100 Greatest monsters of all time

And here are the final 25...

25. Tooms - The X-Files: Tooms (1994)

While some say that, by adding Tooms, The X-Files jumped the shark, adding this malleable monster to the show's mythology brought one of the most terrifying television creatures to the screen. A genetic mutation, Tooms required livers to live, and after sating himself, would once again return to his sticky hibernation. However, unlike his last few ventures into the big wide world, Mulder and Scully were on his tracks, trying to stop his spate of mutilations and murder. A creature of nightmares, with his grabbing hands and his lunatic need to feed, no other TV monster came close to its unnerving quality.

24. The Mummy - The Mummy (1932)

It wouldn't be a list of monsters without adding at least one or two iconic characters from Universal's array of creatures. While the 1999 version was all flash computer graphics, scarabs and a poor man’s Indiana Jones action, this shuffling, methodical creation courtesy of Boris Karloff holds more terror in its slow cumbersome hand than the recent trilogy in its entirety. It’s the under-acting and slow, unstoppable pace that makes the Karloff creation so scary – it’s a relentless force of nature.

23. Graboids - Tremors (1990)

Who doesn’t like films with giant carnivorous sandworms in them? This 1990 oddity starring Kevin Bacon is a superb modern monster movie. Surprisingly light-hearted fun for a horror movie, Tremors shows how truck drivers, cowboys and military fanatics in a quiet desert town deal with huge killer worms. While not all that clever, these superb monsters put Doctor Who's attempt at mutant worms and maggots to shame.

22. The Gentlemen – Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Hush (1999)

While Buffy boasted a vast array of creature and monster designs, from the lackadaisical Lorne to the sinister Major, the show boasted vampires, werewolves, demons, gods and monsters a plenty. However, the most sinister creatures ever to appear in the show were the floating Gentlemen, a set of nightmares that came straight out of the worst fairy tale ever. At first taking the voice away from their victims so they couldn't scream, the sinister Gentlemen would happily perform open dissections, all the time smiling their deathly grin as they chopped, hacked and eviscerated.

One of the scariest episodes of the show ever, there were also some fantastic elements from geek god Joss Whedon in this episode, with Buffy’s mime of stabbing the Gentlemen to death with her stake quickly coming to mind. Providing some of the most fantastic television of the past 20 years, Buffy was a superb show, and thanks to the Gentlemen, Hush is definitely among the top five best episodes of all time.