The creature feature has one recurring failure and one recurring solution, and both are about when the thing appears. Show it early and fully and the film has nothing left. Withhold it and the audience builds something the budget could never have afforded.
That’s why the two highest-rated entries below barely show their creatures, why Jurassic Park has around fifteen minutes of dinosaurs in a two-hour film, and why The Thing works by never settling on a single form.
Creature features are the genre where I’m easiest to please and hardest to fool. I’ll forgive a rubber suit or a wobbly matte line without a second thought. What I can’t forgive is a film that shows me the whole monster in the first reel and then expects me to stay frightened for ninety minutes. The pictures at the top of this list treat my imagination as part of the effects department, and I’m grateful to every one of them for it.
The other pattern is that practical work has aged considerably better than anybody predicted in 1993. Every rating is the one carried by the linked review, with ties broken by year.
1. Forbidden Planet (1956)
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"The monster is invisible and it is the best one on this list."
Forbidden Planet takes the top because its creature can’t be seen. The thing killing the crew is invisible, revealed only by footprints in sand, a force field it walks through, and one animated outline in a blaster beam. The reveal is what justifies the rating. It’s a monster from the id, a projection of Morbius’s own buried resentment given physical power by alien machinery. That means the film’s threat is a man’s unconscious and can’t be fought.
Forbidden Planet at number one makes me happy. A monster built out of a man’s own buried resentment frightens me more than anything with teeth, and the film had the nerve to hang that idea on a space adventure made in 1956. My one grumble is how wooden the crew are next to Morbius, and that’s a small price for the best monster idea on this page.
It’s The Tempest transposed to a planet, has the first entirely electronic film score, and Robby the Robot cost around a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars, more than most complete features of the period. The thing killing the crew is revealed only by footprints in sand, a force field it walks through, and one animated outline in a blaster beam. It’s The Tempest transposed to a planet, has the first entirely electronic film score, and Robby the Robot cost around a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars.
The reveal is that the monster is Morbius’s own buried resentment given physical power by alien machinery. That means it can’t be fought conventionally.
2. Monsters, Inc. (2001)
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"An entire economy built out of a childhood fear, and it holds up to inspection."
Monsters, Inc. is on this list because it’s the only film here that takes the creature’s perspective seriously as labor. If screams are power, the city needs a scare floor, a shift pattern, a door vault and a safety regime.
The reversal is the premise. The monsters are terrified of children, contamination protocols exist for a sock, and the film builds all of it before anything happens. The door chase through the vault works because the rules were established an hour earlier, so the sequence can be pure geography and not spectacle.
If screams are power, the city needs a scare floor, a shift pattern, a door vault, a safety regime, a union and an energy crisis, and Docter builds all of it first.
The door chase through the vault works because the rules of the doors were established carefully an hour earlier, so the sequence can be pure geography.
The monsters are terrified of children, contamination protocols exist for a sock, and the reversal is the entire premise.
3. Young Frankenstein (1974)
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"A parody that reproduces Whale’s compositions accurately before subverting them."
Young Frankenstein is on this list because it’s a real Universal monster film as well as a comedy. Brooks shot in black and white against studio objection and used the original Kenneth Strickfaden laboratory equipment from the 1931 Frankenstein. Peter Boyle plays the creature with real pathos underneath the comedy, especially in the blind hermit sequence and the Puttin’ on the Ritz number. That’s funny because the creature is humiliated and knows it.
I could put Young Frankenstein on for anybody and be sure of a good night. Boyle’s humiliated creature in the Puttin’ on the Ritz number makes me laugh and wince at the same moment, and that mix is harder to pull off than any effect on this page. Brooks and Wilder respected Whale too much to cheapen him, and that respect is exactly why the jokes work.
Gene Wilder wrote it with Brooks and was the originating force, and every joke requires the audience to take Whale seriously first.
Brooks shot in black and white against studio objection and used the original Kenneth Strickfaden laboratory equipment from the 1931 Frankenstein.
Peter Boyle’s creature is played with real pathos underneath the comedy, especially in the blind hermit sequence and the Puttin’ on the Ritz number.
Gene Wilder wrote it with Brooks and was the originating force, and every joke requires the audience to take Whale seriously first.
4. Jurassic Park (1993)
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"About fifteen minutes of dinosaurs in a two-hour film, and it changed everything."
Jurassic Park contains roughly fifteen minutes of dinosaur footage, of which about six are computer generated and the rest are Stan Winston’s animatronics, and it’s the most influential effects film ever made.
The restraint is why it holds up. The T-rex arrives an hour in, announced by water rippling in a cup, and the film has spent that hour establishing the fence, the cars, the rain and the goat so the audience knows exactly what the geography permits.
Spielberg had planned to use go-motion, an evolution of Harryhausen’s technique, and switched after ILM produced a test. Phil Tippett, the stop-motion supervisor, said he’d become extinct, which Spielberg put in the film as a line.
Roughly fifteen minutes of dinosaur footage, of which about six are computer generated and the rest are Stan Winston’s animatronics.
Phil Tippett, brought on as stop-motion supervisor, said he’d become extinct when he saw the computer test, and Spielberg put the line in the film.
The T-rex arrives an hour in, announced by water rippling in a cup, after the film has established the fence, the cars, the rain and the goat.
5. The Mummy Trilogy (1999-2008)
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"An adventure series wearing a horror franchise’s name, and the first one is genuinely good."
The 1999 Mummy isn’t a horror film and never pretends to be. Sommers made an Indiana Jones picture with a Universal monster in it, and the tonal decision is why it worked when the 2017 attempt at a serious version didn’t. Imhotep is a good creature design, regenerating in stages across the film so the audience watches him become whole. That gives the effects a structure instead of a single reveal.
The second film is weaker and the third is poor. That’s the usual shape. Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz are the reason the first one survives. Sommers made an Indiana Jones picture with a Universal monster in it, and the tonal decision is why it worked when the 2017 serious version didn’t.
Imhotep regenerates in stages across the film, so the effects have a structure instead of a single reveal and the audience watches him become whole. Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz are the reason the first survives, and the second is weaker and the third is poor.
6. Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005)
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"A monster movie in plasticine, and the monster is a giant rabbit."
The Curse of the Were-Rabbit is a full Universal-style monster film executed in stop motion, with the transformation sequences, the torch-carrying villagers and the tragic creature all present and played straight within the comedy. It took roughly five years and around thirty animators producing a few seconds each per day, and the plasticine is visibly handled throughout, thumbprints included, which Aardman insisted on.
The monster is a giant rabbit whose motivation is vegetables, and the film commits to that with the same seriousness Whale brought to Frankenstein.
The transformation sequences, the torch-carrying villagers and the tragic creature are all present and played straight within the comedy. It took roughly five years with around thirty animators producing a few seconds each per day, and the plasticine is visibly handled throughout.
The monster is a giant rabbit whose motivation is vegetables, and the film commits to that with the seriousness Whale brought to Frankenstein.
7. The Thing (1982)
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"Rob Bottin was twenty-two and the effects have never been bettered."
No film has better practical creature work than The Thing, and Rob Bottin was twenty-two when he supervised it, working continuously enough that he was hospitalized for exhaustion before the shoot ended. The creature has no fixed form. That’s the insight. It’s whatever it’s most recently absorbed, caught mid-transition, so every appearance is different and the audience never acclimatizes to a design.
It was released two weeks after E.T., failed completely, and Carpenter has said it effectively ended his studio career. The blood test sequence is the most tense scene in any film on this page and contains no creature at all until it does.
Of the horror films on this page, The Thing is the one I’d fight hardest for, and the blood test is the reason. That scene makes me tense. It still galls me that a release date two weeks after E.T. buried it and cost Carpenter his studio career, because nobody has built a better creature since. If I have a small complaint, it’s that a few of the men blur together before the Thing starts thinning them out.
Rob Bottin was twenty-two when he supervised it and was hospitalized for exhaustion before the shoot ended.
This creature has no fixed form, so every appearance is different and the audience never acclimatizes to a design.
It came out two weeks after E.T., failed completely, and Carpenter has said it effectively ended his studio career.
8. Frankenstein (1931)
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"Karloff’s creature is the most sympathetic monster in cinema and he has no dialogue."
Frankenstein established the visual language of the monster film and Karloff’s performance is the reason. The creature doesn’t speak, has the mind of something newly born, and is frightened of fire and of everybody who sees him.
Jack Pierce’s makeup took hours daily and is now so definitive that most people believe the flat head and the neck bolts come from Shelley and not from a Universal makeup department in 1931.
The scene at the lake with the little girl was cut by censors for decades and its removal changed the meaning entirely, turning an accident born of ignorance into an implied murder.
Jack Pierce’s makeup took hours daily and is now so definitive that most people believe the flat head and neck bolts come from Shelley. The scene at the lake with the little girl was cut by censors for decades, and its removal turned an accident born of ignorance into an implied murder.
Karloff’s creature doesn’t speak, has the mind of something newly born, and is frightened of fire and of everybody who sees him.
9. King Kong (1933)
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"Willis O’Brien animated it a frame at a time and nobody had seen anything like it."
King Kong is the founding creature feature and the technique was new. O’Brien animated an eighteen-inch model frame by frame, combining it with rear projection and miniatures in ways audiences in 1933 had no structure for.
Kong has a personality, and that innovation counts for more than the process. He’s curious, irritable and capable of affection, and the animation gives him reactions instead of only actions.
Kong saddens me, and the film wouldn’t work if he didn’t. The irritability is what convinces me. A monster that gets annoyed has a mind, and once I can see that mind I’m on his side for the rest of the picture, so the ending hurts the way it should.
RKO, which was close to bankruptcy, made it during the Depression, and it saved the studio. Harryhausen saw it at thirteen and has said it determined his entire career.
O’Brien animated an eighteen-inch model frame by frame, combining it with rear projection and miniatures in ways audiences in 1933 had no framework for.
Kong has a personality, and that counts for more than the process. He’s curious, irritable and capable of affection, and the animation gives him reactions instead of only actions.
It was made during the Depression by RKO, which was close to bankruptcy, and it saved the studio. Harryhausen saw it at thirteen and it determined his career.
10. Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
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"The rare sequel that is better, and Whale made it as a comedy."
Bride of Frankenstein is better than the original and Whale took the job on the condition that he could do what he liked with it. That turned out to mean making it funny.
Here the creature speaks, which is the significant change and which Karloff opposed, believing the silence was the character. He was partly right and the friendship with the blind hermit is the best material in either film. Elsa Lanchester plays both Mary Shelley in the prologue and the bride in the finale, appears for roughly four minutes, and created an image almost everyone recognizes out of a hiss and a hairstyle.
Whale took the job on condition he could do what he liked with it. That turned out to mean making it funny. Karloff opposed giving the creature speech here, believing the silence was the character, and he was partly right. Elsa Lanchester plays both Mary Shelley in the prologue and the bride in the finale, appears for roughly four minutes, and created one of cinema’s most recognizable images.
11. Them! (1954)
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"Giant ants in the New Mexico desert, and the first hour is a procedural."
Them! is the best of the atomic monster cycle and the reason is structure. The first act is a detective story. A child in shock, an abandoned trailer, an odd print in the sand, and a sugar-related clue nobody can place.
The ants aren’t seen for a considerable time and the film builds its case the way an investigation would, with entomologists brought in to explain and not to exclaim.
Them! is my pick of the whole atomic cycle. I adore a film that lets its experts be smart, and the entomologists here explain things like grown-ups instead of playing comic relief. That detective first act has the kind of patience I wish more modern monster movies had, and it makes the first real look at an ant feel like a verdict.
Warner’s highest-grossing film of the year, it was originally planned in color and 3D, and the ant effects were full-scale mechanical props and not animation. That’s why they’re shot in dust and half-light.
The first act is a detective story: a child in shock, an abandoned trailer, an odd print in the sand and a sugar clue nobody can place. The ants are full-scale mechanical props and not animation. That’s why they’re shot in dust and half-light.
No Warner film grossed more that year, and it was originally planned in color and 3D.
12. Gremlins (1984)
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"A Christmas film with three rules, and the rules are the entire plot."
Gremlins runs on three rules stated in the first ten minutes: no bright light, no water, and nothing to eat after midnight. Every later event is a rule being broken.
That’s exceptionally efficient construction. The audience knows exactly what constitutes a mistake, so the film generates tension from anticipation and not from surprise, and the midnight rule in particular has a built-in clock. The puppets were practical and reportedly a nightmare to work, and the film’s tonal range, from a children’s comedy to a monologue about a father dying in a chimney, was significant enough that it helped produce the PG-13 rating. Three rules stated in the first ten minutes, and every later event is one of them being broken, with the midnight rule supplying a built-in clock. The puppets were practical and reportedly a nightmare to work, with multiple units required for each gremlin. The tonal range, from a children’s comedy to a monologue about a father dying in a chimney, helped produce the PG-13 rating.
13. The Descent (2005)
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"The creatures do not appear for an hour and the film is already terrifying."
The Descent understands that the cave is the monster. Six women go into an unmapped system, the passage collapses behind them, and for the first hour the horror is entirely geological.
The crawlers arrive when the film has already established that nobody is getting out. That means they’re an additional problem instead of the problem. Marshall has said the film would work without them. The original British ending is considerably bleaker than the American release version, which removed the final shot, and the difference between the two is the difference between a horror film and a tragedy.
The Descent frightens me before a single crawler appears, and I think that hour in the rock is the best sustained dread on this page. The American cut is a betrayal of the film. Whoever removed that final shot handed the audience an exit the film never offered, and the British ending is the one I’d tell anybody to find.
Six women go into an unmapped system, the passage collapses behind them, and for the first hour the horror is entirely geological. The crawlers arrive when the film has established that nobody is getting out, and Marshall has said the film would work without them. In Britain, the original ending is considerably bleaker than the American release. That removed the final shot.
14. Predator (1987)
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"An action film that becomes a monster film halfway through, and the creature was rebuilt mid-production."
Predator changes genre at the midpoint. The first half is a commando picture and the second is six men hunted by something they can’t see, and the transition is the whole structure.
Originally the creature was a different design entirely, played by Jean-Claude Van Damme in a suit that didn’t work, and was scrapped during production. Stan Winston redesigned it on a plane, reportedly after James Cameron suggested mandibles.
The thermal vision point-of-view shots make the first half work, because the audience knows something is watching long before the characters do.
The first half establishes the squad as the most capable people in any room. That’s what makes their systematic removal function as horror.
At first the creature was a different design played by Jean-Claude Van Damme in a suit that didn’t work and was scrapped during production.
Stan Winston redesigned it on a plane after Cameron suggested mandibles, and the thermal vision shots tell the audience something is watching long before the characters know.
15. The Incredible Hulk (2008)
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"The forgotten Marvel film, and it is a monster movie, not a superhero one."
The Incredible Hulk is the second film in the Marvel run and the one everybody skips, and it’s on this list because it’s structurally a creature feature instead of a superhero picture.
Banner is a man hiding from what he becomes, the film opens with him in Brazil trying to control his heart rate, and the Hulk is a threat instead of an asset for most of the running time.
I like this Hulk a lot more than its reputation. Banner counting days and watching his pulse in a bottling plant is a man I worry about, and that worry is what a creature feature runs on. My reservation is the shape of it. I suspect the cut the studio won is the weaker film, since the quiet Brazil stretch is where it comes alive and everything after it feels hurried.
Norton rewrote considerably and fell out with the studio over the cut. That’s why the part was recast, and the Abomination fight in Harlem is the most convincing creature-on-creature material in the franchise.
Banner is hiding in Brazil working in a bottling plant, counting days without an incident and training to control his heart rate.
Norton rewrote considerably and fell out with the studio over the cut. That’s why the part was recast. The Abomination fight in Harlem is the most convincing creature-on-creature material in the franchise.
16. The Wolf Man (1941)
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"The film that invented most of the werewolf rules people think are folklore."
The Wolf Man is manufactured mythology. Curt Siodmak wrote the silver, the pentagram and the verse about wolfbane blooming, none of which appear in European folk tradition, and all of which are now assumed to predate the film. Lon Chaney Jr plays Larry Talbot as a large unhappy man and not as a monster, physically imposing and socially awkward, and the horror is that he can’t stop. Siodmak was a German Jewish refugee writing in 1941 about a man marked against his will and hunted for what he is, and later confirmed the parallel was deliberate.
Curt Siodmak wrote the silver, the pentagram and the wolfbane verse, none of which appear in European folk tradition.
Lon Chaney Jr plays Larry Talbot as a large unhappy man instead of a monster, physically imposing and socially awkward. Siodmak was a German Jewish refugee writing in 1941 about a man marked against his will and hunted for what he is, and later confirmed the parallel was deliberate.
17. Mighty Joe Young (1949)
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"Harryhausen’s first major credit, working under the man who animated Kong."
Mighty Joe Young is where Harryhausen’s career begins. He worked under Willis O’Brien, who had animated King Kong sixteen years earlier, and did most of the animation himself.
Joe is given more personality than Kong was, which is the direction Harryhausen would develop for the next thirty years, and the burning orphanage finale is the sequence that matters. The film won the Academy Award for special effects and O’Brien collected it. That reflects the credit structure and says little about who did the work.
Harryhausen worked under Willis O’Brien, who had animated King Kong sixteen years earlier, and did most of the animation himself.
Joe is given more personality than Kong was. That’s the direction Harryhausen would develop for thirty years.
The film won the Academy Award for special effects and O’Brien collected it. That reflects the credit structure and says little about who did the work.
18. The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953)
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"Harryhausen’s first solo feature, and it started the atomic monster cycle."
The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms launched an entire subgenre. A nuclear test in the Arctic wakes a dinosaur, which swims south and destroys New York, and it was released a year before Godzilla. The Japanese production has acknowledged the influence. That makes this the origin of the atomic monster film in both hemispheres.
The Coney Island finale, with the creature destroying a rollercoaster while a marksman climbs it carrying a radioactive isotope, is the film in one image, made for around two hundred thousand dollars.
Its release came a year before Godzilla, and the Japanese production has acknowledged the influence.
The Coney Island finale has the creature destroying a rollercoaster while a marksman climbs it carrying a radioactive isotope.
It cost around two hundred thousand dollars to make and is Harryhausen’s first film as sole animator.
19. 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957)
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"A creature from Venus grows uncontrollably and dies on the Colosseum."
20 Million Miles to Earth has the most sympathetic creature Harryhausen animated. The Ymir arrives as a specimen, grows continuously in Earth’s atmosphere, and is hunted through Rome having done nothing except exist.
The Ymir moves me more than any other Harryhausen creature. It hasn’t done anything except exist, and I spend the Rome sequences rooting against the people with the guns. What holds it at an 8 for me is the human cast, who are as flat as the Ymir is vivid, so every cut away from him feels like a delay.
The Rome locations were shot so the finale could take place on the Colosseum, and the elephant fight in a city street is the best use of the process for its own sake in his filmography.
Harryhausen regarded the Ymir as among his favorite creations and it’s the last of his black-and-white films.
The Ymir arrives as a specimen, grows continuously in Earth’s atmosphere, and is hunted through Rome having done nothing except exist.
Harryhausen shot the Rome locations so the finale could take place on the Colosseum. He regarded the Ymir as among his favorite creations and it’s the last of his black-and-white films.
20. The Blob (1958 and 1988)
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"A hundred and ten thousand dollar original, and a remake that improved on it."
The Blob is the rare pairing where the remake is plainly better. The 1958 original made roughly four million against a hundred and ten thousand dollar budget and is slow, cheap and coy about its creature. Chuck Russell’s 1988 version, co-written with Frank Darabont, uses the premise properly. The thing dissolves people on screen in practical effects that still hold up, and it kills the apparent lead in the first act.
I prefer the 1988 Blob to the original without hesitating. The script kills the apparent lead in the first act, and that rattles every assumption I’d made about who’d survive, while the practical dissolving effects disgust me. My reservation is that the gore sometimes outruns the story, with a few shots held long enough to feel like the effects crew admiring its own work.
It also gives the creature an origin that adds and not subtracts, and it failed commercially where the original had been a phenomenon. On a hundred and ten thousand dollar budget, the 1958 original made roughly four million and is slow, cheap and coy about its creature. Chuck Russell’s 1988 version, co-written with Frank Darabont, dissolves people on screen in practical effects that still hold up.
It kills the apparent lead in the first act and gives the creature an origin that adds and not subtracts, and it failed commercially where the original was a phenomenon.
21. Alien (1979)
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"A haunted house in space, and the creature is on screen for about four minutes."
Alien is a creature feature with almost no creature in it. The adult xenomorph appears for roughly four minutes of a hundred and seventeen, and is shot in shadow, water and strobing light for most of that.
Giger’s design is the reason it can’t be acclimatized to. It’s no visible eyes, its proportions are wrong, and the sexual imagery running through the film is deliberate and never acknowledged by any character. Bolaji Badejo was a seven-foot Nigerian design student Scott found in a pub, and the chestburster sequence was staged without telling the cast what was in the prosthetic. That’s why Veronica Cartwright’s reaction is what it is.
The adult xenomorph appears for roughly four minutes of a hundred and seventeen, shot in shadow, water and strobing light for most of that.
Bolaji Badejo was a seven-foot Nigerian design student Scott found in a pub, and Giger’s design has no visible eyes and proportions that are deliberately wrong.
The chestburster sequence was staged without telling the cast what was in the prosthetic. That’s why Veronica Cartwright’s reaction is what it is.
22. Aliens (1986)
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"Cameron changed the genre instead of repeating it, and the creature is now an army."
Aliens solves the sequel problem by changing category. Scott made a horror film with one creature and Cameron made an action film with hundreds. That means it’s not competing with the original on the original’s terms. The marines are the mechanism. Establishing them as overconfident professionals with superior firepower means their destruction shows the threat far more efficiently than any single encounter.
The queen was a full-scale practical puppet worked by over a dozen people, and the film earned Sigourney Weaver a Best Actress nomination. That was effectively unprecedented for the genre. Scott made a horror film with one creature and Cameron made a war film with hundreds. That’s why neither can be measured against the other.
Establishing the marines as overconfident professionals with superior firepower means their destruction shows the threat efficiently. The queen was a full-scale practical puppet worked by over a dozen people, and Weaver was nominated for Best Actress.
23. Monster Hunter (2020)
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"A video game adaptation that is mostly two people fighting a very large creature."
Monster Hunter is the bottom of this list and it delivers exactly what it promises. Anderson adapts the Capcom game by stripping out almost all plot and leaving the hunting.
The Diablos and Rathalos designs are faithful and the creature work is good. That’s the reason it’s on the page at all. Everything human in it is perfunctory. Milla Jovovich and Tony Jaa spend the middle section unable to communicate. That’s the most interesting idea in the film and is dropped.
Anderson adapts the Capcom game by stripping out almost all plot and leaving the hunting. That’s correct for source material with no story. The Diablos and Rathalos designs are faithful and the creature work is good. That’s the reason it’s on the page.
Jovovich and Tony Jaa spend the middle section unable to communicate. That’s the most interesting idea in the film and is dropped.
Monster Hunter sitting at the bottom of a list topped by an invisible monster sums up how I feel about this whole genre. Anderson shows his creatures constantly and in full light. The designs are faithful, and I admired them without once being frightened. Forbidden Planet gives me footprints in sand and disturbs me. Studios keep paying to show more of the monster, and the films I care about keep finding cheaper, smarter ways to show less.
