QT's opinion on The Thing (1982) in 2021:
"I love John Carpenter’s The Thing. Rob Bottin’s effects in [Carpenter’s] movie are some of the greatest practical special effects ever put on a movie theater screen. I think it’s one of the greatest horror movies ever made if not one of the greatest movies ever made, regardless of genre. One of the reasons The Thing holds a special place in my heart… I love horror movies, I’m a big horror movie fan. I don’t get scared in horror movies. I respond to suspense, I respond to that – oh what’s gonna happen next, and I can jump by a 'boo' scare – but that’s not really terror. I don’t get scared in movies. The Thing I got scared in. I was scared and it made me want to put it under a microscope about why I was actually frightened during that movie. And I think the reason is this: These men are trapped in this situation in this arctic research center, and one or more of them are possibly this Thing that’s going to devour all of them. And no one knows if you are the guy I’ve known forever or you are a Thing. And the movie makes the paranoia of that so palpable, so real, it’s almost like another character in the movie. The sheer paranoia of it. They’re trapped in the Antarctic, in this shelter, and so the paranoia is bouncing off of the four walls… until it has nowhere to go except through the fourth wall into the audience. I started feeling exactly like they felt. When I started writing Reservoir Dogs, I was like, I need to have that aspect that’s in The Thing. I need to trap these bastards in this warehouse and no one can trust anybody else… and I want the paranoia of what’s going in that warehouse to bounce across the walls and hopefully, like in The Thing, it will go out into the audience."
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e3e34ifj (1912)
a year ago
QT's opinion on The Thing (1982) in 2017:
"I always wanted to write a horror film...a sci-fi horror film. I don't want to make a spaceship movie...I'd wanna do something like John Carpenter's The Thing -- you've got an ensemble of actors at each-other's throats -- I'm a very wordy writer and that usually doesn't mesh well with horror...you don't get scared by people talking. But it would work perfectly in something like The Thing. Because the paranoia is so intense that the talking is what heightens the fear. Rob Bottin's effects are some of greatest we've ever seen, but lots of bad movies have great effects. I'm talking about the story itself, the characters, the dialog -- that's what matters. That's what I'd wanna do if I made a horror film...something like The Thing.
QT's opinion on The Thing (1982) in 1994:
"I saw that one in the theaters eight times."
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