In the late winter of 1977, Kim Henkel and Tobe Hooper, already contracted by Universal Pictures into a development deal, under the mentorship of William Friedkin, began an assignment of adapting John W. Campbell, Jr.'s renowned short story WHO GOES THERE?, already previously adapted by Charles Lederer, Ben Hecht, and Howard Hawks in 1950 as THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD. Reportedly written in a very short time, Henkel and Hooper were determined to make good on their task and whatever tidy sum it would bring them, as well as realize something - in a crunch - that played to their strengths: that of madmen's playfulness, of young creatives raised on the terrors of 50's rampaging monster films, already-dated perspectives on the lengths and limits of the scientifically-minded, and how best to process nostalgia of 50's optimism, by more or less dyed-in-the-wool fringe artists aware the world worked at wavelengths quite opposed to each other: the world as is, and the world of functioning professionalism and blind self-sufficiency - or bio-atomic selfishness - that we are expected to accept. Even Lovecraft makes an appearance, as what are young "weird" storytellers of the 70s like Hooper and Henkel supposed to do but react to every source of horrified parochialism and exceptionalist propaganda that infects the entertainment they imbibed, and then spit out... drumroll... an already-bought-and-paid-for piece of "non-tertainment" (not at all to say that their un-produceable THE THING was something I found not entertaining; it's the definition of entertaining, while dodging slyly the descriptors of "finished," "feasible," and furnished in much of any practical particulars). No, this is not the plausibly macabre The Thing of Campbell, Bill Lancaster, or Carpenter's imagining.
Full Plot Synopsis:
John Rettmann is a political functionary intimately enmeshed in sounding out an incident in the deep Antarctic at an American research facility, led by monomaniacal scientist Dr. Byrnes, where a catastrophic drill site collapse occurs that uncovers a deep underground cavern, and where an enigmatic, sarcophagus-like “find” is brought up from the wreckage. In an attempt to preempt international involvement, Rettmann is transported out to the Antarctic with a physicist, Scruten, meeting up en route with a New Zealand diplomat, St. Pudd. Meanwhile, at the site, the find is under monitoring by Byrnes' team, but internal divisions and a strangely growing madness amongst the members interrupts progress; Byrnes, in a scuffle seemingly inspired by the psychological effect of the find, is pierced by a mechanical piece ejected from the coffin. A stopover at an American base to wait out a storm - where they are introduced to two female doctors with the same destination, pathologists Katharine Oxbeau and Christin Wolfe - devolves into a soul-baring night of drinking between Rettmann and the base captain.
Rettmann is given grim news on the next morning's flight to their destination of Amundsen/Scott Station about the Captain who hosted them, pushing the already troubled Rettmann into a grim-faced stupor that is short-lived under current circumstances, as an Arctic white-out greets their plane at the unmanned landing airstrip, causing a spectacular crash into the Geodesic compound that houses operations, leaving a co-pilot dead (in spectacular fashion). The survivors soon realize the facility is eerily dead, and Rettmann and Scruten take charge of exploring the maze-like confines. Very shortly they find the vault in which the FIND was kept, and are confronted by a horrifying and gory vision of body parts and disembodied limbs, joined together by bioluminescent jelly. Immediately it begins to effect the mental state of Scruten, pushing Rettman to force them to flee. Running into the flight navigator and St. Pudd in the corridor, they are soon overtaken by THE THING, which absorbs the navigator and contaminates Scruten, who Rettmann temporarily subdues. The entire surviving group - Rettmann, surly Texan flight captain Forrester, St. Pudd, Oxbeau, and Wolfe - retreat from the main hangar and barricade themselves in an anterior office. The pressure of the situation has gotten to a number of the group; meanwhile, Scruten, conscious and possessed, taunts them before eventually battering down the door. Just as quickly, the Thing appears, absorbs Scruten, and makes a tight go at the rest before being attacked by a fierce group of huskies, while the survivors are forced to retreat the Geodesic altogether into the harsh Antarctic cold, their survival out there slim. Fortuitously, they are approached by Dr. Byrnes, astride a SnoCat, and while heartened at first, Byrnes appears mad, claiming he is no longer part of the living and revealing the metal piece that pierced him, referred to as the Cog, embedded in his torso. Having little to no other choice, the group, aside from St. Pudd, agrees to what seems like a plan to confront the beast using explosives. The group of five mount an offensive from a makeshift lab made in the rubble of the Geodesic. St. Pudd, left outside in trepidation, seems close to death but ventures back into the Geodesic after being attacked by a contaminated huskie. The group inside prepare explosives with new resolve under a new commander, Byrnes, but the pressure continues to effect them, particularly the young doctor Wolfe and a rejoined St. Pudd. Finally the Thing approaches and the group prepare Byrnes for his showdown, arming him with a detonating device. The two adversaries come face to face, only for the energy blasts of the Thing to knock the explosive rig off of Byrnes' person and into the lab, causing its inhabitants to scurry to all corners. The situation devolving, Forrester, overcome by gung-ho spirit, recklessly powers up the crashed, one-winged Skylifter, causing even more havoc to the rented Geodesic, forcing the others into the original room where the Thing was housed, but successfully sucking up the Thing into one of the turbines, St. Pudd contaminated by one of its hurtling pieces. Thinking the Thing has been subdued, the rest of the group, minus Byrnes, emerges only to find St. Pudd collecting pieces of the Thing to merge with. Forced back into the vault where they left Byrnes with the Find, Byrnes is struggling to remove the cog as chaos ensues around him. A mad Christin is determined to attack the Thing herself, restrained by Rettmann, Katharine, and Forrester, and in the scuffle, Katharine is thrown into the Thing's arms. Soon Forrester and Christin are caught up in the terrifying absorption process. Rettmann, despite his devastation, is instructed by Byrnes to force them back into the Find, while Byrnes dislodges the cog from himself and uses it as a lock to the coffin. The powerful force of the Thing still will not be contained, and the Cog is blown off once more, allowing the arms of the Thing to grab Byrnes, turn him into melting flesh, and suck him through the opening, but also effectively plugging the opening once and for all. The one survivor, Rettmann, ventures back outside, witnesses an aurora and a flare of lights and the sound of turboprops.
Hooper Films Contained in THE THING:
Eggshells
Eaten Alive
Poltergeist
The Mangler
Lifeforce
The Funhouse
Toolbox Murders
Mortuary
The Damned Thing
Midnight Movie (with Alan Goldsher)
Henkel and Hooper's The Thing most usefully comes off as a skeleton key of much of Hooper's later work - it astonishingly mirrors the structure of The Mangler while directly using the "madness contamination" trope used in Mortuary and The Damned Thing. The substance under the ground becomes Hooper and Henkel's take on the nebulous shapeshifter of the Campbell story and Lancaster adaptation, resembling more the blind consuming force of the Blob or Forbidden Planet's Monster from the Id than a survivalist-minded bio-organism, despite briefly, meaninglessly, being identified as of humanoid shape by a choleric X-ray technician.
Whether The Thing's sense of self-historicizing prophecy is nonsense or premonition is up for you to tell - like Dr. Byrnes in the story.
I have transcribed faithfully from the original manuscript in terms of general formatting, even though page breaks were unpredictable. I have tried to keep in as many of the original mistakes and typos as I could. This is in an attempt to possibly put us as close as we can be into their state of mind (indeed, typos increase as they reach the finish line, as if in a mad flurry, and calling the ending rushed is virtually an unassailable fact). In addition to 50's monster movies, recalled also by the piece are 70's disaster and survival epics (the Airport series, Towering Inferno) and genre puppets & miniatures excess (Exorcist II, Grizzly).
But what remains to be reckoned with is the philosophy, both its literary pastiche and its own work ethic - how they saw this evolving, what plumbing they were laying in order to enjoy the faint possibility this might be supported by producers into fruition. As a combination of The Mangler and The Damned Thing (with the psychotropic metaphysics of his book Midnight Movie), both coming off as low-budget condensements of this, while combining various elements from other films such as the afterlife-residing "Elderly supernal counselor" of Toolbox Murders or the many-as-one ghosts of Poltergeist, with these parameters of sensibility we can eke out a further study into the artistic corpus that is Hooper's left-behind work.
“That which is dead is just the beginning.”
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