King Kong voted greatest movie monster
He was created over 70 years ago, but King Kong is still the best movie monster of all time, according to experts.
Empire magazine says the big hairy ape is still more terrifying than rival monsters dreamed up in the 21st century.
Despite the technical wizardry used in Lord of the Rings, Jurassic Park and Alien, King Kong is still "the boss".
"Other pretenders try to dethrone him, but the lord of Skull Island tramples them all," Empire magazine says.
"He's a terrifying force of destruction, yet beautifully human. Forget Tolkien and Peter Jackson. This king demands your total devotion".
The Oscar-winning director of Lord of the Rings, who is set to make his own version of King Kong, might want to take note.
The magazine's list of the ten best movie monsters puts Talos, the metal giant in the 1963 classic Jason and the Argonauts at number two, behind King Kong.
The Alien, which erupts from John Hurt's chest in the 1979 sci-fi hit Alien, comes third, followed by T-Rex in Steven Spielberg's 1993 dinosaur movie Jurassic Park.
The Lord of the Rings monster, the spider queen Shelob which entangles actor Elijah Wood in last year's Return of the King, comes sixth, after The Thing, the "extraordinary organism that trashes all sense of bodily integrity" in the 1982 movie of the same name.
The werewolf also features in Empire magazine's top ten.
Developments in special effects sparked a renaissance for the werewolf in the early 80s, with An American Werewolf in London and Michael Jackson in Thriller to name a few.
But the scariest beast of them all was the "travelling man who's hairy on the inside, bloodily tearing his own face away in rage at a faithless bride", the 'Skinned' Werewolf in the 1984 film The Company of Wolves.
The Troll in the 2001 film Harry Potter and The Philosophers Stone comes tenth, behind the Metaluna Mutant in the 1950s sci-fi film This Island Earth at seventh.
At number eight is Tetsuo, "an unbelievable giant" and "showcase in the animator's art" in the 1988 Japanese animation flick Akira.
Of the ten creatures on the list, writer Andrew Osmond says that some are from childhood dreams, and some give you new and icky nightmares.
Japanese titan Godzilla, 50 this year, the robot endoskeleton at the end of the first Terminator, the final stages of David Cronenberg's The Fly, The Blob and the flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz, were all great monsters that didn't quite make it into the top ten.
1: King Kong (King Kong, 1933)
2: Talos (Jason and the Argonauts, 1963)
3: The Alien (Alien, 1979)
4: The T-Rex (Jurassic Park, 1993)
5: The Thing (The Thing, 1982)
6: Shelob (Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, 2003)
7: The Metaluna Mutant (This Island Earth, 1955)
8: Tetsuo (Akira, 1988)
9: The Skinned Werewolf (The Company of Wolves, 1984)
10: The Troll (Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone, 2001).
