The Alien Collection

The xenomorph. Nightmare Fuel personified, courtesy of Swiss artist H. R. Giger. Designed for the first Alien film, they make wasps – nature's own shit-bags – look like ladybirds. They're truly terrifying in their adult form, but that's only the tip of the ice-chill-berg. Even before their eventual metamorphosis, they exist as parasitic larvae of a type that taps into the kind of primal fears that have petrified mankind's fragile psyche for millennia.

Weirdly, despite being a victim of Hollywood's proclivity for milking iconic creatures until their initial power to astound or shock is much diluted, the xenomorph as a concept hasn't lost its appeal. It even survived a crossover.