The Thing Tops Horror's Greatest Special Effects: The Full Ranking

John Carpenter's The Thing (1982) has been named the greatest special effect in horror history, in a new ranked list spanning a century of cinema. Rob Bottin, then 22, built the shapeshifting alien whose surreal sculptures — human and animal anatomy fused into things repulsive and beautiful — have, in the list's verdict, "yet to be equalled".

The ranking, which counts down from Hideo Nakata's Ring (1998) at number 20, rewards practical craft over pixels. One of The Thing's highlights: a geologist's head detaches, sprouts spider-legs and scuttles. Palmer the pothead (David Clennon) supplies the review: "You've gotta be fucking kidding."

What takes second place?

Ridley Scott's Alien (1979). The chestburster scene worked because the cast knew something was coming but not what. John Hurt's torso was replaced by a mechanical chest packed with compressed air and animal entrails, with puppeteers under the table. Scott designed the creature; Roger Dicken built it. Sci-fi cinema, the list notes, would never be the same.

Third: An American Werewolf in London (1981), which earned Rick Baker the inaugural best makeup Oscar. John Landis's horror-comedy had three times the budget of The Howling. As Sam Cooke's Blue Moon plays, David Naughton watches his hand become a paw, his skeleton reconfigures, and his shrieks turn into a howl.

Which scenes complete the top tier?

• Society (1989) — Brian Yuzna's satire climaxes with a "shunt" in which the shapeshifting upper classes merge into a Dalí-esque mass. Effects by Screaming Mad George.
• The Fury (1978) — Brian De Palma explodes John Cassavetes with telekinetic force; Rick Baker's effects did it. Cassavetes reportedly found the film "degrading".
• The Howling (1981) — Rob Bottin's solo debut. Pulsating air bladders transform Robert Picardo into a beast on camera.
• The Omen (1976) — John Richardson supervised David Warner's decapitation by a sheet of glass. Warner reportedly kept the severed head until his divorce, when his ex-wife claimed custody.
• Eraserhead (1977) — David Lynch designed his chittering mutant baby himself, reportedly around an embalmed calf foetus. It was buried in a secret location after wrap.

Why does The Birds rank so high?

The attic attack on Tippi Hedren in Hitchcock's 1963 film took seven days to shoot. Birds were tied to her clothes with nylon threads; one beak nearly took her eye. Hedren's verdict on the experience: "the worst week of my life".

The Exorcist (1973) lands at 11. Linda Blair's 360-degree head rotation — "at once ludicrous and horrifying" — came from Dick Smith and Marcel Vercoutere's lifesize animatronic dummy. The pea-green vomit popularised "projectile vomiting"; the deleted spider-walk became legendary.

What do the oldest entries show?

The silent era holds its own. Victor Sjöström's The Phantom Carriage (1921) used double exposure, all in-camera because optical printing didn't exist yet, to render Death's carriage. Sjöström also stars as the drunkard forced to drive it.

FW Murnau's Nosferatu (1922) flipped negatives, sped up film and used stop-motion until Max Schreck's Count Orlok vanished in smoke. Henrik Galeen's The Student of Prague (1926) reunited Caligari stars Conrad Veidt and Werner Krauss for a Faust tale of a stolen reflection, resolved in a split-screen climax.

James Whale's The Invisible Man (1933) let John P Fulton unwrap bandages to reveal nothing at all, while Claude Rains's voice carried the film. Rouben Mamoulian kept his Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1931) transformation secret for 38 years: Wally Westmore's makeup plus coloured lens filters, revealed only in 1969. Fredric March won the best actor Oscar for it.

Elsewhere: Shinya Tsukamoto's Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989) turned a salaryman to metal via time-lapse, stop-motion and jump-cuts — the finale involves a drill and a coffee table. Georges Franju's Eyes Without a Face (1960), dismissed on release, is now hailed as an influential masterpiece. Jim Krut, who died in August, remains "Helicopter Zombie" in Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1978), decapitated by a rotor in Tom Savini's makeup.

And Scanners (1981)? Dick Smith and Chris Walas packed a plaster skull with "leftover burgers" and shot it with an out-of-frame shotgun. Michael Ironside's scanner makes a rival's head explode. Sometimes craft really is that literal.

The list's implicit argument holds across a century: effects age better when you can touch the goo. CGI-heavy horror, by contrast, gets exactly one entry — and it wins by going analogue.