Have you ever been to a movie that made you tense up anticipating the evil force, and when it was finally revealed, you thought, "That's it?" You might have even laughed when you finally saw what was supposed to be so scary. We know from Jaws and many Alfred Hitchcock movies that the psychological suspense of a monster we can't see is deliciously scary, but often even the best special effects makeup, or even CGI, can't live up to our imaginations. A reddit post in r/movies asked filmgoers which movie monster was a real disappointment to see after building up a lot of tension. More than 3,000 comments came in discussing those films. Cracked picked out a list of the best, and gave them to us with illustrations. The picture above from the 1956 movie It Conqered the World may be an outlier in its sheer ridiculousness, but we can get a laugh out of it.
It Conquered the World. Paul Blaisdell specifically designed his monster to be seen partially in the shadows, but Roger Corman wasn't having it. He said "I paid for a monster and I'm damn well going to see a monster", so they rolled the giant evil cucumber out into the broad daylight of Bronson Canyon, painfully obvious it was on a little furniture cart.
The same redditor told us more about this alien from Venus. Read about 22 films that built up tension, and then revealed an underwhelming monster, at Cracked.