Editorials
Bring on the Gore: Top Ten Practical Effects in Horror!
In 1984, a horror icon was born by the name of Freddy Krueger, in Wes Craven’s landmark horror classic A Nightmare on Elm Street. Key to the film’s success was the special makeup effects work by David B. Miller, who created the celebrated dream-stalker’s gruesome visage. It is this sort of practical effects work that has largely (and regrettably) been discarded in modern filmmaking, but any true horror fan knows there’s nothing more satisfying than some good, in-camera gruesomeness.
With the invention of CG and its quick takeover of most modern effects work, practical effects have become something of a forgotten art in 21st century cinema. Sadly, something is lost with these programmed creations; there is a resourcefulness, an ingenuity involved in practical effects work that simply doesn’t translate to pounding keys in front of a computer. Nothing can ever replace the joy of watching a hand-made effect, lovingly created, projected on the movie screen in front of you. It is this sort of invention we are celebrating here – the practical effects work in horror films that wowed us without being enhanced through digital wizardry. Following are MY PICKS for the ten best (in alphabetical order by movie title). Note: While each effect has only one or two key special effects artists listed, I am in no way denigrating the contributions of any others involved in their construction and/or implementation.
Alien (1979): Chestburster Scene
Artists: Brian Johnson & Nick Allder
Winning the Oscar for Best Visual Effects that year, Alien‘s most memorable effects shot remains the justifiably famous “chestburster” scene, during with John Hurt’s character “gives birth” to a xenomorph through his chest cavity. Shot in one take using four cameras, the “chest-bursting” effect was created using an artificial torso filled with real cow’s blood and intestines, through which the alien puppet was shoved by a guy below the table (a total of three separate puppets were used in different portions of the scene). The effect was so incredibly realistic that star Veronica Cartwright had a well-documented freakout/slip-and-fall when an unexpected amount of blood sprayed directly into her face during filming.
Aliens (1986): Alien Queen
Artist: Stan Winston
Winston won an Academy Award for his work on the film, for his life-size creation of the Alien Queen, standing at fourteen feet tall and requiring 14 to 16 simultaneous operators to bring it to life. Using a combination that included hydraulics, puppeteers, and control rods, the Queen was filmed completely in-camera, and it’s this tangible quality that makes her feel so terrifyingly realistic on screen. The amount of blood, sweat and tears that went into her construction shows in every frame, and puts every modern CG monster to shame.
An American Werewolf in London (1981): Werewolf Transformation
Artist: Rick Baker
Lest you underestimate the impact of Rick Baker’s work on An American Werewolf in London, the “Outstanding Achievement in Makeup” category at the Academy Awards was created specifically as a result of the amazing transformation sequence undergone by David Naughton’s character. The stunningly realistic effects work – created through a combination of prosthetics and fake animatronic body parts – comes across so flawlessly on screen that watching it causes you to viscerally experience the character’s agony. Nearly 30 years later, this remains the greatest werewolf transformation in cinema history.
Braindead (1992): Face-splitting baby
Artists: Richard Taylor & Bob McCarron
It’s tough to peg just a single gore effects shot in a film overloaded with them, but on the other hand it would be wrong not to include Peter Jackson’s “splatterstick” Braindead somewhere on this list. After culling through the gore sequences in the film once again, my vote goes to the shot where Rita (the chick with the groovy `50s-style glasses) has her face split in two by baby zombie Selwyn as he emerges from inside her head cavity. In a movie overloaded with ingenious special effects, this one is quite possibly the most memorable (followed closely by the scene where a man has his ribcage pulled from his chest as he watches).
The Fly (1986): Brundle’s final transformation (“Brundlefly”)
Artist: Chris Walas
In a movie filled with amazing special effects, it was Jeff Goldblum’s final transformation into the “Brundlefly” that stands as the most amazing (and sickest) effects sequence in the entire film. From the shot of Geena Davis ripping off Brundle’s jaw (after which it becomes a pulsating lump of living flesh on the floor) to the shedding of the outer skin on his legs like rotten meat, to the climactic “head splitting” moment that’s enough to make those with weaker constitutions lose their lunch, it’s truly a seamless, breathtaking transformation that’s undoubtedly Chris Walas’ crowning achievement (he won an Academy Award for the film).
Frankenstein (1931): Frankenstein’s Monster
Artist: Jack Pierce
No list of special effects makeup in horror would be complete without the inclusion of Jack Pierce’s now-iconic work creating the Monster in James Whale’s 1931 classic Frankenstein. Taking four hours, the makeup job consisted of “building” the Monster’s square head using gum, cotton and collodion, with green paint to give Karloff a pale appearance on the black-and-white film stock. Impressive too was the fact that Pierce did an enormous amount of research on surgical methods, anatomy, and ancient burial customs to create an “authentic” look. What resulted was not only the most famous makeup job in film history, but one of the most seamless as well – it holds up even by today’s standards.
Friday the 13th (1980): Kevin Bacon Death Scene
Artist: Tom Savini
Savini himself has referred to this “arrow through the neck” effect as being more of a “magic trick” than anything, and like the best magic it’s 100% convincing. I’ve seen every single Friday the 13th movie and they’ve definitely had their share of inventive kills, but none as singularly effective and realistic as this one. You could gripe that this one’s too simplistic to make the list, but I would argue that it’s not as much about the complexity of the effect but the realism of it. Judged that way, this sets the gold standard for gore effects in the modern slasher film.
The Phantom of the Opera (1925): Unmasking
Artist: Lon Chaney, Sr.
Some audience members were said to have fainted during the unmasking scene in The Phantom of the Opera‘s initial run, and while in our desensitized modern culture it doesn’t inspire the same intense response, the makeup job is still strikingly effective. Chaney, a master at applying his own makeup (first in The Hunchback of Notre Dame two years earlier) was a pioneer in the field; while not as elaborate as the others listed here, Chaney’s skull-like appearance as the Phantom is just as impressive, amazing considering the film is now 85 years old. By applying black paint around his eyes, putting a set of ghastly false teeth in his mouth, placing celluloid discs in his cheeks to change the shape of his face, and – ow – inserting wire pins in his nose to enlarge his nostrils (among other things), Chaney managed to create one of the most (painfully) convincing makeup jobs in film history.
Scanners (1981): Exploding Head
Artist: Dick Smith
While it didn’t require the time or lengthy shooting schedule of some of the other effects on this list, Dick Smith’s “exploding head” gag in Scanners is nevertheless one of the greatest, most memorable practical effects shots in horror history. To create the effect, Smith filled a prosthetic head with dog food and rabbit livers, then blew it apart with a shotgun fired from behind. If you freeze-frame it just before the blood-drenched explosion, you can even see that the prosthetic head – created utilizing the Smith-pioneered approach of applying small pieces of foam latex rather than one solid mask – is itself strikingly realistic.
The Thing (1982): Defibrillator Scene
Artist: Rob Bottin
This unforgettable sequence, with masterful effects by Rick Baker protégé Rob Bottin, showcases a skin-crawling chain of events beginning with two severed arms (clear!) and ending with one severed alien head (which, incidentally, goes on to sprout “spider-legs” and crawl across the floor) being blasted with Kurt Russell’s flamethrower. Sadly, the film was a box-office flop on its release, and Bottin wasn’t even nominated for an Academy Award for his work on the film. Which movie won? Uh…Quest for Fire. It’s about cavemen or something. Yeah, I’d never heard of it either.
Editors note: this content has been republished from our vault
I first heard about The Mandela Catalogue through a couple of nephews who were obsessed with the ARG’s sinister mythology. It was only after watching Wendigoon’s in-depth analysis of the series that I realized just how deep this rabbit hole goes.
In fact, I’d already been exposed to the nightmarish visuals of Alex Kister’s YouTube creation for years at that point without even realizing that it was the origin of several viral “cursed images” and spooky memes that had leaked into the wider internet – with this viral element actually being a part of the Catalogue’s overarching narrative.
Flash-forward to 2026 and the unprecedented success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms has led to Hollywood betting on horrific internet properties with existing fanbases, which means that Kister’s unique hybrid of both religious and analog horror is finally headed to the big screen with a script written by Kister himself alongside Tyler Clifton.
While this news shouldn’t be too surprising if you’ve been keeping up with the ongoing success of The Mandela Catalogue (both myself and Wendigoon having previously predicted that the series would inevitably make the jump to theaters one day), plenty of horror fans are likely confused as to why so many folks are excited for what appears to be a Hollywood adaptation of a series of creepy .jpeg images under a VHS filter.
With that in mind, today I’d like to invite fellow readers to accompany me as I explore the origins of Alex Kister’s viral hit and attempt to explain exactly why we should all be excited about the Mandela Catalogue adaptation!
From High School Writing Project to Internet Horror Phenomenon
The first seeds of The Mandela Catalogue were sown when Kister was still in high school and developed a writing project subverting religious tropes in a world where biblical history had been altered by demonic forces. A little while later, Kister came across an analog horror contest on Reddit and decided to adapt his ideas into a standalone video where he would edit a religious kids’ cartoon –The Beginner’s Bible: The Nativity, to be specific- into something far creepier. This is how the iconic Overthrone video was born, with this viral short film taking on a life of its own as fans demanded more eerie content from Kister.
Though the video was originally meant to be a one-and-done sort of affair, with Kister actually regretting some of its primitive visuals and considering the editing amateurish and “YouTube-Poop-like” when compared to his current standards, fan reaction and free time during the COVID-19 pandemic encouraged the (then) seventeen-year-old filmmaker to continue producing content set in this same world. The Mandela Catalogue name was inspired by the Mandela Effect conspiracy theory, as the series would slowly begin to explore the subtle horror of alternate histories.
Inspired by existential dread brought on by extended periods of quarantine as well as a personal crisis of faith, Kister continued to expand his alternate timeline where the rise of Christianity had been prevented by what was presumably the Devil disguised as the Archangel Gabriel. This alternate course of fictional events led to the existence of certain paranormal anomalies that had come to be accepted as “normal” by the 1990s, which is why most of the series’ supernatural horror is presented in such a matter-of-fact manner.
Most of this background information and religious lore is delivered by increasingly cryptic broadcasts and in-universe PSAs, as well as the occasional found footage video, that often have to be decoded by clever viewers. Of course, it’s the consistently disturbing imagery that made the series so popular – much of which was originally created by Kister on a smartphone!
The Alternates: Horror’s Most Unsettling Modern Monsters
The show’s early episodes mostly take place within the fictional Mandela County in Wisconsin and depict life in a world where demonic entities are capable of using media to enter our reality. This process usually involves scaring victims into killing themselves and then repurposing their bodies as horrific doppelgangers referred to as “Alternates”. This terrifying phenomenon has become so common that local police already have specialized procedures in place to deal with the issue, though this usually consists of simply ignoring calls for help so as to avoid spreading so-called “Metaphysical Awareness Disorder” any further.
Over time, Kister would expand this mythology and incorporate different kinds of Alternates into the mix, though the story never stopped deconstructing religious concepts. The series’ second volume exponentially increased both video quality and the overall narrative scope as we began to follow the lives of characters who had already grown up in this dystopian hellscape where the government is forced to prohibit religion, television, and even mirrors in the hopes of mitigating the damage done by the ongoing invasion of otherworldly entities.
The really interesting part comes into play when you realize exactly how the Alternates make use of scary media in order to spread their demonic influence, with the analog horror of it all being a diegetic part of the story and something of a memetic trap orchestrated by the false Gabriel.
I particularly appreciate how some characters begin to suspect that there’s something wrong with their version of reality and that things weren’t meant to play out this way, especially when Mark utters the haunting line “who have I been praying to all this time?” That’s why I think The Mandela Catalogue is an effective piece of religious horror even if you don’t subscribe to the Christian worldview, as the mere idea of a world where evil has already won is a universally terrifying concept in and of itself. Not only that, but the series’ uncanny analog imagery alone is already worth the price of admission, as you’ve likely already noticed by looking at the pictures accompanying this article.
Why The Feature Adaptation Could Be Horror’s Next Big Success
It’s actually been a whole year since Kister first announced that he had been working on a feature-length screenplay for a Mandela Catalogue movie since 2022, with his proposed story following an ensemble of high-school graduates who uncover a supernatural conspiracy after the mysterious disappearance of a fellow student. This premise sounds similar to narrative elements present in the series’ second volume, but I’m pretty sure that Kister is going to go the Kane Parsons route and make the movie more of a spin-off than a re-imagining of its source material.
While notable Hollywood producers like Aaron B. Koontz, Scott Stuber, and Steven Spielberg himself are backing the upcoming project, I feel like there’s no one better to adapt this deeply personal exploration of faith and the dark side of communication than the person who first came up with it. That’s why I can’t wait to see Kister’s work on the big screen, as I have a feeling that this young filmmaker is the next one on the list about to make cinematic history – especially since this is clearly a passion project that has been in the works for years at this point!
That being said, there’s always a chance that the film could end up unleashing a fresh wave of Alternate incursions, but I guess that’s just a risk we’ll have to take.
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