Take a little afternoon flashback to 1982, when John Carpenter’s “The Thing” began scaring moviegoers all across the country. The genre classic is based on John W. Campbell, Jr.’s novella, “Who Goes There?” and improves (greatly) upon Howard Hawks’ and Christian Nyby’s 1951 adaptation of the story, “The Thing from Another World.” In “The Thing,” a group of researchers in Antarctica unearth a frozen, shape-shifting monster, which hunts the researchers in their utilitarian lab. Though the film wasn’t able to break $20M at the box office, it has gone on to scare viewers for over 30 years.
As necessary, given the external shots the movie required, the cast and crew went on location for large chunks of the production. As expected, they didn’t actually fly down to the Antarctic to do it. Rather, as this vintage 12-minute featurette explains, they shot in British Columbia, near the Alaskan border. The 30-below conditions weren’t ideal for a Hollywood...
