"Basking in the afterglow of a warmer alien visitation – E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial had opened two weeks earlier and was charming everything before it – Ronald Reagan’s America rejected The Thing’s ambiguous nihilism wholesale. It was, in Carpenter’s words, “El Tanko”. “It was unpleasant for audiences for deal with,” he later reflected. “I think the social climate in the country at that time had a lot to do with it. There was a recession under way and people rejected its downbeat, depressing view of things. They didn’t like the horrible inevitability of the movie.”"