Conolly - The Thing

DEVILs ADVOCATES

ALSO AVAILABLE IN THIS SERIES

Carrie Neil Mitchell

The Descent James Marriot

Let the Right One In Anne Billson

Saw Benjamin Poole

The Silence of the Lambs Barry Forshaw

Witchfinder General Ian Cooper

FORTHCOMING

Antichrist Amy Simmonds

Black Sunday Martyn Conterio

The Blair Witch Project Peter Turner

Halloween Murray Leeder

Near Dark John Berra

Nosferatu Christina Massaccesi

Psychomania I.Q. Hunter & Jamie Sherry

DEVILS ADVOCATES

THE THING

JEZ CONOLLY

Acknowledgements

I would very much like to thank John Atkinson at Auteur for giving me this opportunity to wax lyrical about the subject of this book. I would also like to thank the many people, in one way or another associated with The Thing, who kindly gave their time and shared their opinions and experiences when contacted: Anne Billson, Todd Cameron, Stuart Cohen, Lee Hardcastle, Ronnie van Hout, Michael Matessino, Tony aka Xidioux and Kirk Watson. Thanks also to David Bates for his read-through acumen, to Robert Chandler for his scanning prowess and to Fredrik Jansson for his screen-grabbing dexterity. Finally I would like to thank Caroline for her fine tooth comb and for putting up with the trail of torn undergarments over the last few months.

This book is dedicated to the memory of fellow Devils Advocate James Marriott.

First publishing in 2013, reprinted 2014 by

Auteur, 24 Hartwell Crescent, Leighton Buzzard LU7 1NP

www.auteur.co.uk

Copyright Auteur 2013

Series design: Nikki Hamlett at Cassels Design

Set by Cassels Design www.casselsdesign.co.uk

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the permission of the copyright owner.

E-ISBN 978-1-906-73393-3

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-906733-77-3

CONTENTS

THE THING the two words that tore through the blackness of space during the opening credits of John Carpenters 1982 film also burned their terrible shape indelibly into my mind when I first saw them. That was not on the occasion of a viewing of the film at my local cinema; you win a prize if you were one of the few to catch it during its original theatrical run in the UK. Neither was it courtesy of home video; I was 17 when the film was first released onto the video rental market, back in the days prior to the Video Recordings Act 1984 when under-18s could get to see all manner of horrors entirely at the discretion of their local video shop owner.

No, I first witnessed those eight letters incinerating their way across the screen during a BBC TV news report concerning the dangers to society of so-called video nasties and the moral panic surrounding the availability of supposedly mind-melting visual material. Among others mentioned in the report were those hardy perennial shockers I Spit on Your Grave (Meir Zarchi, 1978), The Driller Killer (Abel Ferrara, 1979) and The Evil Dead (Sam Raimi, 1981), but it was a shot of the Thing titles, filmed appearing on a television screen in an ordinary domestic British lounge with two impressionable adolescent boys watching it, that caught my eye and piqued my interest. Theres a very similar image midway through Carpenters 1978 hit Halloween; babysitter Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) allows her young charge Tommy (Brian Andrews) to stay up and watch the late night movie, which happens to be the 1951 Howard Hawks-produced/Christian Nyby-directed The Thing from Another World. There they are, those two words flickering in black and white, just as they would be at the beginning of Carpenters remake. Theres a very similar screen-watching moment in the Carpenter Thing itself; we see the men of the American Antarctic research station US Outpost 31 viewing the video footage salvaged from the wrecked Norwegian base as they witness the moment caught on camera when the fated Scandinavian team encircle the saucer that they have discovered in the ice, a near exact match for the saucer discovery scene in Hawks picture.

The Norwegian team encircle the saucer.

But terrifying as it was, The Thing never actually troubled the Director of Public Prosecutions hit list, that notorious roll call of supposed movie atrocities that first appeared in June 1983 of which 39 were subsequently prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act and effectively banned. The nearest The Thing got to being banned under the Act was in Hampshire where police seized copies after a magistrate, having cleared a video dealer on eight counts relating to films on the banned list, proceeded to order that copies of Carpenters film be destroyed. Unless you happened to be living in Finland at the time where the film was initially banned it wasnt too difficult a title to find and watch once it had received its release on tape.

However it didnt entirely escape the tabloids moralistic searchlights in the early 1980s. Somewhat arbitrarily within the space of a few months it featured in reports concerning two serial rapists; before being convicted of the rape of two women and sentenced to two life terms Christopher Meah claimed that The Thing had had a major influence on his actions. Perhaps less spuriously Meahs defence also claimed that his behaviour had been caused as a result of a car crash, which led later to a notoriously controversial compensation payout to the convicted party, an outcome that tends to overshadow his Thing obsession in subsequent reporting of the case. Shortly after the Meah trial made the news a reference to The Thing cropped up again, this time in the case of Malcolm The Fox Fairley, a multiple rapist who displayed an indiscriminacy towards his victims male, female, even a family pet dog of which the Thing itself would have been proud. Seized with the mania of the day that sought to pin every moral violation on the existence of horror films on tape, the press claimed that Fairley was a video nasty fan, a conclusion which appears to be based largely on the fact that he stole two videotapes from the premises of one of his attacks, one of which was The Thing. For the record, the other tape was National Lampoons Animal House (John Landis, 1978), which might just explain his penchant for canines.

Thinking back to that BBC News report, I can only assume that the film crew responsible for the footage picked The Thing for the two boys to watch because they considered it to be especially illustrative of the graphic horror film of the times and, ironically, was a tape they could readily get their hands on. Ive often imagined since that the two boys were the journalists nephews who were coerced into watching those opening credits with the promise of a bag of sweets and a chance for one of them to be seen on television sporting their new electric blue satin windcheater, the one with the eagle embroidered on the back.