The Thing

Though all the close-of-station delays forced us to wait for about a week after the last major flight out, we did finally manage to stage a South Pole winter-over tradition: watching "The Thing." All three of them, actually! On a Sunday afternoon, we dragged all the furniture from one of the lounges into the gym and people set up the projector and sound system and we all settled in with snacks... 

...to watch, first, the hilariously un-scary 1951 original, which is actually set at the NORTH POLE...

...and then the incredibly dark 1982 version starring Kurt Russell, which is finally set in Antarctica...

...and then the 2011 version, which was apparently suspenseful enough that I was too busy covering my eyes to remember to take a picture of the screen. I'm not really a horror movie fan, but how could I pass up such a time-honored South Pole tradition and bonding experience with my fellow winter-overs? So I did actually watch all three. (Except for the parts in the third one where my eyes were closed.) Even though I wasn't inherently interested in the movies themselves, it was pretty interesting to watch all three in succession. It's amazing how film-making has evolved over the past 60 years, not to mention the cultural shifts portrayed along the way (embarrassing gender dynamics in the 50's version, no women at all in the 80's version, and then a female hero in the latest version). And the most recent version looped back around to the 80's version in a very clever way that I enjoyed.

Next real South Pole traditional movie experience will be at mid-winter, when we've all had four months together and are in total darkness and are maybe starting to lose it a bit--at which point we'll watch "The Shining." Which I've also never seen. To balance out all this gruesome scariness, I've started a Cheesy Movie night and am showing sappy romantic-comedy type stuff in one of the lounges every Friday night. As you can imagine, I'm super-popular among this horror- and sci-fi-loving crowd....