Scared Silly

Who's The Most Horrible Movie Monster Ever?

(CBS)  Every Halloween, movie studios roll out new horror flicks in the hopes of a) scaring audiences to death, b) taking their money while doing so, and c) creating such a hit that a sequel must be ready by the same time next year. Of course, almost every horror movie lives or dies (pun intended) on the strength of its bad guy or monster. So, we've compiled a round-up of some of the most petrifying film beasties to ever send you scurrying under your seat.

You won't find Frankenstein's creation here (he's just misunderstood, after all) and you won't find zombies either (there's just too damn many of them), but you will find some of the most memorable terrors to ever stalk the screen…and your sleep.

Count Orlok (Max Schreck)
Talk all you want about Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee, but "Nosferatu," the 1923 silent version of "Dracula" (the name was changed for legal reasons), still featured the most frightening vampire of them all in the form of spectral German actor Max Schreck.

Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins)
That polite, twitchy young man running the highway motel for his mother? He likes to stab guests to death while Mom decomposes in the basement. Hitchcock's 1960 classic "Psycho" introduced a new kind of killer to the movies -- the nice young man utterly divorced from the normal world.

Leatherface (Kane Hodder)
One of the most disturbing images of '70s cinema is the sight of this horrid psychopath waving his saw at the rising sun in an uncontrollable frenzy of bloodlust at the conclusion of the original 1973 "Texas Chain Saw Massacre." Few movie monsters have ever seemed so remote from human understanding.

Michael Myers (various)
The knife-wielding masked killer of the original 1978 "Halloween" (not to mention seven sequels and a recent remake), Michael Myers is all the more frightening because his motivations are a mystery and his methods unstoppable. Just like the movie's most famous line says, he really is the boogeyman.

The Alien
First hatched in 1979, it comes from deepest space, uses living beings as incubators and is the perfect biological weapon, complete with two sets of razor sharp teeth and acid for blood. Its only mission is to destroy everything that comes in its path. In space, no one can hear you scream -- but they sure can in theaters.

Jason Voorhees (various)
Always standing a little in the shadow of Michael Myers, the star of the "Friday the 13th" movies has gained his own iconic status since his 1980 screen debut (he didn't even do the killing in that one -- his mother did). His infamous hockey mask is one of the most recognizable and chilling images in movies.

The Thing
This lethal visitor from the stars first crashed to Earth in 1951 as a murderous walking vegetable, but for our money, the grotesque shape shifter of John Carpenter's 1982 remake -- which can assume the appearance of any living thing it absorbs -- is far more terrifying, because it could be the person sitting next to you.

Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund)
He first slithered into our dreams in 1984's "A Nightmare on Elm Street," his scarred visage and bladed glove lodged there ever since. Krueger has weathered his share of bad movies over the years, but he proved in his debut to literally be the stuff of nightmares.

2 Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins)
He'll lecture you on Italian art, then eat your liver with…well, you know the rest. This cultured and erudite human monster is all the more frightening for his calm, detached comportment. "They don't have a name for what he is, " says Jodie Foster in 1991's "The Silence of the Lambs," and she's right.

Jigsaw (Tobin Bell)
He taught his victims lessons in morality even as he found new ways to maim and dismember them in the first three " Saw" movies. Now Jigsaw is supposedly dead in the new "Saw IV"…or is he? Either way, this relative newcomer's coldly methodical presence makes him an instant addition to the list.

The Devil (various)
Still the first, and the most ambitious. Whether impregnating a young housewife ("Rosemary's Baby"), placing his son into world politics ("The Omen") or sending him to law school ("The Devil's Advocate"), Satan remains the movies' most horrific father figure. He can still teach everyone else on this list a thing or two.