4. The Thing (1982)
It's 1982. You're sitting in a theater and watching E.T. Young or old, you sit in wonder as Elliot and E.T. fly past the moon on a magical flying bicycle. On the adjacent theater, another movie is playing. A guy's having a heart attack on the screen. He's at a research base in Antarctica, and the only people who can help him are his fellow scientists, who were about to kill each other minutes before. The man is rushed to a medical station. Luckily, there's a doctor. The doctor rips off the man's shirt and attempts to revive him. Suddenly, the man's chest rips opens like a giant mouth, the doctor's arms plunge into the gaping maw, and the thing pretending to be a man having heart attack bites the doctor's arms off. Things, pardon the pun, go downhill from there. The Thing opened two weeks after E.T. Did its runaway success have a direct effect on The Thing? Maybe yes, maybe no. The Thing is a dark, uncompromising film, with a level of gore that mainstream audiences weren't ready for. I doubt there was a "right" weekend to open The Thing in 1982. But pitting one of cinema's nastiest aliens directly against one of its cuddliest didn't help matters. Over the years, horror fans discovered the film on video and embraced it - and most consider it to be John Carpenter's definitive work. It's easily among the best horror films ever made, one of the few films that keeps the tension going from its opening credits all the way to its bleak (and absolutely perfect) finish. Little known fact: The Hershey Company originally intended to advertise Reese's Pieces in The Thing instead of E.T. The shape-shifting monster was supposed to have a taste for human flesh... and candy. A scene was written but never filmed where one of the thing's many tentacles slithers onto an unsuspecting victim and stumbles upon an open bag of Reese's Pieces in his jacket pocket. The thing gurgles with pleasure at the peanut buttery goodness, startling the still oblivious scientist, who is quickly devoured whole. At the last minute, Hershey decided E.T. was a safer bet. History, I believe, has proved them wrong.