Balls to the wall scary.  The Thing is beyond a shadow of a doubt one of the 31 Scariest Movies of All Time.  And top five?  Oh yeah.  It’s Alien in the Antarctic.  No?  Well, then it’s definitely something.  One does not simply walk out of Antarctica, so they are stuck there with a space monster that can make itself look like anyone of them.

And it’s that shape shifting ability that causes a lot of the terror and also establishes the movie, quite near the beginning, and something different.  Why?  Well, when you first start watching the thing, there are some fools in a helicopter shooting at what looks like a wolf but ends up being a dog.  Then one thing leads to another and the very first night we are with these people the monster seriously jacks up some dogs.

Dogs?  That’s not fair.  Shitty space monster.  Wait ’til the old guy from Cocoon (when he was young) and Snake Plisskin get ahold of it!  Oh, and that’s the other thing that gets me about this movie.  There aren’t any damsels in peril.  Not that I wanted any.  But it is significant that the only other ‘horror’ movie I can think of that didn’t have a chick in it was Predator.

Yeah, The Thing made me more scared of Antarctica than Jaws did of the ocean.  Actually, I was probably more scared of Antarctica than I was of the ocean in the first place.  BUT!  Put the Thing in the ocean and you have a scary monster movie.  Put Jaws in Antarctica and you have a frozen shark.  So I guess that makes sense. Trailer After the Jump!

Filed under: , ,