Geekade’s Scariest Moments: The Thing
I’ve come to learn that I was indoctrinated in blood at a young age, much in the same manner as Dexter Morgan. Granted, I wasn’t found bathed in the blood of my mother as an infant, but I did watch and thoroughly enjoy “A Nightmare On Elm Street” at the tender and impressionable age of five. By all accounts, I shouldn’t have savored it the way I did. I should have been scarred for life. Instead, it planted the seeds that would grow into (shameless plug in 3… 2… 1…) an award winning horror author.
All that is to say, I don’t get scared easily. I laughed so hard, and loud, when the horse died jumping off the boat in “Ring” that my friend’s mom thought we were watching a comedy. I’m not sure if that was meant to be a scay scene or not, but I like telling that story. I wasn’t phased by ‘Elm Street’ or “Friday the 13th ” or even “Halloween” and “Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” all of which I first watched at way too young an age. But there’s one movie that got me. One movie when I was young that caught me.
To this day I don’t know why it affected me the way it did, but “The Thing” scared the crap out of me. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I was still at an age when I thought there was good in most people, and to have a movie present the idea that you can’t trust anyone because you don’t know what lies beneath the surface messed with my morals or something. Or maybe it had something to do with the hideous mutations each character was undergoing one by one. The one that stands out the most has to be the defibrillator scene in which Dr. Copper tries to save Norris, only to have his hands bitten and ripped off by Norris-Thing who turns into a spider head. Yea, I’ve got two words for you, ‘Fuck that!’ Still creeps me out thinking about it.
I mean, just look at those practical effects. They evoke a reaction that no CGI, no matter how good, could hope to match. You’re welcome for the nightmares.
Alex (or Dr. AzarRising) is the author of the Macabre Movie Mausoleum here on Geekade, as well as an established writer. You can check out more from him here.