Alien influenced The Thing

Carpenter's film was made in the window Alien opened, and reviewers at the time treated them as siblings: an isolated crew, no way out, a creature that uses the bodies it kills, and practical effects designed to be looked at rather than glimpsed. The shared ancestor matters too. Both descend from Campbell's Who Goes There? by way of the 1951 film, and O'Bannon acknowledged the 1951 version among Alien's sources, so this is partly a family resemblance. Filed MEDIUM for exactly that reason: what Alien supplied was commercial permission and a standard for creature work, not the story, which Carpenter had from Campbell.