Monster Mash

In 2001, the Media Psychology Lab at California State in Los Angeles polled people across the United States from ages 6 to 90 in all ethnic groups to determine which movie monsters ranked as the favorites. According to the survey, the most frightening motion picture of all time for all groups was The Exorcist (1973), in which a demon possesses a young girl.

The favorite top ten monsters were the following:

1. Dracula, the aristocratic vampire, with the majority of respondents favoring the 1931 version with Bela Lugosi as the blood-sucking count.

2. Freddy Krueger, the slayer of teenagers with the razor-sharp metal talons on his fingers, from The Nightmare on Elm Street (1984).

3. The Frankenstein monster, the original version with Boris Karloff as the monster with electrodes in his neck, Frankenstein (1931).

4. Godzilla, the prehistoric giant reptile that spews radioactive rays and stomps cities to rubble, from the original Japanese film, Godzilla King of the Monsters (1956).

5. King Kong, the giant ape, from the original King Kong with the Willis O‘Brien stop-action figures (1933).

6. Chucky, the perverse, possessed, murderous doll, from Child's Play (1988).

7. Michael Myers, the masked murderer, who is described in the film Halloween (1978) as the essence of pure evil.

8. Hannibal Lecter, the erudite, cannibalistic serial killer from The Silence of the Lambs (1991).

9. Jason, the unstoppable monster in the hockey mask, from Friday the 13th (1980).

10. The Alien, the multi-jawed, many-fanged creature that terrorized the crew of a spaceship in Alien (1979).