The Most Terrifying Monster Movie Scenes
			Arachnophobia Spiders again in Frank Marshall's crowd-pleasing directorial debut. There are numerous gotcha moments throughout, but our favourite – the nod to Hitchcock's shower scene, when a ravishing beauty gets soaped up, unaware that tiny, creeping death is just inches away. Of course, the hairy beast gets washed down the plughole, but the image is an enduring one (and, the first time we watched it, Empire was dunked in popcorn thrown by the person in front of us). If you tell us you've never checked your shower for spiders since, you're probably lying. Or really, really tough.
			Pan's Labyrinth As Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) enters an eerie and fantastical world – like a William Blake painting come to life – in which an eyeless Pale Man sits motionless at a table full of luscious food she's been forbidden to eat. Naturally, she can't resist the urge to have just a nibble, and the Pale Man – eerie, otherworldly, unnatural – awakes, and pursues. Laced with subtext about temptation and the onset of adulthood, it's the jerky movements of Doug Jones' Pale Man, eyes inserted into the palms of his hands, that truly chill in the standout sequence from Guillermo del Toro's masterpiece.
			The Descent Neil Marshall's modern classic is a wonderful exercise in exploiting the terrors inherent in claustrophobia. But the standout sequence comes about halfway through his potholing horror. We've had glimpses and hints that our six heroines aren't alone in the network of caves into which they've foolishly plunged, but when the lights go out, Marshall marshals his big reveal to perfection. As the girls switch on the night-vision option on a camcorder, the camera swings around almost carelessly from face to face, before revealing – in a truly great jump moment – that a horrible, rat-like Lurker is standing in the cave with them. And even though this one runs away, by the time the screaming dies down, it's clear that things are about to go very, very wrong.
			The Mist It's too easy to go for the ending of Frank Darabont's horrifically bleak Stephen King adaptation, but since that doesn't – strictly speaking – involve any monsters (human or otherwise), we'll go for the pharmacy scene, where our besieged heroes make a run for supplies and wind up encountering hordes of hungry, giant spiders with acidic webs and skulls for faces. Not even the late, great Steve Irwin would have tried to calm down these beauts.
			Jaws Hey, a shark's not a monster! No fair, put this in Non-Horror! Well, yes, a shark isn't a monster, but in Steven Spielberg's wonderful sophomore effort, that's exactly what it is. It's a terrifying, lurking, ravenous, unseen threat that will bite your toes off if you go into the water. It's the Boogeyman with fins. Want further proof? Take the scene in Halloween where Donald Pleasance says that Michael Myers has 'black eyes... the Devil's eyes' – not a million miles away from Quint's speech about 'lifeless eyes... black eyes... like a doll's eyes' here. But the most terrifying scene? Well, Ben Gardner's floating head has been done. The bigger boat where Bruce rears his toothy noggin out of the water and scares the shit out of Brody? Done. But there's nothing more primal than the thought of going for a midnight swim and then being grabbed from underneath by something with more teeth than a Sky News presenter, and then tossed around like a ragdoll. So, for that reason we're going for the opening scene, when Susan Backlinie goes skinny-dipping and ends up becoming the meat in a tooth sandwich. And notice this: John Williams' score is largely absent from the scene. It's just splashing and screaming and gurgling, and the unsettling clang of a nearby buoy.
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