"The Thing (1982)" VS "Alien" ??

Both movies are two of my all time favorites however I will say that the idea in Alien of having a parasitic organism explode out of a human's chest was a very novel idea at the time.

def Alien. to be its the quintessential sci-fi horror film.

stranded in the emptiness of space with only ripley and the alien. great horror/sci-fi movie.

I'd like to add Invasion of the Body Snatchers for your consideration.

But yeah both are classics that I never tire of watching.

The Thing

Interesting. Both are remakes of a sort. Alien is a modern version of It, the Terror from Beyond Space, where a rocketship landed on Mars, and while there picked up a hitchhiker who started whacking crew members one by one when the ship was headed back to Earth. The alien was a big guy in an ugly suit, like the original Thing.

The Thing was a remake, with John Carpenter sticking more closely to the source book, Who Goes There. The special effects were not there yet to create a shape shifting alien when the first version was filmed in 1951. Carpenter's version was a study in paranoia.

If the question were Aliens Vs The Thing then I wouldn't be able to choose, but as it stands now I would go with

The Thing.

Alien was a better-directed movie in my opinion. The claustrophobia of it all was extremely well done, especially the scene in the vents.

The Thing was better scripted I think and had a more interesting bad guy. I love the ending theory that Russell had gasoline in the canister and had David drink out of it to see if he was human and would wince. He didn't.