Night 9 of "The 31 Nights of Halloween Film Fest"

I've joined in the fun over at Domestic Witch's October Blog Party. You can find a list of participating blogs that are having fun celebrating the season of Halloween. When you're done here take a broom ride over to her site and you'll see the list of blogs on the right side bar.

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Here at The Lounge we will have a "31 Nights of Halloween Film Fest". Check back each day to see which movie is featured and some days you may get more than one. They will be a random selection of my favorites. You can see all past selections on the sidebar.

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Make sure to leave a comment for each movie as one lucky person will win their choice of pendant from Laughing Vixen Lounge at the end of the film fest. Please see rules at end of post.

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Night 9..."The Thing"

I remember getting my parents to take me to see "Blade Runner" at the Drive In (I was a huge Harrison Ford fan) and "The Thing" was the second bill. Horror films were too scary for me at that point in life so I went to sleep in the back seat when it started. My parents stuck it out for about 30 minutes before they shook their heads and left.

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Directed by John Carpenter (Halloween, Christine and Escape from New York) this film is a fairly faithful remake of the 1951 "The Thing from Another World". Both film versions are based on a short story called "Who Goes There" by John W. Campbell Jr. Released on June 25, 1982 by Universal Pictures. A group of American scientists up in the Antarctic have their day interrupted by a helicopter trying to shoot a dog. The helicopter crashes and no is left to explain just what the hell was going on. Strange, but not enough to make any of these guys worry much. Head honcho MacReady (Kurt Russell) takes a couple others over to the base camp the helicopter came from to see what they can find out. Meanwhile the dog is left to roam around unattended. Surely there's nothing to worry about there!

MacReady and the others return to camp with a strange human-like burnt body that they found at the other base camp. What could it be? Where did it come from? Shouldn't we be worried about that dog roaming around camp? OK, so we are the only ones asking that last question.

After a little more snooping they find that the other camp had found a space craft frozen in the snow. It also looks like they dug something (or someone) else up and took it back to their camp. Finally, the dog starts to do some ooey gooey morphing and the boys start to realize something is wrong. Yes, they are a very swift group!

Now it's a matter of finding out who is infected by this "Thing" and who can they trust??!

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This is a very bloody movie and I wouldn't suggest trying to eat while watching it. While the special effects are a bit outdated by today's standards it still works. I'd rather have these effects than some poorly done CGI.

The movie plays out like a traditional scary movie and has lots of jumps and scares. Everyone is paranoid and suspicious which makes it all the more hard to figure out who is the next to go. Best of all Kurt Russell is looking young, cute and sporting his best Grizzly Addams look. How bad can it be?

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Some trivia about the movie....

1. This is one of the few Universal movies that do not start with the Universal logo.

2. This is the first movie that John Carpenter did not score himself. Though it would be hard to tell as it sounds almost identical to that signature John Carpenter sound.

3. The opening title exactly duplicates the original 1951 film. To create the effect of the title, an animation cell with "The Thing" written on it was placed behind a fish tank filled with smoke that was covered with a plastic garbage bag. The garbage bag was ignited, creating the effect of the title burning onto the screen.

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Rules for pendant giveaway...
(1) comment about a movie per movie.
(1) extra entry by following this Blog and (1) extra for following on Twitter (You can only take the blog and twitter entries once for the whole contest).
(1) extra entry for Tweeting about this. Please use this message -Check out the "31 Nights of Halloween Film Fest" to win your choice of pendant from @LaughingVixen http://tiny.cc/BBL8T 3 Tweets a day max and no more than 1 an hour!
(1) extra entry for guessing the next film. I will tweet hints on Twitter about the next days movie and you can post your guess as a comment. Doesn't have to be right just your best guess.
Make sure to post each entry as an individual comment on any of the movies comment pages. You can comment on past movies. Make sure you can be contacted from your post.