10 Small Details That Make John Carpenter's The Thing Perfect
4. The Thing's Heartbeat
This is both small and overt, as the soundtrack may be one of the driving forces to fill the film with fear, yet it is so small in parts that it runs almost undetected while the action is unfolding on screen.
The enduring sounds of The Thing, as composed by Ennio Morricone, are the quiet thumping heartbeat that runs through the movie. This heartbeat plays in the same tempo throughout, suggesting that even as The Thing is terrorising and tearing through the men on the base, it constantly remains calm and collected, simply taking its time.
Morricone scored the film when it was not yet completed and as such, Carpenter himself wrote a few additional cues. Morricone later reflected that he had been very impressed with what he had seen, though he was a little confused as to what he was supposed to do. Carpenter had to rush off immediately after the screening, leaving Morricone with only a simple piece of advice - fewer notes.
Those notes which permeate the film pulse along with the audiences' own heartbeats, although surely the viewers' heart rates were running a lot faster than what they were hearing on screen. A newly pressed vinyl of both the score and Carpenter's lost cues is being released in May of 2020.