You know, sometimes I am amazed at how old habits from my youth still persist on surfacing.
Yesterday I had the TV on in the background while I was cleaning up, and the new version of The Thing came on. Eh, it’s ok, but not really the type of movie I enjoy watching, so it’s a good thing I wasn’t really watching it. I didn’t even give it a thought, but then after it was over, John Carpenter’s The Thing came on.
The stuff of…what the screaming Hades IS that??
I tried. I really, really tried to change the channel. I just….couldn’t. I was frozen (heh!) to the screen as the story unfolded for the upteenth time. In my opinion, that is still one of the most frightening films ever made. Why? Not because of the Creature. Not because of the gore. Not because of the screaming and agony.
No. The reason that movie is so scary is the very last scene. After MacReady (Kurt Russell) blows up the Creature and the whole area, he is sitting outside, and Childs (Keith David) walks up. And as they speak I notice one detail: MacReady’s breath fogs, but Childs’ doesn’t!!!! And the last lines say a lot, too:
Childs: What do we do?
MacReady: Why don’t we just wait here for a while… see what happens.
I know now that HE knows, and that just scares the life out of me. Every. Single. Time. I should know better than to watch a John Carpenter movie. They never end well.
Anyway, the evening comes to an end, and we all prepare for bed, and as I lay there waiting for sleep to come, I picture the entire movie in my head once again, and feel anxiety starting to rise, and fear gripping my chest, and so I do what every single normal kid has done to ward off those hellish visions of doom.
I cover my head with my blanket and feel myself relax, the fear subside, and all’s right with my world.
Because every kid knows: a blanket can take on every monster and creature single-handed. It works every time 😉
Sithy Things 
April 30th, 2013 at 9:08 AM
Husbands farting underneath said blanket….where do we…er…THEY figure in?
April 30th, 2013 at 10:15 AM
In this house, they do not. So there 😛
April 30th, 2013 at 9:19 AM
I love The Thing – probably my favourite horror movie – the original, not the absolutely shithouse remake/prequel
April 30th, 2013 at 10:16 AM
Well, the Arness film was awesome, too. But the new one didn’t even faze me. And I am chicken when it comes to scary movies.
April 30th, 2013 at 1:44 PM
I never caught the breath thing before, now I have to watch it again!
That’s the all time best horror movie, The Thing. All the cool gory parts of the first one were retried in the second one, but they weren’t as scary.
If anyone tells me they weren’t on the edge of their seat when MacReady was doing the hot wire blood test, then I say you weren’t watching the same movie. That was a GREAT scene.
April 30th, 2013 at 3:12 PM
THAT is a tense scene. I was sitting on the edge of air the first time 😀
April 30th, 2013 at 1:46 PM
The ending of the new one (no, not the helicopter flying in) was weak. You don’t know if the girl is a hero or a murderer.
April 30th, 2013 at 3:12 PM
^^^^THIS!!! It was disappointing to say the least.
April 30th, 2013 at 2:14 PM
Blankets: Protecting us from monsters since the invention of the bed.
April 30th, 2013 at 3:13 PM
Indeed 😀
April 30th, 2013 at 2:25 PM
A hallway light did it for me growing up.
FWIW, the most frightened I ever got at the theater was seeing Alien for the first time. I was already a fan of HR Giger at the time, but wholly moley!
April 30th, 2013 at 3:13 PM
Mom made me sit with her when that came on TV for the first time. I have serious trust issues with her, and HBO now 😉
April 30th, 2013 at 4:29 PM
Hehe, I like your mom already. 😉
April 30th, 2013 at 4:37 PM
True story: I’d never seen any of the Alien movies, and some friends wanted to go see Alien3 when it hit the base theater ($1!!!). I talked my Mom into renting the first two movies, watched them that afternoon, then drove 30 minutes or so, by myself, to meet my friends at the theater on base. We watched the movie, and it was good. Until we realized that we all (teenagers) had driven by themselves to the theater, and that it was now well past sundown. In rural south Georgia. With long stretches of empty highway through the pine forests and swamps between the airforce base and home. I must admit, I may have *slightly* exceeded the posted speed limit getting back to a well-lit home.
April 30th, 2013 at 5:25 PM
Is it bad that I laughed??? 😀
April 30th, 2013 at 8:45 PM
Heh. Probably. But its just a symptom of Darksided-ness.
Another scary movie was “Jaws”. I still don’t care much for the ocean (which is weird, coming from a Navy guy). Best part of that movie, though, was the drunken tattoo comparing scene, when the skipper mentions he was on the Indianapolis. Instant sobriety. Now that I know more about that incident, the scene makes soooo much more sense.
For the 25th anniversary of Jaws (or 20th, something like that), a radio station down in Austin held a contest. 100 winners were taken to a special directors-cut screening of the movie, food and beverages provided free of charge. The winners were loaded onto a party barge out on Lake Travis, where a special screen had been set up on the shore of someone’s property. The kicker, though, was that unless they were getting food/drink, the movie-goers were REQUIRED to watch the movie while floating in inner-tubes. Life jackets and tethers were there for safety, and the adult beverages were not opened until after the movie was over and everyone was out of the water. But….to watch frikkin JAWS while floating in the water….
…I think I may have to change my shorts now.
April 30th, 2013 at 10:48 PM
Oh, HELLA NO!!!
April 30th, 2013 at 5:27 PM
She did that with several movies: Amityville Horror, Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, The Shining….
April 30th, 2013 at 2:27 PM
I have no idea why my name got lengthened…
April 30th, 2013 at 2:38 PM
It’s zombies for me…. watched 28 days later… didn’t sleep for a week. And even spoof zombie films (i.e. Shaun of the dead), and I am dreaming of zombies….. and yet I cannot stop watching it! xxx
April 30th, 2013 at 3:14 PM
HA! I just finished watching Shaun of the Dead. Never gets old 😀
April 30th, 2013 at 6:28 PM
Y’all haven’t lived until you’ve seen Army of Darkness on a 50″ plasma tv. No, it’s not any more scary, it’s just funnier.
I have never been a fan of horror movies, but the scariest damn movie I ever saw was “Them”. I grew up in southern New Mexico, and Trinity Site wasn’t too far away. So, when that movie about ants that had grown to giant size due to radiation exposure came along, it scared shit out of me.
April 30th, 2013 at 10:47 PM
Oh, but I have! Even better: getting to meet Sam Raimi before he was all that. Oh, and his brother, Ted 😀
April 30th, 2013 at 8:23 PM
“The H-Man.” 1950s, Japanese. Way scarier than The Blob….at least it was when I was 10.
As for The Thing, Carpenter rules. So many great lines…”You have to be fucking kidding me.”
“I know you men have been through a lot, but when you find the time, I rather not spend the rest of the winter TIED TO THIS FUCKING COUCH!”
“Cheatin’ Bitch.”
April 30th, 2013 at 10:48 PM
The couch line was the ONLY time I laughed 😀
May 1st, 2013 at 8:58 AM
Carpenter’s lines? Yeah, they are great.
Hauk: It’s the survival of the human race, Plissken. Something you don’t give a shit about.
Everybody to Snake Plissken: “I thought you were dead”
Roddy Piper: “I have come here to kick ass and chew bubblegum… and I’m all out of bubblegum.”
Ok, the last one, not so much.