John Carpenter Zoom Crashes a Special Screening of The Thing in the Middle of the Antarctic

Nothing prepares you for six months of snowy isolation quite like John Carpenter's The Thing. To celebrate the onset of winter in Antarctica this month, the residents of theAmundsen–Scott South Pole Stationscreened a data-entity-href="https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/topic/john-carpenter" data-entity-title="https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/topic/john-carpenter" href="https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/topic/john-carpenter" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"John Carpenter/a's beloved 1982 horror film, which centers around a group of Antarctic researchers stalked by a shape-shifting alien that had once lain dormant under the ice for millennia./p h2John Carpenter Makes Surprise Appearance at Antarctic Screening of 1982'semThe Thing/em/h2 pIt's an annual rite of passage among the crew, but this time around, they were joined by a very special guest: the horror master himself! While the 76-year-old filmmaker/composer couldn't make it in person for obvious reasons, he was kind enough to cameo over Zoom, as fanSteven K Schalau revealed toa data-entity-href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/1247563199057863/posts/1814908688989975/" data-entity-title="https://www.facebook.com/groups/1247563199057863/posts/1814908688989975/" href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/1247563199057863/posts/1814908688989975/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"emThe Nerds District/em Facebook group/alast weekend./p p"We are cut off from the rest of the world until November," wrote Schalau, who works as a contracting sous chef at the remote government research outpost."As a tradition, the following day off (the station doesn't work on Sundays, otherwise six day work weeks) we watchem The Thing/em. Well, this year our 'Thing Marathon' was started off with [a] Zoom call with none other than a data-entity-href="https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/topic/john-carpenter" data-entity-title="https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/topic/john-carpenter" href="https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/topic/john-carpenter" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"John Carpenter/a himself!"/p div data-embed-button="media" data-entity-embed-display="view_mode:media.embed" data-entity-embed-display-settings="[]" data-entity-type="media" data-entity-uuid="dc682237-36bd-4134-93c5-febe5104e67c" data-langcode="en" class="embedded-entity"div class="media__image" style="max-width:508px" div class="media__image-wrapper" div div img loading="lazy" decoding="async" fetchpriority="low" src="https://www.syfy.com/sites/syfy/files/styles/scale_600/public/2024/03/screen_shot_2024-03-08_at_4.44.06_pm.jpg" width="508" height="600" alt="A Facebook post featuring John Carpenter and The Thing (1982)." typeof="foaf:Image" /div /div /div div class="media__metadata" div class="media__metadata-wrapper" span class="media__caption"/span span class="media__credit"Photo: Steven K Scalau/The Nerds District Facebook Group /span /div /div /div /div pstrongFor More on emThe Thing/em:/strongbrstronga data-entity-href="https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/thing-sequel-john-carpenter-david-leslie-johnson-mcgoldrick-interview" data-entity-title="https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/thing-sequel-john-carpenter-david-leslie-johnson-mcgoldrick-interview" href="https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/thing-sequel-john-carpenter-david-leslie-johnson-mcgoldrick-interview" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"Return of The Thing? Everything to Know About The Cancelled Miniseries Sequel to The Thing/a/strongbrstronga data-entity-href="https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/kurt-russell-was-not-a-fan-of-macready-sombrero-in-john-carpenter-the-thing" data-entity-title="https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/kurt-russell-was-not-a-fan-of-macready-sombrero-in-john-carpenter-the-thing" href="https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/kurt-russell-was-not-a-fan-of-macready-sombrero-in-john-carpenter-the-thing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"Kurt Russell Admits He Wasn't a Big Fan of MacReady's Iconic Sombrero in The Thing/a/strongbrstronga data-entity-href="https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/kurt-russell-john-carpenter-discussed-the-thing-ending-for-long-long-time" data-entity-title="https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/kurt-russell-john-carpenter-discussed-the-thing-ending-for-long-long-time" href="https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/kurt-russell-john-carpenter-discussed-the-thing-ending-for-long-long-time" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"Kurt Russell and John Carpenter Discussed the Ending of The Thing "For a Long, Long Time"/a/strong/p pWe can't prove it, of course, but we like to imagine that everyone got a bucket of popcorn, a commemorative a href="https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/kurt-russell-was-not-a-fan-of-macready-sombrero-in-john-carpenter-the-thing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"R.J. MacReady sombrero/a, and their very own bottle of JB Blended Scotch Whisky. How else are they going to stay warm all winter long?/p pHalf remake of 1951'sem The Thing from Another World/em and half adaptation of J.W. Campbell's emWho Goes There?/em, Carpenter's take onemThe Thing /emwas a critical and box office misfire upon its initial release in June 1982, having been totally outshined by another visitor from outer space named a href="https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/topic/et-the-extra-terrestrial" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"E.T./aIn the decades since, however,emThe Thing/emhas been reappraised by audiences and critics as a masterpiece of suspense, terror, and a data-entity-href="https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/the-thing-john-carpenter-special-effects-40th-anniversary" data-entity-title="https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/the-thing-john-carpenter-special-effects-40th-anniversary" href="https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/the-thing-john-carpenter-special-effects-40th-anniversary" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"practical effects/a. Much ado is made about the film's ending, with fans endlessly debating the ambitious fate of the final two survivors: MacReady (Kurt Russell) and Childs (Keith David). It truly is one of the greatest films ever made, regardless of genre./p pOriginally constructed in the late 1950s, theAmundsen–Scott South Pole Station is occupied by around 50 scientists and support staff throughout winter and up to 150 people during the summer months. The gathered personnel conduct research across several areas of study, including meteorology, astronomy, astrophysics, glaciology, geophysics, seismology, ocean and climate systems, and biology. According to a href="https://www.nsf.gov/geo/opp/support/southp.jsp" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"the official government website/a, "It has collected the longest continuous set of meteorological data from Antarctica's vast interior ice plateau, and it is well located for studies of the cusp region of the magnetosphere."/p pemstronga href="https://www.uphe.com/movies/the-thing-1982" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"John Carpenter'sThe Thing/a— along with itsa href="https://www.uphe.com/movies/the-thing-2011" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"2011 prequel/a— is available to own from Universal Pictures Home Entertainment./strong/em/p