Horror Movies With The Best Monster Transformation Scenes

We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.

Monster movies have been around for more than a century, with some of the earliest examples dating back to the formative years of cinema itself. Going all the way back to 1914's "The Golem" and 1922's "Nosferatu," monsters have been terrorizing moviegoers for decades and show no sign of going away. In fact, nearly every generation has suffered nightmares at the hands, claws, and jaws of silver screen creatures. The classic Universal monsters like Frankenstein, Dracula, the Wolf Man, and the Mummy dominated cinemas during the Golden Age of Hollywood; "Jaws" scared audiences away from the ocean in 1975 while "Alien" scared them away from space in 1979; and the special makeup effects innovations of the 1980s gave birth to a whole host of new drive-in monstrosities. It seems that no era is safe from a good creature feature.

The horror genre is filled with gruesome monsters that keep us coming back for more, even when they gross us out to no end. However, there's something that's extra memorable about seeing the transformation of someone into and/or from a monster, and innovations in makeup and visual effects allow filmmakers to constantly push the boundaries when it comes to showing us that ooey-gooey on-screen metamorphosis. In this article, we take a look at some of the best monster transformation scenes in horror movies.

(Warning: There are spoilers for each film mentioned in this article, as well as descriptions of violence and disturbing scenes.)

"The Howling" (recently given a 4K restoration) was directed by Joe Dante who's no stranger to helming creature features, as his credits include the original "Piranha," "Gremlins", and "Gremlins 2: The New Batch." Based on Gary Brandner's eponymous novel, the film tells the story of L.A. news anchor Karen White (Dee Wallace) who is sent to a forested resort to recuperate after a traumatic incident involving a stalker named Eddie Quist (Robert Picardo). However, Karen soon learns that the resort is actually a community of werewolves who can transform even without a full moon, and so she sets out to warn the world of their existence.

Hitting theaters just a few months before "An American Werewolf in London," "The Howling" features an almost-as-good transformation scene in which Karen is confronted by Eddie, who was seemingly killed earlier in the movie. While this transformation scene isn't quite as polished as that of "An American Werewolf in London," it still features some innovative effects for its time, replete with muscles bursting through clothing, monstrous teeth growing, and a face bulging and expanding. Interestingly enough, Rick Baker was the original makeup effects artist on "The Howling" until he left to work on John Landis' "American Werewolf," handing over the gig to Rob Bottin, who was an apprentice of his at the time.

Another remake of a classic 1950s sci-fi horror film, John Carpenter's "The Thing" tells the story of a group of researchers stationed in Antarctica as they are besieged by an alien entity that can absorb hosts and become them. With a claustrophobic setting and strong performances, the film increases the tension and paranoia in a way the 1951 original didn't, as each member of the doomed team question who's who and trust quickly turns into suspicion. Not only that, the group determines that if the alien were to reach civilization, it could assimilate the entire world population in a matter of months.

Like "The Fly," "The Thing" has more than its fair share of transformation scenes but one of the most iconic is when one of the team members named Norris (Charles Hallahan) suffers a heart attack and the others attempt to defibrillate him. However, it's quickly revealed that the stricken researcher is a copy when his chest bursts open in the shape of a large maw and a massive tentacled creature explodes out of it. The icky fun doesn't end there, as even when it's been torched with a flamethrower the head rips itself from the body and grows spider legs. There's plenty more that happens in this scene that this article can't do justice to, so just watch it for yourself.

This fourth installment in the popular "Nightmare On Elm Street" franchise is when the series began to drift away from the pure horror elements of the previous three movies, and towards a more darkly comedic style. The film follows Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) as he returns to terrorize the surviving teens from the previous installment, "A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors." However, he must now contend with Alice Johnson (Lisa Wilcox), who has been bestowed Kristen Parker's ability to bring other people into her dreams.

While not as fondly cherished as other entries in the "Nightmare On Elm Street" series, "The Dream Master" does have a few standout scenes, in particular one in which a sleeping Debbie Stevens (Brooke Theiss) is transformed into a giant cockroach. It's a gross-out scene, as gargantuan roach legs protrude from her skin and she soon finds herself inside a gigantic Roach Motel. When she falls onto the sticky floor, it rips her face off to reveal that of a human-sized cockroach. Debbie is then squished to death by Freddy, but not before he utters one of his classic sardonic one-liners: "You can check-in, but you can't check out!"

"Society" is one of the weirder films on this list, and that's saying something. Directed by Brian Yuzna (most famous for producing Stuart Gordon's H.P. Lovecraft flicks "Re-Animator" and "From Beyond"), the film tells the story of Bill Whitney (Billy Warlock), a teenager of a wealthy Beverly Hills family, who feels out of place with the upper-class community he lives in. He notices his family and girlfriend exhibiting strange and even disturbing behaviors, and eventually discovers that they are all of a different species from him.

As wacky as this darkly comedic horror satire is, the scene where Billy discovers the horrifying truth is the real standout. In it, he finds his family and their aristocratic friends engaged in a bizarre orgy that sees them all melding and fusing together, their bodies contorting and bonding into each other in disgusting ways. The over-the-top creature designs were done by Joji Tani, better known as Screaming Mad George, who is known to cult horror film fans for his surreal special makeup effects. It's a pretty long scene, the camera lingering on naked bodies warping and mutating in ways that only someone named Screaming Mad George could dream up, so don't watch if your heart is faint and your stomach is weak.

Here's one more "were-" transformation scene, but at least it's not about a werewolf. No, this New Zealand comedy horror film gives new life to the genre with the creation of weresheep. "Black Sheep" begins in the past when brothers Henry and Angus Oldfield are children living on their farm with their father. However, when Henry experiences the dual shock of his father's accidental death and Angus pranking him with a sheep's corpse, Henry is left with a deep fear of sheep. Years later when they're both adults, Henry returns to the farm to sell his portion to Angus but discovers that he's been performing horrid experiments on sheep that turn them into vicious man-eating creatures. Even if you survive an attack from one, their bite can turn you into a grotesque human/sheep hybrid.

Angus eventually becomes a victim of his own aberrant scientific interests and is infected, leading to him mutating into Lamb Chop-meets-Mr.-Hyde. The transformation scene takes some of its cues from various classic monster transformations, featuring closeups of muscles protruding from clothing and the face extending into bizarre new proportions, all set to a soundtrack of cracking bones and distending limbs. If you're looking for a more modern creature flick that uses old-school practical makeup effects, then "Black Sheep" is for you.

H.P. Lovecraft wasn't known for being very tender, but he'd probably appreciate "Spring," a romantic horror film about Evan Russell (Lou Taylor Pucci), a young man who travels to Italy to help get over the recent loss of his mother. Once in Italy, he meets and develops a relationship with a mysterious woman named Louise (Nadia Hilker). As expected in this sort of film, there's far more to Louise than she lets on, and it's gradually revealed that she is thousands of years old. A member of an ancient primordial race, Louise also has the tendency to morph into a horrible monster on occasion, one of which is depicted when she's bothered by a tourist who makes the terrible mistake of believing her to be a prostitute before being murdered by her.

The real shock comes when Evan goes to Louise's home and stumbles upon a tentacled creature wearing Louise's dress and writhing around on the floor. The creature is obviously Louise, and upon realizing this Evan administers her a syringe filled with a concoction which helps Louise revert back to her human form, covered in slime and goo. The most disturbing aspect of this scene is that it depicts a creature that's caught between human and monster, something that's part homo sapien and part something else entirely.