Remembrance Day and....GI Joe?

Stick with me here on this one folks.

While putting Remembrance Day and a toy in the same sentence may seem frivolous and inappropriate to some, there is a very strong personal connection between the two for me. It is a connection that has created a love-hate relationship with extremely popular and fondly remembered line of action figures known as GI Joe.

Those of you who may have read my Remembrance Day blog last year, know about my grandfather who fought with the Canadian Expeditionary force at Vimy Ridge in World War I. I had a Great Uncle, Pvt. James Bowman (my father was named after him), who was gassed in the trenches of World War I. Having survived the war, he later died of complications from the gas, but not before a long and drawn out illness. I had another uncle who was killed in World War II during the Italian campaign of 1943. Yet another uncle of mine survived both Dieppe and D-Day but, I'm told, he was never really the same person after that.  My own father served in the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II. The veterans were many in my family. So the  Remembrance Day tradition was a strong one. 11 AM every November 11 was a solemn and emotional moment in my house.

In 1971, at all of seven years old, I found myself very interested in a toy many of my friends at school had. That toy was called GI Joe. I was particularly interested in the talking astronaut figure. It was just about the coolest thing I'd ever seen in my life. There was just one problem. The overall military nature of GI Joe did not sit well with my WWII vet dad. My older brothers had already been denied playing with the toy a few years earlier for the same reasons.

I knew some other kids that were not allowed to play with GI Joe but for completely different reasons. In the early days, GI Joe's were thought of as "dolls". Back then, the whole concept of an  "action figure" (the coining of that term has got to be one of the greatest marketing triumphs of all time) had only been around for about 6 years. It still being a new and socially revolutionary concept at the time, many dads back in the day, to put it mildly, were uncomfortable with the idea of their boys playing with "dolls".  Though, as far as I know, my father was the sole  conscientious objector to GI Joe.

As luck would have it for my seven year old self, the GI Joe line had recently seen an interesting shift.

My dad circa 1940.

In the early 60's, Korean War veteran Ted Levine, who is largely credited with creating GI Joe, came up with the idea of a poseable figure that would be aimed at an entirely new market for such things, boys.  There was a great deal of skepticism at Hasbro, the company he was working for, that a "doll" for boys would never sell. In fact, some thought the idea could potentially be the biggest disaster in toy business history. So Levine then coined the term "action figure" and suggested that they use it exclusively in marketing GI Joe. They went pretty hard core on that idea too. Any retailer that used the word "doll" in reference to the figure was cut off from the line completely.

Even that was not enough. Hasbro felt that the toy needed to be masculine in the extreme in order to overcome the whole "doll" PR problem. Cowboys, athletes, knights, pirates and policemen were considered but finally everyone agreed that you just can't get more masculine than the military .

They borrowed the name GI Joe from a 1948 Robert Mitchum movie titled The Story of GI Joe (with no official permission, BTW, a copyright infringement that no one could get away with today). The term GI Joe itself was coined during WWII by legendary American war correspondent, Ernie Pyle.

The 1964 GI Joe "doll'.

Originally consisting of just four figures all named Joe (one each for the Army, the Air Force, the Navy and the Marines), the 12 inch "action figure" was a massive hit. It was the first toy in history to run TV ads outside of the Christmas season. The whole "action figure" vs "doll" thing (despite the objections of a few socially reactionary dads out there) did not hurt sales a bit. As was the case with a lot of pop culture aimed at kids from the 60's, the original Joe's seemed innocent enough but had some disturbing undertones. The talking GI Joe Marine, for instance, had the cold blooded line, "Enemy patrol sighted. Fix bayonets!".

By the late 60's those undertones became uncomfortable overtones. The war in Vietnam had escalated and thus had become incredibly controversial. The sales of GI Joe were greatly impacted. It's hard to believe today but all things military were very unpopular at the time, most especially when it came to toys for young kids. My dad was definitely an early adapter on that front.

Rather than cancel the line, Levine and the guys at Hasbro came up with a new concept for GI Joe: The Adventure Team. They dropped the military angle completely. Instead of army, air force and navy, there was now Land Adventurer, Air Adventurer and Sea Adventurer. It was, in fact, a very clever way of redressing the already existing army, air force, marines and navy uniforms and accessories. The new line of GI Joe's also came with groovy, fuzzy 70's "like like hair and beard".

My dad still took quite some convincing. These adventure guys seemed to have a pretty major military vibe going on and, worse still, they were still armed. Sure, their rifles were now supposedly loaded with tranquilizer darts but every member of the Adventure Team did still carry a side arm (for self defense purposes only, my dad and I finally agreed). Much to the chagrin of my older brothers, my dad finally relented.

With the Adventure Team, GI Joe was now a bunch of bearded guys who devoted their machismo energies to saving endangered species (though, usually dangerous ones like tigers and giant apes), recovering lost treasures and artifacts (usually from dangerous locales like shark infested waters or ancient Egyptian tombs during an earthquake) and launching daring rescue missions. GI Joe in the 70's never had a single human enemy.

The shift was just what GI Joe needed. The Adventure Team became the hottest selling toy of  the early to mid-70's, surpassing even the original 60's line. The new breed of bearded 12 inch men of adventure were, and still are, some of the most cherished toys of my childhood. I will still will grab the odd vintage Land Adventurer when a good price comes up on eBay.  Some members of the Adventure Team share my office even as I write this.

By the late 70's, and by the time I had grown out of them, the Adventure Team sales began to falter. They were being beat out by action figures based on the enormously popular TV series The Six Million Dollar Man and by a line of figures based on superheroes from both Marvel and DC Comics (made and marketed by the same company -egads!).

Before the 80's, there were no TV shows or comic books based on toys. Both Canadian and American broadcast regulations back then put limitations on the amount of advertising children could be exposed to. So what basically amounted to a weekly 30 minute ad for a toy was not allowed. Nor was it seen as an appropriate way to advertise to impressionable children. TV toy promotion was limited to 30 second appearances during breaks from other children's shows.

The only GI Joe comics at the time came with the toys themselves.

The toy industry, including Hasbro, was lobbying to change the regulations on advertising to children. Hasbro, in particular, argued that they were being clobbered by the competition. The competition being mainly companies that were producing licensed toys  based on TV shows and comics. They felt it was unfair that they were not allowed to produce TV shows based on their toys in order compete in that arena. Still, the rules held firm.

After several unsuccessful attempts to retool GI Joe, the line finally died out in 1978.

Action figures, though, were still going strong. Particularly well selling were a line of action figures made by Kenner based on the ground breaking hit movie Star Wars (which, then, BTW, was still just one movie). In order to save money on plastic prices (late 70's -oil crisis, kind of an issue), they reduced the standard action figure size from usual 12 or 8 inches to a relatively tiny 3 3/4 inches.

When the Reagan Administration came into power in the US in the early 80's, there was a great amount of deregulation in many different industries, not the least of which was the media. Many broadcast regulations in the US were discarded or changed. One of those regulations was the one that concerned the limit of promotional material that was allowed to appear in children's television programs. In other words, TV shows based on toys were now A-OK.

This worked out nicely for Hasbro, who had been looking for a viable way to relaunch one of their most successful products. They took advantage of the situation to introduce a whole new GI Joe line.

The GI Joe "Real American Hero" line launched in 1982. The line blazed the trail for a new era of toy marketing. The figures were launched in conjunction with a TV series (originally just a mini-series)  and a monthly comic book published by Marvel Comics. They also took their cue from the successful Star Wars series of figures and took advantage of the much-cheaper-to-mass-produce 3 3/4 inch format. By 1985, GI Joe was the top selling toy in the US, surpassing even sales records made by GI Joe in both the 60's and 70's.

The nature of GI Joe had shifted significantly by the 80's. Gone were the bearded adventurers of the 70's. Gone also was any sense, either amongst the general public or the toy companies, that military-themed toys were in any way inappropriate for young children. GI Joe was now unapologetically military in nature.

We were definitely living in a changed world.

In the 80's, the cold war started to heat up again. There was also a major swing back  to American jingoism at a level that had not been seen since the early 60's .

It was now also legal to cross-promote toys advertising with TV series and comic books in a manner unheard of in my childhood years. Along with GI Joe there were toy-based TV shows  for The Transformers, The Care Bears, He-Man and My Little Pony, to name a few.

I remember coming back home to my first apartment when I was a student at Concordia and turning on my little 15 inch CRT TV (with rabbit ears, natch). In a fuzzy, staticy picture off of one of the US border stations suddenly came this assault of action music, constant movement, explosions, uber-macho guys running around with guns, followed by a stars and stripes themed logo and the prominent words, "Real American Hero", next to the title "GI Joe".

I was so shocked and stunned, I spilled Kraft Dinner all over my crappy second hand couch.



I know that many of my younger friends don't get my animosity toward one of their most cherished and beloved childhood icons. To be clear, my reaction to the 80's GI Joe incarnation was not just about disliking the significant changes they made to my cherished and beloved childhood icons. No, my problems with the new Joe's consisted of much broader personal, social and political issues than just a plain old bit of geekery.

For adults at that time, the idea of TV shows that were basically 30 minute toy ads was something of repellent concept. The ethics of the new marketing concept were questionable. Parents and educators were up in arms over this new brazen approach to advertising to children. I remember 60 minutes doing a major segment on how and why the advertising for children regulations were changed. While I often feel that the media and such parental lobby groups are just a tad alarmist, I could see their point. The line between entertainment and advertising had become blurred. Younger children generally don't understand the persuasive nature of ads, least of all when they are disguised as a TV show.

Even as an young adult, the whole concept was a shock to my system. The 80's saw a new era of even more coordinated advertising and market strategies, not just to kids but to everyone. It was the first time the word "demographics" entered the lexicon. The baby boomers had stowed their idealism of the 60's. One of the catchphrases of the 80's was, as Michael Douglas in Oliver Stone's Wall Street said, "Greed is good.".

To be fair, I understand that a kid growing up at the time, though, would most likely have had no sense of any of these issues. They would not even know that things had ever been any different.

It's interesting to note that the Canadian regulations regarding such children's advertising activities as TV shows based on toys never changed. GI Joe, Transformers, My Little Pony et al ran only on American border stations. However, they were still on the toy store shelves here so the Canadian broadcast rules made little difference in the overall scheme of things. I guess the concession that the Canadian editions of the many of the "Real American Hero"  action figures had maple leafs on their uniforms where their US counterparts had the stars and stripes was supposed to make it all okay.

Then, of course, there was the overt militarism of the 80's Joe's. Again, I came from a family background of veterans who had either been killed, wounded or psychologically damaged in two world wars. The Vietnam War and the protests against it were on TV just about every day when I was kid. War was serious shit, even when I was a kid.

It wasn't the militarism in and of itself that was so much the issue for me, it was the age at which the militarism was aimed. And it wasn't even solely about the militarism, either. The 80's GI Joe seemed incredibly jingoistic to me. I mean, c'mon, they had a character named Sergeant Slaughter (albeit borrowed from the WWF). We were living in the time of Reagan, Mulroney and Thatcher. I saw stuff like the 80's GI Joe's,  The A-Team, Rambo and Top Gun as disturbing pop culture indicators of a sweeping ideological shift.

For me, the sum total of the new GI Joe's was just a little too disturbing.

I was a student in Communication Studies at Concordia University in Montreal in the early to mid-80's. One subject I studied was propaganda. So when the assignment came up to write a paper on some current propaganda, you'll never guess what I chose.

I watched about a month's worth of the daily installments of GI Joe series, frantically taking notes on the whole thing. I took this approach because something that really bugs me, both then and now, are critics, academics, pundits and so on criticizing or commenting on a TV show or movie that they have never even seen.

While I remember appreciating the writing  by some of my favourite Marvel comics writers like Gery Conway, Steve Gerber and Marv Wolfman, the show did not do much to dissuade my initial negative impressions (to be fair, I did not nor have I ever read all that much of the GI Joe comics). I found that the GI Joe TV series held much in common with the tenants of most war propaganda movies.

The good guys a classic war propaganda movie, for instance, are always extremely individualistic, often from multi-ethnic backgrounds. The bad guys, on the other hand, are usually a mass of faceless inhuman automatons with absolutely no individuality. The GI Joe team sure lived up to that point. They didn't even seem to have consistent uniforms. Even when they did, the uniforms were filled with individualistic variations like football jerseys, sunglasses, and cowboy hats. There were also Native Americans and Latino's on their team. The Cobra soldiers, on the other hand, all had exactly the same uniforms and all wore the exact same inhuman faceless masks.

In most war propaganda, the enemy was often shown as disjointed, bickering and generally not unified in their efforts. This was never more true than with bad guy characters of Cobra Commander, The Baroness and Destro. They were consistently arguing with each other within their obvious Axis Powers paradigm.

Each episode would end with one of the Joe characters appearing in front of some random kid about to climb an electrical fence, swallow household cleaners, swim in dangerous waters or do some other dumb risky thing. The Joe character would explain why the given activity is a bad idea (there were also the occasional social lessons), concluding that "Now you know and knowing is half the battle". It's like the whole segment was there to say "So there, upset parents and educators. Now will you get off our backs?".

As the professor who graded my paper asked, were the toys, the TV show and the comic books really propaganda? Were they pushing a particular political or ideological agenda? The answer is no. First and foremost, they were trying to make money. And, in the process, they invoked much of the popular zeitgeist of the time in which they were created.

Was the whole approach somewhat ethically reckless? In my opinion, yes.

Yikes!

The post -1982 GI Joes now almost totally dominate the brand. The new movies and the TV series revivals are all based those incarnations. Nobody but guys over 40 even know what the Adventure Team is. Google GI Joe and it's 9, count 'em 9, pages before you see any reference to anything pre-82. Walk into a comic book store and there are like 11 different GI Joe titles, all of them based on 80's and beyond incarnations. I mean, would it kill you to put out just one comic book or even a movie based on the GI Joe Adventure Team?

Now, GI Joe may seems like an odd and even inappropriate topic to discuss on Remembrance Day. I bring it all up to point out what the values that were to handed down to me by family background and the historical context of the time in which I grew up. The idea is of Remembrance Day is to remember the wars and those who fought them and those who have fallen. Most importantly, though, the underlying message of the Remembrance Day poppy is, to me, "never again".

I do believe that, sometimes, military force is necessary. Those times, in my opinion, should be exceedingly rare. Due to the flaws of our political systems and in our very nature, military force is a power that is all too often abused.

Now I know a bunch of people who grew up with those toys and they have not (to the best of my understanding) gone on to become war mongering fascists. And, if there's one thing I've learned from expressing my issues with the 80's GI Joe's to people who grew up them is that you never fuck with a geek's beloved childhood icons.

But war is always looming, especially in a post-911 world: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, the list goes on. We need to be cautious when it comes to culture of war (pop or otherwise). These days there is often a tacit agenda attached that culture.

As DC comics (and I think The Bible) used to say, "Study war no more".

Casting Steven Soderberg's Bazooka Joe and His Gang

If you grew up between 1954 and 1981, you are no doubt familiar with Bazooka Joe and His Gang. They were the  comics that came with every package of Bazooka Joe bubble gum. The original antics of the eye patched youth and his rag tag group of streetwise kids were on the radar of just about every kid back in the day. Most of us know the Bazooka Joe characters inside out....well...okay...it's probably more like a kind of  passing familiarity bordering on dim memories.

Since 2009, rumours on the Internet have abounded concerning a potential big screen live action Bazooka Joe movie . With comic characters both major (Batman) and obscure (The Green Hornet) dominating the box office, just about every comic property in existence is finding its way to the big screen. So why should what is perhaps the tiniest come ever be an exception?

The best possible film adaptation would have to feature Golden Age Bazooka, '54-'81. None of this 80's and 90's rebooted retro-coned Bazooka Joe Universe, featuring Bazooka Joe as a time traveling rapper or any of that nonsense.We're talking Old School inner city Bowery Boys-esque Bazooka here, folks. So before Hollywood mucks it up I want to get this out there. Here is my ideal director (cinematic chameleon Steven Soderberg is perfect for the job-but more on that later) and dream cast for Bazooka Joe and His Gang, the movie.

Ryan Gosling as Bazooka Joe

Too often the casting of iconic roles in important reboots like Bazooka Joe are based solely on looks. In the case of Bazookas Joe this would be a mistake. There is more to the character of Joe than just his youthful looks, shock of blond hair and trademark eye patch.

Despite his happy-go-lucky, every man attitude, Joe has demons, lots of them. The guy completely lost the use of his right eye at a very young age. How does that emotional subtext inform Joe's behavior in three to four line blackout sketches?

You need an actor with the right chops to pull that kind of thing off. Canadian Ryan Gosling is that actor. Critically acclaimed for his work in such films as Lars and The Real Girl, Blue Valentine and Drive, Gosling has got the what it takes to pull off the depth of Joe's buried inner pain yet still maintain the levity necessary to bring dignity to some really bad punchlines.

Robert Pattinson as Mort

As I seem to recall, Bazooka Joe and His Gang was never quite as popular with the girls as it was with boys. So the Bazooka Joe movie would have to do what many comic-based films before it have done: play not just to the core audience of male fans but also be able to attract a viable female audience. Remember how many times in the recent Marvel Comics-based superhero movie, Thor, for instance, lead actor Chris Hemsworth had his shirt off?

In that case, the Twilight move hunk Robert Patinson is a natural to play Joe's best friend, Mort. Mort is an interesting character too. He's guy whose face is covered 100% of the time with a turtleneck sweater and....oh...um...yeah....wait a sec...okay...um...maybe not.

Amanda Seyfried as Jane

 

Bazooka Joe and His Gang would be Amanda Seyfried's second crack at an iconic role. She has previously played Little Red Riding Hood in the 2011erotic fantasy thriller of the same name. If she can make that work, then she can certainly play the part of just about the only woman in Bazooka Joe's gang. 

Jane is Joe's longtime girlfriend (21 years, and that's just counting the original continuity) . She must love the guy a lot because she pretty much always got stuck playing straight man to Joe or one of  the other members of his eponymous gang. When Jane does get a punch line, it's usually one that's part of a group effort like the classic comic where Joe asks his gang, "Where was the Declaration of Independence signed?" and the entire gang replies together, "At the bottom!".

If anybody can breathe dignity and poise into the thankless role of a non-character like Jane, it's the woman who somehow ended up cast as "the unattractive girl" in the Megan Fox vehicle, Jennifer's Body.

Zach Galafianakis as Hungry Herman

As with many of the over weight characters from the 50's and 60's, Hungry Herman was about one thing and one thing only: eating. Pretty much every gag in some way had him wanting, trying to get or getting food. We saw little of his home life, his relationships or his job (or school?). It was like the guy was a food addict or something.

Then who better to play a character with that kind of an obsession than the guy who lit up a joint on live TV while appearing on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher? Pot and hunger: one follows from the other, right?

If you've seen Mr. Galifianakis in the Hangover movies or in the HBO series, Bored to Death, then you know that the man has penchant for playing cryptically obsessed characters. They're guys' who, despite the obvious nature of their desires, still remain somewhat ambiguous in nature.

A great new spin on a one track character, I say.

He would have to lose the beard to satisfy the purists.

Leonardo DiCaprio as Pesty

It's never really made clear in the original comics but most Bazooka Joe historians and scholars agree that Pesty is more than likely Joe's little brother.

True, Leonardo Dicaprio is 16 years older than Ryan Gosling but he does have that ageless baby-face thing going for him. Having played characters as diverse as Howard Hughes, King Louis XIV and J.Edgar Hoover, Dicaprio could make the part his own.

And it that isn't reason enough for you then, well, it's a Bazooka Joe movie, eh?

Tom Hardy as Toughie

"I just had a fight with toughie. When it was all over, he crawled up to me on his hands and knees."
"What did he say?"
"Crawl out from under that bed you coward!"

Toughie was frequently the heavy in Bazooka Joe comics. He was usually the source of most of the conflict and dramatic tension throughout the 2 to 3 panels of the story.  Most of his storylines involved physical confrontation or the threat of physical confrontation with Joe or other members of his gang. Make no mistake, urban gang violence was indeed prevalent in the Bazooka Joe Universe.

The character of Toughie would have really have to be a toughie, when you think about it. The guy, just by himself, is consistently a major threat to a gang composed of anywhere from 4 to 7 members.

Tom Hardy is an actor who brought an incredible threatening physical presence to the title character of director Nicolas Winding Refn's film,  Bronson. Yet Hardy was also able to bring a degree of sympathy to the monstrous character. Such a nuanced portrayal of Toughie would certainly help to shake up the often staid narrative structure Bazooka Joe's 2 to 3 panel stories.

Hardy would be comfortable in a franchise film. He played Captain Picard's younger clone in the movie, Star Trek: Nemesis. He will be appearing as the Batman villain, Bane, in Christopher Nolan's upcoming The Dark Knight Rises. In 2012, he will taking over an iconic role first made famous by Mel Gibson in not one but two upcoming Mad Max sequels.

Anne Hathaway as Pat

Anybody remember Pat?

Me neither.

Nonetheless, if the reaction to the casting of Anne Hathaway as Catowman in the next Batman movie is anything to go by, Bazooka Joe fans everywhere will be outraged by the news of her appearance in the film. And I don't want to think about what's gonna happen the first time photos of Ms.Hathaway in her Pat costume surface on the internet.

Kall Penn as Tex

There's too many white people in this movie.

Obama administration to Bazooka Joe: it's a natural progression.

Nicholas Cage as Boastful Billy

Speaking as a writer, I admire the audacious simplicity of some of the Bazooka Joe character names. Case in point, Boastful Billy. With stories that are sometimes just one panel long, you don't have much time to flesh out and develop characters as you may in with, say, in stories that are seven or eight panels long. As soon you hear Joe or Mort say, "Here comes Boastful Billy", though, you know exactly what to expect.

Lately, Nicolas Cage, it seems, has a hard time saying "No" to just about any role. I mean Season of the Witch and Sorcerer's Apprentice back to back, followed by a Ghost Rider sequel? How much debt are you in, again?

If there is one thing Cage can play, it's slightly deluded yet boastful characters (Vampire's Kiss, Honeymoon in Vegas, accepting the lead in the Wicker Man remake). Let's face it, the man is a very good actor who has done far too much slumming. He certainly could use the career prestige of a project like the Bazooka Joe and His Gang.

Robert Duvall as Joe's Dad

Apocalypse Now, The Godfather, The Great Santini, Tender Mercies: none of these roles, while all amazing performances, are anything like the part of Bazooka Joe's dad. Duvall hasn't really done all that much lighter fare, especially ones that feature so many puns along with awkward set-ups and punchlines.

Duvall ultimately would give us a glimpse into not just Joe's dad but into Joe himself. He is, after all, the guy who made Joe into the man he is today.  A name like Duval's would bring a certain degree of legitimacy to the project. With any luck, he'd pull a Marlon Brando and ask for like 11 million dollars for a two minute role.

And just think about how cool it would look in the credits and on the poster: 

"...and

Robert Duvall

as 

Bazooka Joe's dad"

Judy Dench as Joe's Mom

Because, quite frankly, Helen Mirren will turn this role down cold.

Director: Steven Soderberg

Steven Soderberg is probably the most versatile director working in both Hollywood and the independent film scene today. He has tackled many different kinds of films in different genres. He's taken on the big mainstream star driven blockbusters like Ocean's Eleven Trilogy and the recent Contagion. He's no stranger to indie character-driven films like Sex, Lies and Videotapes and Full Frontal. He's done art-house fare like the four hour subtitled biopic Che and narratively experimental Terence Stamp film, The Limey. He's helmed Oscar winning movies like Traffic and Erin Brokovich.  And Soderbergh is not afraid to take risks that sometimes don't payoff. Risk like, for instance, casting adult film star Sasha Grey in the lead role of The Girlfriend Experience. Soderberg is now breaking into franchise cinema as well. He'll be directing the upcoming Man From U.N.C.L.E. reboot starring Bradley Cooper.

With the possible exception of  Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire, 28 Days Later, Trainspotting), Soderberg is one of the very few directors that is able to successfully reinvent himself from film to film.  He is the only auteur out there that could conceivably pull off a Bazooka Joe movie. After all, we are talking about a two hour movie consisting of a series of three to four line scenes ending a single punchline and no other narrative closure.

Work your magic Steve!

And I have one final request for the Bazooka Joe and His Gang movie. For the Canadian release of the film, every line of dialogue has to be repeated twice: once in each official language.

Five Movie Scenes That Scared the Hell Out of Me

I am a big fan of a good well-made suspenseful horror film. Yet I have not been scared watching a movie in something like 30 years. Sure, there have been many films in the genre that I have found tense, disturbing, suspenseful and just plain creepy. As far as reacting with actual real fear to something that I've seen on screen, though...nope...nothing....not for a long time.

However, in my younger days (much younger, in some cases) , I was pretty frakin' terrified by some movies. Most especially, the ones I used to watch alone on TV, late at night, after everyone else in my house had gone to sleep. That intense movie-watching induced fear phenomenon has rarely repeated itself since then.

I suppose my lack of recent cinematic fear could be a function of age. Or could be that I went on to acquire so much knowledge regarding the techniques of film-making that it became hard for me (at least on some level) not be to conscious of  the all the cinematic techniques that are generally employed by any given film maker when they are attempting to scare the living shit out of you.

Back in the day, I was a sucker for many a good horror movie and even some movies (I hesitate to confess) that were not even really in the horror genre. Those movies, and more particularly particular certain scenes in them, have stayed with me. I can still remember and relive the fear they induced. Today, I understand why those scenes managed to get to me way back when but that does lessen my sense memory of the whole affair.

So now I'm about to induce that sense memory once again as I present my Top Five Movies Scenes That Scared the Hell out of me.




5.The Birds (1963)
D: Alfred Hitchcock

Scene: Immediately after the birds' first big attack.


Given the era that I grew up in, Alfred Hitchcock just had to make this list. For my money, The Birds is Hitch's scariest film. No. Not Psycho. The Birds.

Yes, I know that Psycho is the movie that for, better or worse, gave us the entire horror slasher genre. Janet Leigh getting stabbed to death with a large kitchen knife while taking a shower is pretty disturbing, to be sure. However, I was much older by the time I finally saw Psycho. More importantly, though, I think the idea of being attacked by a psychotic transvestite while washing oneself never really connected with me. Now, when it came to the idea of these flying animals that I'd seen in large numbers up in the trees all my life just suddenly, and for no apparent reason, aggressively turning on the human race, well, that's a fear that I connected with quite a bit. I'd experienced first hand seagulls trying to steal french fries from the lone helpless kid on the beach. The knife wielding psychotic transvestites didn't really try that one so much.

I was 11 or 12 when I first saw The Birds. It would be several years before I'd take an entire university course on Hitchcock and would come to know the guy's work inside out. Back then, all by myself, watching the late late show (that's what they used to call midnight TV airings of movies in the pre-Craig Ferguson era), I was fair game for Mr.Hitchcock's masterful fright techniques. About all I knew about the celebrated suspense director at the time was the parody version of him I'd seen on The Flintstones.

The particular scene that really freaked me out did not involve an avian attack. It involved its after math. Right after the 1960's version of Angry Birds launched the film's first action attack set piece, Rod Taylor and Tippi Hedren, the stars of the film, find a ten year old Veronica Cartwright on the balcony of her house. In the scene, the young Cartwright has just discovered the dead body of  her teacher played by Suzanne Pleshette (as a longtime fan of The Bob Newhart Show, that in of itself was already disturbing enough). In the scene, Cartwright is wailing her eyes out. There is something about her cries over a death that we did not even witness that was particularly chilling. In addition, the matter-of-fact way that Hitchcock shot the scene made it emotionally disturbing. It managed to induce a fear of the birds after the fact. The avian aggression is nowhere near as scary the deep psychological scars it leaves behind.

You've got to hand it to Hitch for, among other things, having a perfect eye for casting. If you've seen Veronica Cartwright in any of her many characters roles in films ranging from Alien to The Right Stuff to The Witches of Eastwick, you know that totally nailing hysterical crying scenes is one of Ms.Cartwright's amazing gifts as an actor.

4. Fantastic Voyage (1966)
D: Richard Fleischer

Scene: White blood cells attack the miniaturized submarine.

Yeah. I know. Even the description of the scene sounds silly. And Fantastic Voyage is not, strictly speaking, even a horror movie. To be fair, I was 6. In retrospect, I might of been a bit too young to be watching this movie. I wish I'd of shown better judgement back in those days. Between that and the glue eating, my life was a mess back then.

Right off the bat, the very idea of the people inside a submarine being shrunken down small enough to be injected into a human body was kinda wigging me out to begin with. The only time in my life I have ever had surgery was when I was six years old. The memories were no doubt still very fresh at the time. I would not have put it together then but anything medical, let alone anything so fantastically intensely medical,  had the power to really get to me on deep level.

Again, what was I doing watching this movie?

Fallout from the evil white blood cell attack.

The scene that really got me in this case was the one that happens when the effects of the shrink ray (or whatever the device was - I don't really recall) start to wear off and the microscopic submarine slowly starts growing larger. The sub and the scientists inside become large enough to get the attention of the body's immune systems. The science behind the whole premise of the scene (and the entire movie) is impeccable, I'm sure.

Anyway, white blood cells start attacking the submarine. So suddenly these flying white bubble-ish things start hurling themselves at the sub. The visual effects were a tad cheesy even by 1966 standards. However, it is still a very tense moment in the film,  especially if you've been sucked in by that point....and if you're six years old.

Yes on both counts. Totally. The nightmares later that night did a nice a job of embellishing the fears that scene unearthed in me.

I did not see Fantastic Voyage again until many years later on video. Only this time around, being in my early 20's, I found myself focusing, for some strange reason, on Raquel Welsh and her exploitatively tight wet suit. From there on in, I had a decidedly different reaction to the movie.

That's one way to conquer a childhood fear.

3.War of the Worlds(1956)
D: Byron Haskin

Scene: The first on-screen appearance of the Martians.

The 1956 version of War of the Worlds has some very dated visual effects. We're not talking about the more sophisticated terror of the 2005 Steven Spielberg remake here. And I wasn't exactly 6 when I saw it. I think I was like twice that age. I guess War of the Worlds  (as the title song from The Rocky Horror Picture Show tells us) was just one of "some terrible chills" that producer George Pal promised to show his bride.

The '56 War of the Worlds was only loosely based on HG Wells' landmark alien invasion novel of the same name. The scene that really scared me in this movie was loosely based on a scene in the book (and was more faithfully recreated in Spielberg's 2005 remake).

Our two heroes, Gene Barry and Anne Robinson, are holed up in an old farm house in the midst of one of the many Martian  attacks on Southern California (yep, aliens were still from Mars back in the 50's). The Martian spaceships (a very cool design, BTW) can be seen hovering over the farm.

Our heroes look out the window at one point and see a Martian, out of its ship,scurrying by outside. The creature is only seen for a fraction of a second. At this point in the movie, we've seen their ships but not the Martians themselves. That brief glimpse was freaky in its own right.

Barry, being the man in a 1950's SF/Horror movie, runs outside to investigate. Knowing the conventions of the genre very well, he leaves Ms.Robinson alone to fend for herself. Then, while Robinson is looking elsewhere, we see a three-long-fingered hand reach for her shoulder. It makes contact and she screams and turns around. Then we see the three-eyed Martian full-on for the first time. For it's time, it was a very well made monster. It did not look at all like the classic 50's obviously-a-guy-in-a-suit  monster (more likely it was puppet). The Martian was very slimy and creepy looking. Looking back at the stills from the '56 War of the Worlds now, well, honestly, it's actually almost laughable.

I don't remember laughing at it.



2. Alien (1979)
D: Ridley Scott

Scene: The alien egg opens.

Alien has, among other things, the distinction of being the last movie that ever really frightened me. I remember finally catching up with it during its initial theatrical release while visiting Toronto in the summer of '79. I was 15 at the time.

Alien was playing in a big old movie palace kinda theatre (The University, if I recall the name correctly). I went to a weekday matinee showing so, naturally, it being Toronto, nobody was there. So there I was, completely alone one the balcony of this old massive ornate movie theatre. The balcony alone must have had the capacity for about 150 people.

What was it with me and watching these movies alone?

You'd think the many terrifying factors of Alien would have been enough to scare me under those circumstances. Not so much. The intimidating psycho-sexual creature, the face hugging alien and the chest bursting scene were all definitely disturbing, gross and tense. In terms of actual fear, there was, as you might expect, only scene that really got to me.

A lot of times its the anticipation that is the most frightening thing in horror movies. This is especially true when there is a master director like Ridley Scott at the helm. Case in point, the seemingly 20 minute scene with Harry Dean Stanton looking for the lost cat in and amongst all that monster friendly darkness and enclosed spaces. While that scene was was unnerving, it's not the one in question.

Remember the scene where John Hurt and his fellow astronauts discover the massive amounts of alien eggs on the crashed alien spaceship on some unknown planet? That's the part that got me. One sequence in there in particular, actually.

One of the eggs suddenly, slowly and quietly opens up. That's creepy enough. Then stupid John Hurt decides he wants a closer look. When it comes to characters in horror movies, apparently these people have no fear...or common sense. At this point, Scott in masterstroke of suspenseful direction, slowly moves his camera in towards the egg, then over it top of  it and then right down into the pulsating ooziness of the center of the thing.  It's a brilliant shot; one of the best in the film. The viewer just  knows that something bad is in that egg. The egg is creepy and dangerous yet the audience is forced to look right down into it.

That camera movement, more than anything in the movie, filled me with dread. At the time I knew very little about the film so I didn't know about the face hugging alien or anything like that. I just knew something really bad was coming. The shot was just plain scary on a totally visceral level.

Despite a bit of a gross out factor, turns out nothing happens in that shot. Then, after all the tension has been released, and Hurt and the rest of the audience have relaxed, the face-hugger, suddenly and without any build-up of tension, comes leaping out of the egg. In rapid motion, it wraps itself around Hurt's helmet as he falls out of frame. It all happens so fast that the eye can hardly even process the action.

I think I jumped about a foot when that thing sprang out of the egg. Luckily, no one was around to see it.

1. The Fly (1958)
D: Kurt Neumann

Scene: "Help me! Help me!"

In 1986, David Cronenberg made an incredible remake of the classic 1958 horror movie, The Fly.  The film is intense, unsettling, gory and ultimately almost metaphysically disturbing. Classic Cronenberg in other words.

And, pound for pound, it's a much more effective thriller than the original Vincent Price version. The '58 Fly is a tad staid and stiff. The giant fly head looks pretty silly, even next to Goldblum's now 25 year old creature make up in the remake. Also, vintage horror movies like The Fly and The Last Man on Earth where Price doesn't play the villain never really worked for me (check out Theatre of Blood or the Dr.Phibes movies for a couple of amazing villain performances by Price).

All that aside, the end of original Fly has one of the most chillingly frightening scenes ever put on film. Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea star David Hedison (though he's credited as Al Hedison) plays a scientist that, like Goldbum, is attempting to develop a matter transport device. Due to, literally, a fly in the works, Hedison ends up with a Fly's head and the fly ends up with Hedison's head.

Long story short, the film ends with the Hedison-headed fly getting caught in a spider's web. The spider starts wrapping the fly up in with its web, effectively paralyzing the insect with the human head. The head remains uncovered and, squirming like hell, the human headed fly yells in a tiny high pitched voice, "Help me! Help me!" as the spider gets ready to eat him alive.

Yikes.

Finally, Price (who plays Hedison's brother) looking down on the tiny horror, picks up a rock and throws it on the spider web, mercifully killing both victim and killer instantly.

That tiny cry for help is probably the scariest thing I have ever heard. It's wickedly unsettling on a primordial level. I saw the scene for the first time by itself, out of context,  in a documentary on great horror movies. That can only speak to it's incredible power. Those helpless words from that terrified lilliputian voice have stayed with me to this day.

It was quite some time before I watched the movie as whole. Watching 90% of the film for the first time, I found myself grimly anticipating the "Help me! Help me!" scene. When the film finally reached its conclusion, the scene had not lost one bit of its disturbing emotional impact. 

While Cronenberg's remake is a great horror film, interestingly, it never hits a moment as viscerally unsettling as the cries of "Help me! Help me!". Oddly, the line is not the in '86 version at all. It only turned up on some of the posters. It was probably put there by an artist that was once as freaked by that scene as I was.

I think this Halloween, I'll put all of these scenes on around midnight and watch them all alone and see if I can recapture some old fearful magic.

Happy Halloween everybody!

15 of The Weirdest Combinations of Artists and Cover Songs Ever

Sorry, folks, no Shatners or Nimoys in this baby.


15. The Sun by They Might Be Giants

One of my fave bands covers a song from an educational album they used to listen to as kids.




14. Batman by The Jam

 Back in the late 70's, covering any TV show theme song, let alone one that (at the time) was very strongly associated silly kids stuff, was a bit of a risk for an emerging New Wave band from the UK.




13. Sympathy For the Devil by Laibach

Love this version.

The lead singer sounds like Henry Kissinger doing Bela Lugosi.




12. It's Not Easy Being Green by Frank Sinatra

I remember getting a major "WTF?!" when a friend of mine who was huge Sinatra fan heard this one for the first time.




11. Love is All Around by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts

Do you think maybe Joan Jett had a crush on Mary Tyler Moore as a kid?





10. My Own Personal Jesus by Johnny Cash

Johnny Cash sings Depeche Mode. Man, those last few albums of Cash's career were awesome.

The video is by yours truly.






9. Follow Me by Blondie

I guess Blondie was big enough at the time that they could get away with doing a song from a Broadway musical. Then again, this album did mark the beginning of their downturn.




8. High Ho by Tom Waits

 Imagine Snow White directed by Bertolt Brecht...




7. Suzanne by Neil Diamond

 You step into an elevator circa 1975 and hear this.








6. Sunshine Superman by Mel Torme


Ya gotta keep up with these kids today, Mel.





5. By The Time I Get to Phonix by Nick Cave

And in the other direction....

I don't care how much of a dark post-Punk icon you are, you should still show some respect your elders, Mr.Cave.




4. Don't Give Up by Willie Nelson and Sinead O'Connor

I'm not sure what's weirder: that Willie Nelson did a song with Sinead O'Connor or that he did a cover of a song made famous by Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush with Sinead O'Connor.




3.Let The Sun Shine In by Frente

The song that made Pebbles and Bam-Bam famous.

A beautiful version, in spite of itself.



2. Here Comes Santa Claus by Bob Dylan

I'm not sure where Bob is at these days. Jewish? Born-again Christian? Buddhist? One thing is for sure: none of those religions believe in Santa.




1. Ob-la-Di-Ob-La-Da by Bing Crosby

This one is just too awesome for words...




The frakkin' back-up dancers alone are priceless.

These are some of my choices for really odd cover versions, feel free to chime in with some of yours below...

The thing about The Thing

WARNING: This post contains some Big Time SPOILER ALERTS on the original novella and all three Thing movies (including the NEW THING MOVIE)


The Thing, the third movie in what can now safely be referred to as The Thing franchise opens today. Like the titular shape-shifting creature, the story and basic premise of The Thing has shape shifted and adapted to the themes, issues and even fears of the various times in which films were made.


The latest take on the badass chameleon alien monster has garnered a great deal of skepticism amongst fans.  Reactions have ranged from “No!” to “Why?”.  However, there has consistently been a new movie version of The Thing every thirty years or so since 1951.  The original novella, Who Goes There? by legendary SF writer John W. Campbell Jr. was published in 1938.  The basic premise behind the story of a group of scientific researchers in Antarctica who discover a malevolent alien being buried in the ice goes back even further than that.


If you take into account the underlying archetypal themes of the story, such as shape-shifting, spiritual possession and the evil twin, it’s a tale almost as old as civilization itself.  In literature and folklore, the yarn usually involved such evil or mischievous forces as fairies, demons and ghosts. By the time the more technological and scientifically advanced mid-20th century rolled around, the mythological figures were replaced by the more mysterious and ominously threatening forces of alien beings from other worlds.

Writing under the name Don A. Stuart for the pulp magazine Astounding Stories, Campbell’s novella Who Goes There? first appeared in print in 1938. It’s hard to verify all these years later but more than likely the title was meant to be a reference to the opening line of William Shakespeare’s immortal tragedy Hamlet. The line is spoken in reaction to the first appearance of the ghost of Hamlet’s recently murdered father. Timeless themes are already prevalent in the title alone.


Who Goes There? is a well written piece of short fiction that gets a lot of mileage out of a simple premise.  A group of researchers working in a research base in Antarctica known as Big Magnet stumble upon a spaceship in the ice that has been buried there for 20 million years. In a classic ironic bad move typical of these kinds of stories, the crew brings a frozen alien being back to the station. Once the alien thaws, it comes to life. It soon becomes apparent that The Thing (as it it is referred to in the story) can take the form, shape, memories and even personality of any being it kills. It is even possible, the crew soon realizes, that The Thing may be able to do this to more than one being at any given time.


The story quickly becomes a classic cat and mouse game of suspense with the added twist that it’s never really clear who is the cat and who is the mouse. Short story even shorter: all incarnations of The Thing are  finally detected and destroyed by MacReady, the base’s assistant commander. The Thing is stopped just short of building its own atomic-powered anti-gravity device. Its plan was to escape Antarctica and infect the rest of the planet.  


That’s a key part of the premise of the original 1938 story. What is at stake is more than just the survival of the men and the ensuing “who is The Thing in disguise?” paranoia. It’s about protecting the entire world.  If anything, the altruistic motives of the crew in Who Goes There? trump even their own instincts for self preservation. A telling premise for a story that first appeared  on the eve of World War II.


13 years after the first appearance of Who Goes There? in print, a film adaptation of Campbell’s story, The Thing From Another World, was released. Though the film was not really an adaptation. Just about the only elements of Campbell's story that turn up in The Thing From Another World are the remote location, a very cold climate, an alien and a crashed spaceship.

The Antarctic location of the base is replaced by an Arctic location.The research station has become a US Air Force base in Alaska.  In this case, the alien spaceship (or "flying saucer" as it is referred to in the dialogue) has crashed not 20 million years ago but very recently. The Thing itself is a classic Guy-in-a-Suit 50’s sci-fi monster movie alien. The decision to dump the shape shifting angle is interesting, given the Cold War era context of the film. The movie easily could have gone in an Invasion of the Body Snatchers direction. Distrust of everyone and everything for fear of Communist infiltration was an idea heavily promoted in politics and the media in the early 1950’s. 


The Thing From Another World, though, takes a much simpler path. Destroy the evil alien monster at all costs. The greater good of the free world trumps anyone person's own personal safety. The underlying threat of The Thing taking of the world most likely resonated strongly in the era of the Red Scare.


The Thing From Another World opts for an obvious no-frills killer monster plot line. The Thing is some kind of a plant monster that feeds on human blood. And who knows? The monster could be the vanguard of a much larger alien invasion. Protecting the rest of world from the evil creature is paramount. The film’s central conflict is just like the film it was shot on: black and white.


Historical, political and social contexts aside, The Thing From Another World is a very effective thriller. Even by today’s standards there are scenes of great suspense that still hold up.


The movie’s director is credited as Christan Nyby, a long time editor for legendary Hollywood director Howard Hawks (The Big Sleep, Sargent York, Rio Bravo and the Star Wars-inspiring  Air Force). While Hawks is credited as producing the movie, it has been widely reported that most if not all of the film was actually directed by Hawks himself .


Whomever is responsible, the movie was one of the first to use the classic suspense tactic of the sudden scare without any build up of tension.  For instance, there is a scene when the base commander casually opens a door. Suddenly, and without warning, The Thing is right there on the other side, attempting to lurch into the room. The scare is so effective that there is automatic suspense for the rest of the film any time anyone even reaches for a doorknob.


The Thing, in the end, is ultimately destroyed, by the the actions of the brave and resourceful US servicemen, another powerful theme of post WWII early Cold War Era (one that, quite understandably, has resurfaced in a post-911 world).  Even the media is heroic in the end (not really something that has stayed with us into a post-911 world). The reporter embedded on the Air Force base to cover the crashed flying saucer story, gets on the radio at the end of the film and broadcasts to everyone back home in America that the threat from another world was defeated this time but there may be many more invading Things to come. He utters the now classic line that has come to define much of 1950’s Hollywood Sci-Fi, “Keep Watching The Skies!”.


The Thing From Another World did well at the box office in 1951. It saw many subsequent re-releases and TV airings in the years to come. One of the fans the movie picked up along the way was a young kid on whom the 1951 Thing made a lasting impression. That young man’s name was John Carpenter. Carpenter would, of course, grow up to be one of Hollywood’s most successful horror directors.  He made his mark in the late 70’s with one of the early progenitors of what is now a staple of the horror sub-genre, the slasher film. The film was Halloween and it also happened to slash box office records (pun intended).

In 1982, Carpenter got his chance to remake one of his favourite movies.  Despite his affection for The Thing From Another World, he kept very little of the original film in the remake. Instead, Carpenter and screenwriter Bill Lancaster returned to Campbell’s original novella. The plot is very close to the plot of the ‘82 Thing. Even the character names are mostly the same. About the only thing Carpenter retained from the ‘51 version was a similar font in the onscreen title sequence.  John Carpenter’s The Thing is a very different  beast than The Thing From Another World.


The setting is back once again in an Antarctic research station. The malevolent alien retains many of the shape shifting assimilation characteristics of the The Thing of Campbell’s story. Even McReady’s (yep, that character is back too) unique blood test for detecting alien duplicates is almost virtually the same.


Kurt Russell (who, by 1982, had finally successfully ditched the typecasting curse of all those 70’s live action Disney comedies like The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes and The Strongest Man in the World) plays the character of MacReady. The names are the same but the novella and movie characters are not exactly identical. For one thing, McReady and the other characters are pretty much only concerned with their own survival and self-preservation. Not only is protecting the rest of the world from The Thing a secondary consideration but so is protecting the other members of the research crew.  With a creature so deadly and so evasive, it becomes every man for himself pretty quickly. Literally every man. Oddly, the 50’s version of The Thing has female characters but the 80’s (true to the 1930’s story) does not.


And it is this aspect of the characters that makes Carpenter’s vision of The Thing so dark.  People easily become selfish and unlikeable under such a threat. Is the conflict with the monster or with each other or even with civilization itself?


The other darkness and far more visual elements of The Thing are the effects. Using a combination of animatronics, stop motion animation, make-up and plain old fashioned puppetry techniques, Carpenter and his effects crew created some incredibly creepy and wonderfully cinematic appearances for the eponymous monster. Each time we see The Thing either being detected and/or getting caught in the act of assimilating another victim, the visual effects take center stage. However, there's more to these scenes than just their functioning (as many critics back in the day loved to point out) as a showcase for impressive effects work.


People and animals are distorted, their faces or other body parts are twisted often screaming mutilations of nature that have become appendages to the creature. The Thing itself is filled with pulsing veins, spurting blood and unknown organs. Tentacles, claws, crab-like legs writhe about as the creature assimilates living beings and lashes out for more victims. The Thing expands to great heights or great lengths or both. The creature of The Thing is disturbing, compelling and frightening at the same time. Yet the appearances of the creature are also tinged with an undertone of pathos. In the end, The Thing is a dangerous beast, to be sure, but its actions are also portrayed as those  of a cornered animal, deeply aggressive in its fear.


The Thing is kind of an exaggerated version of its enemies. It is fighting for its own survival and self-preservation just like its human counterparts. Overall, the portrayal injects a grim yet compelling vision of the human condition in what could otherwise be mere horror movie escapism.


In 1982, the Cold War had heated up once again in the early days of the Reagan era. Gone were the dominant anti-war, anti-establishment ideologies of the 60’s and 70’s. The world was swinging back to conservatism. In its historical context, Carpenter’s nuanced portrayal of a creature just as distorted and frightened as its human enemies reads almost as a last gasp of liberalism in an increasingly reactionary era.


That portrayal may explain why the film bombed in its initial theatrical release. Ultimately, on an almost subconscious level, The Thing is scary, suspenseful and grotesque but most importantly, it is bleak and nihilistic. It’s a message and a motif that can be a bit of a turn-off on a first viewing. It all holds up much more strongly over multiple viewings. That was no doubt why The Thing only attained its classic cult status after its initial home video release.


The Thing had such a long and distinguished track record as cult classic that rumours of remake or a sequel have been lingering for years. After 30 years, the rumours were wrong. 


No remake. No sequel. But there is a prequel.

The newly released film version of The Thing depicts events that immediately precede the events of the classic ‘82 version. Narrative-wise, that’ s a prequel. However, the movie has the exact same title as the 1982 version. Ostensibly that makes it a remake. Or maybe a premake? A requel? Whatever the case, it’s a clever way of hitting the core audience of fans of the classic ‘82 version while also attracting a new generation of movie-goes who are unfamiliar with the classic and are just looking for some new SF Horror thrills.


On that level, The Thing 2011 (seriously, how is Universal Pictures ever gonna keep their catalog straight?) certainly delivers, but it really doesn’t end there.

The now classic themes of The Thing are all present: terror, paranoia, violence and plenty of visually elaborate effects. The story focuses on the Norwegian outpost referred to in the opening of The Thing 1982.

While director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. displays reverence for Carpenter’s The Thing, the film differs from the ‘82 version in many significant ways. Gone, for instance, is any sense of pathos for the alien creature. The creature is violent, aggressive and horrifying. Like the in the ‘51 version, The Thing is evil. Kill it now. Period.

The Thing 2011 displays a sense of terror that reaches audacious extremities. van Heijningen lingers on the creature at just about any point in the story when it becomes a mass of unnaturally pale twisted human body parts. We see The Thing as made up human appendages along with blood drenched veins, slimy tentacles, hairy insect legs and crustacean claws. And that’s just for starters.  

The Thing also contains such intense psycho-sexual imagery as a thick-veined alien phallus-shaped form of what was once a human arm that forcibly inserts itself directly into its victim’s screaming mouth. Or, in another the sequence, a six legged, half assimilated naked form of a man  crawls over top of another screaming male victim. It then slowly lowers its grotesque semi-human naked form down onto the man and forcibly melds with his flesh. Glimpses of The Thing’s oral orifices consistently appear as some variation of a vaginally shaped mouth lined with tiny sharp castrating fangs.


Geez, Freudian much, guys?


In spite of (or perhaps because of) such imagery, The Thing 2011 is able to build suspense with the best of them. van Heijningen knows how to direct his actors, shoot his shots and edit his scenes to create tension that is often palatable. The paranoiac undertones of the story are probably the strongest feature of The Thing 2011.

The current Thing is unmistakably a product of a post-911 world. We live in a time when most of the western world still remains on edge about potential terrorist attacks. Those plotting such attacks, we are told, are potentially living in our midst. The re-currant “trust no one” theme of The Thing plays particularly chillingly in 2011.

Despite the fact that The Thing is a pure force of evil, the humans are not necessarily a pure force for good. Their actions in their quest for survival against a deceptive and powerful enemy are often morally compromised.

In the 2011 Thing, the character of Dr. Kate Lloyd (another solid performance from Mary Elizabeth Winstead of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World fame) plays more or less the same role in the story that the MacReady character played in the original novella and the ’82 film. The young American female scientist seems to intuitively understand the potential threat of the creature almost from square one. Unfortunately, her “more mature” male old world colleagues do not share that intuition. In that sense, Lloyd’s character is closer to Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley character in the Alien franchise than she is to Russell’s (or even Campbell’s) MacReady.

The Thing 2011 is often intentionally ambiguous both in terms of its narrative and its morality. Dr. Lloyd makes some extreme decisions, working on what appears to be (to the viewer at least) somewhat questionable evidence. Her choices make for some of the most emotionally charged moments in the film.

Is Lloyd a hero? Or an anti-hero? Did she do what was necessary to survive? Or did she irrevocably cross morally unacceptable boundaries?

What was that about a post-911 world again?

At the current rate of prequels and remakes, we are due for another version of The Thing in roughly 2041. What changes to our world with the next 30 years see? More importantly, how will those changes impact the story and underlying themes of the next Thing movie?

We will just have to wait and, in MacReady’s final words of the ’82 Thing, “...see what happens.”