Here's THE THING...

Now, I absolutely love Carpenter's The Thing. I'm happy to say that I saw it opening weekend back in 1982 and it stands as one of my favorite theater-going experiences. Not to mention that if you get a bunch of horror geeks in the same room arguing over what the greatest horror film ever made is, The Thing just might win. Well, at least most of the time.

Personally, I rate it as the second greatest horror film in the history of history. And no...The Shining isn't the first.

But it seems that there's a bit of a ruckus over Universal's upcoming prequel (due October 14th). Imagine that. A lot of folks have taken to the message boards to air their personal outrage over the studio's audacity in trying to reinfranchise their original investment.

They're howling that Hollywood needs to quit remaking existing properties and invest in new and creative visions. And I usually agree. I can count off on one hand all the successful remakes of great horror films and still have a middle finger left over to acknowledge the rest. But the last time Universal gave someone the funding to create an exciting new monster mythos was...

...well, damn. John Carpenter and The Thing. Ouch.

The Thing is, the movie originally tanked at the box office...three million opening weekend. Yeah, weird to think that most folks seemed to hate the movie when it came out.

But here's why I'm not disturbed by this move. Universal has been sitting on this property (let's just step back and admit that Universal is a business, first and foremost) for near thirty years.

But over the years, their investment has been re-evaluated by critics and the public and has become one solid property for building a franchise on (now sit back and imagine where solid writers could go with the mythos by The Thing IV).

So it’s kind of reassuring that they’ve held off as long as they have. But here we go...

Rolling into this, they had four options:

1. Remake.
2. Make a sequel.
3. Do a prequel.
4. Throw away more money on another attempt at rebooting The Wolfman.

We won’t talk about the fourth option.

I sort of cringe over the first option, and I’m glad more level-minded folks at Universal felt the same way. Not saying that the studio would have went the Platinum Dunes route (and to Universal's credit they did deliver with the remake of Dawn of the Dead), but Carpenter’s The Thing was lightning in a bottle. Trying to rehash the same material is setting out with failure as the best case scenario.

As for a sequel...seriously, does anyone that loves Carpenter’s movie really want to be told what happened between Mac and Childs? It’s a great ending (although admittedly probably a big reason for its initial failure...that and all the doggy abuse). And a sequel means you have to top everything from the original.

So a prequel is the best option, for the fans and for the studio. It can exist as its own entity while leaving Carpenter and writer Bill Lancaster's vision untouched. Essentially, it’s playing around in the same mythos, but doesn’t touch the iconic characters. And if it’s a success, a franchise can be built that continues on without co-opting the Carpenter/Lancaster narrative.

Call me naive, but I’m trusting Universal on this one (despite The Wolfman, which at least was a noble failure). Their track record hasn’t been all that great lately, but I get the vibe that they’re traditionalists. Which is welcome. I'm pretty sure that they're doing everything they can to avoid alienating the fanbase on this one.

And as someone that cut their horror teeth on the Universal monster movies of the black n’ white era, that means some- thing to at least me. I'm not saying that it's going to be better than Carpenter's version. Because it won't. It won't even be as good.

But at least I get the impression that everyone involved in this project seems to respect the material they're working with. So if it's only half as good as Carpenter's, then it'll be better than most studio horror films. And that right there is something to be excited about.

Sad, I know.

But The Thing is...

...there's still a lot of traditionalists that would argue that Hawks' version of John W. Campbell's "Who Goes There?" is still the best. Go figure.

ALIEN RAIDERS (2008)

Okay... the title is horrible. And the DVD cover, while adequate, still isn't exactly something that jumps off the shelf and chases you around the video store...

... but this D2DVD sleeper had me at the opening credits (with ironic use of the Siouxsie track, "Into a Swan") and kept me smiling through the final line.

Granted, I smile at weird things, but...

One of the worst things about the Christmas season is the damned music that sparkles from every public music system. But in a supermarket in podunk Buck Lake, the music becomes the last thing on the shoppers' minds as a vanload of paramilitary toughs roll in and start capping some folks in the aisles...

... but just some folks.

Things can't get any worse, and then they do as the flick shifts into The Thing Hidden in the Mist. Shot on HD (and looking pretty damn' swell), Alien Raiders is a surprisingly entertaining throwback to the early eighties creature features. There's some sly black humor at work, but the emphasis is on keeping the suspense and intermittent mayhem sustained.

Director Ben Rock (part of the original Blair Witch posse) doesn't seem to have had much of a budget to work with here, but delivers more than satisfactorily with what he had on hand. The creature effects are old school prosthetics, with a minimum of CGI wankery.

And with a cast of relatively unfamiliar faces that hit their marks as well (if not better) than the Albas and Gellars that are polluting mainstream horror films, there's no public image getting in the way of characterization. Not to mention that this puppy doesn't let itself get bogged down with needless backstory...

... it hits the ground running and doesn't stop until it rolls through the exit.

Although I'm not saying that it's a new classic. The momentum gets a little slack towards the end, and the "twist" is pretty obvious once our heroes start going all Bush Administration metaphor to figure out who's with us or who's with them...

... although the poignancy of the final line does work to offset that minor weakness. Ultimately, there's a certain Shane Black snap to the dialogue that makes this one stand out.

But hell... I woulda been happy goin' crosstown and paying to see this in the theatre. If more D2DVD entries were this polished, I'd be even more happy staying home and letting the movie come to me.

Images swiped from the flick's MySpace (heh) page.