Best Special effect!

[Osi Osgood]

OK, a different kind of topic ... What is your absolute favorite special effect that you have witnessed in a film? My pick, to this very day, is in the film, "Poltergeist", it's the effect where the families house is imploding on itself. I still don't know how it was done, and there's a part of me that wouldn't want to know. A magnificent effect and that, before the age of CGI.

[Ed Gordon]

My pick would be the special effects in The Matrix. I don't think they used CGI, but did it on 35mm film. Frankly, I don't think any special effects done with CGI should even be considered. Good CGI is made by artists with powerful computers. Great art maybe, but not special film effects.

[Chip Gelmini]

If I remember correctly, the house explosion in poltergeist only took a few seconds to do in real time cause somehow they used a vacuum system to destroy the prop that made the house. It was then played back in backwards or something. I don't know how much of this is right......

[Rob Young]

Those ghosts at the end of "Raiders of the Lost Ark". Puppets in a water tank, but boy did they scare me when I was 11.

Osi, the Poltergeist house effect is covered in the Disney + documentary, "Light and Magic". It's an absolutely brilliant double series that documents the development of ILM. Naturally, there is a lot of Star Wars in there, but it is so well made I've watched it twice. Worth a month subscription to Disney + just to watch this.

[Brian Fretwell]

To me the best special effect would be one that I didn't recognise WAS a special effect!

[Janice Glesser]

I don't know if you would consider it a special effect... Maybe more a cinemagraphic technique, but the one continuous shot effect in the movie 1917 was so impressive to me. I have noticed this effect to some degree being used in the new TV series The Studio.

[Melvin England]

Brian - Good point !

Janice - Good one ! A completely different cinematic experience when I saw it on the big screen.

A couple of contributions from myself......

1) Terminator II - The liquid mercury (?) re-forming itself to become a robot again.

2) Titanic - If this was modern times it was the shot that looks as though it was filmed high above the ship from a drone and tracks along the decks with all those CGI "passengers" wandering around going about their business. Very convincing IMO.

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[Graham Ritchie]

When it comes to best special effects and considering this film was released way back in 1968, I would have to give it to "2001 A Space Odyssey".