The giant extraterrestrial bird
Why It's Rubbish: When the good guys first encounter this creature, it's travelling so fast they think it's a UFO. Unfortunately, when it slows down it’s revealed to be something closer to a zombie turkey with an embarrassing Jedward hairstyle.
How To Make It Awesome: A haircut would be a good start, but taking a blowtorch to the rubbery material would either give it a gnarled, savage look or destroy it completely (no bad thing).
The slug-like alien
Why It's Rubbish: Creeping, yes. Terrifying, no. When the costume design for a creature consists of a length of shag carpet with some actors hidden beneath it, the results are less frightening than a trip to Allied Carpets.
How To Make It Awesome: At least make it look like the kind of carpet you’d find in a student bedsit, complete with bits of Pot Noodle, trodden in sweets and the remains of old roll-ups.
Mother nature
Why It's Rubbish: “Fucking trees, man, the plants,” blasted Mark Wahlberg recently while talking about M Night Shyamalan's The Happening , admitting it was “a bad movie”. Great concept, but when mankind's biggest threat can only be witnessed in the rustle of wind through the leaves, it's going to get real old, real fast.
How To Make It Awesome: Come on Shyamalan, you must have seen the Ents from the Lord Of The Rings ? When the trees uproot themselves and start trying to take down skyscrapers then we’ll start cowering.
The cat
Why It's Rubbish: If you were more scary when you were alive than when you're undead, then something has gone badly wrong. At least Dr Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs) pulls off an excellent comic dance with the stuffed replacement for the real creature.
How To Make It Awesome: Get Resident Evil director Paul WS Anderson to CGI-zombie its ass.
The mutant sheep
Why It's Rubbish: Like a cross between a dead farm animal and Mr Snuffleupagus from Sesame Street , this beast is more likely to make you spit your popcorn in laughter than fear. The only thing more rubbish than the monster itself is the fact it takes almost an hour to show up as the film's many backstories and nonsensical plots play out.
How To Make It Awesome: Actually employ a genetics lab to crossbreed Mr Snuffleupagus with real sheep DNA. Watching Sesame Street will never be the same...
The shrews
Why It's Rubbish: “Nothing out of the sky, or out of the sea or on the Earth could be more terrifying!” screams the tagline for this movie. The Advertising Association wasn't set up until two years later or we reckon they'd have been all over that statement, especially as cheese that's been in the fridge slightly too long is more terrifying than these dressed up dogs.
How To Make It Awesome: Recut the film using footage of Liz Taylor in The Taming Of The Shrew .
The human mosquito
Why It's Rubbish: Think The Fly and you're sort of on the right lines, except the excellent make-up and effects that turned Jeff Goldblum into a buzz kill are lacking from this TV movie.
How To Make It Awesome: Footage of director Tibor Takács rolling up the script and using it to swat the lead character would greatly improve this film.
Gorga
Why It's Rubbish: Not the first terrible monster flick to use the old man-in-an-ape suit ruse, this one stands out because the budget only seems to have stretched to the top half of that outfit. Why else is Gorga never shown below the waist, despite having a dust up with an equally low-budget creature that makes Barney The Dinosaur look realistic?
How To Make It Awesome: Use the fact you don’t have the bottom half of the ape costume to your advantage. Adding a pair of goat hooves would create a truly nightmare-inducing monster!
The jellyfish man
Why It's Rubbish: Everyone connected to this movie should ask themselves why they were involved with a film whose walking jellyfish monster is basically a man in a balloon. Four-year-olds making an outfit for a class project about the sea would do better.
Ho w To Make It Awesome: Take a permanent marker and draw something scary on the balloon.
The skeleton
Why It's Rubbish: You'll wish this particular skellie had remained lost. Brought back to life thanks to the Atmospereum from a fallen meteorite (and you thought Avatar 's Unobtanium was a rubbish name), the skeleton's psychic powers unfortunately don't stretch to willing the viewer to turn this garbage off and watch something – anything – better.
How To Make It Awesome: Call up motion capture technician Richard Hince, who created the dancing skeleton in the music video for Robbie Williams' Rock DJ. He’s your only hope.
Tarantulas
Why It's Rubbish: Surely it takes more than ordinary spiders to take on The Shat? Apparently not, as a massive surge in the tarantula population leaves humans stuck inside trying to keep the enemy at bay in a style usually saved for zombie films. Our advice, try literally stamping them out.
How To Make It Awesome: Three words: Eight Legged Freaks . Spiders the size of trucks beat the teeny ones every time.
The forest creatures
Why It's Rubbish: M Night Shyamalan’s work gets its second mention in this list thanks to his creation of a woodland enemy straight out of Jim Henson's workshop. Spoiler alert! That the creature isn't supposed to be real and has actually been built to look menacing to keep the kids from wandering into the woods is no excuse.
How To Make It Awesome: Lose the hoodie.
The leprechaun
Why It's Rubbish: Warwick Davis proves that finding a leprechaun doesn't always lead to gold as his troublesome trickster terrorises none other than Jennifer Aniston! We can almost (but not quite) forgive how rubbish this monster is for the fact the series has rumbled on to include such awesome entries as Leprechaun In Space and Leprechaun In The Hood .
How To Make It Awesome: Start from scratch, changing the title to a creature that doesn’t make you think of Lucky Charms cereal.
The monkey
Why It's Rubbish: Having caused an horrific outbreak of an Ebola-type disease, it's a shame that the infected monkey is just too cute to make you worry about the widespread panic.
How To Make It Awesome: Once infected, the monkey experiences gigantism and grows to the size of a house, eventually climbing one of New York’s landmark buildings for a final showdown (or has that been done before...?)
The ventriloquist's dummy
Why It's Rubbish: OK, so ventriloquist dummies can be creepy. But when the main villain in this tale from the writer and director of Saw asks “Who’s the dummy now?”, you might feel like it's you for sticking with this rubbish for so long.
How To Make It Awesome: For real chills, add forgotten TV entertainer Brian Conley shouting, “It’s a puppet!” [ Shudder ]
The troll
Why It's Rubbish: A tiny turd of a bad guy, Troll suffers from the fact that he's even more rubbish than The Leprechaun . Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone tried (and failed) to create a really scary troll, leaving it to Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring to finish the job.
How To Make It Awesome: Get this troll to the gym and don’t let him out until he’s so muscular he has to smash an opening through the wall to leave.
The giant octopus
Why It's Rubbish: The charm of Ed Wood's films comes from their very low-fi nature, but even bearing that in mind an octopus attack that sees its victim wrestling with rubbery limbs is poor by any effects guru's standards.
How To Make It Awesome: Even a visit from Sting Of Death ’s rubbish jellyfish man would kick this up a notch.
The mutant eye
Why It's Rubbish: While the film's title is correct in that this massive mutated eye does kill, we'd have preferred it if it was 'killer' like the slang expression that means awesome. And since the eye beast goes on a rampage to try and mate with the female of the species, we can't help feeling they missed a trick by not calling it An Eye For The Ladies .
How To Make It Awesome: Get the 'special' effects team to Specsavers pronto.
The birds
Why It's Rubbish: This awful take on The Birds is so knowingly poor that Hitchcock will thank the stars he chose to be cremated. Otherwise his body would be spinning so fast in his grave he'd probably have dug his way to the surface!
How To Make It Awesome: Raid David Attenborough's back catalogue for some truly terrifying avian footage.
The blood freak
Why It's Rubbish: The answer to the question 'Has Big Bird ever done it with a human lady?' may have been answered if the blood freak's appearance is anything to go by. The chill factor is always going to be lessened when your monster looks like it's just walked out of a Mardi Gras parade.
How To Make It Awesome: Double the costume budget by spending an extra £10 on a scarier mask.
Ro-man
Why It's Rubbish: Even in the bad old days of TV's Doctor Who , when baddies were created on such a tight budget they might be actors with ping pong balls in their mouths, this creature's design would have been passed over as too rubbish. As bizarre as it is terrible!
How To Make It Awesome: It's the middle ground that makes this a laughing stock: either it's a man in a gorilla costume; or it's some kind of substandard robot that looks like it's wearing a diving helmet. Choose one and stick with it.
The possessed doll
Why It's Rubbish: If you think Chucky couldn’t cut it as a bad guy, best steer clear of this Child's Play clone that sees an evil Mayan spirit take on a new life in a doll factory in Mexico.
How To Make It Awesome: Now that the Toy Story trilogy has finished, the Pixar animators could put their cutting edge talents to work on a new franchise.
The hares
Why It's Rubbish: The common misconception is that the monsters in this film were rabbits made to appear massive onscreen. Knowing that they're hares may be a great bit of info to amaze your mates with, but it doesn't make them any more scary...
Ho w To Make It Awesome: Remember the rabbit Kevin McCarthy pulls out of a hat in Twilight Zone: The Movie ? That's what Lepus needs.
The iguana
Why It's Rubbish: Budget won't stretch to a CGI tyrannosaurus rex a la Jurassic Park ? You could always opt for an iguana, which makes an excellent stand in. And when we say excellent, we mean awful.
How To Make It Awesome: Don't simply settle for an iguana, see if the pet store can go the extra mile and at least provide a Komodo dragon.
The demon
Why It's Rubbish: An investigator trying to expose a cult leader as a fraud finds himself under a real curse that will see him killed by supernatural forces. Tension builds impressively, until the demon appears and breaks the spell.
How To Make It Awesome: Less is more. If your demon looks so laughably bad parents wouldn't mind buying their kids a plushie version to play with, it's best to hide it in shadow and let the audience's imagination do the work.
The alien
Why It's Rubbish: It may have unfairly been ruled to be a video nasty thanks to the sight of a full grown man being born from a pregnant woman, but it should really have been ruled nasty for its unconvincing alien baddie.
How To Make It Awesome: Add it to the list of '80s horror flicks currently getting a remake.
The beast
Why It's Rubbish: Radiation (that old chestnut) transforms a Russian defector – played by Swedish wrestler Tor Johnson - into a mindless killer. Although ‘transforms’ is probably the wrong word, given that he doesn’t look much different than before.
How To Make It Awesome: If you're going to use the physique of a wrestler to create your monster, why not have him start off as a wimpy fella and then transform him?
The gingerbread man
Why It's Rubbish: Top marks for a film title that sounds like it was devised at the end of a night in the pub, but you can't help think that the soul of a convicted killer would have preferred to wake up in a Chucky doll, rather than be reincarnated as a baked snack.
How To Make It Awesome: Scrap the script and make this a gritty update of the Hansel & Gretel story, about a serial killer who lures kids to his candy house in the woods.
The bed
Why It's Rubbish: As inanimate objects go, a bed is not the most scary choice for a cold blooded killer. At least it's a four-poster.
How To Make It Awesome: For a truly blood curdling experience, the bed only eats you after you've spent three hours trogging around IKEA.
Bruce the shark
Why It's Rubbish: A controversial choice, but Bruce is not a good monster. In fact, the film builds its tension so successfully because the animatronic shark refused to work as directed and the editing process had to make the most of his enforced absence.
How To Make It Awesome: Spielberg would love to replace him with a CGI alternative but so far he hasn't submitted to the same meddling urges as a certain Mr Lucas...
The mutant baby
Why It's Rubbish: It travels around the city using the storm drains. It's being chased by a heavily armed posse of police officers. And it kills when it's afraid. Somebody better hit this nipper up with an Asbo asap.
How To Make It Awesome: Upping the gore factor didn't help a 2008 remake, so perhaps turning this into a psychological study of the fear of impending parenthood might do the trick? Or maybe not...
The zombie hooker
Why It's Rubbish: “Wanna date?” screams this reanimated collection of prostitute body parts. No thanks love, we're off to see some zombie strippers.
How To Make It Awesome: Remake the movie using the dead hookers we keep in the Total Film basement. See, we've already scared you more than the original film ever did...
The killer whipped cream
Why It's Rubbish: When even your pudding starts attacking you, there's no safe place left in the world. What next, murderous popcorn?
How To Make It Awesome: A clever tie-in product released in supermarkets could blur the boundaries of fantasy and reality enough to make this slow-moving goo appear ever-so-slightly more frightening.
The mutant squirrel
Why It's Rubbish: We've seen too many episodes of Blackadder to find squirrels, with their long tails and their stupid twitchy noses, even the least bit scary.
How To Make It Awesome: Recast the monster in the 1973 road safety Public Information Films featuring Tufty. Only this time if the kids don't watch out for cars they get covered in radioactive squirrel drool and stomped on.
The scarecrows
Why It's Rubbish: When the tagline (“They only want a brain. Yours.”) is the best thing about your film, it's time to quit making movies and concentrate full time on that career in marketing. The most disappointing thing about Scarecrows is that it takes something which should be über-creepy and only manages to scare away the birds.
How To Make It Awesome: Bin the distracting heist-movie plot that kicks the film off and stick with the horror survival elements.
The slugs
Why It's Rubbish: Even if you're a gardener and you've just surveyed the damage these little parasites can deal to your plants, you wont be scared of them. Let's face it snails are harder – they've at least got some protection.
How To Make It Awesome: If you're going to go down the road of calling them mutant slugs, lets have them do more than just develop teeth and an appetite for flesh. Beefing them up to the size of those creatures hanging around Spock's coffin in Star Trek III should do the trick.
The clothes press
Why It's Rubbish: Remember that Tobe Hooper movie that scared you senseless where the guy had a chainsaw? Well this isn't that one. It might be from the same director and based on a Stephen King short story, but trust us, a possessed laundry machine that folds people like clothes is a lot less impressive.
How To Make It Awesome: Make it a trouser press that moves from hotel to hotel, ironing unfashionable creases into any garments left lying around. Oh, the horror!
The beast creatures
Why It's Rubbish: Moving puppets on sticks and then throwing them at actors fails to create any sort of horror vibe.
How To Make It Awesome: These teeny-tiny creatures already have the kind of appetite and willingness to attack that should make them a threat. Now they just need to look less like dolls your little sister would play with.
Beelzebub
Why It's Rubbish: It's made of papier mâché. And its attack of choice is to throw starfish. Did we mention it was made of papier mâché?
How To Make It Awesome: Tough sell, when the '80s hairstyles induce more fear than the crappy monster ever will. First order of business is to shoot an end battle that doesn't look like a WWE face off between a braindead wrestler and a giant ant.
The goblins
Why It's Rubbish: You'd be forgiven for thinking we already covered this one, but Troll 2 throws up an even bigger surprise by not even using trolls! Plus, the scare factor is significantly reduced when you find that all the baddies are vegetarian.
How To Make It Awesome: Ditch the herbivore tendencies and put those fangs to good use, or we're sending Laurence Olivier's doctor from Marathon Man around to confiscate them.
