15 Horror Movies You Probably Didn't Know Were Based On Books
4. The Thing
With The Thing director John Carpenter managed to create one of the most iconic and memorable horror films of all time. Though the terror didn't initially begin with this Kurt Russell gore-fest.
Carpenter's The Thing is the second film adaption of John W. Campbell's Jr. 1938 science fiction novel Who Goes There. An American research station in the Artic is invaded by a shape-shifting alien. Chaos ensues as the crew tries to survive while attempting to figure out who's human and who is an otherworldly imposter.
Along with this 1982 film there has been a previous adaption several decades before entitled The Thing From Another World, several comics, radio dramas, and both board games and video games. While each version has differed from its source material in clearly noticeable ways, they've all managed to capture the themes of paranoia and violation. At the concepts core lies the idea that not only are we not alone in the universe, but maybe it'd be better if we were.
They can't all be E.T.