10 Best Body Horrors That Make You Squirm
1. The Thing
John Carpenter isn't known as the Horror Master for no reason. And in his 1982 The Thing - a take on John W. Capmbell Jr.'s Who Goes There? novella - Carpenter served up one of the greatest movies of its time.
Part horror, part sci-fi, The Thing gave moviegoers an offering that featured some truly ground-breaking special effects work from Rob Bottin and his team. While the present day so often sees filmmakers fall back on CGI for their creatures and beasties, Bottin's work on The Thing serves as a testament as to why practical SFX work can be so special and hit home so well.
To this day, The Thing holds up as a jaw-dropping feature that goes heavy on the body horror as its titular parasite possesses and then mimics person to person - or even a poor dog at one point during the film's opening!
John Carpenter defined the slasher movie with Halloween. He gave us politicised machismo in Escape from New York. He embraced the classic ghost story formula with The Fog. And he spun satire and social commentary in They Live. But with The Thing, Carpenter gave a perfect example of how to make a body horror that remains timeless nearly 40 years after it first hit the silver screen.