John Carpenter’s The Thing is one of those movies whose reputation has grown over the years.

It got some stinky reviews when it came out and under-performed at the time, but it has since been reappraised and had a second life on DVD as a horror classic. Carpenter subsequently made some pretty rubbish movies (hello Escape from LA…), but The Thing was the culmination of a golden run (coming on the heels of what I consider his other two stone-cold classics Assault on Precinct 13 and Halloween).

If you have somehow missed it, a shape-shifting alien gradually takes over and wipes out the men trapped in an Arctic research station. Kurt Russell, Carpenter’s ‘go-too’ actor (Escape From New York, Big Trouble in Little China etc) stars. 

The film is crafted brilliantly in terms of pacing, tension and great Panavision photography of the icy wastelands. But it is probably best known for its deliberately gross practical special effects. Carpenter is certainly not afraid to repeatedly up the ‘icky’ factor – if the stomach sprouting teeth to bite off a character’s hands doesn’t get you then the head subsequently growing spider’s legs probably will! As one character memorably says, “You gotta be fucking kidding”!  

The ending has been a source of much debate. Basically (spoiler alert: look away!), Russell and the one other surviving character blow up the camp and go sit outside in the snow to freeze to death. The question is: is one of them now the Thing or not? Carpenter makes it ambiguous, but many viewers have analysed the scene (down to the characters’ icy breaths) for clues.

This UK quad poster rather nicely riffs off the arctic environment in a creepy way, with the alien shape looming over the camp, whilst not giving too much of the film away. I particularly like the tag-line: “Man is the warmest place to hide.”