20. Ring (1998)<\/p>\n
Towards the end of the 20th century, when film-makers\u2019 overreliance on CGI was increasingly making special effects less special, it took the old-school practical approach of Japanese film-maker Hideo Nakata to make one\u2019s hair stand on end. Just when you think the cursed VHS tape has claimed its last victim, Sadako\u2019s vengeful ghost emerges from the well, comes closer \u2026 and climbs out of the television screen.<\/p>\n
19. The Phantom Carriage (1921)<\/p>\n
The Swedish director Victor Sj\u00f6str\u00f6m makes extensive use of double exposure \u2013 all done in-camera because optical printing had yet to be developed \u2013 to depict Death\u2019s soul-collecting carriage in this folk-horror classic. Sj\u00f6str\u00f6m also plays the dissolute antihero, condemned to be the spectral vehicle\u2019s driver unless he can mend his ways.<\/p>\n
18. The Student of Prague (1926)<\/p>\n
Henrik Galeen\u2019s expressionist variation on the Faust legend reunites the stars of The Cabinet of Dr Caligari: Conrad Veidt plays the student who makes a deal with the devil (Werner Krauss), who steals his reflection. This evil doppelganger runs amok until Veidt confronts it in a split-screen climax.<\/p>\n
Vampire Count Orlok (Max Schreck) being destroyed by sunlight. Photograph: Hulton Archive\/Getty Images17. Nosferatu (1922)<\/p>\n
FW Murnau commandeers a variety of in-camera effects for this vampire masterpiece. Flipped negatives, sped-up action and stop-motion add to the unheimlich ambience until, exposed to the sun\u2019s rays, cadaverous Count Orlok (Max Schreck) vanishes in a puff of smoke.<\/p>\n
16. Dawn of the Dead (1978)<\/p>\n
Raise a glass to Jim Krut<\/a>, who died in August but who will forever be remembered as \u201cHelicopter Zombie\u201d in George A Romero\u2019s undead classic. Thanks to the magic of splatter makeup maestro Tom Savini, he shambles into frame \u2013 and gets the top of his head sliced off by a spinning rotor.<\/p>\n 15. Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989)<\/p>\n Shinya Tsukamoto burst on to the body horror scene with a no-budget semi-experimental cyberpunk nightmare in which a Japanese salaryman\u2019s body parts gradually turn to metal through a combination of juddery time-lapse, stop motion and jump-cutting, all set to a clanging soundtrack. Finally, his penis turns into a giant drill and destroys a coffee table.<\/p>\n Old school \u2026 Ring Photograph: TCD\/Prod.DB\/Alamy14. The Invisible Man (1933)<\/p>\n James Whale\u2019s adaptation of HG Wells\u2019s novel owes much to the sardonic tones of Claude Rains, whose face is only briefly glimpsed in his Hollywood debut. John P Fulton\u2019s special effects show the actor unwrapping bandages from his head to reveal \u2013 nothing!<\/p>\n 13. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1931)<\/p>\n Fredric March won the best actor Oscar for his performance in this violent, sexy pre-code adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson\u2019s novella. It would be 38 years before the director, Rouben Mamoulian, revealed how they achieved the groundbreaking onscreen transformation of Jekyll into Hyde: Wally Westmore\u2019s makeup combined with coloured filters over the lens.<\/p>\n 12. Eyes Without a Face (1960)<\/p>\n A surgeon kidnaps young women and \u2013 in explicit black and white \u2013 slices their faces off with a scalpel in an attempt to restore the beauty of his disfigured daughter. Georges Franju\u2019s eerie arthouse horror was dismissed on its release, but is now hailed as an influential masterpiece.<\/p>\n Influential \u2026 Eyes Without a Face Photograph: Cinetext\/Allstar Collection\/The Criterion Collection\/Allstar11. The Exorcist (1973)<\/p>\n The pea-coloured puke popularised the term \u201cprojectile vomiting\u201d, and the deleted \u201cspider-walk\u201d became legendary before its restitution. But the signature effect in William Friedkin\u2019s film is Linda Blair\u2019s 360-degree head rotation, an effect at once ludicrous and horrifying, thanks to Dick Smith and Marcel Vercoutere\u2019s lifesize animatronic dummy.<\/p>\n 10. The Birds (1963)<\/p>\n The climbing frame, the schoolchildren, the gas station are impeccable set pieces, but the attack on Tippi Hedren in the attic is particularly terrifying. Much of the impact was achieved by editing, but some birds were attached to her clothes by nylon threads, and one of the beaks nearly took her eye out. The scene took seven days to shoot; Hedren described it as \u201cthe worst week of my life\u201d.<\/p>\n 9. Eraserhead (1977)<\/p>\n David Lynch\u2019s first full-length feature is set in an industrial hellscape, where Jack Nance, he of the tumbleweed hair-do, ends up having to look after a chittering mutant baby. The creature, designed by Lynch himself, was reportedly made from an embalmed calf foetus with added working parts, and was ceremonially buried in a secret location after production wrapped.<\/p>\n 8. The Omen (1976)<\/p>\n Graphic decapitation goes mainstream in a special effect supervised by John Richardson. Photographer Keith Jennings (David Warner) stoops to retrieve the Daggers of Megiddo, the only weapons effective against Damien the Antichrist \u2013 and is beheaded by a sheet of glass sliding off a runaway truck. Warner reportedly kept the severed head until his divorce, when his ex-wife claimed custody of it.<\/p>\n Posh partygoers meld into each other in Society. Photograph: TCD\/Prod.DB\/Alamy7. The Howling (1981)<\/p>\n Joe Dante\u2019s werewolf satire, co-written by John Sayles, shows Robert Picardo (AKA Star Trek\u2019s holographic doctor) saying \u201cI\u2019m gonna give you a piece of my mind\u201d and offering a bit of his own brain to a horrified Dee Wallace before pulsating air bladders transform him into a beast before our very eyes. Take a bow, Rob Bottin, making his solo special effects debut.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n 6. The Fury (1978)<\/p>\n John Cassavetes, darling of American indie cinema, found Brian De Palma\u2019s film \u201cdegrading\u201d, but his villain\u2019s comeuppance is so satisfying you wish Rick Baker\u2019s effects could have been retroactively applied to the same actor\u2019s character in Rosemary\u2019s Baby as well. One of the psychic teenagers the scumbag has been trying to control zaps him with her full telekinetic force and kaboom! He explodes!<\/p>\n 5. Society (1989)<\/p>\n Brian Yuzna\u2019s body-horror satire unmasks the upper classes as shapeshifting entities who literally feed off the proletariat. The film climaxes with an orgiastic \u201cshunt\u201d in which posh partygoers merge into an orifice-invading mass not unlike Salvador Dal\u00ed\u2019s Great Masturbator<\/a>, surreal effects courtesy of Screaming Mad George.<\/p>\n 4. Scanners (1981)<\/p>\n There is no shortage of mind-boggling effects in the early films of David Cronenberg, but his sci-fi thriller about warring psychics provides one of the most memorable. One telepath\u2019s demonstration of his ability is hijacked by a more powerful scanner (Michael Ironside) who makes his head explode. Dick Smith and Chris Walas packed a plaster skull with \u201cleftover burgers\u201d, then blasted it with an out-of-frame shotgun.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n 3. An American Werewolf in London (1981)<\/p>\n Rick Baker won the inaugural best makeup Oscar for his work on John Landis\u2019s horror-comedy (with a budget three times that of The Howling). As Sam Cooke\u2019s Blue Moon plays on the radio, David Naughton stares aghast at his hand turning into a werewolf\u2019s paw. As his skeleton painfully reconfigures itself, his shrieks of agony turn into a howl.<\/p>\n Shocking \u2026 the cast didn\u2019t know a critter would emerge from John Hurt\u2019s chest. Photograph: Collection Christophel\/Alamy2. Alien (1979)<\/p>\n The rest of the cast knew something was about to happen, but didn\u2019t know precisely what, so when a critter erupts out of John Hurt\u2019s chest, their shock is almost as extreme as the audience\u2019s. For the money shot, Hurt\u2019s torso was replaced by a mechanical one packed with compressed air and animal entrails, with puppeteers hiding beneath the table. Director Ridley Scott designed the creature, Roger Dicken constructed it and sci-fi cinema would never be the same again.<\/p>\n 1. The Thing (1982)Horrifying .. The Thing. Photograph: Universal Pictures\/Allstar<\/p>\n A shapeshifting alien infiltrates a US research station in the Antarctic, sporadically erupting into displays of special effects that have yet to be equalled. Take another bow, Rob Bottin, who riffs on elements of human and animal anatomy in surreal sculptures that are simultaneously repulsive and beautiful. In one of the highlights, a geologist\u2019s head separates from his body, sprouts spider-legs and tries to scuttle away. Palmer the pothead (David Clennon) says what we\u2019ve all been thinking: \u201cYou\u2019ve gotta be fucking kidding.\u201d<\/p>\n