10 Smartest Decisions In Sci-Fi Movie History

9. The Blood Test - The Thing

The blood test from John Carpenter's The Thing is one of the most iconic scenes in sci-fi history, and with damn good reason.

After the titular shape-shifting extra-terrestrial has wreaked havoc on the remote antarctic research base, protagonist MacReady (Kurt Russell) devises a test to figure out which of the remaining survivors is playing host to the Thing.

Given that the Thing has demonstrated its innate drive to survive at all costs, MacReady surmises that an infected person's blood would attempt to flee from a threat, in this case a heated copper wire.

And so, MacReady takes blood samples, heats the wire and has at it, eventually revealing that Palmer (David Clennon) is infected when his blood leaps from the Petri dish.

Granted, this leads to the deaths of not only Palmer but also poor Windows (Thomas Waites), but in figuring out a way to discern an otherwise invisible impostor, it was undeniably genius.