FILM FANS PICK THE TOP 10 SPECIAL EFFECTS SCENES OF ALL TIME.
It was a groundbreaking scene back in 1977...ah, yes I remember it well, my daughter Kelly was born that year. Along with
her was born the scene most fans picked as the number one SFX scene of all time. The opening scene from STAR WARS,
starring Harrison Ford, has been voted the best special effect in cinema history. The first glimpse of the colossal
Imperial Star Destroyer still has film fans awe-struck nearly 30 years after it was first seen. In a galaxy far, far away,
a rebel ship races into the distance pursued by blasts of laser fire. Then its pursuer comes into view, virtually filling
the entire screen. It was a ship so vast that it took moviegoers' breath away when the film first hit the big screen.
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The 1977 classic, now renamed by George Lucas as STAR WARS: EPISODE IV-A NEW HOPE, beat competition from state-of-the-art
modern movies including The Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Matrix. It topped a poll conducted by SFX magazine to find
the greatest ever special effect. Star Wars winning the best special effects sequence ever shows just how significant the
film is to movie fans," said SFX editor Dave Golder. This film was crucial at the time as it brought about the resurrection
of science fiction films that had gone out of popularity after the Macarthy era and the early sixties. “It was the Big Bang
of modern special effects, redefining the way space ships should look on the big screen.”
The fantastic climax of 1933 classic KING KONG, in which the giant ape climbs the newly constructed Empire State Building
with the beautiful Fay Wray in hand, was second. After climbing to the top, Kong fought off machine gunning bi-planes while
holding on to the antenna at the top of the building, before falling 102 storeys to his death. Fay Wray who died in 2004
was best known for this role.
Fans picked for third was the gruesome moment in John Carpenter's THE THING (1982 remake) in which a severed head sprouts
spider's legs. This films special effects were stomach churning from beginning to end, but, viewers were really grossed out
when a guy's head rips itself off his body and pulls itself along the floor by its tongue, then sprouts legs and scurries
away.
My personal favourite which left me awestruck as young teenager was the skeleton fight sequence from 1963 film JASON AND THE
ARGONAUTS. Animated in stop motion by the great, legendary Ray Harryhausen it remains ground-breaking for its day.
Harryhausen himself considers this film his best ever. The skeleton scenes were only one of the eye-boggling stop motion effects. The
skeleton scene took four months to produce and lasted for all of three minutes on the screen. Heck, this was the movie that
started me playing around with stop motion with my little 8mm projector that my father owned at the time. Patience, not being
my greatest virtue, made this a very short term career, but it was fun while it lasted. JASON AND THE
ARGONAUTS came in fourth.
Arnold Schwarzenegger’s shift-shaping, liquid metal cyborg nemesis T-1000 from TERMINATOR 2: JUDGEMENT DAY,
played by Robert Patrick, came in fifth. The cyborg was able to walk through doors, reform itself after being frozen
and shattered. Truly wierd was the scene where a shotgun blast blue Patrick's face into two pieces of grey liquid material.
Did bullets stop it...no...it stillwent after Arnold. Fans could not help but admire this film.
Probably my favourite sci-fi film, next to BLADE RUNNER, was the classic FORBIDDEN PLANET of 1956. The Krell machinery was
picked as the sixth greatest special effect of all time. If you haven't seen thi movie well you should. The Krell were the
original inhabitants of the planet Altair 4, the forth planet from its sun. The machinery they left behind covered miles and
miles of a vast underground. Shafts seemed to be bottomless and powered by tens of thousands of powerful futuristic turbines.
These machines kept the planet alive well after its inhabitants destroyed one another with the power from the ID.
Andy Serkas should have won an academy award for his protrayl of Gollum from the LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy.
The computer-generated character based on British actor Andy Serkis, was seventh. The Hobbit gone bad was acted out and then
the sfx people translated it to the creature on the screen who ended up looking so real it was darn right spooky.
THE MATRIX (1999) “bullet time” effect, in which time appears to slow, came eighth. The slo-mo, vapour trail bullet effect
was enough to make Keannu Reeves reach deep into his bag of acting tricks and utter that now famous line that only he could
say properly..."Whoa." This film prbably saved his career many times over.
Who could ever forget the chest bursting scene in the absolutely terrifying original ALIEN movie of 1979.
This famous scene in which an Alien bursts out of John Hurt’s chest came in ninth. This was Hollywoods version of the worst
case of indigestion ever. The look on Veronica Cartwright's face made the scene even more memorable.
The most recent film to make the list was last year’s SPIDER-MAN 2, in which Spidey fought evil Doctor Octavius (Doc Ock)
aboard a speeding train. The scene started with a fight at the top of a skyscrapper and ends on an elevated subway track.
Spider-Man not only had to save people thrown off the train with his webbing but he tried to do the old standby Superman
trick to stop trains, but fails and has to once again use vast quantities of webbing to stop the train from going off the
end of the track saving everyone aboard the train before Doc Ock captures the exhausted super hero. This was a superb breath
taking scene that will be remmebered for a long time by fans of special effects movies came in tenth.