Trailer: The Thing

I've had in mind gaming John Carpenter's 1982 film "The Thing" for some time.  I only saw the movie for the first time earlier this year and really enjoyed it.  Great 1980s gory creature effects and an electronic score from Ennio Morricone.

I found a great metal model of The Thing from Sally 4th.  An eight-part model plus Kurt Russell's character, the helicopter pilot R J MacReady.  Not cheap but it's a lot of lead!

I painted it with various shades of lurid pink and some fluorescent green/yellow.

But this is the final creature of the movie, so I needed to create a number of others.  The first threat in the movie is Lars the Norwegian who arrives by helicopter but with some artistic licence, I decided to use this sled and driver from Copplestone Castings.

The pack came with five huskies so I kept two back.  I painted one up normally to reflect the apparently harmless dog that Lars is chasing at the beginning of the movie, and then filed one down a second dog model to remove the hair and then painted and gloss-varnished to make it look appropriately gory.

I made a Spider Thing from the head of an old figure with legs and eyes on stalks created with soldering wire.  For the creature representing the infected Bennings, I drilled a small hole in the torso of one of my mountaineers.  The hole is hidden in the shadow beneath his binoculars allowing me to temporarily insert some pink tendrils again made from soldering wire.

Outpost 31 doesn't look that interesting in the film and I wanted a bit more colour on the gaming table so I modified a cargo container image by adding doors, windows and logos, and printed them out on card.

R J MacReady is supported by a set of Polar Adventurers, again from Copplestone Castings.

Finally, here's the short video I put together to trail my game of The Thing.