I would consider Carpenter’s to be a sequel of sorts. It takes up after another crew has been already destroyed by The Thing. It gels well with the idea that the 50s movie is about post WWII paranoia (kill everything that looks different on sight). While Carpenter’s, while being a bit closer to the source material, is about cold war paranoia. Everything, even those who you trust the most, could be a shapeshifting monster. The movie even ends on a cold quiet unresolved and presumably eternal face-off.