There are few horror films as thoroughly chilling as John Carpenter's 1982 masterpiece "The Thing." Loosely based on the John W. Campbell novella "Who Goes There?", which was previously adapted as the 1951 Christian Nyby film "The Thing From Another World," "The Thing" follows a research team in the arctic as they battle with a mysterious alien being that had been frozen in the ice. While the movie wasn't a hit when it first came out (in large part because it was a disturbing bummer with an enigmatic ending), "The Thing" has come to be thought of as a true horror classic.
But "The Thing" so many of us know and love today was almost a very different movie, as Carpenter realized during editing that the pacing was far too slow and he needed to cut some dialogue and add more monsters (a great call). He had originally planned for a pretty different ending in which MacReady proves he's human and ultimately survives as the hero. In an interview with CHUD.com back in 2006, star Kurt Russell revealed that he had something to do with the film's haunting, ambiguous ending, and I have to say: Thank you, Kurt!