Sadly, Laser-Capable Sharks Didn't Make The List Either

Edmonton's Vue Weekly has a rundown of Hollywood's best death rays. Of course, heading the list is Darth Vader's penile substitute:

Set aside the standard suspense-creation of a countdown list—that shit’s for Cosmo and David Letterman. We all know who wins this contest, so let’s get this bad boy outta the way quick. Which bad boy? The bad Death Star beam boy, of course. A full-on, no-nonsense, kill-everybody-now planet-smasher, it’s as if millions of lasers cried out in terror and were suddenly awesome. Also, the gunnery crew had those cool helmets with the underbite blast shields.

I disagree about the helmets - they made me think of humanoid cockroaches. But I especially loved how the four sub-beams moved in slow motion, formed up, thought about it a second, then took off to go blow something up.

Also on the list was my personal favorite:

Proton streams, Ghostbusters

They’re produced by unlicensed nuclear accelerators, they’re untested and they’re not to be crossed; the ghost-snaring proton streams are perfectly realized on film with a wild, unpredictable, snaking blast of barely-controlled pure energy. Look at those dudes! They can barely hold on to their projector nozzles. These are truly the weapons of a gang of irresponsible genius science-cowboys with nothing left to lose but their immortal souls. Brilliant.

I'm reminded of the part where they switch them on for the first time in an elevator and other people slowly backed away.

The other ones on the list:

Martian heat ray, War of the Worlds (1953)
Scanning beam, Tron
Pure love, The Fifth Element
Radioactive breath, Godzilla et al.
Crotch laser, Goldfinger
The map room ray, Raiders of the Lost Ark
The SOL laser, Akira
The White House wrecker, Independence Day
Lifetime achievement award: Star Trek

All well and good (although I think the Martian heat ray and 'pure love' were kind of lame), but how could they possibly miss the myriad of beamage shown in Mars Attacks?

[h/t - BBspot]