Stan Winston was a genius.
Just watched this film again after decades and the beheading scene at the start is just awesome.
I thought it would look worse than I remembered, but it actually looked better.
I remember first seeing it in the eighties and thinking it was going to be a throat slitting with a really good appliance on the neck, then when the whole head come off it was rewind time.
This looks better than anything I've seen CGI'd.