The thing about that dog in “The Thing” is that he was half wolf. You really have to understand that, because it wasn’t easy making Jed (the dog/wolf) such an integral part of the film, which was just inducted into the National Film Registry.
As everyone who saw John Carpenter’s 1982 sci-fi/horror classic knows, Jed was kind of a big deal. Like fellow star Keith David, it was his first major role! He opens the movie!
But he’s not the cute canine he appears to be when he shows up at the frozen research station in Antarctica where Kurt Russell and pals are swillin’ Scotch and doing a little science. You might have guessed this right off, as crazed Norwegians in a helicopter are shooting and throwing grenades at Jed, who is (literally) running for his life through the snow. We soon find out Jed is actually a shape-shifting monster from outer space who is decidedly unhappy to be here.
Complications — many of them gruesome — ensue.
The film has long been a cult classic and, as such, this year was the public’s No. 1 choice for induction into the NFR. (Most films are nominated by the National Film Preservation Board, with final selections by the Librarian of Congress, but public nominations can be made on the NFPB’s site, and, with the Librarian’s nod, thus gain induction.)
Richard Masur, one of the film’s stars, points out that it was one of the last great “rubber movies,” meaning that all the special effects were made by hand, a potpourri of rubber prosthetics, animatronics, unguents, gels and blood-like goo that went everywhere and got all over everybody. Rob Bottin was the special effects guru who made the gross-out magic.
“There is not a frame of CGI in this film and people who care about that, and many of us do, are very impressed that this film is finally being recognized for the extraordinary accomplishment that it represents in film history,” Masur said in a recent Library interview. (Masur is a longtime member of the NFPB, representing the Screen Actors Guild, but as “The Thing” was voted in by the public, he was not involved in its selection.)
Masur played Clark, the dog handler at the research station, and thus Jed’s best buddy. He spent three weeks with Jed and his trainer to be able to work with Jed on camera. Like many a temperamental Hollywood star, Jed was high-strung and not given to nailing the first take.
Masur, now 77, recalls that the set had to be locked down when Jed was there. He still remembers his commanding presence: “He was so big and powerful and just beautiful. But also because he was half wolf, he had this wolf thing, which is they don’t bark and they don’t growl. You see them growling in movies and stuff, but mostly they don’t. What they do is if they’re going to get into it, they just stare at you, and then they move.”
Veteran wildlife trainer Clint Rowe had gotten Jed to do this unnerving, silent stare on cue.
“There was no emotion in it, but it was very frightening,” Masur said. “It wasn’t just, ‘Oh, he’s staring.’ It was, ‘I’m about to kill you.’ ”
Masur spent by far the most time of anyone on the movie with Jed because he had the most screen time with him. The location shots were just outside Stewart, British Columbia, and it really was as bitterly cold as it appears on film. Since Jed had a couple of shots in which he walks through a crowded recreation room, everyone had to do a bit of settling in with him, which was often edgy. Jed took a particular dislike to Russell one day, perhaps because the star was wearing cowboy boots that he’d been wearing on his horse farm. (Jed did not, apparently, care for horses or most actors.)
Like the other stars in the film — David, Russell, Masur, Wilford Brimley — Jed went on to other things in Hollywood. Most notably, he played the title role in “White Fang” and “White Fang 2,” a pair of ’90s films based on the classic Jack London novel.
According to Jed’s profile page on the Internet Movie Database (you didn’t think he had one?), our hero was of Canadian and American descent. Mom was Canadian, a “captive Vancouver Coastal Sea Wolf from British Columbia.” Dad was a Malamute from Juneau.
Jed lived to be 18 and died in 1995. He was buried in Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, which is in Washington state. His fame lives on, but it is perhaps best to remember him, and his career-defining role in “The Thing,” from a polite distance.
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