The Thing

Warning: this has nothing to do with Latin America. Unless they come across something hidden in the ice in the Antarctic.

I am a fan of 1982's The Thing. So when I heard there was a prequel, I was dismissive until I learned the "original" I liked was a remake of a 1951 film The Thing from Another World. Then I learned that even the original movie was based on a novella "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell., published in 1938. So I had to take a look.

The novella is great fun, though I like the way the movie ends more. It's darker, and you can't beat Kurt Russell in the role of McReady. Other than that, the movie stays remarkably close to the novella, though it removes the more cheesy references to things like anti-gravity machines. Given how long ago it was published, however, that clearly wasn't too cheesy at the time--in fact, Campbell included a discussion of atomic energy (though not, in that pre-Hiroshima era, any reference to bombs).