While few movies ever become classics, even fewer have posters that stand the test of time. The original Star Wars, Back to the Future, and Alien are all prime examples of movie posters that have become iconic. And among them is the poster for John Carpenter's 1982 horror, The Thing. However, despite the poster's impact on pop culture, it was made in just 24 hours with the artist having little knowledge of the movie's story.The poster features a man in a winter coat with their hood up, and from inside beams a bright light that obscures the face. It's vague enough that the movie could be about anything, but after watching, the hidden face seems to perfectly symbolize the alien. The true identity of The Thing is never shown, plus who it's disguised as is kept a mystery. And the genius of the poster is all thanks to artist Drew Struzan.
Drew Struzan Knew Nothing About The Thing
The Thing is known for having a disastrous post-production, with the practical effects going way over budget and early previews being incredibly harsh. Production was all left very last-minute, including the advertising, as days before posters needed to go up they still had nothing. And so, the studio approached artist Drew Struzan, who was fresh off of the poster design for Blade Runner, and asked him to create a poster in just 24 hours.
Drew accepted the offer, and as talked about in a video posted on his Twitter, he rushed outside in a winter coat, and his wife photographed him in the iconic pose. With such little time, Drew only knew the movie was about a shape-shifting alien in the Antarctic, and so kept things as vague as possible while sticking with the key points. But it's the simplicity that worked so well. With the painting finalized, he quickly delivered it to the studio. And "when they put it under the glass to photograph it, the paint stuck to the glass because the thing was still wet."
John Carpenter Hated the Poster
While The Thing's poster has become iconic, at the time it was the opposite of what John Carpenter wanted. He had recently made the first Halloween, and horror fans had seen multiple Friday the 13th movies, and so Carpenter wanted to make The Thing stand-out against the traditional slashers. The movie features smarter characters than the usual horror victims, and the alien doesn't chase people around the base to kill them.
However, as expressed in The Thing's audio commentary, John Carpenter was heartbroken when seeing the poster. He thought it made the movie look like yet another slasher film, and that the villain was just another murderer without a face, which is somewhat understandable, and was one more production problem Carpenter didn't want to deal with.
But in the end, horror fans have placed The Thing among other classics, with another Drew Struzan poster that became iconic. He even went on to draw posters for Star Wars, Indiana Jones, The Goonies and many other 1980s classics, making him one of cinema's most famous poster artists.