Like many masterpieces, director John Carpenter’s science-fiction epic The Thing was not immediately well received when it premiered in 1982. The movie follows a team of research scientists in Antarctica. A young Kurt Russell and co. unknowingly take in a shapeshifting, identity-stealing alien and fall into paranoia as the monster kills off and replicates one after another. Pretty much everyone hated it. The New York Times called it “instant junk.” Roger Ebert dismissed it as “a great barf-bag movie.”

Yet with time, The Thing has become a bona fide classic. “It is one of the great science-fiction and horror films of all time,” says Dan Halsted, head programmer at the Hollywood Theatre, who picked it to celebrate the theater’s 100th birthday.

That juxtaposition between The Thing’s current popularity and its flop release is part of why Halsted selected it to kick off a run of screenings celebrating the theater’s centennial—that, and they scored Kurt Russell himself for a live Q&A after. The official anniversary is in July, but the Russell screening is May 9, in a glorious 35-millimeter print.

Tickets ($100) go on sale at noon Thursday, April 2—to members of the Hollywood Theatre, that is; noon the next day for everyone else, if any remain. Halsted warns that’s very unlikely, especially with fewer than 400 seats available. (The event is a fundraiser both for the theater and for MindUp, a mental health organization founded by Goldie Hawn, Russell’s longtime romantic partner.)

Halsted, who has worked at the Hollywood for 23 years, admits The Thing is one of his favorite films. But he also offers a nugget of Kurt Russell Portland trivia to bolster the choice: The actor’s late father, Bing Russell, owned a minor league baseball team called the Portland Mavericks from 1973 to 1977. Kurt, who split time between the baseball diamond and the soundstage in his early years, was the Mavericks’ second baseman for a season until he retired into the movie business full-time due to a torn rotator cuff.

Baseball aside, Halsted is most excited to chat with the storied performer about his long career onscreen, including his turns as Elvis Presley (in Carpenter’s made-for-TV Elvis) and his trajectory going from Disney star in the ’60s and ’70s (The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, anyone?) to action hero icon with roles like hunky, one-eyed Snake Plissken in the dystopic Escape from New York. Halsted had even considered Escape, an earlier Carpenter-Russell collab, to kick things off, but settled on The Thing out of personal preference. 

Halsted’s not alone in his appreciation for the previously maligned sci-fi flick. Today, it’s celebrated for its incredible tense atmosphere backed by Ennio Morricone’s haunting synth tracks and its introduction of the sonorous Keith David in his first major role. More than anything, horror junkies love it for its comically grotesque, groundbreaking visual effects designed by artist Rob Bottin. The iconic defibrillator scene, in which a man’s chest cavity opens into a maw, chomping off the hands of an unfortunate scientist, has no doubt appeared in many a nightmare since 1982.

If you miss The Thing, there are plenty of other chances to celebrate the Hollywood’s first century. Halsted is keeping much of it close to the chest but says he plans to show the first film the Hollywood ever screened, the silent More Pay, Less Work, complete with a live organist, like it’s 1926. Also in the works is a 70-millimeter screening of 2001: A Space Odyssey, nodding to that film’s exclusive run in Portland at the Hollywood when it first came out in 1968.

The birthday week starts on July 10—originally the team planned on the following week to coincide with the theater’s actual birthday, July 17, 1926, but that happens to be the release date of Christopher Nolan’s hotly anticipated retelling of The Odyssey. Apparently Homer beats out Kubrick, even with Matt Damon in that dreadful costume.