The Thing V Alien V Event Horizon

Hmm, Daddy or chips.

Dare I say it, but for me Event Horizon and The Thing are close to B movies. Good, but a bit over the top and kitchy. Alien is a pure classic.

Is event horizon good? Ive never seen it, ill say alien though

shadowcomplex wrote: »

Your Dad has probably pondered the same question regarding you

Whoosh.




Incidentally, I went for Event Horizon. I love the other two classics but Event Horizon is the greatest sci-fi horror movie ever made for me. It was genuinely scary when I first watched it and has very sinister demonic undertones throughout hinting at a menace far darker than any mere aliens would ever pose. Right from the outset the film imposes a sense and atmosphere of isolation on the viewer that few other movies have equalled - about as far as a film can go to towards aiding the impossible task of communicating how far Neptunian space is from Earth.

The entire movie is a string of extremely memorable scenes with the tension cranking ever tighter often in ingeniously imaginative and creepy ways. There are few breathers and you're never bored for one minute as the increasingly compelling and macabre tale unravels. Yes, one scene with very early CG is very dated now but it's only used in that zero G scene and apart from that everything looks completely believeable and genuine, far moreso than anything we see today. You only have to watch Interstellar to get a hint of the impact and influence it's had though it's far less renowned and famous than either The Thing or Alien. Pardon the pun but watching that movie for me has and always will be an Event.

hard to say between Alien and The Thing (john Carpenter) version

Event Horizon was meh, as said by Argcola just a very poor ending

The first hour of Event Horizon was very good, but it struggled to tie itself together.
Alien is a classic film with groundbreaking production values for the genre. I actually saw Aliens first as a kid so that would be my favourite from the trilogy and probably blunted the impact of the original when I eventually saw it.

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The Thing had a profound affect on me though when I saw it as a 15 year old. Really shocked and scared me. The intensity of the blood sample scene is unrivalled, and while the special effects may be dated they are so freewheelingly grotesque that they still pack quite the punch. And the backdrop of doom that sets in from the strange opening scene intensifies the entire way through to the grim ending.

I think it is an utterly brilliant film really, and one that modern horror / action films struggle to emulate. They are simply soft in comparison.

TBH Alien and The Thing (John Carpenter version) are in a different class to Event Horizon.

EH is a good film but it just tapers off towards the end. It does have some very creepy scenes though and I always like Sam Neill in films.

It's a very close run thing then between Alien and The Thing. Both are brilliant films with similar themes of the body being infected with an outside organism. However The Thing shades it for me, because it is probably Kurt Russells best film, John Carpenter is at the top of his game and I love the fact that the special effects still look good today even though the film is 33 years old!

RopeDrink wrote: »

Alien is Alien, can't say a bad thing about it, really.

Jayz, I can : split up and look for the cat. So many horror movie clichés it is super annoying.

The Thing is far better - the characters actually try to act like they are up against a monster.

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

Jayz, I can : split up and look for the cat. So many horror movie clichés it is super annoying.

The Thing is far better - the characters actually try to act like they are up against a monster.

Dude, its 1979, and they needed to split up to get the cat as it would throw off their sensors, very realistic, as far as they know at that stage the alien was only 5 inches long.

kingtiger wrote: »

jasus what to do you think created the cliches

It wasn't Alien, since I was irritated by them in 1979.

pixelburp wrote: »

Splitting up was actually the only realistic way of catching the thing given the information they had.

And when you find the cat, and it starts hissing and spitting at you as if there is a giant monster sneaking up behind you...

Yes, it was a very scary movie when I first saw it, but the bits labelled "THIS IS A HORROR MOVIE" were just too obvious all the time.

It is true that the characters in The Thing generally act far more rationally and attempt to organise much more than the horror movie norm. It's a really strong aspect of the film imo.

MisterAnarchy wrote: »

I only saw The Thing for the first time last year and couldn't get over how good the special effects were for the time it was made.
I thought it was an excellent film .

All 3 of the films are excellent ,I saw Event Horizon in the cinema and it was edge of the seat stuff .
It was also stunning effects wise .
It also has some classic lines
Where we're going... we don't need eyes to see!

Hmm, reminds me a bit of this:
"Where we're going, we don't need roads!"

I saw a documentary there recently about the recent remake of The Thing. They interviewed the special effects guys and they demoed some of the appliances they had designed. They were incredible, as gruesome and grotesque as the best stuff from the John Carpenter version. However, they went on to explain that the director ditched all their best work to replace it with CGI because it gave him more flexibility when filming a scene. He could swing a camera around an empty room once, safe in the knowledge that the CGI guys could paint a monster in the corner. Using practical effects meant that he was restricted to certain camera angles, etc. and he may have to do a number of takes to get it right.

The two special effects guys were heartbroken, and they said that a lot of their type of skills were being lost to the cinema industry. It was awful to see because the practical effects looked so much better than the CGI stuff in every regard.

Alien and The Thing are some of my favourite movies. I enjoyed Event Horizon for the most part when I saw it in the cinema, but I think it fell apart in the last act. It's alright, but I wouldn't rank it near the other two.

Skerries wrote: »

was this on the dvd?
yeah that film needed to go back to the old style of practical effects, this is one of the reasons that Christopher Nolan's films are so well received

I only watched this recently, but I'm struggling to recall where. Could have been on Netflix, or maybe linked from something else on youtube. I'll wrack my brains!

One of the fellows was Tom Woodruff, the other's name escapes me. They worked on stuff like Alien 3. They are the best around at the practical effect stuff, but they admitted that they were struggling to get enough money invested in them to do research into new techniques.

Chris_Heilong wrote: »

If people havent voted for Alien then they need to watch it again in HD, best film ever. The Thing is almost as good.

Sorry while I do like Alien (Although I rate Aliens higher) John Carpenter's The Thing is the one for me. Although the have a lot in common with Dan O'Bannon and John Carpenter both created Darkstar (very similar story to Alien). I just love The Thing great special effects, a mostly unknown cast give great performances fantastic Ennio Merricone score, excellently directed by Carpenter who rivets up the tension and pending doom and the ending leaving us without the final answer (although if you watch the final scene which of the characters breath can you see in the cold air? ). It was a box office flop thanks to ET coming out around the same time.
So The Thing gets my vote!