Terrible Special Effects In Popular Horror Movies

Much like science fiction and fantasy movies, horror movies ask viewers for the ultimate suspension of disbelief. Thankfully, some crafty horror filmmakers throughout cinematic history have contributed lots of effective psychological trickery, dating back as far as the films from such late greats as James Whale, Alfred Hitchcock, George A. Romero, and Wes Craven, and carried on over the years through the likes of John Carpenter, James Wan, Sam Raimi, and more recently, Jordan Peele. Thanks to these fabulous directors and so many others, the phrase "It's only a movie" has been uttered under the breath of audience members millions of times, whether in theaters or the comforts (and ultimately, discomforts) of their own living rooms.

The "It's only a movie" phrase, however, does have its limitations, especially when some hokey special effect is splattered on big screen and nearly ruins the entire movie watching experience. In an effort to exorcise our memories of such horrid failures, we're here to relive some of the most terrible special effects in horror movies. It should be noted that these are not cheap shots at notoriously bad horror movies (or so-bad-they're-good horror movies), such as anything from the catalog of the late great schlockmeister Ed Wood or purposefully cheesy fare like the Sharknado or Toxic Avenger movies. No, these are unforgivable instances when for whatever reason, studios and filmmakers simply should have known better.

Perhaps one of the most interesting forays into the horror genre came in 1994 when director Mike Nichols — yes, Mike "The Oscar-winning director of The Graduate" Nichols — took the helm of and co-wrote Wolf, starring Jack Nicholson and Michelle Pfeiffer. It was an uncharacteristic turn for the dramatic and sometimes comedic film director, but a highly effective one as he gets the beast to come out in Nicholson's New York publishing house character who finds a new lust for life after he's bitten by a werewolf.

For the most part, Nichols goes the minimalist route with his leading man when it comes to his scenes as a lycanthrope, basically giving Nicholson a set of fangs, creepy contact lenses to yellow out his eyes, and additional facial hair around the jawline and chin to make sure we still know Jack. What we don't know is that near the end of the film's climactic third act, Nicholson's final transformation into a hairy beast isn't to make him a wolf... man, but an actual wolf.

If that wasn't disappointing enough for fans who wanted to see Jack in full werewolf makeup, a la Lon Chaney in any of his Universal Wolfman movies, instead for a couple seconds we get an animatronic wolf as Nichols pulls back a shot that begins with a closeup of the wolf's eyes and ends as we see what's supposed to be a creature tilt its head back to let off a howl to call his future mate (Pfeiffer). The unnatural-looking, Z-grade effect is laughable, considering that Nichols surely had enough money at his disposal to come up with something more realistic than what looks like a nature park exhibit for elementary school kids.

Released in 2001, director Stephen Sommers' The Mummy Returns, the smash sequel to his 1999 blockbuster The Mummy, is remarkable for two reasons. First, it marks the big-screen debut of WWE star Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson; second, the film produced one of the worst CGI sequences in a 20-year span.

Johnson appears in a prologue in The Mummy Returns that introduces his character, the Scorpion King, who returns in the third act as hybrid human/scorpion to take on the film's hero, the swashbuckling world adventurer Rick O'Connor (Brendan Fraser). The scorpion part of the character looks realistic enough, it's just that the human portion — the part that really matters — looks like a bad video game rendering of the Rock. The weird part of the scene, though, is that it intercuts with an epic battle between O'Connor's buddy Ardeth Bay (Oded Fehr) and his fellow swordsmen with Anubis' Army in the desert, where the visual effects are top-notch (at least for their day). But the minute the scene cuts back to the CGI Scorpion King, the stark difference in quality makes what's supposed to be a scary character laughable.

Steven Spielberg's great white shark thriller Jaws ushered in the era of the summer blockbuster, so film audiences had every right to scrutinize every sequel that the film series spawned. As such, director Jeannot Szwarc delivered a decent second installment, but somebody at the studio level should have had the good sense of reeling in the shark attack idea from there since the sequel pulled in $102 million at the domestic box office — far less than the original's tally of $260.6 million stateside (a monstrous take considering it was released in the mid-'70s).

Throwing caution to the wind and hopping on the resurgence of the 3D film craze in the early 1980s, Universal Studios proceeded with a threequel and hired director Joe Alves for 1983's Jaws 3D, a seemingly logical move since he was the production designer on the previous two Jaws films. Let's just say things didn't quite work out since this was Alves' first — and last — directing gig (which earned him a Worst Director Razzie nomination).

Jaws 3D hit its low mark during the not-so-thrilling conclusion of the film, as the film's talented cast (including Dennis Quaid and Louis Gossett Jr.) feigned fright (in cheesy slow motion, no less) as a virtually motionless great white (which looks superimposed on the screen, apparently to help achieve the 3D effect) "smashes" through the glass window of an underwater control room for a theme park in perhaps one of the silliest sequences ever filmed in 3D. There's more, though, as Quaid manages to blow up the shark with a grenade, creating an explosion of blood followed by various parts of the beast including parts of the shark's jaw, which freeze in the frame suddenly — another of the film's miserable 3D effects.

Although she's better known for roles like Bond girl Xenia Onatopp opposite Pierce Brosnan's 007 in 1995's GoldenEye and the statuesque mutant Jean Grey in 2000's X-Men, Famke Janssen has also carved out some time to take part in a few horror projects, from such films as Clive Barker's Lord of Illusions and the 1999 remake of The House on Haunted Hill to the bloody great Netflix series Hemlock Grove, which also starred the future Pennywise the Dancing Clown, Hollywood It-guy Bill Skarsgård.

Janssen has also had few missteps in her career, although she can't exactly be blamed for a goofy scene in director Robert Rodriguez's alien horror thriller The Faculty. The scene involves Janssen's alluring high school teacher Miss Elizabeth Burke, who attempts to attack the rebellious student Zeke Tyler (Josh Hartnett) while he's trying to flee from her in his car. Zeke manages to crash his vehicle in a way that cuts off Miss Burke's head, which, as it turns out, is attached to a tentacled creature. The result is mismatched CGI shot in which Janssen's clearly superimposed head looks barely attached to the tentacles. Meanwhile, the rest of her body is ambling around, looking to reattach its missing noggin. As clumsy as it is, at least the body looks real, but it can't make up for the poorly executed effects.

A creepy vampire thriller, the 2008 Swedish film Let the Right One In not only paid dividends for director Tomas Alfredson (who went on to helm the excellent spy thriller Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy), it spawned director Matt Reeves' 2010 English remake (retitled Let Me In) starring Chloe Grace Moretz and Kodi Smit-McPhee.

While Let the Right One In was compelling enough to earn awards or nominations from the likes of BAFTA, the National Board of Review, the Tribeca Film Festival and several critics organizations in the U.S., clearly voters let the film's infamous "cat attack" scene slide. Whether it was for the lack of a visual effects budget or the art department's secret affinity for The Muppets, Alfredson amazingly OK'd a scene in which supporting character Virginia (Ika Nord) is attacked by felines which are clearly puppets. The scene starts with real cats, of course, which makes the transition to their furry stand-ins seem all the more lifeless.

Watching the atrocious visual effects in 1997's An American Werewolf in Paris is especially painful considering the landmark effects of its predecessor, director John Landis' 1981 horror classic An American Werewolf in London.

The original film earned makeup maestro Rick Baker the first-ever Oscar awarded for Best Makeup, a statuette largely earned to the innovative practical effects he used to transform lead character David (David Naughton) into a lycanthrope. Sixteen years later, however, director Anthony Waller cast practicality to the wayside in favor of CGI, and the half-rendered-looking results are cartoonish and chaotic. How Waller thought an emerging visual effects field could best Baker's stunning work on the original American Werewolf shall remain one of the biggest mysteries of all time.