in John Carpenter’s 1982 sci-fi masterpiece, American scientists investigate an abandoned base in Antarctica and discover a terrifying life-force that can take the form of its prey… Introduction by curator Andrew Mario broadcast from the darkness of Amundsen-Scott station located at the South Pole!
U.S. Outpost #31, Antarctica, 1982—Twelve men are commissioned to gather physical and natural science data. It is the dead of winter. With six months of darkness ahead of them, they uncover the find of the century. Of a thousand centuries. If only they could put it back… Join us for a special pre-show presentation by curator Andrew Mario, Popcorn included!
The Thing. (1982. Directed by John Carpenter.4K. 109 min.)
John Carpenter’s reworking of the Howard Hawks sci-fi horror classic from 1951—itself based on the same John Campbell short story, “Who Goes There?,” that inspired Ridley Scott and Dan O’Bannon’s Alien a few years earlier—is a deeply disturbing tale of uncanny doubling and alien possession set at a scientific research station in Antarctica. While the film is legendary for its gory effects, the plot is pared to the bone and it is Ennio Morricone’s spare and insistently pulsating synth score (clearly influenced by—and an influence on—Carpenter’s own musical compositions) that deepens our sense of annihilating loneliness and imminent doom. Technically a remake of Howard Hawks‘ well-loved 1951 “The Thing From Another World,” (or more accurately, a new, more faithful adaptation of John W. Campbell’s story “Who Goes There?“) which Carpenter pays tribute to in the opening moments, the new film took a very different approach, ramping up both the paranoia and the eye-popping physical effects, which maintain the power to disgust even today.
Curator bio:
Andrew Mario is a Carpenter, environmentalist and history nerd from Brattleboro. His profession and passions have brought him from building homes and community spaces across Windham county, to farms and eco-villages in Finland and Serbia, and now to the bottom of the Earth. Since 2022 Andrew has worked for the U.S. Antarctic Program (USAP) constructing field camps and maintaining stations used for glaciology, seismology, astronomy, geology and biology. Currently he is at the Amundsen-Scott station located at the South Pole. During the 6 months of darkness he is woodworking in the station shop, growing vegetables in the greenhouse, exploring the stations vast collection of films and admiring the near constant auroras overhead.
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