#1: The Thing

To say that it was a matter of when I saw the #2 and #1 movies that determined which came first is only partially true.  I saw The Thing when I was about 10 or 11 and it was dark out.  Right after the credits rolled it was bedtime.  My brother and I were having a sleepover somewhere and curled up, in a sleeping bag where anything could get you wasn't an ideal sleeping condition.

 

But it was more than age and time of day.  As scary as The Exorcist was, well, you could run away from that.  Unless you were Regan you could walk out the front door and never look back.  These guys were in the Antarctic.  There was no place to run away.  Especially when you considered the nature of the alien.  Oh, and Blair destroyed the helicopter.  Much like the #2 movie, most of this movie's work is done in your mind, not on screen.  The Thing running around and chasing people would have been comical.  Instead, it chose to hide and push these men into destroying each other.  To be trapped in a place where the environment could kill you, where the man standing next to you could be something other than human, where you could be something other than human... that is true terror.

 

Other than some editing errors (I think there's a boom mike clearly on screen somewhere) there isn't a flaw to be found.  Acting, directing, story are all on point and the ending gives you something else to be creeped out by.  Are you about to freeze to death or get eaten by the guy sitting across from you?