The Thing from Another World: Damn it is nice when a movie still holds up.
Don't get me wrong, it's not scary anymore (though it does have one expertly-timed scare and a lot of suspenseful bits). But it's just a fine movie, the dialogue keeps the whole thing snapping along with likable characters and a pretty straightforward story. The tone is certainly friendlier than the 80s The Thing, but John Carpenter must've been a fan of the original anyway since he made sure to have characters watching it in Halloween.
Funny thing, I watched this a ton when I was a kid. Colorized and black and white, whatever version they were showing on TV, and later after I recorded on VCR. I never considered it my favorite, but looking back, it's weird how heavily I gravitated towards it, because typically my scale of how good a monster movie was back then was how much they showed the monster. More monster screentime = better movie, so between ages 7 and 12 if someone had asked my favorite movie it would've been The 7th Voyage of Sinbad. And yet somehow I loved The Thing from Another World despite it barely showing the monster at all. Like even my undeveloped adolescent mind could grab hold of the presence the creature has in the movie, or that I was enjoying it without there being any real on-screen carnage.
Again, just a damn fine movie.
The coolest trilogy of 80s horror remakes--The Fly, The Blob, and The Thing--have the benefit that if you got a kid who's not old enough to handle the 80s versions yet, the 50s versions should be totally okay to watch. Then later, they can enjoy the remakes too.