The night that I discovered The Thing From Another World happened only because of a freakish scene I caught while going through the channels. This was summer 1979, we still had a dial TV but there must have been cable with something like HBO. I stopped on something that had some creepy music. It was a dude stepping in to an elevator, which proceeded to fall down the shaft before the elevator cables ripped through the roof of the car and sliced the guy in half.
I was 12, I had recently had my dreams wrecked by seeing Alien, and this just caused an instantaneous I must get this off the TV reaction. The movie was the second Omen movie. I flipped the station again, and eventually found something with the words The Thing in the title. I thought at first I,was getting ready to watch Godzilla vs the Thing, but no, this was not that. Thankfully I got to watch something much better.