10 Greatest Use Of Practical SFX In Horror Movies

In director Chuck Russell’s The Blob (1988), a glowing meteorite crash-lands on Earth, inside of which a luminous purple ooze wriggles around and moves as if it is alive. A vagrant investigates the meteor and the ‘Blob’ leaps onto his hand, taking over his arm. In the movie's first particularly gruesome shot, we soon see the vagrant dead in hospital, his face contorted and the lower half of his body completely devoured. The Blob has grown in size after its meal and secretes acid melting the skin of its next victim.

In another scene, when an attempt is made to pull a victim out of the jelly-like matter while he is being consumed, his arm rips off. At this stage in the film, it is all too apparent that this this sci-fi/horror monster movie is going all out to provide an over the top, memorably visceral experience for the viewer, with its kills all highly imaginative and visually impressive.

In other memorable sequence, we see the Blob burst out of a girl, covering her boyfriend in flailing tentacles, and in another it comes out through a sink, devouring a man’s face and pulling him face-first into the plughole and waste disposal unit. With each kill the Blob absorbs the victims and grows in size. It can ooze its way in anywhere, making escaping it particularly tricky. We see its victims inside its translucent gloop while it is in the process of digesting them, in a number of highly imaginative shots that the effects team clearly relished in creating.