At an isolated Antarctic research station, scientists battle a deadly alien with such extraordinary shape-shifting capabilities that the men don’t know if the person next to them is still human. The truth is only revealed when the alien is threatened and violently abandons its current inhabitant.
As played out in John Carpenter’s bleak 1982 film The Thing, these scenes are shocking. The alien bursts from its warm hideout inside man or beast with pieces of previous victims gushing out and sinewy tentacles whipping through the room in search of another victim to absorb. Yes, it looks as gross as it sounds and that’s the marvel of this film made in the predigital and CGI-age.
To say Carpenter’s film was ahead of its time is one of the biggest understatements in film history. The alien effects created by whiz kid Rob Bottin were so grotesquely unique that audiences and critics recoiled from them resulting in vicious reviews and empty theaters. Add in the insurmountable box-office competition from that lovable little alien in “E.T.” and the dismal fate was sealed for The Thing.
Now, 54 years later, the world seems ready for it.
The Thing is one of 25 films named to the 2025 National Film Registry in recognition of its place as a film that is “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.” It is also the only horror/sci-film on this year’s list. The designation means it will be preserved by National Film Preservation Board allowing it to be discovered by future generations. The Thing was the No. 1 choice by fans who nominated 7,559 titles. That is not an automatic qualifier since it is the Librarian of Congress who makes the final choices based on recommendations by the NFP board and the public. However, fan response to The Thing was strong and notable.
Jacqueline Stewart, chair of the NFP board, recognized the accomplishment when she said, “It is especially exciting to see that the top title nominated by the public for this year, The Thing, has been added to the National Film Registry.”
Why was it chosen? Here’s what the press release announcing the 2025 Film Registry said about The Thing.
Moody, stark, often funny and always chilling, this science fiction horror classic follows Antarctic scientists who uncover a long-dormant, malevolent extraterrestrial presence. “The Thing” revolutionized horror special effects and offers a brutally honest portrait of the results of paranoia and exhaustion when the unknown becomes inescapable. “The Thing” deftly adapts John W. Campbell’s 1938 novella “Who Goes There?” and influenced “Stranger Things” and “Reservoir Dogs.” It remains a tense, thrilling and profoundly unsettling work of cinema.
Filming The Thing
By 1981, 33-year-old filmmaker John Carpenter was already recognized as a master of horror, and more importantly in the film industry, a proven box-office commodity thanks to the success of Halloween (1978), The Fog (1980) and Escape from New York (1981). His next project was a remake of The Thing from Another World (1951), based on the 1938 novella by John W. Campbell Jr. called Who Goes There?
Playing the alien in the 1951 film was a pre-Gunsmoke James Arness whose 6-foot, 7-inch frame allowed the creature to appear a threat in size and strength. Although it looked like a relative of Frankenstein’s monster with a strange-shaped head, the alien didn’t exhibit any powers. Still, the idea of it was enough for the film to be a hit. Even The New York Times prickly critic Boswell Crowther had good things to say, writing that it was “generous with thrills and chills.” Long considered a classic of the sci-fi genre, it was named to the National Film Registry in 2001.
For Carpenter’s 1982 remake, expectations were high. Fans loved his films. And the director had hired the 22-year-old Bottin who had revolutionized werewolf effects in The Howling (1981) with his pioneering practical effects where he used technology you could do with your hands, instead of animation and computers.
There was much buzz with leading genre magazines including Fangoria and Cinefantastique among those filled with early stories and special sections about what promised to be groundbreaking effects. Bottin and his staff used latex, rubber, wire, puppets and mechanics to invent things that had not been seen on film. Innocent everyday household items like heated Bubble Yum gum, melted crayons, mayonnaise, cream corn and “vats” of K-Y jelly helped create the startling effects.
In the end, the work was as promised: innovative, original, trailblazing. But it was also gruesome and too much for audiences and critics. Reviews were as eviscerating to the film as its shape-shifting creature was to the victims it inhabited, ripped open and annihilated while morphing into other shapes.
It was “an extraordinary exercise in the grotesque,” wrote Peter Stack of the San Francisco Chronicle.
Jay Boyar in the Buffalo Courier-Express termed it a “gore-a-rama,” adding “It’s impossible not to be repulsed by The Thing.”
The reviewer from Motion Picture Digest didn’t hold back by giving the film a “poor” rating. “It takes a strong stomach to sit through John Carpenter’s The Thing which has the most repellent and downright nauseating shock effects yet devised for a horror movie from a major Hollywood studio.”
We know that bad reviews don’t necessarily doom a film, but timing was everything for The Thing. It was released the same day as Ridley Scott’s masterpiece Blade Runner and Clint Eastwood’s Firefox, and just two weeks after E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial.
Audiences, who had their heartstrings tugged by the beloved E.T., did not want to see an alien wrap its tentacles around dogs or burst from a human. The disappointing $20.9 million at the box office barely covered its $15 million budget.
Carpenter was devastated, as was his cast and the crew that had worked around the clock for more than a year, resulting in Bottin being hospitalized for exhaustion.
The film quickly disappeared from theaters. Carpenter lost the next movie he was going to direct, Stephen King’s Firestarter, and the experience took a long-lasting emotional toll on him. In an often-quoted 1985 interview with Starlog, Carpenter said “I had no idea it would be received that way … The Thing was just too strong for that time.”
That’s no longer the case as illustrated by the National Film Registry honor. The Thing also has gained new fans through the years from home video releases (including a 2021 4K release), streaming and continued screenings.
In the 2020 book Fright Favorites (Turner Classic Movies), film historian David J. Skal recognized that while the movie’s “unprecedented level of grotesque special effects repelled reviewers and critics alike” on its original release, that it was now “widely hailed as a visual-effects milestone in imaginative cinema of the predigital era.”
“Bottin’s morphing monstrosities in The Thing, bring to mind Salvador Dali’s melting timepieces given human shape, as well as the ferocious, twisted forms of painter Francis Bacon in works like Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion,” Skal wrote.
In a new interview for the Library of Congress, Richard Masur, who played the dog handler Clark in the film, called it called it one of the last great “rubber movies” referencing the fact that all special effects were made by hand.
“There is not a frame of CGI in this film and people who care about that, and many of us do, are very impressed that this film is finally being recognized for the extraordinary accomplishment that it represents in film history,” Masur said in the interview.
Legacy of The Thing and Rob Bottin
It saddens me to know that the extraordinary creativity of Rob Bottin and the others who worked on The Thing was maligned or just ignored for so many years. Today, it’s routine to watch medical dramas where chests are cracked open, organs are removed and brains are drilled into for surgery. People love it and make these shows hits on television and streaming services. (In my case, I’m watching through nearly closed eyes until it’s over.)
It saddens me even more to watch old interviews with Bottin who comes off as a huge movie fan filled with energy and excitement for his work, as well as gratitude. He’s long been out of the public eye and the film industry and that’s a shame. I’m hoping this honor will put the spotlight back on the film and Bottin’s work. It should be celebrated.
Also on the crew
Bottin didn’t do it alone. While there are too many talented people to mention, here are some of the names featured in interviews. Two of the most well-known times are Roy Arbogast who did many of the mechanical effects including the dogs, and Stan Winston who created “the dog-Thing.” Rob Borman and Dale Brady, both only 19 at the time, worked on the final version of the creature called the “Blair Monster” or “Blair-Thing,” one of the most startling versions of the alien. Others included Eric Jensen, Randy Cook, Carl Surges and Ernie Farino.
Vote for the National Film Registry
Nominations for the 2026 National Film Registry are accepted through Aug. 15, 2026. Go to loc.gov/film where you can find the online nomination form. The site provides links to the movies currently on the Registry as well as hundreds of titles not yet selected. Nominees must be at least 10 years old and be “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” You can nominate up to 50 films(!).
Films Selected for the 2025 National Film Registry
(chronological order)
- The Tramp and the Dog (1896)
- The Oath of the Sword (1914)
- The Maid of McMillan (1916)
- The Lady (1925)
- Sparrows (1926)
- Ten Nights in a Barroom (1926)
- White Christmas (1954)
- High Society (1956)
- Brooklyn Bridge (1981)
- Say Amen, Somebody (1982)
- The Thing (1982)
- The Big Chill (1983)
- The Karate Kid (1984)
- Glory (1989)
- Philadelphia (1993)
- Before Sunrise (1995)
- Clueless (1995)
- The Truman Show (1998)
- Frida (2002)
- The Hours (2002)
- The Incredibles (2004)
- The Wrecking Crew (2008)
- Inception (2010)
- The Loving Story (2011)
- The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)
