Original was more G-Rated as to Blood and Guts.

Cronenberg's The Fly says hello...

It's not unusual at all.

I once compiled all the horror remakes and originals that I was aware of (think the total was 25-ish) and picked the superior entry then tallied it. It was just above 50% in favor of the remakes.

People just defer to the originals with regards to remakes and even sequels. There is a reason everyone tells you the original is always the best in most franchises and it's due to reverence, not objective quality. There is no logical reason for franchises with some 5-13 films (spanning decades) that the original would be the best in almost every instance. Yet that is often what people will claim with;
- Halloween
- Scream
- A Nightmare on Elm Street
- Hellraiser
- Child's Play
- The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
- Saw
- Final Destination
- The Omen
- Psycho
- The Conjuring

Some are nearly 50-50 with regards to their sequels;
- Alien
- The Evil Dead
- Romeros Dead franchise

Friday the 13th is one of the few where the sequels arguably are prefered and it's easy to see why. The popular iconography of the franchise is Jason Voorhees in a hockey mask. That didn't happen till the third film. Which is my point here, it's outside factors determining the 'superior' entries. It's all reverence.

The reason people will readily discard the original 1950s sci-fi horror in favor of their 1980s remakes is due to aging (all movies age, even the classics from the 1980s become dated but they're more modern than their 1950s counterparts) and also nostalgia, the 1980s was four decades ago the 1950s was seven! Many of the people on movie forums are dudes in their 30s-50s. They have nostalgic bias for the 80s, not the 50s.

Anyone who tells you The Thing is a better remake, or a good movie period, because of the effects are blatantly wrong. I've heard so many 1951 fans say this, including Tom Savini, that "the only reason worth watching the 1982 version is for the gore." So, so, SO unbelievably untrue.

The Thing 82 is one of the most immaculately shot horror films of all time. Carpenter's eye for visual cinematography is unmatched. The atmosphere -- that cold winter wind that's constantly billowing in the background, the deep royal blues and flaming oranges, the brilliantly lowkey music from Ennio Morricone -- all heighten the film beyond nearly any of its competition. Alien is probably the only horror film I can name with better atmosphere. Even The Shining, another film about the cold, doesn't match the same feeling of frigid isolation as The Thing does. The screenplay is superb, the pacing is brilliant. Carpenter threads the needle of suspense with ease. We, as the audience, make the exact same realizations about the situation at the exact same time as the characters in the movie. It's entirely unpredictable and always has the audience guessing about where the story will go next.

Is all of this really hard to see? It is absolutely flabbergasting that people can watch one of the most immaculately filmed horror films ever and say "the gore is the only noteworthy part." Insanity! By your logic, The Thing 2011 would've been adored for its advancements in modern CGI, yet the fanfare is very quiet for that film simply because it's not as good.

Not to knock the 1951 film; it's certainly great for the time period and is enjoyable even in the modern era. The problem is that it's a film stuck in the 50's and has immediately aged due to alot of the Atomic Age tropes (that cheesy sci-fi score, the damsel-in-distress who faints at the sight of anything mild, that lame 'funny' dialog straight out of I Love Lucy, etc.) Not to mention, it's clear nostalgia is the driving force for the 51 film's fans too.