The Thing is definitely in my Top 5 movies of all time along with Alien. Those two movies are very much alike in tone and cast chemistry/group dynamics. Plus horror and brooding suspense.
Totally. When you see a decapitated head scurrying away on little crab legs, you know exactly what to do with it. When you see your five colleagues, you have no idea.
To me, the biggest impact is from the question of whether Things even know that they’re Things. It’s not “Is one of you a Thing?”; it’s “am I a Thing?”.
I was 24 YO the first time I saw it. “Nothing is gonna scare me, right? I’m too grown-up for that!” At one point, the good guys open a door and IT’S JUST STANDING THERE!! My brother and I both scream, HOLY SHIT! and eventually come out from behind our respective chairs, once again too cool to be scared. The jump felt wonderful.
Not to mention They Live.
In the final scene, Kurt Russel’s breath is steaming, and the Black guy’s isn’t.
I thought you had to be wearing the special glasses to notice that.
I saw the 1982 flick on a small-screen color TV in a darkened bedroom. When it started, my dog at the time (a little Havanese) freaked out when she saw the husky running against the snow. I never heard her bark like that again.
As many time as I’ve seen this movie I never asked myself, before now, why didn’t the early Thing victims (like Norris, Palmer, or Bennings scream bloody murder? I mean, the dogs raised holy hell when dog-thing started doing his, er, thing in the kennel.
Maybe because it was a wolf-dog hybrid and, even on the TV, it pinged her threat radar.
Yeah, I kind of figured that. The important thing was that the hybrid was running against a background of pure white, which made it really stand out. With a background like a forest or something urban, or if the beast had been standing still, she probably wouldn’t have reacted at all.
When that was on cable a lot when I was young, it freaked me right the hell out. But, I still kept re-watching it because it was so good. That spider head thing…yeesh!
As always I have to salute the acting of the Thing-dog. So good, and yet slightly off.
Keith David.
Thanks!
If you look carefully you can see his breath. It’s just that his back is to the flames, so he’s more in shadow than Kurt Russell.
It also doesn’t make sense that the thing wouldn’t have visible breath. That would imply that either it doesn’t breath, or that its body temperature isn’t significantly higher than the arctic air, either of which would have been much more obvious tells that someone’s been turned than the blood test.
Also, the Bennings-thing emits visible moisture vapor when it screams at Macready right before he tips the gasoline onto it.
Well, shoot.
I’ve always liked the philosophical-type discussions of “Do you know you’re a Thing?” It’s so mind-bendy.
More important is “HOW do you know you’re a Thing?” 
Well, I mean, you might have a sudden compulsion (and inexplicable knowledge) to build a spacecraft from common antarctic items. But otherwise it’s probably long-term asymptomatic, until you start thing-ifying others.