The Thing (1982), directed by John Carpenter.
The damned Norwegians dug up something frozen in the ice that got away from them. They're dead. Now everyone at the next Antarctic base must die.
I remember not liking this much at the theater. I was probably being loyal to the The Thing from Another World (1951) original and this was just too gooey for me.
It's a great premise and the isolated ice-bound base is an appealing location for SF, horror and thrillers, but I still see nothing but problems with this film:
Too many characters and not enough time to get to know them.
Can't see their faces through their beards.
Ok, it's a creature feature, but everyone seems to know they are in a monster movie and behaves accordingly.
Where did they find all this bad attitude? That dope-smoking guy: I would have put him out in the snow weeks before the creature appeared.
We have a long period of no trust and no strategy. The plot just stalls.
Where's the sense of wonder, of the alien-ness of encountering a being from another world?
Flame throwers? Abundant firearms? A natural language AI computer?
Ambitious special effects but still too gooey.
Is that the pre-eyepatch Snake Plissken?
I do give them credit for the ambiguous un-Hollywood ending.
Ennio Morricone score, although the "dum...dum-dum" bit sounds like Carpenter.
Available on Blu-ray. The director and Kurt Russell provide a happy commentary track. Lots of trivia.