The Thing (1982)

JOHN CARPENTER: THE SHAPE OF DREAD, PART V

John Carpenter entered the early eighties on a run nobody could touch, turning micro-budgets into hits with HALLOWEEN, THE FOG, and ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK. Universal handed him a budget bigger than all three of those films combined to adapt John W. Campbell Jr.'s novella Who Goes There? What followed was a brutal production: claustrophobic set builds, sub-zero location shoots, and Rob Bottin's practical creature effects, built at a scale nobody had attempted before. When THE THING (1982) hit theaters, critics hated its bleak tone and audiences stayed away, and the failure briefly landed Carpenter in director's jail. This deep dive traces Outpost 31 from its decades-long road to production, through the box office disaster that followed, to the reputation it's spent the last forty years clawing back.

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Credits

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Theme Song: "There's Still a Little Bit of Time, If We Hurry and I Mean Hurry" by Slasher Film Festival Strategy.

This episode was written, produced and edited by Gary Horne & Justin Bishop.

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JOHN CARPENTER: THE SHAPE OF DREAD, PART V

PART 1:

Part 2:

Credits

Escape From New York