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John Carpenter and Kurt Russell have team for some of the more memorable movies in recent Hollywood history. Some might even relate their successful filmmaking relationship to that of Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro. Escape from New York. Big Trouble in Little China. And of course, The Thing. While each may not have been a huge success in their day, they've endured on VHS and now DVD.

The Thing (a remake of the 1951 classic "The Thing From Another World") is the story of 12 men on a research base in the Antarctic in 1982. The movie opens as a flying saucer lands on planet Earth. Fast forward a little and a helicopter is chasing a wolf, trying to kill it. These 12 Americans save the wolf and kill the people on the helicopter who've opened fire on their camp. But this is no ordinary wolf. Soon, strange things begin to happen around the camp and the men realize that the wolf is actually an alien who can assume the shape of anything it comes in contact with. With nowhere to run, and a storm on the horizon, the men are forced to hole up in their camp and it isn't long before suspicion begins to settle in. Who's real? Who's been infected by the alien? Who can you trust? And what follows is a pretty decent horror/action/sci-fi flick.

Now available on DVD (again) is The Thing. I say again because this DVD is pretty much the same package released as a Collector's Edition disc in 1998. The difference - new packaging and an all-new digitally remastered picture. Otherwise, all the features are the same. But for those who don't own the original, I'll go over the features here.

First, a commentary from Carpenter and Russell, which is a great listen. It's easy to understand why these two have drawn back to each other over the years - it's because of their chemistry. It's a fun listen despite the fact that Carpenter spends a little too much time describing what we're seeing on screen rather than giving insight into the filmmaking process.

The only other extra really worth checking out is the featurette "John Carpenter's The Thing: Terror Takes Shape". Longer than some movies at 82 minutes, we get an in-depth look at pretty much everything about the movie via interviews with much of the cast and crew. I found that a lot of the feature dealt with the effects in the film (with some great stories from special effects make-up designer Rob Bottin who created The Thing) although there's also some great material from some of the actors about what a great experience making the movie was. A top notch feature, worthy of the movie itself.

The next few extras are pretty much all text features with some photos added. They include the features "Production Background Archive", "Cast Production Photographs", "Production Art and Storyboards", "Location Design", "Production Archives" and "Post Production". There's a fair amount of detail included here, although being text, some of it is a little hard to get through. But if you really enjoyed the movie, they're worth the time.

Three more features combine text and video to give a more visual experience. "The Saucer" looks at the creation of the film's opening shot. "The Blairmonster" looks at an extended version of the film's final action sequence. And "Outtakes" are some extended scenes from the film.

The final feature is the film's original theatrical trailer. I find trailers for older movies to be a lot better. Although they can sometimes be a little cheesy, they don't give everything away like they do nowadays. This one was nicely done in that it captures the best parts of the movie and really leaves you wanting more.

Aside from the fact that this is pretty much the same DVD that has been available for awhile now, this is still worth it, if only for the fact that this movie is now a cult classic. And even though the features are pretty dated by today's standards given advances in the types of DVD features available, there's still enough entertaining material here to satify any fans out there.