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The Hawks original exalted human interaction, John Carpenter's version corrodes it in a Sartrean descent. The lone female voice at the Antarctic station belongs to an electronic chess game, the scientific crew is pasty and flabby despite the badass duo of Kurt Russell and Keith David. "First goddamn week of winter!" The intergalactic intruder enters as a gray husky zipping across the tundra, infiltrating the base in a masterfully clipped sequence: A reverse tracking shot down the corridor, "Superstition" playing in the distance, the victim's shadow on the wall as the pooch enters the room, fade to black. The neighboring Norwegian camp, left in ashes in the creature's wake, offers the first views of unspeakable horror, mountains of grimacing flesh like Bacon canvases. Wilford Brimley contemplates the virulent spread on a computer screen and, locked in after attempting to isolate the shape-shifter from the outside world, can only murmur to himself. "I don't know who to trust..." Peter Maloney in the snow with monstrous hands and a steamy roar is from Munch, Richard Dysart with limbs ripped out by a ravenous torso is a grand Lovecraftian vision, Redon figures as Charles Hallahan's head comes unglued and sprouts arachnoid legs. Which is to say that makeup artist Rob Bottin is a surrealist sculpting with latex and grue, adding grisly reds to the blinding blues and whites of Carpenter's impeccably compressed frames. The sharp depth of field in Dean Cundey's cinematography only heightens paranoia, claustrophobia, the dread-awe of penetrating menace. "I know I'm human," Russell attempts to assert as nerves dissolve, tentacles spurt, and even blood itself twitches and hisses. A magnificent cabinet of grotesqueries, a cycle of evil perpetually frozen and exhumed. Hawks' explorers break through and gaze ahead, Carpenter's crouch in the void and wait for the darkness. With David Clennon, T.K. Carter, Joel Polis, Richard Masur, Thomas Waites, and Donald Moffat.
--- Fernando F. Croce |