Making Monsters: Horror Movies and the Art of the Uncanny

This October, I've decided to focus on the makeup and special effects that are a huge part of what makes horror movies so gruesomely entertaining. Horror is my favorite genre because it affords filmmakers nearly unlimited reign to exercise their imaginations; this is even more true for the effects artists who bring the many monsters, mutants and specters that populate our favorite scary movies to life. I'll feature a different movie, focusing on a character or scene, every day; this isn't a best-ever countdown, though, just a collection of some of the first movies that came to mind. Some are from state-of-the-art A-list horror movies, others represent the handmade aesthetic of classic exploitation and indie horror. If the list is largely populated by movies from the '70s and '80s, it's because, thanks to the new permissiveness of the era and the pioneering work of my childhood heroes - guys like Dick Smith, Tom Savini, Rick Baker and Stan Winston - those decades marked a high point for the possibilities of creating fantastic horror stories for the big screen.

In fact, today's entry starts the season off with a bang...