34 Years Later, Major ‘The Thing” Easter Egg Unearthed
The Thing is arguably one of John Carpenter’s finest cinematic efforts, a claustrophobic pure horror tale unfolding at an Arctic base where the viewer is clueless who the alien creature has molded itself into with each passing scene. Lensed in the era when practical special effects were king, the film has left its mark as one of the greatest horror movies of all time. Problem is, even with the latest technology available to clean up video imaging, The Thing has never gotten a proper release from Universal to showcase the movie in all of its glory – until now.
Shout Factory is releasing a collector’s edition of The Thing on October 11th, much to the delight of Carpenter fans around the world. Director of photography Dean Cudney personally supervised a 4K restoration of the original negative to ensure the colors and imagery where what he would have wanted in a theatrical release. Among the slew of special features is a commentary featuring Bumhouse blog writer Rob Galuzzo and, as observed by Slash Film, a new in-plain-sight Easter Egg has been discovered.
Dean Cudney is currently whizzing around the country on a press tour to tout the 4K release, but that isn’t stopping Galuzzo from revealing a juicy nugget. In the midst of recording the commentary, Galuzzo inquired to Cudney if there were any visual cues audiences may have missed on repeat viewings. Cudney told Galuzzo that both he and director John Carpenter wanted to leave an allusion to hint to audiences which character remained human as the movie rolled on. Cudney said, “You’ll notice there’s always an eye light, we call it, a little gleam in the eye of the actor. It gives life.”
So – with that in mind – do we now know the biggest Easter Egg of the movie has been in front of our faces this entire time?
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GA4Ozqt7338[/embedyt]
What say you? Is Childs the Thing, or has it been MacReady all along? Or, 34 years later, are fans still being toyed with?
Jerrold spent his childhood in southeastern Pennsylvania ingesting far too many TV shows and movies, thus creating a stark-raving mad geek. He’s a movie aficionado, binge-watches Netflix, and is a total TV junkie. His addiction has led to an unhealthy and rabid obsession of various geek pantheons – Star Trek, Star Wars, both DC *AND* Marvel,
cult 80’s and 90’s television, Supernatural, The X-Files, Doctor Who, and, and…holy overload. He’s still waiting to run away in a 1967 Impala or a blue police box.
