1.) The stop-motion gopher in "The three worlds of gulliver" (1960)...Was harryhausen drunk while animating this thing?
2.) The blue-screen helicopter crash in "DNA" (1997).
3.) The monster in "The creeping terror" (1964).
4.) The computer generated hulk in "The hulk" (2003).
5.) The stop-motion belial in "Basket case" (1982).
6.) The blue-screened crickets in "The beginning of the end" (1957).
7.) The Tokay gecko with clay frills glued to it's back (Supposedly a baby t-rex...right...) in "The lost world" (1960).
8.) The baby mutant salamander in "Gargantua" (1998).
9.) All the effects in "Biohazard: The alien Force" (1996).
10.) The dinosaurs in "Baby" (1985).
11.) The CG langoliers in "The langoliers" (1995).
12.) All of the rubber dinosaurs in "Attack of the super monsters" (1982).
13.) The blue-screen effects of Denis Quaid falling off the roof of a sky-scraper in "Dreamscape" (1984).
14.) The blob monster in "Y2K: Shutdown detected" (1999).
15.) All the effects of the TV series "Sliders".
16.) The CG licker in "Resident Evil" (2002).
17.) The CG spiderman in "Spiderman 2" (2004).
18.) The baby Djinn creature that come out of a wall in the beginnig of "Wishmaster 2: Evil never dies" (1999).
19.) The Scorpion king at the end of "The Mummy 2" (1999).
20.) All the effects in "Van Helsing" (2004).
21.) The alien in "Mission to Mars" (2000).
22.) The zombie make-up in "The Evil dead" (1982).
23.) All of the effects in "Overdrawn at the memory bank" (1985).
24.) The CG crocodile in "Crocodile" (2000).
25.) The ape creature in "carnivore" (2000).
26.) The CG cockroaches in "Fear of the dark" (2002).
27.) Satan in "Asylum of Satan" (1972).
28.) The crawling eye creatures in "The crawling eye" (1958).
29.) The helicopter crash in "The crawlers" (1990).
30.) The helicopter crash in "carnosaur 2" (1995).
31.) The dinos in "carnosaur" (1993).
32.) All the effects in "Rodentz" (2001).
33.) Just about every effect ever featured in a "Sci-fi channel original movie" (They only use really crappy CG).
34.) The blue-screen effects in "King Kong" (1976).
35.) The dino and miniatures in "The last dinosaur" (1977).
36.) All the effects in "The day after tomorrow" (2004).
37.) Just about every beasty ever featured on "Lost in space" (64-67)
38.) The sea monster in "Monster" (1979).
39.) The giant corn god at the end of "Children of the corn 3" (1995) (This is strange, considering it was done by effects-wiz Screaming mad George!)
40.) The stop-motion giant spider in "Planet of Dinosaurs" (1978).
The blue screen work in "Megaforce" was pretty bad, the work in "MetalStorm: The Destruction of Jared Syn" was...much worse
The handpuppets in "Robot Holocaust" come to mind
Hey what´s wrong with you !?
You have listed 40 worst special effects and not even mentioned STARCRASH ?
The Killer Shrews? Although, that probably falls into costuming.
The acid slime spitting in Reptilicus. Or better yet, when the monster eats the sruggling man.
the screaming lobster shadow in "teenagers from outer space"
I don't think the Evil Dead zombies as the Carnosaur dinos deserve mention here. Sure, the deinonychus and tarbosaurus each had about three different faces and kept changing size, but overall the rod-puppets looked pretty good.
I gotta back you up on that one. While the zombie makeup in evil dead could be obvious, it sure as hell wasnt the worst. I thought it all looked pretty cool myself. Zombie Lake, now that was a crappy make-up job. Or how about the zombies in Night of the Zombies 2. Just white paint and WWII uniforms. Lame.
The flying zombie head from Zombi 3 would top my list
The movie 39 STEPS is good except for the police helicopter. It looks like a toy plane with a whimmy-diddle attatched. This was the early 1930's so they may not have had a good idea of what one looked like.
Superman 4 was pretty bad. The first film had way better effects, shot years earlier. What the hell?
Worst I've ever seen in the CG catagory would have to be "Vicious" with Tom Savini, and the movie cover looked so cool too.
Superman 4 was pretty bad. The first film had way better effects, shot years earlier. What the hell?
The first one was done with a budget, as was the second. The fourth, and I believe the third, were produced by a different studio with much lower budget(s)
I forgave you for not mentioning Star Crash, but not listing The Giant Claw???!!! ;)
And as I'm a self confessed bad special FX geek, the helicopter crash in DNA was accomplished with a process called Introvision, not Bluescreen as you described. But I do agree with you 100%, it looks REALLY bad!
Great topic BTW :)
Dude the CGI hulk doesnt in any way deserve to be mentioned here. They did a good job with it.
The ED zombie make up/effects werent that bad either.
The spider man CGI wasnt that bad come on, you're nit picking now.
Besides you seem to be forgetting....
the AvP cgi
godzilla 2000 cgi
blade trinity(check out the trailer and tell me I'm wrong) cgi
the serpent 'finger puppet' in the viking women vs the sea serpent
Ed Wood 'special' effects
dark star special effects
manos effects
Coleman Francis effects
Freddys dead special effects
the blood waters of dr.Z effects
AND...house of the dead effects
Besides you seem to be forgetting....
He seems to have a thing against CG effects
I laughed my ass off for almost an hour after seeing that!
Yes the fearless one, I do have something against CGI. I used to like it. But in recent years, it's gotten cheap, unconvicning, gratuitous, lazy and unnecessary. It put effects artists with talent--like Stan Winston and Rick baker--out of work and requires remarkably little effort, not to mention the fact it lacks a "realistic" feel as the good old creature effects which we so loved in films like "The thing", "The fly", and so on. I really don't care when they use it for outer space battle sequences or vast armies marching into battles, but for god sakes, IT SHOULD NOT BE USED ON MONSTERS!!!!!!!!!!
I mean, look at it this way: remember Rancor? The giant monster under Jubba's palace in "Return of the Jedi"? It looked like a real, living, 40-foot monster. It was, in fact, a two-foot handpuppet. yeah. I think that if they could create something that convincing in 1983, they can do so today as well. But oh, silly me, that might actually require EFFORT...
A quick look at IMDB shows that both Rick Baker and Sam Winston continues to work quite a bit People with talent, with a good artistic eye, cam always find work .
As far as the Rancor, I remember as a kid thinking that it looked fiarly unconvinving as an obvious stop-motioned (or go-motio) monster and Luke in front of an obvious blue screen. It was decent for it's time, but you still had to suspend disbelief and take what the movie was giving you and go along for it.. Most special effects require that to some degree or another.
The thing you are missing is that it's all about talent and money. People who are good and have the time and talent can get good results. Movies that don't have the budget to hire good people and put the production budget into good effects are not going to get .
Python and Boa are good examples with silly lookg CG effects. Thing is, if the same talent and budget went into making stop motion miniatures or giant animatronic puppets or what have you...would the result have been any better?
Ironically, the reason you see so much bad CG effects is that DTV has allowed movies to be made and distributed for much, much cheaper so you just see *more* movies where the option of using CG, even if not well, is much higher. Those cheap movies actually have a chance of getting to you.
That's just it......CG is CHEAP, requires little talent, effort or creativity.
Indeed it comes down to people who are willing to work hard and are talented (Money, all things considered, plays a minor role in how good the effects are--creativity and dedication are all it really takes.) but it seems as though there is a lack of either effort or creativity amongst today's filmmakers.
Yeah CG monsters all suck. Especiall Gollum, the trolls and the balrog for the LOTR trilogy. totally unconvincing, if they used stop motion it would have scared me to death because stop motion looks better than CGI.
Sorry cheecky yer on yer own here. Plenty of good examples of CGI critters and stuff have been given and used effectively. While you are right that CGI is cheap and all, it really does depend on how much time is allowed for the animators to work their magic.
If yer gonna blame anyone blame the producers, not the animators.
Well, CG can allow you to do more for the same money. I'm not sure how much a couple of CG artists and time down at he local render farm really costs, but it can't be too terribly cheap. What CG allows you to do for the same bucks is have a bigger vision. A CG monster done on the cheap may not be impressive (see "Python") but it's still going to be a lot bigger and more mobile than trying to do it with models or puppets or whatever. It's easy to knock a low budget movie for using a CG monster and trying to do a lot with it, but replace that CG monster with a fake looking puppet that doesn't move and it's just as bad. Cheasy, low-talent effects always look stupid, CG just allows you to be more impressively stupid
>Python and Boa are good examples with silly lookg CG effects. Thing is, if the
>same talent and budget went into making stop motion miniatures or giant
>animatronic puppets or what have you...would the result have been any better?
Look no further than King Cobra (http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0138797/combined) for the answer to that question.
>I'm not sure how much a couple of CG artists and time down at he local render
>farm really costs, but it can't be too terribly cheap.
I'm not exactly an expert, but I've heard people mention costs in the range of $1000 or more a minute for professionally rendered CG. In fact, I seem to recall Steven Speilberg setting up his own CG studio with Amigas running Video Toasters, to do the effects for Seaquest in order to keep the costs down. I think the final images were actually rendered on SGI systems though, since even the fastest Amiga couldn't match the raw speed of SGI machines, but the design and animation was done "in house".