10 Most Half-Ass Movie Monsters

Of all the not-hard-to-make movies out there, horror is number two on the list right under pornography...and if you're working for Roger Corman, those might not even be separate categories. You don't have to spend millions to be scary. One of the most frightening scenes in Nightmare on Elm Street required little more than a buck's worth of spandex stretched over a hole in the wall. That said, you have got to think things through or you'll end up as ridiculous as...

10. Attack of the Killer Refrigerator: Inanimate objects becoming vengefully sentient can be a great premise. Look at Rubber, for example. But when you make a movie for $25 about a "refridgerator" pissed off because you hit it with a hammer, you can't expect cinema gold. Strangely enough, this premise got expanded to a full feature-length movie called The Refrigerator in 1990. Some people are embarrassed about stupid things they did in the '80s, but not director Michael Savino. He's a double-or-nothing kind of guy.

9. The Phantom of the Opera: Joel Schumacher's film adaptation of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical is actually petty damned good. It introduced us to Emmy Rossum, the arrangements are awesome and Gerard Butler eats every inch of the classic villainous role.... Right up until the big reveal of what's behind the mask. This is an iconic moment in all Phantom mediums, and in the musical the makeup they use is truly hideous and terrifying. For some reason Schumacher decided to go with "Mild Allergic Reaction" instead. Incredibly, this look, which I achieve effortlessly every morning by sleeping facedown on a wrinkled pillowcase, took four hours to create in makeup.

8. The Lift: Elevators are scary, even when monitor manufacturers aren't actively screwing with you to make you believe the bottom just fell out of the damned thing. The Lift (1983) involves an elevator killing people after coming to life. (By lightning? Of course by lightning. Lightning is where babies come from, right?) There's not even a half-assed abuse story like the fridge above, it just likes tricking blind people into empty shafts and eating heads.