Which is better?

First, I'd like to reply to the posts about older black and white movies not being as good as today's films. This is utter nonsense. That's like saying older music isn't as good as today's music because it was recorded on analog instead of digital. On the contrary, the older black and white films are better made due to the technical limitations put upon the filmmakers--they had to be creative to get the primitive (by our standards) technology to work properly. The lighting, the cameras, everything had to be just so to get the image on film. With today's technology, any idiot can point a camera and get a usable picture.

Comparing the two films is almost apples and oranges. They both have merit. They are extremely different, but it should be noted that Carpenter didn't completely jettison the Hawks version--echoes of it show up in his film.

And while I enjoy the Carpenter film I think the Hawks version has a slight edge. It's a much tighter picture in terms of pacing (often Carpenter's "suspense" is just poor pacing-- see just about every film he's made since Halloween) and the dialogue is great, smart and witty. The story also moves much better in the older film. Carpenter does an annoying fade to black to get out of a scene about 20 times in the course of his picture.

Carpenter's movie is much much darker in tone. I recently showed it to a young friend and she found the dark tone completely depressing (there's no unity among the men, we are all ultimately alone) while the older film shows the men working together to defeat the enemy and ends rather optimistically, as long as we "watch the skies" (WWII was fresh in the minds of everyone). One of the reasons the Carpenter version was greeted poorly is that it opened about two weeks after Spielberg's ET--people were not in the mood for scary aliens. They wanted loving friendly aliens and upbeat stories. They did not get it from Mr. Halloween.

Carpenter's movie scared the crap out of me when I was a kid, but so did the Hawk's version. As for special effects, I'll put the Hawk's scene in the boiler room when they set the monster on fire over Carpenter's inflatable bladders any day. That's real fire, the guy is really on fire, and they light him up more than once, too. Pretty cool.

Keep in mind also that flying saucers had only been in the popular consciousness since 1947. In 1951, ideas about aliens and flying saucers were still forming. By 1980, they were pretty much old hat.

On another note, the actor that plays the too-alien-friendly Dr. Carrington, Robert Cornthwaite, is still alive and acting. He was only 34 when he made the movie though he is made up to be a much older man. I'd probably seen the movie 20 times and never noticed. And Margaret Sheridan, who's so good in this, only made six pictures in her entire career. That's a shame.

Of course, I also enjoyed the original story, "Who goes there?' and the comic book based on the Carpenter film which picks up where the movie left off. Maybe I just have a thing for the Thing.

I say again:

"The best version is the X-Files episode "Ice"."

Anyone else here agree?

Carpenter tried, but the mindless gore and uninspired acting and writing ruined it.

I'm surprised that there are so many defenders of the 1950s version. The 1982 film is, in my view, a minor masterpiece; while the Hawks' film is pretty unremarkable. It's virtually indistinguishable from many other 1950s monster movies with Geiger counters, hokey dialogue, and exaggerated acting. Very much by-the-numbers for that era. Carpenter's film is genuinely scary...try watching it alone at night in an empty house.

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Hawks originaly wanted to do the creature like in the book. He even had a clip of the creature that was way different then the Arness one. How ever the studios said that a shape a shifting alien was to scarey for the public and would lose money. So he changed the creature but made it quite violent. The scene where it is set on fire is way different then the final one. but again he was told it was to gory so he toned it down but wasn't happy about it.

The problem with the Carpenter version is that it came out only a few years after 'Alien', has essentially the same storyline (yes, 'Alien' probably owes a lot to Campbell's story), but is inferior in all departments to Scott's film -- visuals, performance, writing, suspense, direction, design, etc etc. The 'thing' is just disgusting rather than frightening, whereas the 'alien' is a brilliantly designed creature. I won't even bother going into the 'what you don't see is scarier' spiel, because I think it's blatantly obvious when you compare these two examples.

But the blood test scene was terrific, and I like the final scene with MacReady and Childs -- the sort of ambiguous ending we see far too little of these days.