John Carpenter's The Thing (1982)**

 The creature effects obviously get their fair share of recognition, their just due. You read about it's failure upon release, how John's career was hurt by this incredible experience that popped rental kids' minds. Those autopsies of alien transformation carcasses with Brimley's Blair assessing the horrifying reality of what the human race faces--extinction--and the harsh understanding that he'll need to condemn his guys to death in order to save mankind. These twisted designs of the transformation interrupted before the alien invasion of human and wolf victims and how we are treated to the whole gruesome and hideous process, almost always just thwarted in the nick of time. The split open chest with the hands of Dysart severed by teeth of Hallahan's torso when revealed to be an alien replacement...the head pulling apart from the rest of the body and growing legs and antenna. Heads opening to reveal teeth that chomp down on a victim's face, these quivering appendages reaching for humans or animal to assimilate. Giant monsters with arms, eyes, teeth, heads, malformed and misshapen, exploding out and reaching forward. Sure the process was complete with the likes of Clennon and Hallahan, and eventually Brimley, but what I always never could forget was when the assimilation was stalled and halted. Right in the middle of assimilating Maloney, or attacking Waites, Brimley stuffing Moffat's mouth with invasive alien "assimilation material", or dogs in kennels barking for help while raped of their identity and reassembled into alien replication. This film broke ground and changed the industry of what effects artists could do on film. So just imagine seeing it on VHS for the first time!

I can honestly say I was never the same after watching it. I knew when I first saw this in 1988 or '89, it was unlike anything I'd seen before it. Mind blown.

But what I have written above is nothing new. How many others submit the exhilarating declaration of how the effects and gore knocked them on their ass? A lot of kids like me, teenagers and adults alike, located during their nightly rental store haunts this film, jaunting home from the last excursion to absorb the punches of monster effects brought to life by Bottin and his incredibly talented crew.