John Carpenter's The Thing (1982) was a great film, one of his best IMO. For me, it's right up there with Alien (1979) as one of the greatest sci-fi horror films ever made. And yet one film made anything between $100 - 200 million at the box office whereas the other made only $19 million. Carpenter's classic was unlucky to be released at roughly the same time as E.T.
I totally agree. Those are great movies.