Which type of monster holds the number one spot? Keep reading to find out.

The Academy awards a straight genre movie with the coveted best picture Oscar, and it's this hot mess? Imagine "The Creature from the Black Lagoon" directed by Stanley Kramer. Overly simplistic and dated about Jim Crow and gay people, it also boasts a villainous turn by Michael Shannon that's so broad it needed a twirled mustache. As with the abhorrent "Edward Scissorhands," this movie's message is that if you're different, you need to go away. No wonder it won best picture!

12. "Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio" (2022)

Even in his lesser movies, del Toro's visuals are usually intriguing. Not this time, I'm afraid. I admire the amount of work that went into this stop motion animation take on Carlo Collodi's classic children's story. And Ewan McGregor is fun as Jiminy -- I mean -- a non-Disney branded cricket. I was amused by a running gag where his song constantly gets interrupted, and surprised that the song actually was pretty good when I got to hear it. But I found watching this to be a chore.

11. "Mimic" (1997)

Del Toro disowned the theatrical cut of this movie after Miramax interfered with the production. "I lost casting battles, I lost story battles, but the one thing 'Mimic' is visually 100 percent exactly what I wanted," del Toro told an audience at the London Film Festival in 2017. "Mimic" generates some effective suspense, and it is visually stunning. Bostonians should watch just for the schadenfreude of seeing Manhattan get chewed on by killer mutant bugs.

10. "Blade II" (2002)

Wesley Snipes returns as Marvel's first moneymaker, Blade. The first movie was entertaining, but del Toro's eye for creature design makes this a lot more fun to look at, even if it follows the typical sequel convention of being bigger, louder, and sillier. At the time, in this very paper, Chris Fujiwara wrote "[i]s there a limit to the violence the MPAA will let a major-studio get away with without slapping on the dreaded NC-17?" Come on, Chris! If it were THAT gory, it would be higher on this list.

9. "Cronos" (1992)

In addition to being his first pairing with Ron Perlman, "Cronos" marked del Toro's directorial debut and the introduction of his style to audiences. Essentially a vampire movie with a scarab creature straight out of "The Mummy," this movie mixes religious imagery with the magical realism common in a lot of Latin American cinema. Extra points for casting Luis Buñuel regular Claudio Brook ("The Exterminating Angel") as Perlman's uncle.

8. "Hellboy" (2004)

Speaking of Ron Perlman, he's the titular superhero in this comic book movie. Hellboy is tough yet charming despite Perlman wearing a ton of makeup that makes him look like, well, a guy from hell. Assisting him is GDT regular Doug Jones as humanoid Abe Sapien and Selma Blair as a woman who can control fire. John Hurt plays Trevor, Hellboy's adoptive dad. The villains are Rasputin and demons from a portal built by Nazis during World War II. Somehow, this all works, and works quite well.

7. "Hellboy II: The Golden Army" (2008)

Del Toro succeeds in making a sequel that's just as good, if not better, than its predecessor. Perlman, Blair, and Jones are back (he's got his trademark multiple roles this time) as is Hurt, who in a flashback tells his son about The Golden Army when our hero is just a little tyke. As expected, this is bigger, louder, et al., but how can you resist a movie with man-eating Tooth Fairies?

6. "Nightmare Alley" (2021)

When this movie came out, I said I would have rated it half-a-star higher had it been in black and white (and having seen del Toro's alternate b&w version, I stand by that). Alas, this remake of the 1947 gothic noir starring Tyrone Power is in color, and it suffers a bit for it. Far gorier than its predecessor, this version still retains its noirish edge. Bradley Cooper is well-cast as carny Stanton Carlisle, a low level grifter who makes the typical noir dude mistake of thinking he's the smartest guy in the room. Cate Blanchett plays a shrink with a sinister side and blood red lipstick. The movie makes an interesting parallel between psychiatry and the grift Cooper and his fellow carnies enact. That's before the bloodletting begins.

5. "Crimson Peak" (2015)

This gorgeous 19th-century Gothic romance is del Toro's second-best ghost story (stay tuned for the first). One of his most ravishing features, this one stars Mia Wasikowska as Edith, a wannabe novelist, and Jessica Chastain as Lucille, the sister of Edith's paramour, Thomas (Tom Hiddleston). All sorts of nasty events occur at the estate known as Crimson Peak, proving that Edith should have listened to her mother's ghost when she told her daughter to beware of the damn place.

4. "Frankenstein" (2025)

Had this film been sitting with me for a year or so, I'd feel comfortable putting it higher. But I'm still in the afterglow phase of seeing this heartbreaking take on Mary Shelley's 1818 classic novel, so I don't completely trust myself. As I said in my review, Jacob Elordi is incredibly good as the Creature, breaking your heart while challenging us to consider what it means to be human.

3. "Pacific Rim" (2013)

Out of all of the movies on this list, this is the one I had the most fun watching. It earned four stars from me. This time, del Toro takes on kaiju and massive kaiju-fighting robots. The result is pure, Idris Elba-powered entertainment. It's a cliché to say a movie made you feel like a kid again, but that's exactly what happened here. I'll take flak for putting this one so high, but I'm used to the flak.

2. "The Devil's Backbone" (2001)

This Spanish-language ghost story featuring children, war, politics, corrupt adults, and otherworldly entities that help and harm feels like a successful dry run for del Toro's one true masterpiece, "Pan's Labyrinth." Marisa Paredes ("All About My Mother") stars as an orphanage administrator in Spain alongside Fernando Tielve as the film's orphan protagonist, Carlos. Carlos discovers that the adults surrounding him are capable of evil deeds bad enough to make the dead restless. Del Toro gets great performances from his child actors, and the ghostly climax will haunt you long after the film ends.

1. "Pan's Labyrinth" (2006)

This Oscar-winning fantasy/horror film takes place in Spain five years after "The Devil's Backbone" and shares similar themes. Once again, children are involved, but this movie takes the guise of a very grim Grimm's Fairytale. Jumping between the real world and a magical labyrinth, the film follows Ofelia (Isabel Banquero), a girl growing up in Francoist Spain. In the fantasy world, Doug Jones costars as the mysterious Faun, who guides Ofelia's alter ego, Princess Moanna. He also terrifies her (and us) as the Pale Man, a creature with eyes on its hands. Several movies have tried to funnel horrific events through the guise of fantasy; this is one of the few films to succeed. Nearly impossible to shake after you see it, which is why it's my number one.

Guillermo del Toro's movies, ranked - The Boston Globe