Behind the Effects: "The Thing" Eating Arms

 

The Thing is a 1982 horror/thriller from legendary director John Carpenter.  The film is famous for it’s acting, cinematography and special effects, and you can probably guess which one of those three we’ll be talking about today (this isn’t “Behind the Cinematography" after all.)

Most notable amongst the effects sequences are those featuring “The Thing” to which the films title refers; which usually contain a person going through a grizzly, disturbing and unabashedly surreal transformation into a monstrous alien “thing.”  If you haven’t seen the film, I suggest you watch the below sequence to know what I’m talking about. But be warned: It’s pretty gruesome, and contains one particularly naughty word about two and a half minutes in.

The first thing that one might say after watching the above sequence is, “agh, oh gosh! What Is that?”  But after you calm down you might wonder, “How did they do that stuff?”  Well. . . I’ve got a few answers for you, so fill your knowledge whole with some bizarre techniques used in John Carpenter’s The Thing!

Firstly, when Charles Hallahan’s torso opens up and eats the doc’s arms, you may notice that the scene is cut right down the middle.  First we see this. . .

Then one jump cut later we see this. . .

The difference between the two shots is that the first one features the Doc, played by Richard Dysart, giving Hallahan normal fake medical attention, while the second features a hydraulic replicant of Hallahan’s chest and an amputee with gelatin attached to his arms.  That’s right, they hired someone (who’s name I couldn’t find) who had lost his arms from the upper elbow down in an industrial accident, to play Dysart’s double.  The man was rigged with a very detailed Richard Dysart mask and given arms made of Jell-O, plastic tubing (to pump fake blood through,) and fake bone. In the above picture the only thing that's "Real" is Charles Hallahan's head.

The animatronic chest-mouth of doom utilized powerful hydraulics in order to operate, so nothing else was needed in order to make the arms fall off.  All they did was have the mouth close, and that was more then enough to smash through gelatin and plastic.  Once the ends were severed, they pumped blood through the plastic tubes in the arms while the nameless amputee ran around pretending to be in pain.  The result is actually pretty gruesome.

For the hydraulic chest itself, they had Hallahan sit around the effects studio without his shirt on for an akward amount of time, so that they could then make an exact rubber model of it. So when it was time to shoot the sequence they hid Hallahan’s actual body inside the operating table so that only his head and arms were viewable, and laid the fake body and the hydraulics on top.  in the scene, Hallahan’s arms are always his real arms, and his head is his real head (up to the point were it oozes of, grow legs and walks across the floor.)  Only his chest is fake for the majority of the scene.

The rubber chest was places on top of the surprising simple hydraulic clamp, which is about as technically complex as a trash compactor.  This way when the jaws opened the first time, the chest would rip open with it, creating a realer, more convincing, effect.

There’s a lot of cool stuff I haven’t touched on in just the scene I had you watch, not to mention the rest of the film. What I've covered here really only amounts to about twenty seconds of screen-time; I didn't even get to the infamous spider-head.  Unfortunately, to mention all the precise techniques used for this movie would be to write a large book.  However, I may return to this subject again in the next few weeks to give you more juicy details on the magnificent effects displayed here.  In the meantime I hope this inspires you to watch John Carpenter’s 1982 horror classic again, and to have your mind boggled by a heart wrenching plot, as well as mind boggling special effects!

Thanks for reading!  If you have a specific scene from a specific movie  you want to know more about, send me an email at atchleyosaurus@gmail.com.  With a little luck I might end up writing a whole Behind the Effects just for you!  Come back in the next few weeks for more articles, reviews and other fun “things.”