mattw has been feeling that Aliens and Monsters as presented in TV & film fall far short of those presented in books. (In particular, in terms of their alienness and monstrosity.) He suspects it’s at least largely due to the fact that, well, you have to show them eventually if they’re on a screen, whereas a book can describe things that would be impossible to show with today’s technology. This may be a completely wrong theory.

I think books shall be allowed in the list below, too, to allow better comparisons.

brehaut points out that sometimes humans are more alien/monstrous than aliens are — for instance, compare Hannibal Lecter with any Star Wars alien.

Convincing aliens (completely non-human, but not just animals)

• Alien/Aliens
• The Time Machine (the book)
• The Mote in God’s Eye (book)
• Hannibal Lector (Silence of the Lambs)
• Bram Stoker’s Dracula

Aliens that are humans in masks

• Star Trek
• Star Wars
• The Time Machine (the movie)
• Chronicles of Riddick
• Underworld series
• Blade series
• Most vampires
• Most werewolves

TV, film and books also frequently suffer from revealing/defining their monsters far too early; there’s a ton of suspenseful power in the unknown, and no matter how awesome and fearsome your monster is, they’re always going to be far more horrifying if they’re just a shadow glimpsed in the background.

mattw has been reading Dracula, and not only does the word ‘vampire’ show up less than a handful of times in the first half of the book, we haven’t even once clearly seen the Count at work – it’s all shadows and glimpses and boding. None of the characters know of vampires, and therefore no-one knows what’s actually going on for quite some time, and that’s scary.