While John Carpenter’s The Thing nears its 45th anniversary, you may feel like you’ve heard all the stories about this iconic film…think again.
From the makers of the In Search of Darkness series, this is a near 5 hour deep dive that leaves no stone unturned about one of the classic sci-fi horror films.
We cover the origins, from the 1950s original to Carpenter’s appeal for the project, but the flipside of this is Larry Franco who provides the Studio point of view as a producer, chronicling the making of the film but also the fallout as it notoriously bombed at the box office thanks to Spielberg’s E.T.
One of the fascinating sections concerns the music which was credited to Ennio Morricone, but had some input from Carpenter too.
Interestingly, we also discuss the 2011 film and what could have been, given the production problems with that plus the age-old question about the ambiguous ending, with the answer clearly going with Carpenter to his grave.
All of the stars (who are still with us) are accounted for and the anecdotes from Carpenter, Kurt Russell and Keith David are worth the streaming cost alone.
A special mention has to go to the sadly absent Rob Bottin, who gets a large chunk dedicated to his groundbreaking special effects work on The Thing, while touching on his legacy within genre cinema.
While Carpenter can sometimes be a difficult interview, the In Search Of.. crew have found the right balance between nostalgia and his sometimes brutal honesty about his own legacy and what the success of the film would have meant for his career.
Much the same as their Aliens Expanded feature doc, CreatorVC have created a definitive chronicle of The Thing which will have fans grinning from ear to ear.
The Thing Expanded is available now on digital platforms.
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