The Thing Week: YouTube Things

Over the past year, since last Thing Week, I’ve seen a lot of videos on YouTube that pertain to The Thing. Most of them are short and don’t really have any entertainment value to them but once in a while there was a tribute or fan made video that stood out from all the rest. I decided to pull together all the ones that I thought were great and showcase them here. But before I get into that, I feel that I should bring up the stark difference between The Thing From Another World and John Carpenter’s The Thing. Why should I bring this up? Well, it’s because while I was trolling around YouTube I watched both of these movies’ trailers and I was reminded just how different they are but how they both deal with the same themes. So, without further ado… I present to you two different trailers from two different time periods about one thing.

Here are a chosen few YouTube videos that I found that did a great job honored Carpenter’s The Thing.

Here’s a pretty good fan made “redux” trailer for Carpenter’s Thing.

I’ll let the description speak for itself: "First video clip made for Zombie Zombie, the electrifying French duo of Etienne Jaumet and Cosmic Neman. Directed by Simon Gesrel and Xavier Ehretsmann thanks to their favourite toys... the GI Joes ! The video is an hommage to the director AND soundtrack composer John Carpenter, especially one of his masterpieces : THE THING."

This was a new one that was sent to me by the creators of this web series. The synopsis reads, "When a terrible illness descends on the town, the boys of Barkley Auto will do anything to protect themselves from the virus and each other!" I enjoyed it. They really did a great job referencing The Thing from the sick dog in the beginning to the 80’s sounding score that plays throughout. Look for my personal favorite scene that has the manager chugging down a bottle of whiskey while giving everybody the middle finger.

Along the lines of the G.I. Joe reenactment, here is the full, uncut version of the Lego reenactment of The Thing. The uploader of this video isn’t the original artist but the original artist does have a YouTube account here. It was originally broken up into two parts until it was just combined into one.

I don’t remember how I found this but there was apparently a fan made sequel to The Thing and in these two videos, the special effects guy tells us how he made these amazingly well thought of and well designed replications of the Thing creatures. If you want to see the fan made film, you can check out his YouTube channel here.

And if all this wasn’t enough, here is Mr. John Carpenter himself regaling his experience while making The Thing as well as his impression on the original Thing From Another World.