Star Wars tops special effects poll

The opening sequence of 1977's Star Wars has been voted the best special effect in film history.

16:57 10 January 2005

The opening sequence of 1977's Star Wars has been voted the best special effect in film history.

George Lucas's introduction to the movie features small space ships being pursued through space by a looming and imposing Imperial Star Destroyer.

"It was the Big Bang of modern special effects," said Dave Golder, editor of SFX magazine, which carried out the poll.

"Star Wars winning the best special effects sequence ever shows just how significant the film is to movie fans."

He added: "Even now, nothing beats the feeling you get when you see this huge flying spaceship coming across the screen - which is breathtakingly enormous."

In second place was the famous and tragic image of King Kong climbing the Empire State Building in the 1933 classic of the same name.

And voters put the severed head that sprouts spider legs from 1982's The Thing in third place to prove that modern computer graphics are not all they are cracked up to be.

In fact, the majority of the top ten were old films, with only three produced in the last ten years.

1963's Jason and the Argonauts is packed with fantastic special effects and the most famous of these, where skeletons grow out of bones thrown to the ground, took the film to fourth place.

Arnold Schwarzenegger's T-1000 in 1991's Terminator 2: Judgement Day took fifth place, followed by Forbidden Planet from 1956.

The creature Gollum secured the multiple-Oscar-winning Lord of the Rings trilogy a place in the top ten, while the "bullet-time" sequence in cult classic The Matrix put the film in eighth place.

Top special effects

1. Star Wars - opening (1977)
2. King Kong - climax (1933)
3. The Thing - spider head (1982)
4. Jason and the Argonauts - the skeletons (1963)
5. Terminator 2: Judgment Day - the T-1000 (1991)
6. Forbidden Planet - Krell machinery (1956)
7. The Lord of the Rings trilogy - Gollum (2001-2003)
8. The Matrix - bullet-time (1999)
9. Alien - bursting chest (1979)
10. Spider-Man 2 - train fight (2004)