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Who Framed Roger Rabbit is a masterpiece of clever tricks, superb acting, and professional animation.
The Thing still has the best practical movie monster effects I have ever seen. And the most upsetting.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a breathtaking film that uses wirework choreography to transport you into a storybook fantasy.
During COVID lockdowns, my husband and I started coming up with movie anthologies or themes we could watch so we would A) always know what to watch next and B) further educate ourselves in film. My favorite anthology to date has been John Carpenter. I had never seen a John Carpenter movie before and we went through all of them and it was a blast. But out of all of his films, The Thing was by far the most impactful. My husband and I both grew up on the Internet and are highly desensitized to gross and scary things. But we were both on the edge of our seats while also appreciating the masterful prosthetics and puppetry that went into that movie. I always have to warn people, that I can't recommend it enough but it's not for the faint of heart. Definitely one of the Great horror films ever made.
The original Jurassic Park. Crazy to think that movie came out in 1993, over 32 years ago.
Lord of the Rings effects still hold up, in my opinion at least. The Balrog uses a lot of "hidden" information with the use of blackness to cover up bad cgi. Horse charges are zoomed out far enough to disguise how few horses are actually there. Most of the movies use practical effects though.
There is an enormous amount of CGI in Lord of the Rings that you don’t really notice. Yes they used lots of miniatures and other practical effects, but that only takes you so far. The extended DVDs are full of some of the really cool ways they combined digital and practical. They show PJ “filming” at one point with a block of wood with a mocap ball on it.
They invented an entire new software just to make the huge battle scenes good. That software, Massive, is still used today to simulate giant crowds.
Gollum hasn’t aged perfectly, but pretty well for an entirely CGI character from the early 2000s.
Especially when you compare the effects in Lord of the Rings to the Hobbit. You can really see when the studio is overworked and underpaid, even when it's a studio as good as weta.
I can usually turn a blind eye to bad CGI, but The Hobbit was next-level awful. It wasn't so much bad as unfinished. I felt I was watching a pirated movie before post production was complete.
2001 a space odyssey's effects are completely practical, which make sense since it came out before the first moon landing. it's all physical models and cut-out photographs being moved in stop-motion, or huge rotating sets to simulate centrifugal gravity, or colored film being spun over a set of rollers.
personally i think it's worth it to watch it for the effects alone, which is just as well because its influence is such that it has been eclipsed story-wise by things that came after it and so feels a bit shallow.
Kubrick was in charge of faking the moon landing, but he insisted on shooting it on location.
Alien,
the original 1979 one.
Imo it really aged well,
recently rewatched it and was amazed by how good the special effects looked, especially for that time.
It's also a really good movie,
scores 8.5/10 on IMDB,
kept me on the tip of my chair for the full 2 houra.
Alien is a 10/10 for me. Showed my wife last year and she was indeed on the edge of her seat for the duration. And she hates science fiction!
So much of the movie has leaked into pop culture and memes that it's easy to forget just how horrifying it is, how well crafted. I hadn't sat down and really watched it for decades until I watched it with my wife.
The Princess Bride
The flames are real flames! The R.O.U.S. is a tiny guy in a suit! The giant is... Andre the Giant!
Yeah, the behind the scenes stuff for that movie is wild.
They had to keep reshooting the fire swamp scene, because Cary Elwes (Westley/Dread Pirate Roberts) kept panicking every time Robin Wright (Princess Buttercup) got lit on fire.
The R.O.U.S. scene had to be delayed, because they had to go bail the dude in the rat suit out of jail. He had apparently gotten too drunk the night before, and was in the drunk tank on the morning that they were supposed to shoot the R.O.U.S. scene.
Mary Poppins. The (as it possibly happens) one of a kind lense that perfectly matched the frequency of light produced by sodium vapor lamps. It produced a green screen like effect that was better than anything else for decades to come.
Look at the above image above and notice how perfectly you can see the background through the diaphanous fabric of the hat.
The wild part about it is that this technique required a very specific prism in the camera in order to work properly, and the tech behind it was completely lost to time and nobody else knew how to make that work, which is why we've primarily had blue/green screens with chunky matte lines ever since. The guys at Corridor Digital managed to recreate the effect pretty authentically, and it's awesome to see the results of their work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQuIVsNzqDk
Star wars, with models and miniatures.
Most great old movies, where cheesy effects were irrelevant next to the story.
Gravity Falls Little Gift Shop of Horrors, where the characters watch an 'incredibly expensive' stop motion scene that we (the audience) only see as reflected shadows.
Just gave the special editions a rewatch. The cgi inserted scenes have aged incredibly poorly, especially compared to the rest of the 1977 effects
The "Despecialized" editions are the best right now. I appreciate what Lucas wanted to do in the 90s but I wish he'd just left the originals alone.
I’ve really enjoyed 4K77.
And matte paintings. Never forget the legendary artists who turned paintings into scenery, or the camera workers who managed to blend in the actors to them.
How about most of the storm troopers standing at attention for the arrival of Vader? Matte painting.
Blade Runner (1982) still looks incredible. The miniatures and attention to detail in design effectively set the tone for subsequent cyberpunk.
Gremlins. My brother and I were just discussing this because we heard that the new Gremlins movie will be using analog effects.
The Thing, Terminator 2, Jurassic Park, Alien(s), ET - just from top of my head. The Thing would be my favorite out of the bunch. No CGI, just pure and hardcore man-made effects.
Jurassic Park
Yup, it was lauded for its amazing CGI when it came out, but the vast majority of the movie was shot with puppets and practical effects. It’s also a great example of “less is more” in the sense that the movie is over two hours long, but only has like 15 minutes of actual dinosaur footage. That meant they were able to focus their time and resources effectively, to make the few bits of CGI as good as they could be.
Jaws.
The shark prop didn’t work well and looked terrible, which resulted in much of it being left out of the movie. The movie is more terrifying because of this.
Tron. Vector graphics and filters gave a better effect than any of the weak sequels.
The fifth element.
Tron.
Even now the CGI looks pretty dope and that shit was done on computers from the 80s!
The Thing and the Aliens trilogy
Some of the best practical monster effects ever in film, and Aliens especially had awesome sets.
Star Trek (original series)
The teleportation effect is so fucking simple (literally just beads swirled around in water) and yet looks so damn cool.
I can't believe no one has said The Thing yet.
The creature effects are so good, it holds up today.
You want old movies? How about Royal Wedding (1951). It has a scene where Fred Astaire dances on the walls and ceiling. There's no cgi or special effects, it was just done with a simple camera trick.
Reading through I see no one has yet mentioned dark crystal which I think is hensens magnus opus.
Matrix 1. Other than some CGI, it doesn't have so much special effects as much as it has special camera tricks.
Only the best Xmas movie if all time - Gremlins.
Citizen Kane. A lot of clever and groundbreaking effects that most people don’t even realize are happening.
I can’t believe I haven’t seen a mention for The Thief of Bagdad.
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0033152/
When you watch it you won’t believe it was made 85 years ago.
Roger Ebert reviewed it stunningly. https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-thief-of-bagdad-1940
Definitely Forbidden Planet. Killer electronic music soundtrack as well.
I was kind of shocked how well Flight of the Navigator held up when I rewatched it for the first time as an adult a couple of years ago. The effects used for the ship were great.
Metropolis (1927)
Jurassic Park comes to mind. The scene with the raptors in the kitchen uses a mix of puppets and CGI.
2001 looks awesome still, despite being a space film from the 60s
Tremors.
Great practical effects for the time the movie came out. Further, they were very clever about only showing you the worm a few times. Screamers style graboid rooster tails during chases was campy, but just the right kind of campy.
Do not talk to me about anything after tremors 3 because none of that shit is Canon imo. Honestly tremors 3 was the beginning of the end but ill still always love them assblasters
ladyhawke smartly did the zoom into the eye and have it morph and zoom out to the animal. Holds up much better than using the limited technology of the time.
Touch of Evil by Orson Welles, 1958.
The cinematography, and opening single-shot scene is a thing of legend.
--
Also, The Shinning, 1980.
The impossible geometry of the hotel, is used to create an unnerving effect for viewers.
Not as old as some mentioned, but I love Gondry's use of practical effects in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Also want to drop in Fx: Murder by Illusion, just 'cause I loved the movie when I first saw it many decades ago...
