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""The Thing""

11 Comments -

1 – 11 of 11
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Interesting bit of movie trivia - James Arness played the Thing in the 1951 version.

11/21/07, 5:36 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

The original story "Who Goes There?" also owes a lot of its setting and premise to the short H.P. Lovecraft novel "At The Mountains of Madness," about an Antarctic expedition that finds the remnants of a seemingly extinct alien race that was overthrown by its resentful servants-- sort of a sci-fi Oswald Spengler kinda thing.

11/21/07, 10:04 AM

Anonymous Fred said...

The 1982 version of The Thing was perfect. I like Moore's work on BSG, but there's really no need to re-make The Thing.

11/21/07, 11:24 AM

Anonymous Evil Neocon said...

Moore's version will suck for the same reason BSG sucks and most current sci-fi sucks. Sci-fi from the beginning has been populist and the flaw of Moore and other dabblers is that they use sci-fi to preach their elitist moralizing.

Very predictable. Also note that the elitists lack creative energy (unlike Campbell and Heinlein) to create their own stories -- they depend on recycling the work of others. A lot like Rap in the sterile stasis of elites battling for status.

11/21/07, 11:58 AM

Anonymous Topiary Utopia said...

I remember reading "The Brain Eaters of Mars" as a kiddo and enjoying it a lot.

The "false mother" episode reminds me of a story by Philip K. Dick called "The father-thing".

11/21/07, 1:17 PM

Anonymous SFG said...

"The father-thing".
That story scared the shit out of me when I was a kid. Whew!

The original story "Who Goes There?" also owes a lot of its setting and premise to the short H.P. Lovecraft novel "At The Mountains of Madness," about an Antarctic expedition that finds the remnants of a seemingly extinct alien race that was overthrown by its resentful servants-- sort of a sci-fi Oswald Spengler kinda thing.
Ah, Lovecraft. He actually was big into that Aryan superiority thing. He was an anti-Semite who married a Jewish woman, which says a lot to me. ;)

11/21/07, 4:20 PM

Anonymous tommy said...

I'm curious about your opinion on horror films in general, Steve. Which ones, if any, do you like and why? I agree with Udolpho - horror is the most difficult genre to pull off.

11/21/07, 4:56 PM

Anonymous jody said...

carpenter's 1982 version is one of the best horror movies. there's no reason to remake it.

of course there was no reason to remake dawn of the dead, but the remake turned out good.

horror is hard to do. it is difficult to make something that will scare adults.

11/22/07, 9:40 AM

Anonymous David said...

evil neocon wrote:

Moore's version will suck for the same reason BSG sucks and most current sci-fi sucks. Sci-fi from the beginning has been populist and the flaw of Moore and other dabblers is that they use sci-fi to preach their elitist moralizing.

Very predictable. Also note that the elitists lack creative energy (unlike Campbell and Heinlein) to create their own stories -- they depend on recycling the work of others. A lot like Rap in the sterile stasis of elites battling for status.


Someone has snatched ec's body. That comment was insightful.

tommy said:

I agree with Udolpho - horror is the most difficult genre to pull off.

Isn't comedy harder? All you need for horror is the simple plot line of "chaos intruding into order." For example, a nice little perfect family or happy over-sexed teenagers start being eaten by invisible worms...

But making people laugh, genuinely laugh, is regarded as hard by most people. (Though friends tell me I make them genuinely laugh all the time, without even trying.) (Uh, that was a joke. See what I mean?)

11/22/07, 10:23 AM

Anonymous tommy said...

Isn't comedy harder? All you need for horror is the simple plot line of "chaos intruding into order." For example, a nice little perfect family or happy over-sexed teenagers start being eaten by invisible worms...

But to make good horror?

But making people laugh, genuinely laugh, is regarded as hard by most people. (Though friends tell me I make them genuinely laugh all the time, without even trying.) (Uh, that was a joke. See what I mean?)

Comedy is probably #2.

11/24/07, 5:23 AM

Anonymous SFG said...

Moorcock's leftism didn't keep the Elric books from being pretty good, IMHO. But that's fantasy not sf.

Asimov was on the left but is still considered a seminal figure in the field. It IS true that sf has many more libertarian/conservative writers (such as Jerry Pournelle) than normal literature.

11/24/07, 5:47 AM

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