The results of a poll of British movie goers by Irish whiskey maker Jameson were released on 24 February 2011 and show that the alien monster from the 1979 Ridley Scott science-fiction classic Alien is rated as the most scariest monster. The film, which is one of the top ten science-fiction movies of all time, first shows the alien when it bursts out of Kane’s (played by John Hurt) chest in one of the most memorable movie scenes.
The poll of 400 film fans in the United Kingdom put the man-eating shark from Steven Speilberg’s 1975 film Jaws into second place while the invisible laser-wielding alien from 1987’s Predator came third. Fourth was the Creeper from 2001’s Jeepers Creepers and fifth was the half man half fly in David Cronenberg’s 1986 remake of The Fly, in which Jeff Goldblum played the beast.
"Four of the films that made the top five were made more than 24 years old,” said a spokesperson from Jameson in the official press release. “They are classic movie monsters by anyone's definition but what's really surprising about these results is that the traditional and iconic monsters of the last hundred years like vampires, werewolves, Godzilla and King Kong were more likely to leave fans snoring than screaming."
Scary Monsters – The Rest of The Top Ten
A more recent monster did come in at number six, the Crawler from 2005’s The Descent followed by the shape-shifting alien in 1987’s The Thing in seventh place. The werewolves in Neil Marshall’s 2002 British film Dog Soldiers came in at number eight.
The top ten was completed by the T Rex from 1993’s Jurassic Park and Count Orlok from the classic 1922 vampire movie Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens was tenth, and is also listed in the top ten horror movies of all time.
"Most people we polled agreed that CGI was making monsters much more realistic and scary compared to the special effects of the early first half of the twentieth century,” said the Jameson spokesperson. “I guess with technology developing the way it does we will have a lot more monsters to give us nightmares in the future."
More Scary Monsters in the Top Twenty
The next two listed were both from 1984 – the Arnold Schwarzenegger’s mechanical assassin from The Terminator in eleventh and the gremlins from Gremlins in twelfth. King Kong came in thirteenth, though the poll didn’t make it clear whether this was the 1933 or 2005 version. The creature from 2008’s Cloverfield was fourteenth and the triffids from 1962’s The Day of the Triffids came in fifteenth.
More confusion for sixteenth as to whether Godzilla was from the classic 1954 Japanese movie or the inferior 1998 remake, which many thought would have been better filmed in Japanese and then badly dubbed into English to make it more authentic.
Mary Shelley’s creation Frankenstein was seventeenth, but again there have been more than one science-fiction movie of that name with both the 1931 and 1994 films being worth a look. The bugs from 1997 film version of Robert Heinlein 1959 science-fiction book Starship Troopers was eighteenth.
The creatures from the 2003 Patty Jenkins film Monster came in nineteenth and another science-fiction movie rounded off the top twenty with the worms from Dune.
Other Results From the Jameson Poll
Nearly half of the people surveyed admitted they had suffered nightmares after watching a monster movie. Women were most likely to have a nightmare after watching Jaws and men were most likely to have a nightmare after watching Alien.
A third admitted that they hid behind their hands while watching a scary film with one in ten saying they had left the room altogether. One in four men said they had been forced to hide their eyes during a scary movie.
Steve Rogerson - Steve Rogerson is a UK-based writer specialising in television, technology, sports and beer.
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