms off. It's at this point in the movie that I realize this is probably the best thing I've ever seen in my life. Ever.
The alien creature pops up out of the chest cavity in a stringy blood covered tower at the top of which is a duplicate head of the man it popped out of. The head is covered in blood, appears tortured and anguished, is screaming and menacing, and looks completely and utterly ridiculous. It blows my mind that someone spent days designing this "monster." Kurtypoo blasts the alien with his flame thrower and the creature starts screaming in anguish. The man's head (The "real" one at the top of his shoulders) begins to stretch off away from the burning torso and falls off the table while no one is watching. It uses it's tongue to pull itself away and under a desk where no one can see it sprout legs like a spider and eyes like a crab. The smaller new creature, balding bloody man head as body, spindly bloody hairy spider legs, and bulbous purple crab eyes turns and tries to run from the room. Someone spots the absurd creature and signals Kurt to turn his flame thrower on it. Thankfully he burns that stupid piece of shit up too.
Mr. Russell then rounds everyone up in another room and starts tying most of them up. After watching the detached head separate from the body and try to escape, he's got an idea. He decides that every part of these alien's bodies are separate entities and that if you harm any part, even the blood, it will react. He starts cutting the thumbs of all his buddies and collecting their blood in petri dishes. He uses his own blood first, and with a metal wire heated by flame, he tests the blood to see if it reacts. He proves that he is not affected and then starts going through the list of others in the room. About the fifth man he gets to, the blood screeches and tries to scurry away. Then the man it was taken from begins to violently shake and pulsate. He's tied to a bench with two other men, who are screaming and wailing for their lives as they watch the man sitting next to them burst and bubble from the inside. Unfortunately Kurty's flame thrower stalls and he's unable to torch the monster as it tries to make it's escape. It jumps to the ceiling and drops in front one of the other men equipped with a flame thrower. Before he's able to use it, the monster's head splits open revealing huge ridiculous fangs which chomp down on the other mans head. Kurt finally get's his flame thrower to work, but too late. The first monster, engulfed in flames, bursts through the walls of the room into the snow storm. Mr. Russell tosses a stick of dynamite his way and the monster goes boom boom. Kurt returns to the room, torches the other guy who got his head chomped, and finishes testing everyone's blood. Wilford Brimley is still tied up outside though, and one of the scientists, who went missing earlier, isn't accounted for yet.
With only three men left, they go out to test ol' Mr. Brimley's blood and find that he's gone missing. They notice one of the floorboards in the shed is loose and they take a peek underneath. There's a tunnel below the shed, and when they investigate they discover that Brimley used the helicopter and tractor parts to build a small spaceship under the ice. Then the power goes out. The men decide that the aliens think theres no way out now and they want to freeze and go into hibernation until a rescue team arrives. The don't want to let that happen so they decide to blow the whole complex up and burn it to the ground. While in the basement of the complex the alien manages to nab two of the men, leaving Kurt Russell the last man standing. The alien comes at him from under the ground, and Kurt tosses a stick of dynamite at it. The whole complex goes up in a giant explosion but Kurt manages to get outside unharmed. The last missing scientist returns and the two sit down and have a little chat before they sit down in the snow and wait to freeze to death.
The end.
I apologize that I don't possess the language skills to properly paint a mental picture of the monsters I saw on the screen in front of me today. I normally would never ever recommend watching one of these films, but this is one you may need to see. If only to witness these monsters, I think you'll thank me in the end.