The Thing

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Year:	1982
Country of origin:	USA
Director:	John Carpenter
Genre:	Alien paranoia
Starring:	Kurt Russell, T.K. Carter, Wilford Brimley, Keith David, David Clennon
Rating:	5/5
IMDB link:	http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084787/
Tagline:	Man is The Warmest Place to Hide.
Favourite line:	"I know I'm human. And if you were all these things, then you'd just attack me right now, so some of you are still human. This thing doesn't want to show itself, it wants to hide inside an imitation. It'll fight if it has to, but it's vulnerable out in the open. If it takes us over, then it has no more enemies, nobody left to kill it. And then it's won."

Carpenter's updating of The Thing From Outer Space is an absolute triumph.
Right from the first scene, the husky running through the snowscape pursued by a Helicopter with a hooded individual shooting, there is a pervading sense of isolation. There's no-one for miles around, and the desolate location is used to full effect.

We all know the story here, surely:
A team of scientists working at the South Pole are thrust into a nightmare scenario of distrust and paranoia when the husky from the opening sequence turns out to be more than it appears. It has been taken over by a lifeform which has the ability to transform itself into that of another living being, essentially absorbing the unfortunate victim into its own being before taking on its very shape. The creatures plan - to absorb anything it comes into contact with until all threats are eliminated.
It's simple, sure, but my Christly Christington is it effective.
As the protaganists of the piece realise what they are up against, one by one they turn against each other, convinced that their former work colleagues and friends are....changed.

Cranking up the claustrophobia to near unbearable levels, this is one of Carpenter's finest hours (it's rated 171st best film ever made on imdb at time of writing, incidentally), this is a sci-fi horror masterpiece that holds up superbly some twenty six years later.
Scary, gory - the effects are remarkable throughout - and packed full of menace, this is a must watch blood fiends.