John Carpenter's The Thing is a horror classic, known widely for its paranoia-fueled story and stellar prosthetic effects. Released in 1982, The Thing originally performed quite poorly, earning mainly negative reviews from critics and bombing at the box office, making just shy of $20 million on a $15 million budget. By nearly all accounts, the movie was a complete failure.
However, it has experienced a bit of a critical re-appraisal throughout the years and is now (rightfully) regarded as a horror classic. Very few movies can disgust like The Thing, and very few have portrayed feelings of paranoia in such a succinct and nerve-crushing manner.
Tobe Hooper Was Originally Chosen As Director
Today, The Thing is widely regarded as one of John Carpenter's best works. But the job nearly went to fellow horror maestro, Tobe Hooper.
Universal had secured the remake rights for The Thing from Another World (itself an adaptation of John W. Campbell's novella Who Goes There?), and they had Hooper under contract at the time. Hooper had released The Funhouse under Universal in 1981 - just one year before the release of The Thing. Hooper was instructed to write up a rough draft, but Universal was unhappy with his ideas and decided to ditch him for someone else.
The Movie Went Through Numerous Writers
Penning The Thing proved an incredibly difficult task, for numerous reasons. Many writers wrote rough drafts for the movie, including Tobe Hooper, novelist David Wiltse, and William F. Nolan, who penned Logan's Run in the late '60s.
Carpenter made it clear that he didn't want to write the movie, and Universal turned to the likes of Deric Washburn, Nigel Kneale, and even famed horror author Richard Matheson, who is perhaps best known for writing I Am Legend. All turned it down.
The Writer Won Over Carpenter With One Scene
After John Carpenter became involved in the project, screenwriter Bill Lancaster was brought on board. Lancaster was a novice screenwriter, having only written two movies - The Bad News Bears and The Bad News Bears Go to Japan.
Lancaster seemed like a strange pick for such a dark, dreary, and complex horror story, but Carpenter was a fan of The Bad News Bears and loved his ideas for the movie. One of Lancaster's best ideas was the blood test sequence, which sees MacReady testing everyone's blood to suss out The Thing. Carpenter loved it, and it solidified his desire to work on the movie.
The Effects Budget Was Greatly Inflated
After Carpenter agreed to make the film, The Thing was given a rough $10 million budget from Universal, with just $200,000 of that allocated for creature effects. However, storyboarding grew so extensive and ambitious that Universal was forced to up the budget from $10 million to $15 million.
Universal also realized that the make-up department was quite large and extensive, and they agreed to allocate $750,000 (up from $200,000) for the effects work. But even this went over-budget, and Universal eventually spent $1.5 million on the movie's visual effects.
The Norwegian Base Is Actually Just The American Base
The Thing opens with a destroyed and burnt out Norwegian base, the story of which was eventually told in full in the 2011 prequel.
To save money, Carpenter and his team simply decided to film this sequence after destroying the main American base. The base was built on location in Alaska, and the filmmakers decided to actually blow it up for the film's climactic sequence. Once it was blown and destroyed, Carpenter and his team simply filmed inside its burnt out skeletal ruins and used them for the movie's opening sequence at the Norwegian base.
Numerous Endings Were Filmed & Edited
Ending The Thing proved a difficult task, and even to this day, its ending remains hotly divisive. Many people - including the movie's editor and a Universal executive - hated the movie's ambiguous and nihilistic ending and decided to have it changed.
In one filmed but ultimately unused ending, MacReady is rescued and given a positive blood test, proving that he is human. In another, slightly re-worked ending, Childs was omitted completely. They eventually decided on the original ambiguous ending, which did not sit well with test audiences (or the general public).
Carpenter Originally Wanted A Single, Unchanging Creature
Part of what makes The Thing so fantastic is the multitude of ways in which The Thing appears. Sometimes it appears as disgusting tentacles, other times as a giant spider-thing with a human head, others times as a dog with a split-open head, and yet other times as simple human beings.
This was largely the decision of make-up designer Rob Bottin, as Carpenter originally envisioned one single, unchanging monster. In this Vulture interview, Carpenter claims, "In the project we originally came up with, the creature was just one thing. And Rob’s idea was that it could look like anything, and it keeps changing. So I went with that."
Bottin Was Hospitalized For Stress
As viewers can probably assume, working on The Thing was no easy feat. Rob Bottin had a particularly challenging job in overseeing the movie's special effects, and it took a toll on his physical health.
Bottin was so dedicated to his craft that he often did the most difficult tasks himself, literally lived on the set, and worked for one straight year without taking any days off. He was eventually hospitalized for double pneumonia, a bleeding ulcer, and exhaustion - all a result of the stress and work load. Bottin was just 21 years old at the time.
Stan Winston Did Uncredited Work On The Movie
Bottin knew full well that he couldn't keep on like that and decided to hire Stan Winston to help him with the movie's effects. Winston is perhaps the biggest name in Hollywood special effects history, winning four Academy Awards for three movies - Aliens, Terminator 2, and Jurassic Park.
Winston primarily worked on the Dog Thing - a grotesque creature seen near the beginning of the movie. Winston had great respect for Rob Bottin and refused to take official credit for his work, wanting all the credit and acclaim to go to Bottin alone.
The Poster Was Created Without Any Knowledge Of The Film
The Thing's poster is certainly a classic. It was created in just 24 hours...and without any knowledge of the film itself. It was designed and drawn by Drew Struzan, who is widely known among movie circles as the greatest poster designer of all time.
His hand-drawn posters, including the iconic ones for Back to the Future and Star Wars, have drawn acclaim the world over. Struzan was told the very basic premise of the movie and whipped up the poster in just 24 hours, knowing absolutely nothing else about the movie.