Films seldom if ever exist in isolation,
they are influenced by those that came before and exert an influence on those that come after.
points on a graph of film evolution.
But of course some points are more important than others.
'My God, what the hell happened here?'
There is one obvious answer to where did John Carpenter's the Thing came from.
Although usually referred to as a Howard Hawks film,
The Thing From Another World was directed by Christian Nyby for Hawks' production company.
With Hawks taking a very active role.
giving the film has an unmistakably Hawksian feel, particularly in Margaret Sheridan's sparky heroine.
'Come here.'
and the rat-a-tat overlapping dialogue of Charles Lederer
'They're organisms that survive after death.'
'Cold can destroy them'
'On the other hand these organisms maybe dangerous.'
a style Lederer honed in screwball comedies like His Girl Friday, also directed by Hawks.
'Cos I'd know you any time, any place...'
'Anywhere.'
Carpenter's version cleaved more closely to the source novella, Who Goes There by John W. Campbell jr.
(Partly due to budget constraints which forced the 50s version to eliminate the shape-shifting element)
but don't let how good the later film is fool you,
The Thing From Another World is a masterful piece of film-making - iconic is its own right
and informing Carpenter's take.
The main difference is that Hawks' film is about a team working together to defeat an adversary,
with the best ideas coming, not from Kenneth Tobey's Captain Hendry, but from his men.
'Captain, I just thought of something, you said you were going to use kerosene again,'
'Do you know anything better?'
'Something hotter, we have enough cable to stretch to the greenhouse, why not use electricity.'
In fact we barely see the Thing itself.
While Carpenter's film is about a team tearing itself apart.
'I would rather not spend the rest of this winter tied to this damn couch.'
and the creature is front and centre.
The Thing From Another World is a by the numbers B Movie, with all the cliches that entails.
'Any destruction would be an outrage, a betrayal of science.'
'Yes it it will make me and the others sleep a lot better.'
but made by a team with a thousand times more talent than those who would usually handle this material.
Carpenter's the Thing is another beast entirely.
'As different from us as one poll to another.'
But The Thing draws on a broader legacy of B grade genre cinema.
It Came from Outer Space is another story of a shape-shifting alien invader, taking the form of its victims.
The jelly like goo of 1958's The Blob is surely a low budget forerunner of Rob Bottin's pliant creation.
The Deadly Mantis is another monster found frozen in polar regions, released to menace mankind.
The underrated The Day Mars Invaded Earth once again sees humans replaced by aliens
and features a brilliant and unexpected conclusion, that rivals The Thing for bleakness.
While 1964's The Flesh Eaters,
replaces polar researchers with a fleeing Nazi scientist on an island and some unfortunate castaways,
and delivers one of the goriest and most gruesome films of the era.
Also this familiar moment...
At its end, the tiny flesh eating organisms coalesce into one huge, gelatinous monster,
instantly calling Carpenter's movie to mind.
And it's not just B Movies.
Like The Thing from another World, Invasion of the Bodysnatchers is a B Movie premise
tackled by an A-list director (in this case Don Siegel) and again we find aliens taking human form.
'They're after you, they're after all of us. They're here already.'
But Siegel's classic also features another instantly recognisable theme from The Thing: paranoia.
'I thought you'd feel that Gary, you were the only one who could get to that blood, we'll do you last.'
The shadow of the cold war hung heavy over sci-fi movies of the time
'You are to shoot the presidential nominee through the head.'
and while the Thing's paranoia is more focussed,
its air of mistrust is instantly reminiscent of these red scare influenced films.
'Anyone messes with me and the whole camp goes.'
Another element that defines The Thing is it's character dynamics,
and here the film that seems most influential is not a genre one, but Sidney Lumet's 12 Angry Men.
(Lots of arguing)
This is the classic claustrophobic character drama.
'Boy, how do you like that?'
'Look witnesses can make mistakes.'
'Sure when you want them to they do, when he wants them to they do...'
'Keep the yelling down.'
'You keep saying that, maybe what we need is a little yelling in here.'
Under intense pressure, people who are supposed to be working together turn on each other for no reason,
making an impersonal decision painfully personal.
'You're not going to intimidate me, I'm entitled to my opinion.'
It may be no accident that there are 12 characters in Carpenter's movie.
'I heard you pass my door.'
'Not me.'
Carpenter himself cited Agatha Christie's classic 'Ten little Indians' as an influence.
Another study of isolated people under pressure, turning on each other as they succumb to an unseen threat.
And adding yet another genre to the mix.'
'What is she had not screamed, you would still be in the dining room and the judge would still be alive.'
The film that is most often compared to The Thing, is of course Ridley Scott's Alien.
How much of an influence the earlier film had is hard to say -
though its success may have at least helped Carpenter get his film made.
One possibility is that Alien affected The Thing in an anti-influence way.
H. R. Geiger's creature may be stickily biological,
but its honed hunter's body and bio-engineered precision is a world away from the sprawling, blood and gristle explosion of the Thing.
Did Carpenter make a conscious decision to differentiate his alien?
who knows?
As sure as it is the product of many films, the Thing has influenced just as many.
The Fly, coming hot on its heels has a similarly gruesome aesthetic,
and is another a modern remake of a 1950s classic.
Guillermo Del Toro's 1997 film Mimic has another monster pretending to be human
(this time a giant insect).
Comedy/horror Slither brings it back to aliens and it's grotesque, mutated effects have The Thing written all over them.
While 1998's Phantoms, with its frozen setting, and knowledge-absorbing, shape-shifting Entity, runs like a virtual remake.
Then there is the remake itself
and, although 2011's The Thing is theoretically a prequel, carefully referencing the original...
it's far more of a remake than Carpenter's version was of The Thing From Another World,
retreading the exact same plot but with less tension.
before going all sci-fi with a giant game of 3D Tetris.
Some of this is simple stupidity, replacing the greatest scene of the original...
With a plan that revolves around bad teeth.
'It can't imitate inorganic material.'
But it also serves to show what a fine line Carpenter's film walked -
the remake is so similar and yet fails on virtually every level.
The Thing is a tightrope walk,
and it succeeds because it is more than just sci-fi horror.
However much it draws the eye, The Thing isn't really about The Thing, it's about the people -
isolated and under attack -
'Nobody trusts anybody now.'
John Ford's classic Western, Stagecoach is the forerunner of all films dealing with the claustrophobia of wide open spaces.
and how it affects people under stress.
Replace the deserts of Monument Valley with the polar wastes,
'I've just been honourably discharged from the union army, after the war of the rebellion.'
'You mean the war for Southern Confederacy sir.'
Replace the cramped stagecoach with a cramped research station,
'Will you turn that crap down, I'm trying to get some sleep.'
replace the Indians with a stranded alien,
and you have the same situation - men with acres of space and yet nowhere to hide,
forced together with little to do but grate on each others' nerves,
and with danger ever-pressing, pushing them to breaking point.
'If you hadn't insisted on waiting for we would have been there by this time.'
In the latter half of Howard Hawks' career he increasingly turned to Westerns.
This is when he made The Thing From Another World
and it bears considerable comparison to his best known western, Rio Bravo.
A few years before however, he made Red River.
Like Carpernter's The Thing, Red River is a study of men under pressure turning on each other.
Unlike Stagecoach, there's little heroism here, particularly in Wayne's stubborn Tom Dunson.
'Don't ever trust anyone till you know them'
Whether you look at Stagecoach or Red River or any number of similarly themed films,
there's a great case to be made that The Thing is a Western -
there are no women in sight, the macho posturing is in every scene,
and while the characters seem self-serving, there's a code they stick to,
which makes them reluctant heroes.
'Whether we make it out or not, we can't let that thing freeze again.'
'Maybe we'll just warm things up a little around here.'
Above all, there is the isolation, they are on the frontier, making their own justice.
And further proof of this can be found in yet another film influenced by the Thing.
'No offence Cowboy fella, just getting your attention.'
Quentin Tarantino screened Carpenter's film for his cast during filming of the Hateful Eight.
'He's in cahoots with this is one is what it is.'
It's not just that both films star Kurt Russell,
are set in a frozen wilderness and have scores by Ennio Morricone,
'We're just waiting for everybody to go to sleep and that's when we're gonna kill you all.'
Tarantino wanted his film to have that same sense of paranoia that The Things exudes,
recognising that this is more than just a gory monster story.
'If we've got any surprises for each other and think we are in much shape to do anything about it.'
The sum of all these influences and the root of all this influence ought to be a mess of a film,
but while the Thing is literally messy, it is also a honed thriller.
'We'll do you last.'
That's the Thing's power -
like it's title character, it takes on the appearance of other films, assimilating their strengths into its own.
It can be a Western,
a character drama
a who dunnit
or a horror on the surface,
but underneath, bubbling away, it remains always and only The Thing -
unique, unequalled, deadly.
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