The Film: After a brief, unsatisfying stop off helping to bring Halloween II to the screen (he directed additional scenes and clashed with main director Rick Rosenthal), Carpenter teamed back up with Russell for this remake of Howard Hawks' horror, itself adapted from John W Campbell's novelette Who Goes There?

Frozen terror is the order of the day as Carpenter makes a film that is - blasphemy! - superior to Hawks' and ratchets up the tension with some superb physical effects as scientists in the Antarctic are confronted with a shape-shifting alien.
 
Carpenter Chats: "I loved the first film. I thought it was great. But they left a lot of Campbell's story out of it. I read the story before I saw the film. I guess I was about ten. Even then, I realized that the whole nature of Campbell's Thing was different than that of Hawks'.

"Actually, Alien borrowed quite a bit from Campbell's concept of the creature. Now, I suppose, when this movie is released, it may be compared to Alien.

"I'm not worried about it, though. I mean, that was one of the few effective monster films to be made recently, and it only took snippets of Campbell's ideas. We have the entire story."

Remade? A prequel (if it remains that way) is at the scripting stage, with Matthijs van Heijningen Jr on board to direct. But it seems to be a real beast to figure out.