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There was a programme on BBC2 that I remember from when I was a kid, where people in the film industry would talk about their favourite scene from film - about the composition and mood and acting all coming together for them. It showed John Wayne in shadow at the doorway from the Searchers during it's title sequence. SO firstly, what was the programme called?
And secondly, I put it to you, Barbelith, to do the same.
I'll get the ball rolling.
John Carpenter's The Thing (1982)
Remaking Howard Hawks' B-horror, The Thing From Another World, though staying more faithful to the John Campbell short story on which both are based (Who Goes There?) Carpenter's apocolyptic, bleak film manages to end on the most stiring downer in cinematic history.
Much has been made of the very special effects the fact that the film flopped due to people wanting the sweeter more positive alien experience with ET, but for me the most perfect moment in this film is a relatively quiet moment, coming after one of the films many 'shocking' moments in which the nature of the beast that the men of the isolated Antarctic US outpost has been revealed to them more fully.
MacReady (Kurt Russel) has surmised that the survival instinct at a cellular level of the titular Thing, means that every part of it will fight to live, that a piece of it will 'crawl away from a hot neddle, say'. A test is devised by MacCready - a character that is already suspected by his fellow outpostees as being suspicious at a time when any character could be a perfect immitation, as Childes (Kieth David) says 'So, how do we know who's human? If I was an imitation, a perfect imitation, how would you know it was really me?' - blood samples will be collected, a piece of copper wire heated up and the wire placed into the sample.
The scene opens with MacCready, still suffering from having been left out in the cold to die after clues have pointed to his not being human, warming his hands against the hiss of the igniter flame of a flame thrower he now wears - TNT about his person, his eyes tired and distrusting - and sound plays an important part through out the scene.
The atmosphere has lowered to an almost intimate level, and we are treated to the sounds of a scapel blade slicing into individual thumbs to collect the blood samples, which drip and pour into dishes. The first test takes place, with the hot wire scraping and screetching into the blood, and we, along with the characters on screen, exhale and feel relief.
What Carpenter does perfectly is to make the scene play slowly, we get to feel the relief of the individual as they pass the test, we get to feel the building doubt of characters, uncertain of their peers very nature, uncertain of their own nature, uncertain of the validity of the test. It makes the destraction of tension between MacCready and Garry (Donald Moffat) work perfectly when Carpenter pulls the carpet from under our feet as the test proves successful on a character that we have not been paying attention to, the blood screams as the wire presses into it, and the scene is suddenly all about noise and movement as the men struggle to survive once more.
It is probably the sheer silence of the moment, sandwiched as it is by two moments of visceral horror, that makes this a perfectly tense moment, and a part of the film that embraces the feelings of isolation and mis-trust between it's characters, as every character behaves as you would expect them to, you really begin to realise what the Thing is capable of, and leads to MacCready's realisation that perhaps survival isn't an option, that the Thing has to be stopped, what ever the sacrifice. |
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