The Thing (1982 Film) - Production

Production

The screenplay was written in 1981 by Bill Lancaster, son of Burt Lancaster. The film was shot near the small town of Stewart in northern British Columbia. The research station in the film was built by the film crew during summer, and the film shot in sub-freezing winter conditions. The only female presence in the film is the voice of a chess computer, voiced by Carpenter regular (and then-wife) Adrienne Barbeau, as well as the female contestants viewed on a videotaped episode of Let's Make a Deal.

According to the sign post outside the camp, the Antarctic research team is stationed at the United States National Science Institute Station 4. However, in early drafts of the script, the base was called, "U.S. Outpost 31". When making a recording of events, Kurt Russell's character, MacReady, signs off as, "R.J. Macready, helicopter pilot, U.S. Outpost #31".

The film took three months to shoot on six artificially frozen sound stages in Los Angeles, with many of the crew and actors working in cold conditions. The final weeks of shooting took place in northern British Columbia, near the border with Alaska, where snow was guaranteed to fall. John Carpenter filmed the Norwegian camp scenes at the end of production. The Norwegian camp was simply the remains of the American outpost after it was destroyed by an explosion.

The Thing was Carpenter's eighth time directing a full-length feature and his first movie under the production of a major film studio (Universal Studios).

The Thing was the fourth film shot by cinematographer Dean Cundey (following Carpenter's Halloween, The Fog, and Escape from New York) and the third to feature Kurt Russell as the lead actor. Russell would appear in two additional Carpenter films following The Thing: Big Trouble in Little China and Escape from L.A.. Most of the special effects were designed and created by Rob Bottin and his crew, with the exception of the dog creature, which was created by Stan Winston.

In the documentary Terror Takes Shape on the DVD, film editor Todd C. Ramsay states that he made the suggestion to Carpenter to film a "happy" ending for the movie, purely for protective reasons, while they had Russell available. Carpenter agreed and shot a scene in which MacReady has been rescued and administered a blood test, proving that he is still human. Ramsay follows this by saying that The Thing had two test screenings, but Carpenter did not use the sequence in either of them, as the director felt that the film worked better with its eventual nihilistic conclusion. The alternate ending with MacReady definitively proven to be human has yet to be released.

According to the 1998 DVD release, the "Blair Monster" was to have had a much larger role in the final battle. However, due to the limitations of stop-motion animation, the monster appears for only a few seconds in the film.

One of the film's associate producers, Larry J. Franco, has a credited cameo as the Norwegian rifleman from the beginning of the film. Director John Carpenter and his then-wife Adrienne Barbeau have uncredited cameos as a man in the Norwegian video footage and the voice of the chess computer, respectively.

Although the production's helicopter pilots are not characters within the movie and only serve as body doubles when the helicopters are in flight, they are listed under the credits. Nate Irvin is listed as Helicopter Pilot and William Zeman is listed as Pilot.

Two names were changed from Bill Lancaster's second draft of the script. The character Windows was originally named Sanchez, who was described as "hating it here" and "lousy at his job". The second character changed is the Norwegian rifleman, who was identified as "Jans Bolan" in a deleted scene from his dogtags and named Lars according to the 2011 prequel.