Bloody Perfect: Bad Blood
Isaura Barbé-Brown brings us the next post in her monthly column, Bloody Perfect.
It’s the time of the year when my mind is on snowy vistas, warm jumpers and a mysterious night-time guest who is full of surprises… so naturally my mind went straight to The Thing (1982).
John Carpenter and I have several things in common; a love for horror, a love for practical effects, and a love for Kurt Russell and his beautiful, feathered hair… and all can be found in The Thing.
Set in Antarctica at an American research station where several moody men do, um, research, I guess. The team take in a dog that was being pursued by a Norwegian helicopter and gunman who try and fail to explain their reasons before the helicopter crashes and the gunman is shot dead.
The dog is put in a kennel with the other sled dogs who are immediately wary of their new roommate, and they’re right to be. Before long there is a fleshy, tentacled, snarling, acid-shooting creature where a dog used to be. The team, to their credit, kill it with fire. An autopsy on the creature reveals it to be an alien that is capable of assimilation – or imitating any human or animal on the Earth. The resident biologist Blair (A. Wilford Brimley) uses a computer simulation to predict that this creature could assimilate all life on Earth in a matter of years. When a member of the team, Bennings (Peter Maloney), starts to be assimilated, MacReady (Kurt Russell) eliminates the Bennings-Thing and the rest of the team realise exactly how much danger they’re in.
The Thing could be anyone and it could be anywhere. It assimilates quickly and it’s moving through the group at incredible speed. The dogs have been killed, the vehicles have been sabotaged, and the radios have been destroyed. There is no escape.
After a truly spectacular scene involving a defibrillator and a head/crab/spider Thing, MacReady believes that unlike human blood, the blood of an assimilated person will react to threat (like a hot wire) as a separate entity trying to survive. MacReady, who is armed with a flame thrower and dynamite, ties the rest of the men up and takes a little of their blood to test.
One by one he holds the hot wire to the blood of his colleagues, and when he reaches Palmer’s, the blood leaps from the petri dish and Palmer (who is actually a Palmer-Thing) starts to vibrate. The men who are tied to him panic, MacReady’s flame thrower isn’t working and the Palmer-Thing has started to change into something horrifying. Before Windows (Thomas Waites) can get his flame thrower to work, his head is clamped in the Palmer-Thing’s jaws and he too is infected. MacReady is forced to incinerate them both and the team gets smaller and more hopeless.
The tension as the blood is being tested is unmatched. These men were already at each other’s throats and now can’t trust each other and are tied together in this sweaty, bloody nightmare, surrounded by an inescapable tundra, in the middle of nowhere. Who wouldn’t be tense? This coupled with the glorious and disgusting effects of the Palmer-Thing makes for a truly magnificent scene. The first time I saw it, at the ripe old age of 11, I don’t think I took a single breath until I knew the Palmer-Thing and the Windows-Thing were dead. MacReady was not the hero those men wanted, but he was the one they needed. He also proved that you could keep your hair conditioned and bouncy and still be a badass.
This film received terrible reviews when it first came out, but since then has, quite rightly, become a beloved classic (we do not speak of the remake).
It may not be a traditional Christmas film but it does involve the spirit of (trapped) togetherness, roaring fires and fancy mum hair… so if you really squint, it’s actually not far off.
Isaura Barbé-Brown is a Hackney born and based actress. She studied at AADA in New York and BADA in Oxford. She has written for The BFI, Black Ballad UK as well as The Final Girls/Bloody Women and been a guest on The Final Girls podcast and the Evolution of Horror podcast. She has done talks at the BFI for their Squad Goals event and during their Love season with the Bechdel Test Fest on race in romantic films. Isaura has also been on panels for BFI Future Film, The Watersprite Film Festival and The Norwich Film Festival. Her acting work covers theatre, film, tv and voiceover. She has also written for short film, TV and theatre as well as short stories and poetry. You can find Isaura on Twitter and Instagram.
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