John Carpenter's The Thing

Spent last night and the early hours of this morning watching John Carpenter's terrific remake of the Thing.

When I was 13? 14? I remember watching this and being completely and utterly terrified by it. One of those movies that compels you to watch even though you can feel yourself becoming more and more scared as it goes on.
So I sat down last night with a morbid sense of excitement at what I hoped would be a great night's viewing. And it lived up to my own billing.
I'd forgotten enough about it to still be shocked at the right moments and completely creeped out by it. The creeps started at the point when the Thing in dog form was put in with the other dogs. The point when the other dogs realise something alien and dangerous is trapped with them sent those great horror movie chills down my spine.

There's nothing quite like that feeling of settling down to watching a great horror movie that you know is going to scare you. And I can name just 3 that really do that to me: Alien, The Thing and The Shining. Not even the Exorcist does it. I went to see it when I was 18 and it had just been re-released to the cinema and I sat through it, thoroughly unimpressed and certainly not scared.