“I know I’m human. And if you were all these things, then you’d just attack me right now, so some of you are still human. This thing doesn’t want to show itself, it wants to hide inside an imitation. It’ll fight if it has to, but it’s vulnerable out in the open. If it takes us over, then it has no more enemies, nobody left to kill it. And then it’s won.” - RJ MacReady

First of all, Kurt Russel has beautiful hair and beard. That can’t be disputed. This movie is about a group of scientists who work on a station in Antarctica. They’re not nerd scientists, with glasses and lab coats and clip boards, they’re rough looking scientists who like to drink all day long and play ping pong and wear flannel. Also at the station is Kurt Russel, who is not a scientist but a helicopter pilot named MacReady. Kurt Russel has the best movie names like “Snake Plissken.” What the hell kind of name is that? Amazing.

Anyway, a group of Norwegian scientists fly their copter over to the US station and are trying to shoot up everyone in sight, especially one husky dog. The US crew blows up the Norwegian’s helicopter to keep them from acting all crazy. Then, MacReady and one of the burly doctors from the US station go over to the Norwegian’s camp only to find that those marzipan loving weirdos had discovered an alien life form, buried deep in the snow. They take the alien body back to the lab to do some tests on it. I call this major error in scientific methods number one: I am no scientist, but if I find something weird, like a withered but still smoking alien life form, I do not touch it with my bare hands. I do not think, “hey! I wish I had this thing in my kitchen so I could run some crude tests!” I think, instead, “I am going to fly away very fast in my helicopter and take one of those showers that washes off toxic stuff.” But those scientists play by their own rules and soon their all standing around the alien body, taking no precautions, wearing no masks or gloves just staring at it. Hanging out. Letting its alien spores get all up in their systems. Well, it turns out that the alien gets all up in your business and can emulate any cells. It can become a fluffy husky dog or a burly science man named Curtis. It doesn’t matter.

The movie is very suspenseful because you don’t know who has the alien in them and who doesn’t. Everyone gets very suspicious of each other and there are many tense moments. There are equal parts tense moments and flame thrower moments.

[reprinted with permission from mightyamy.com]

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