How John Carpenter’s The Thing Went From Flop to Cult Favorite – CBR – Comic Book Resources

John Carpenter's The Thing is considered a cult classic and one of the best horror movies of all time, but it took years to achieve that acclaim.

In 1982, John Carpenter released his horror movie, The Thing. Since that time, both fans and critics have come to consider it one of the best horror movies of all time. It is a true cult classic that some even favor over the 1951 film it remade.

However, when The Thing hit theaters in 1982, critics and audiences were less than kind. The reviews were scathing and the movie was a commercial failure, only making $13 million at the box office. So what happened between 1982 and 2020 that changed people's opinions?

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Reviews ofThe Thing called it "instant junk" (Vincent Canby), "a great barf-bag movie" (Roger Ebert) and "the most hated movie of all time" (Cinefantastique). The movie even received a Razzie nomination. The fallout almost led to the destruction of Carpenter's career. He was supposed to direct Firestarter but the studio fired him after the response to The Thing, and he was under a multi-film contract with Universal but the studio bought him out to rid themselves of the director.

Carpenter talked about the movie's failure, in an interview with Starlog in 1985. He noted The Thing was "too strong for that time. I knew it was going to be strong, but I didn't think it would be too strong... I didn't take the public's taste into consideration."

The first problem that Carpenter ran into with his movie was that it was a remake of the classic, The Thing From Another World. That movie was a straight science-fiction film, far from the horror Carpenter later introduced. In the '50s, horror movies had fallen out of vogue, and both the Universal Monster movies and the more upscale Val Lewton horror films disappeared for one reason: Nothing in fiction was as terrifying as the horrors of World War II. Replacing horror movies were science-fiction films -- some with lighter horror slants -- that asked questions about the state of the world. These new monsters were creatures like Godzilla, created by science.

The Thing From Another World was a black-and-white film, directed by Christian Nyby and an uncredited Howard Hawks. One in a line of red-scare movies, the plot centered on a U.S. Air Force crew that found an alien who could take the form of anyone it sees. The message of the film was "you can't trust anyone," the basis of McCarthyism. However, John Carpenter's The Thing wasn't even the first remake of one of the movies from this subgenre.

Because it was a remake of a science-fiction classic, critics saw The Thing as as a science-fiction movie rather than the horror film people see it as today, and the movie was possibly too bloody and gory for fans of science fiction in the early '80s. That is a big reason people dismissed it, while a red scare science-fiction film from four years earlier received critical praise.

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Consider these reviews for Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which contrast starkly with those for The Thing: Pauline Kael, one of the seminal movie critics in the '70s, called it "the American movie of the year -- a new classic;" Variety said it "validates the entire concept of remakes." What made this movie so different from The Thing?

In 1978, when Philip Kaufman remadeInvasion of the Body Snatchers, it was more science fiction than horror, where the real fear was your neighbors were now the enemy. There was little in the way of gore and violence, and the scares stayed bubbling beneath the surface. Yet, the endings of bothThe Thing andInvasion of the Body Snatchers were essentially the same, as both showed what came before wasn't over. In the latter, Donald Sutherland pointing and screaming, proving to be an alien, is a cinematic legend; in the former, Kurt Russell looking out, silently realizing hope might be lost, is more subliminal and doesn't mesh with the gore that came before.

The truth is that the failure of The Thing was due to when it was released. The movie hit theaters the same year asBlade Runner, E.T.: The Extraterrestrial, Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan and Tron. Those movies are either smart or optimistic science-fiction movies, which means they're all the polar opposite of what Carpenter brought fans with his film. Even the violence ofBlade Runner is nothing compared to the gore of The Thing.

The biggest problem in 1982 was The Thing was misunderstood. It told a similar story to Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but critics were unable to see past the creature effects and bloody gore of Carpenter's movie. Both films were about losing faith in the world around you, realizing you can't even trust those closest to you and fighting against an unseen enemy.

The Thing was a movie that arrived years before its time. When The Fly hit theaters four years later, a visceral horror movie based on science-fiction ideas like The Thing that also included similarly gory and gross effects, it was a critical and commercial success, making $40 million at the box office. By then, people could see past the gore to recognize the movie's allegory for AIDS in the '80s. IfThe Thing arrived a few years later, it might have been recognized as the same thoughtful allegory asInvasion of the Body Snatchers. Sadly, the gore was too intense for the times so it was not, and Carpenter didn't receive accolades for the movie until much later.

Six years later, Carpenter made They Live, the same type of movie as The Thing but this time without the intense gore. The 1988 film starred Roddy Piper as a man who finds sunglasses that allows him to see a hidden alien menace has already overrun the world. It is almost like the spiritual sequel toInvasion of the Body Snatchers. While the film reached number one at the box office, it received universally negative reviews, but later becoming a cult classic as well. Maybe that is just the story of Carpenter's career.

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Shawn S. Lealos is a freelance writer who received his Bachelor's degree in Journalism from the University of Oklahoma with a minor in Film Studies. He has worked as a journalist for 25 years, starting in newspapers and magazines before moving to online media as the world changed. Shawn is a former member of the Society of Professional Journalists and a current voting member of the Oklahoma Film Critics Circle. He has work published on websites like The Huffington Post, Time Warner Cable, Yahoo Movies, The Movie Network, Chud, Renegade Cinema, 411mania, and Monsters & Critics. Shawn is also a published author, with a non-fiction book about the Stephen King Dollar Baby Filmmakers and has begun work on a new fiction series as well. Visit Shawn Lealos' website to learn more about his novel writing and follow him on Twitter @sslealos.

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How John Carpenter's The Thing Went From Flop to Cult Favorite - CBR - Comic Book Resources