The Kasturi/Files: Episode 2: Thing & Tonic

Welcome to Day 2 of our horror movie series, The Kasturi/Files, on Speculative Chic, with commentary, arguments, and cocktail recommendations from Sandra Kasturi and Gemma Files!

Sandra Kasturi: Today we’re talking about The Thing (1982, directed by John Carpenter). Carpenter’s version of The Thing is the second iteration of this film; the first was made in 1951, directed by Howard Hawks, as The Thing from Another World. Both were based on John W. Campbell’s novella “Who Goes There?” though Carpenter’s version is much more faithful to the original Campbell piece, situating the narrative back in Antarctica (instead of Alaska), and keeping most of the characters from the story. While the Hawks version had all that delicious Cold War paranoia and fear of extraterrestrials (read: dirty Commies), the 1982 film is several things: a monster movie, a haunted house movie, and, technically, a science fiction movie (because: aliens!). It touches of course on themes much like Invasion of the Body Snatchers did — how can we truly know what’s inside someone else (literally and figuratively), and, therefore — how can we truly know ourselves? The basic premise is that a group of Norwegian researchers at an Antarctic research base find something buried in the ice dating back millennia, which turns out to be a kind of shapeshifting extraterrestrial. Or rather, a creature that basically absorbs other life forms, takes over their DNA and appearance. Of course — we don’t know this at the start of the film. We have that great opening of the helicopter pursuing a sled dog toward an American research base — the Norwegian pilot is trying to shoot the dog from the sky. The Americans don’t know what’s happening, they shoot the pilot, the helicopter blows up, but the dog is fine . . . or is it? DUN DUN DUUUN. Of course, the dog has been altered/subsumed by the alien life form, which then starts taking over other dogs and humans. Things go very wrong as the research station scientists are picked off one by one. You know, it’s kind of an Agatha Christie And Then There Were None riff too, come to think of it! Only with fewer posh accents.

Gemma Files: Indeed. The Thing is a notorious case of something coming out at the exact worst time possible — the same year as Steven Spielberg’s E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial — but eventually growing into the audience and reputation it deserves, partially via the coming video rental store explosion of the mid-1980s to mid-1990s. Not to mention that the creature special effects designed by Rob Bottin set a standard for decades to come, incredibly inventive and always hovering on the ragged edge of spectacular failure; the reason the sequence in which a character’s head separates from his body is so unspeakably gooshy stems from the fact that the gag itself could only be done once, because the combination of elements proved so destructive they literally melted all its components once Bottin set it off. And then there’s the general air of hopeless paranoia which permeates the whole film, from its open ending on back . . . scenes fade to black; questions go forever unanswered, characters wander off-screen and simply disappear. if E.T. was made (at least in part) to make us feel positive about the possibilities of communication with the unknown/unknowable, The Thing was made to unsettle, to depress, to make people doubt everything about themselves. Including, as the film goes on, whether or not they may actually still be “themselves,” whatever that might mean. It’s an existential mindfuck set in a sea of beards. There’s also a prequel, which is better than you may have heard, not to mention far less of an unrelenting bag of dicks.

Sandra: Sea of Beards! I think that should be our band name. Or maybe Unrelenting Bag of Dicks? I know The Thing (2011, directed by Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.) was a box office bomb, but I thought it was better than the reviews it got, and it dovetailed nicely into Carpenter’s version. Of course, whenever you’re making a prequel of something, but you’re doing it thirty years later, you run into all sorts of issues because of course our F/X capabilities are so much better now. Just like having Star Trek prequels occur in the timeline before the original Kirk/Spock series from the 1960s. I guess we just suspend our disbelief! What I’m constantly struck by in Carpenter’s film, though, is the level of body horror going on — were he and David Cronenberg drinking buddies or something? There’s definitely some Cronenbergian squick going on. By the way, I had totally forgotten that Ennio Morricone did the soundtrack for The Thing. It’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in Antarctica! And I can’t believe that we’re now creeping on 40 years of The Thing. It still holds up!

Gemma: 2022 marks The Thing’s 40th anniversary, which may explain why its cultural influence continues to extend far beyond the bounds of the horror genre — for example, it continues to be screened annually every February to mark the beginning of winter at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, in Antarctica. And be sure to check out Peter Watts’s brilliant short story “The Things,” told from the alien intruder’s POV, which was first published by Clarkesworld Magazine in January 2010, and received a 2011 Huge Award nomination for so aptly communicating the Thing’s horror at the idea of just how terribly lonely a species made up of individual consciousnesses must be. No wonder we don’t welcome it with open arms!

Sandra: I love “The Things.” So awful and wonderful. On a whimsical note, I feel like I would be remiss if I didn’t point people to “Thingu” if you haven’t seen it already, Lee Hardcastle’s adorable and icky mashup of Pingu and The Thing. It’s probably one of the funniest things I’ve seen in the last decade. Who knew Claymation could be so visceral?

Cocktail: Gin & Tonic

Sandra: Now, a gin & tonic is no great surprise as a cocktail, but let me tell you — the best one I’ve ever had in my life was in Dublin. First of all, it was made with Glendalough gin. And they served it in a bowl of a glass — you could practically bathe in it. You can replicate this at home (on a smaller scale): pour 2 oz Glendalough over ice into a lowball glass. Add a sprig of mint, a spoonful of juniper berries*, and garnish with a wedge/slice of pink grapefruit. Top with tonic. Normally, I’d omit all that nonsense and add the traditional lime, but I promise you — do it this way and you won’t regret it. Delicious! If you can’t get Glendalough, Tanqueray and Bombay Sapphire are also good. (For whimsy, you can use the “Gin & Titonic” ice cubes if you’re inclined. Too soon?)

* I found juniper berries on Amazon, after a frustrating half hour at the Bulk Barn explaining what they were to the three vacant teens I attempted to communicate with. Their responses were: “Joopoo?” and “Huh?” and “Jupiter berries?” I went home and ordered online. Much more civilized.

Book Recommendations

Sandra: We would be remiss if we didn’t recommend the John W. Campbell 1938 story, “Who Goes There?”  Note: There’s been a lot of controversy lately about Campbell and his racism; we acknowledge this, but respectfully defer something so serious to a discussion that specifically addresses those issues.

And though it’s SF, not horror, it’s set in McMurdo Station, so I can’t not mention Kim Stanley Robinson’s Antarctica. Robinson applied for a government grant to go to Antarctica when he was writing his Mars trilogy — the climate there being the closest on Earth to Mars. He was denied because his books weren’t about Antarctica. So he re-applied with a book about Antarctica and got approved. Brilliant.

As Gemma mentions above, quite possibly the most amazing and fucked-up riff on The Thing is Peter Watts’s “The Things” (for which he also won a Shirley Jackson Award); it was anthologized in The Humanity of Monsters, from ChiZine, and has been republished many other places. Peter calls it a piece of fan fiction, but it’s much more than that — a disturbing tale of, well, first contact. Touchy-feely first contact. In the worst way.

Gemma: A Land So Wild by Elyssa Warkentin or Dark Matter by Michele Paver are both fine, weird Arctic tales of paranoia.

Sandra Kasturi is the publisher of ChiZine Publications, winner of the World Fantasy, British Fantasy, and HWA Specialty Press Awards. She is the co-founder of the Toronto SpecFic Colloquium and the Executive Director of the Chiaroscuro Reading Series, and a frequent guest speaker, workshop leader, and panelist at genre conventions. Sandra is also an award-winning poet and writer, with work appearing in various venues, including Amazing Stories, Black Feathers: Dark Avian Tales, Prairie Fire, several Tesseracts anthologies, Evolve, Chilling Tales, ARC Magazine, Taddle Creek, Abyss & Apex, Stamps, Vamps & Tramps, and 80! Memories & Reflections on Ursula K. Le Guin. She recently won the Sunburst Award for her short story, “The Beautiful Gears of Dying,” in the anthology The Sum of Us. Her two poetry collections are: The Animal Bridegroom (with an introduction by Neil Gaiman) and Come Late to the Love of Birds. Sandra is currently working on another poetry collection, Snake Handling for Beginners, a story collection, Mrs. Kong & Other Monsters, and a novel, Wrongness: A False Memoir. She is fond of red lipstick, gin & tonics, and Idris Elba.

Formerly a film critic, journalist, screenwriter and teacher, Gemma Files has been an award-winning horror author since 1999. She has published two collections of short work, two chap-books of speculative poetry, a Weird Western trilogy, a story-cycle and a stand-alone novel (Experimental Film, which won the 2016 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel and the 2016 Sunburst award for Best Adult Novel). Most are available from ChiZine Publications. She has two new story collections from Trepidatio (Spectral Evidenceand Drawn Up From Deep Places), one upcoming from Cemetery Dance (Dark Is Better), and a new poetry collection from Aqueduct Press (Invocabulary).