10 Great Sci-Fi Movies Where The Aliens Walk Among Us
5. The Thing
Whereas the remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers took the paranoia of the Cold War and reconfigured it in the densely populated city of San Francisco in the 1970s, John Carpenter's remake of the 50s classic The Thing From Another World sticks closely to the claustrophobic setting of the original - a small band of research scientists isolated in the Antarctica. Kurt Russell stars as Jack MacReady, the helicopter pilot who discovers a strange smouldering corpse at a nearby Norwegian research station and takes it back to his colleagues to analyze, after a mysterious dog arrives at the compound, pursued by grenade-wielding Norwegian scientists. The evidence soon leads to the discovery a vast alien craft buried deep within the Antarctic ice, and before long an alien presence has begun working its way through the camp, assimilating people one by one. Infamously a box office failure having followed on from the cutesy success of E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, The Thing has justly gone on to become a bona fide cult classic. It's not hard to see why: Rob Bottin's incredible visual effects - all puppets, latex and animatronics - prove that hands-on special effects can often out-trump CGI (just watch the vastly inferior, CG-laden 2011 prequel/remake to see for yourself). The plot may well suspend logic - and disbelief - from time to time, but with a film so gleefully intent on scaring the pants of the audience it's a small criticism to be made. Several decades since its release, The Thing's legacy to science fiction horror remains secure.
