The Thing From Another World

I stayed up late last night and watched the original movie from 1951. I remembered it as a tight little movie that moved the story along at a brisk pace. This version, presented on the Turner Classic Movie channel, had some extra scenes added. They dealt mostly with the characters and their development. They weren't bad, but their quality varied wildly from the other scenes, and they kind of slowed the action down a bit.
The movie is based on a novella called "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell, Jr. In this story, the Thing is a creature that can assume different forms, a device that was used in John Carpenter's 1982 remake.
In the '51 version, the Thing was a manlike creature played by James Arness, who later gained fame as Marshal Matt Dillon on the long-running TV series "Gunsmoke."
The action takes place in an isolated science station in the Arctic, which the military men take over in order to fight the Thing. One of the themes of the film is the opposing views on how to handle the Thing. The military wants to destroy it before it destroys them, while the scientists want to reach out and make friends with it. Think of what we can learn from it, and so on. The head scientist even uses the station's blood supply to start growing a new crop of Things in the lab.
The Thing's description as more vegetable than animal causes the reporter in the story to call it a "super carrot." Mad Magazine's parody took this and ran with it. The Thing is drawn as a large carrot with arms and legs and big sharp teeth.
That the Thing's vampiric nature doesn't seem to phase the scientists makes it easier to side with the soldiers and their efforts to kill it.
Many later science-fiction movies would swing the other way, making the military the villains, and the scientists who want to make contact more sympathetic. Easy to do when the aliens look like Michael Rennie or a wrinkled teddy bear, but more difficult when they arrive with heat-ray equipped tripods or burst out of your chest.

The '82 remake, as noted, is more faithful to the original story. The action is still in an isolated science station, but this time it's located in the Antarctic.
There's no science vs. military subplot, just the paranoia that overtakes the men as they wonder who's human and who's a Thing.
The special effects, by Stan Winston and Rob Bottin, are spectacular. Since the Thing can adopt any form, the transformations it undergoes highlight its alien nature. It can imitate a man or a dog, or attributes of both of them in one body. It can shift to avoid an attack, and grow as many mouths or claws to defend itself as it needs.
It's a classic film, despite some aspects to the character of MacReady, played by Kurt Russell. The post's helicopter pilot, he spends a lot of time drinking liberally from a whisky bottle, even just before a flight.
Don't drink and fly, MacReady!
Also, not much attention is paid to the consequences of breaking windows in the station or going outside improperly dressed. The subzero weather'd finish them off pretty quickly.
Still, it is a classic, and both films are an excellent way to add some tension and genuine fright to your late night viewing.