A word is in order concerning the special effects seen in the Carpenter film. The movie’s incredibly realistic visualization of Campbell’s original monster, effects that still stand even after twenty years, became a lightning rod for the critics’ attacks. Not only did Rob Bottin do a good job of bringing the monster to the screen, but people apparently felt that he did too good of a job. The ‘82 Thing "was roundly criticized as being merely a string of curiously disgusting special effects." Liz Kingsley comments that "The Thing became the first of what we now know to be a long, long line of films whose special effects are their raison d’etre." And Kim Newman says that Carpenter’s version is just "creature clogged." It seems that, once the critical bandwagon got rolling, it became difficult for mainstream Hollywood to keep from claiming Bottin’s Thing was, to a crippling extent, "phenomenally gory."

Upon closer scrutiny, however, this sort of criticism is seen for what it really is. We can make two observations here. First, it might be surprising to learn that the film’s creature effects cover a little more than 12 minutes. This includes all the autopsies as well as the actual transformation sequences. Considering the fact that the total running time is 102 minutes (109 minutes, if we include the ending credits), the special effects account for only about 12% of the film. Is 12% enough for the critics to characterize the film as being "clogged" with special effects? If so, then how should we view the ‘51 film? Its creature scenes take up 9.4% of its duration. Is there really that much of a difference between 9.4% and 12% for the one to be acceptable while the other is to be rejected?

The fact that the critics have harped so much on just 12% of Carpenter’s film strongly suggests that the creature sequences have much greater strength than people are willing to admit. Writing back in 1983, Ted Mahar said that if the film’s gore were edited for TV it would "result in a very puzzling 50-minute filmlet." It turns out that his time estimate was about half the actual number. It would be 90 minutes, not 50. That this number is so far off testifies to the power of Rob Bottin’s sequences.

Thus, here is something that the critics seem to have never considered. The creature effects of the ‘82 film are so good that they tend to eclipse everything else, regardless of how strong the rest of the film may be. The critics have never asked themselves whether or not Bottin’s creature would steal the show no matter what. The other 90 minutes may constitute a powerful performance, but the creature’s psychological and emotional impact may overshadow this fact. If so, then this criticism of the film’s effects falls flat and is no longer tenable.

Second, we ought to remind ourselves of what John Carpenter and Rob Bottin were attempting to accomplish. They wanted a realistic portrayal of John W. Campbell’s original creature concept. In his novella, Campbell has the shape-shifting creature taking on human, canine, and bovine forms. It cannot instantaneously change itself from one disguise to the next, as with Odo of Deep Space Nine, the alien bounty hunters of The X-Files, or the T-1000 of Terminator 2. Instead, its transformations require a bit of time, and when it does shed its various disguises, Campbell describes it with such words as "melting," "dissolving," "boiling hideously," "oozing," "twisting," and "sloughing away." The people who get to see these transformations say that the Things "look very nasty when they start changing" and "they look as funny as hell when they start melting." In Campbell’s story one of the creatures is even stopped halfway through the process of assimilating a dog, and the dead creature’s body is fused with that of the dead canine.

Now, it seems highly unlikely -- if not even impossible -- that any reasonably good attempt at bringing Campbell’s creature to the silver screen would be anything but gory and disgusting. Indeed, it is part of the very nature of the beast for it to be sickening in people’s eyes. If the creature does not come across as revolting, then it is not truly "the Thing." Therefore, when a critic faults the ‘82 film for being disgusting, he or she is saying in essence that the Campbell creature concept ought not to appear on screen. If audiences are not to be nauseated by their monsters, as these critics seem to think, then it becomes patently clear that the Campbell concept should never be filmed. In other words, this objection to the Carpenter movie is not truly a "criticism" but is actually a form of censorship.

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