The Thing

Seems I've been running into a lot of movies that are being remade lately. This one I stumbled upon while looking up the info for one of my favorite horror flicks from the early 80's... John Carpenter's The Thing. Basic gist of the story is as follows; scientists at a base in Antarctica find another abandoned base, the only living thing there is a couple penguins and one lone husky, the bring the dog back and lo and behold all hell breaks loose. Turns out the fluffy pet is infected with an alien that can perfectly reproduce the appearance of its host while it continues to kill the other members on the base. The gore factor in this film is way off the chart, in less than half an hour the infected dog's face splits into fours and turns into this writhing mass of tentacles and flesh. Disgusting indeed. On my first viewing of the film, I made my friend walk me back to my dorm room once it was over. Despite the fact that my building was only about 100 ft. down a well-lit path, I was convinced some form of the alien was going to jump out from behind a bush and wrap me up in one of its slimy limbs. The suspense starts kicking in once you realize that other people on the base are getting infected too. The only way to kill this thing? Burn it. The flamethrower rules as the main weapon, but the scientists still get whittled down to only two by the end of the film.
Now the new The Thing is set to be released in October and is being billed as a "prequel" and tells the story of the first set of scientists that originally found the homicidal mass of alien infection. Is this going to be good? Hard to say. The directors have at least done the courtesy of waiting a couple decades before trying to take another stab at it, unlike the multitude of other rehashed and remade movies that have come out lately. (Cough, Repo Men, cough, The Adjustment Bureau, cough). Granted this one does have the upper-hand at having casted Mary Elizabeth Winstead, better known to the nerd masses as Ramona Flowers from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. I suppose at the very least it's worth a look once it releases.