The Thing (1982) – WTF Happened to This Horror Movie?

John Carpenter’s 1982 film The Thing (watch or buy it HERE) is widely considered to be one of the greatest horror movies ever made – but when it was first released, The Thing was a box office failure that was torn apart by critics, who accused Carpenter of being a “gore pornographer”. So we decided to dig into the making of this flop-turned-classic with a new episode of our WTF Happened to This Horror Movie? video series, which you can check out in the embed above.

Carpenter directed The Thing from a screenplay by Bill Lancaster, which was based on John W. Campbell Jr.’s 1938 novella Who Goes There?, which has previously been brought to the screen as the 1951 film The Thing from Another World. Carpenter’s film has the following synopsis:

In remote Antarctica, a group of American research scientists are disturbed at their base camp by a helicopter shooting at a sled dog. When they take in the dog, it brutally attacks both human beings and canines in the camp and they discover that the beast can assume the shape of its victims. A resourceful helicopter pilot and the camp doctor lead the camp crew in a desperate, gory battle against the vicious creature before it picks them all off, one by one.

Kurt Russell, Wilford Brimley, T.K. Carter, David Clennon, Keith David, Richard Dysart, Charles Hallahan, Peter Maloney, Richard Masur, Donald Moffat, Joel Polis, and Thomas G. Waites.

This is what the WTF Happened to This Horror Movie series is all about: Hollywood has had its fair share of historically troubled productions. Whether it was casting changes, actor deaths, fired directors, in-production rewrites, constant delays, budget cuts or studio edits, these films had every intention to be a blockbuster, but were beset with unforeseen disasters. Sometimes huge hits, sometimes box office bombs. Either way, we have to ask: WTF Happened To This Horror Movie?

The The Thing (1982) episode of WTF Happened to This Horror Movie? was Written by Cody Hamman, Edited by Joseph Wilson, Narrated by Jason Hewlett, Produced by Lance Vlcek and John Fallon, and Executive Produced by Berge Garabedian.

A couple of the previous episodes of the show can be seen below. To see more, head over to our JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!

What do you think of Carpenter’s The Thing? Let us know by leaving a comment!

The post The Thing (1982) – WTF Happened to This Horror Movie? appeared first on JoBlo.