#i dont mean they’re identical or using the same designs—I just mean they’re movies abt basically the same shapeshifting monster

[beastoftheblackhole]

let’s add ‘the thing’ to this discussion of practical effects, bc it’s one of my fave movies of all time and still looks astonishing. It’s a combination of puppets, animatronics, and editing tricks like playing shots in reverse. Apologies for incoming body horror.

This is an animatronic, I believe. The cords and tendons are microwaved bubblegum.

The tentacles on the floor actually moved backwards towards the puppet; they filmed it normally and then added it in in reverse.

Iirc this was done the same way—carpenter uses that trick a lot in this movie.

I couldn’t find a gif of the exact moment after this, but when Copper—the guy holding the defibrillator—pulls back with his arms bitten off, it’s actually a double-amputee body double wearing a mask of the actor. It’s only a second or two of footage.

The stuff they used to make the steam coming off the prop on the table smelled so bad that all the actors didn’t have to act their disgust.

This was filmed on a sound stage; I know the ship in the foreground was a matte painting, and the background may be a matte painting w a guy on a ladder, but I’m not positive.

I tried to find a gif of the dead radio operator in the Norwegian base; he cut his wrists and throat and the blood pouring down has frozen solid. They used the stuff that makes twinkies shiny and dyed it red. There’s a shot where Kurt Russell tosses a stick of dynamite after one of the things (which was on fire and performed by a guy who was *literally on fire*), and if you watch him you can see him fling himself against the wall of the building, bc the actual explosion was bigger than anticipated. This movie is considered a landmark of special effects, right up there with the transformation sequence of ‘An American Werewolf in London’ (which incidentally was done by the mentor of the fx guy for ‘the thing’). If you wanna compare it to cgi, go watch the prequel made in 2011. Originally they were going to use puppets just like Carpenter’s version, but the studio pressured them to use cg instead, and it doesn’t look nearly as good. There’s a bts feature showing the puppets they’d built and there’s no contest, the puppets are far superior.

Marvel movies have completely eliminated the concept of practical effects from the movie-watching public’s consciousness