SWF's Favorite Monster Designs

There may be no shortage of monster movies these days, but how many of them are actually good? This is no way meant to be an exhaustive list, just a sampling of some of my all time favorite monsters in film.

Cronenberg's The Fly remake was chock full of amazing special effects created by Chris Walas. The fully realized Brundle Fly at the climax was sick.

 Likewise, Rob Bottin made a several crazy effects for the shape shifting creature in Carpenter's The Thing. The spider head has creep factor of 10.

Special effects all star Stan Winston made his directorial debut with Pumpkinhead. Though it wasn't well received upon release, Winston's backwoods monster/revenge tale is pretty effective.

 Godzilla may be the king of monsters, but you can't f- with Giger's Alien. Even in the worst sequel, the xenomorph itself remains a king hell bad ass. Weird and sleek, vicious and uncompromising.

 And so the king of all monsters, Godzilla is about to get another American reboot, and by the reports so far it sounds like this one is going to do it right. Godzilla served as a metaphor for the real nuclear devastation that Japan had suffered in WWII. Through the years and several films, the big guy evolved into sleeker meaner versions, look to the left to see one of my favorite takes.

 Of all the versions of Frankenstein's monster to grace the screen since Edison's silent I'd call Christopher Lee's take in Hammer's first Franken- film the best.

 After Frankenstein's monster, the Creature From The Black Lagoon is my favorite monster of all time. There have been few man-in-a-suit monsters that have been as original and cool as the creature. (the version in the Monster Squad rivals the original, for sure.)

After Leia's slave outfit, the best part of Return Of The Jedi has to the Rancor monster. A hulking carnivorous beast that's apparently immune to Jedi powers, but not big doors.

What's yours, fiends?