I recently got "The Thing" through my Blockbuster Online movie rentals by mistake (well out of order anyways) I decided to rent it because I was a big fan of his other movies such as Halloween 1 & 2 and Assault on Precinct 13.
The Thing is very similar to the movie Alien which came out around the same time. The only difference is it is set on earth in Antarctica. The setting in Antarctica helped the movie out a lot.
The movie is basically about an alien(s) that can morph into any living creature it encounters. There is a good amount of gore in the movie and the story seems pretty good as well.
It stars Kurt Russel who apparently did numerous movies with John Carpenter during the 80's and 90's. The rest of the cast is quite small so you can get to know the characters well enough in the movie as well.
The movie felt very long which was good because often times movies rush into things too quickly and don't give enough time to develop the characters and plot line very good.
I give The Thing a 9/10.