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Do you remember… When there was… More than one cinema in town?… And some of them only showed one film at a time?… In Spendyke… There was… The Odeon… And… The ABC… And… Studios 1,2,3,4… And… The Tivoli… And… The Palladium… We got the taxi to the Palladium… One time… About then… To see… The Thing… Bill’s dad was thrilled… Almost as excited as we were… And he wasn’t even coming… He’d seen the original version back in the fifties… And thought he knew… What we were in for… Even with the taxi… We got there late… But that… Only added to the experience…
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In hindsight… All the leading actor… Had going for him… Was his resemblance… To a latter day Jim Morrison… And given the time… It is not altogether out of the question… That this was deliberate… Anyway, we missed the opening credits… And so we didn’t realise… That The Thing had come from outer space… This… If anything… Made the film far better… Than it otherwise would have been… By preserving its mystery… Much longer… Than originally intended… In essence… It is a siege movie… With the enemy within… Not unlike the situation… We now find ourselves in…
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Back then… The Palladium had seen better days… Shoddy seats… Cold… The Thing... Was a shape-shifting entity… Which devoured its prey… And then took on its form… In order to evade detection… And the first job of the infiltrated… Was to locate those… Who had been… Assimilated… It was never the obvious suspects… Of course… And as this was played out in… An Antarctic research station… There was an outside chance… That The Thing… Would not make it to the population at large… And thus humanity would be saved… No hope for that… In our case… Unfortunately… The Thing… Is.
France & Vincent 