The Top 5 Horror Movie Monsters

To accompany my recent guide to five memorable horror movies of the 80s is this list of the top 5 horror movie monsters. "Monster movies" in the classic sense are no longer in vogue, but the concept of "monster" remains in reinvented form. These five horror movie monsters are all memorable for their evil, their destructive capability, or their monstrous form.

Dracula: The one "monster" of classic movie monsters to survive - the Wolf Man, the Mummy, and Frankenstein's monster all pale in comparison to the Prince of Darkness. Dracula has been in countless movies, the most recent being Bram Stoker's Dracula with Gary Oldman as Count Vlad the Impaler. Dracula's powers vary from movie to movie, but at the core he is an ancient vampire with the power to mesmerize his victims.

Alien: When Ridley Scott's Alien was released in 1979, no one had ever seen anything like it before. The alien is nearly silent, fast, with an exoskeleton and acid for blood. Oh, and it lays its eggs inside people. Unlike some horror movies where it seems incredulous that the beast would never die, this alien was scarily believable as a cunning predator that could outthink its victims.

Pinhead: In Hellraiser, "Pinhead" is the nickname given to a terrifying man summoned to drag his victims to a world of pain for pleasure's sake. His nickname comes from his appearance - a face covered in needles. He's impervious to pain, relentless, and says things like "We'll tear your soul apart!" as he and his gang of Cenobytes advance on their intended recruit to bring back to hell.

The Thing: The monster in John Carpenter's The Thing had no name. It was an alien parasite that could take on the appearance of its prey. It created an atmosphere of paranoia in the Antarctic exploration group that haplessly stumbled into its lair. In the most memorable scene, it changes form before Kurt Russell's eyes, briefly appearing as a human headed spider. How's that for a horror movie monster?

The Jaws Shark: From, you guessed it, the movie Jaws. Ok, so a shark is not a monster. But in the context of a predator terrorizing humans splashing around at the beach, it kept many people out of the water (in real life). It also made people aware of the sheer size and vicious power of sharks, and what they could do to their victims.