What They Wrote by Jack Ketchum

Author:Jack Ketchum [Ketchum, Jack]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Horror, Reviews, literary criticism
Publisher: Crossroad Press
Published: 2015-03-22T23:00:00+00:00

“IT’S THE DOG SCENE THAT GETS ME”

On John Carpenter’s THE THING

Article

A big beautiful black-and-white dog, a husky, is racing across the bleak Antarctic tundra. Above him a guy in a helicopter is shooting at him with a high-powered rifle. You’re watching this. And if you’re an animal lover like me you’re thinking what the fuck? You want somebody on the ground to shoot his miserable cowardly ass right out of the copter.

At least that’s how I felt when I first saw THE THING back in ’82. Somebody should definitely shoot the guy.

Anyhow, here’s this dog zigging and zagging beneath the copter. Good evasive moves this dog’s got. He’s headed toward the science lab station. And now the guy starts trying to bomb him.

Even for hunters this is a little extreme.

All this noise has grabbed the attention of Kurt Russell and company to the extent that Kurt might even put down his bottle of J&B. But no. He just watches while the dog hits his buddy George and starts licking his face like any grateful dog would do to somebody who represents sanity and safety. Meanwhile the eagle has landed and blown sky high on a mishandled bomb and the shooter misses the dog and hits George instead so that the chief finally does what we’ve been waiting for somebody to do. Pops him one in the head. Good shot.

But already we’re taking no satisfaction in this.

It’s because of the bombs. They’ve tipped us to the fact that this is no ordinary hunt for some ordinary animal.

Even when Richard Masur’s petting him, calming him down. He doesn’t seem to need calming.

In real life Richard made friends with him. “Jed was a very spooky dog at first,” he said, “because he was half wolf and half dog and the wolf half was real dominant. He did everything like a wolf. He would never bark, he’d never growl. But the minute he got uncomfortable he’d just suddenly go…” And here Masur does pretty good thousand-yard stare. “Clint (his trainer) had warned me, if you see that look on his face just relax, try and relax.”

It couldn’t have been easy. I’ve seen three wolves up close and personal once and that stare is impressive to say the least. Carpenter uses Jed’s to truly spooky effect in an empty hallway, in the autopsy room with the creature and finally – after his very wolfish hesitation at the cage door with the other dogs – an eerie disturbing close-up as Masur turns off the lights on them. You just know all hell’s going to break loose and it does. Culminating, in my mind at least, not with the whiplash tentacles or the blooming sickly flower-burst of Jed’s muzzle but in the piteous shots of one of the poor doomed sled-dogs desperately tearing at the jagged wire mesh of their cage with his teeth.

In all that follows this is still the scene that gets to me the most.

The reason’s this.

I believe that animals exist in what for lack of a better phrase I’ll call a state of grace.

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