Predator

Few action movies hide a better monster movie inside them. McTiernan lets the first half play as pure 1980s bravado, all crushing handshakes, one-liners and miniguns, so the moment the team realizes its firepower means nothing, the jungle itself starts to feel hostile. Stan Winston's creature is a design for the ages, and the shimmering camouflage, heat-vision point of view and that eerie mimicked voice make every unseen glance from the trees count. Alan Silvestri's drumming score keeps the dread marching, and Schwarzenegger has rarely been better used than as a soldier pared down to wits and instinct. Nearly forty years on, it is still the hunt every other film in the series gets measured against.