The Thing Trivia

The original movie took place at the North Pole, this version takes place at the South Pole.

The Thing From Another World can be seen playing on a TV in Halloween.

Unusual for a Carpenter film Ennio Morricone (composer of such film classics as The Good, The Bad and The Ugly), composed the films soundtrack. The title track (Humanity, Part Two), however, is very (almost too) similar to Carpenter's usual electronic compositions.

From Anthony John Thorne:: You mentioned how Morricone's THE THING soundtrack was very similar to Carp's stuff. Carpenter has said in a couple of interviews that some of the tracks in the film, (i.e low, moody synthesisers and stuff) are actually his. He utilised what he liked from Morricone's score, and then composed a couple of brief tracks himself to polish some scenes up.

Here is another interview extract, with a slightly different viewpoint - From Chris Sherbanuk
...excerpt from an interview with Morricone published in Fangoria #135, Aug '94 by Lois Curci and Claudio Fuiano... ..."Carpenter flew to Rome and showed me his film," Morricone says. "He was very insistent, and I liked his movie, so I decided to do it." "The only thing is though, we barely talked about what he had in mind." "When I flew to Los Angeles to record the score, I brough along a tape that contained some synthesizer music I had recorded here in Italy." "It was realy difficult for me to unerstand what kind of score he wanted, so I composed an array of totally different things, hoping he'd find something of partic- ular interest to him." "Now I've been in this business for 30 years," says Morricone, "and I think I know what my clients want, and guess what?" He (Carpenter) picked the piece which mostly resembled his own personal compositions. "That is of course the main theme, which can be heard throughout the movie." Confirmation of this claim comes from the film's soundtrack, which contains a great deal of music which never made it into the movie. The main theme is virtually the sole composition heard during the film, and collectors consider the alblum "a rather peculiar one" as a result. "I wrote an hour of music for 'The Thing,' and I just can't believe the way it was ignored," frowns Morricone. "So when they asked me what to put on the album, I recovered all the stuff we had previously recorded." "You can't sell a soundtrack album with only one theme: its like cheating your potential buyers!"

From Eric Smith : SPOILERS This triv contains information on an alternate version, giving away the ending of the film - One of the sled dogs gets away after the explosion. Also, there's some narration at the beginning and end. This alternate has been shown on TV once or twice but as far as I know is not the intended JC version.