Just a week ago, SF was at Sydney's State Theatre, marvelling at how beautifully E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial holds up some 30 years after that sweet little space frog first lit up our heart lights.

And yes, by the final reel, damnit, we still had something in our eyes!

There are more tears flowing this week at the news that E.T.'s real dad, Italian special effects maestro Carlo Rambaldi, had 'returned home', aged 86.

Rambaldi won an Oscar for his marvellous animatronic E.T. -- having already snapped up a statuette for his equally iconic work on the chestburster in 1979's Alien.

He contributed marvellously outlandish creatures to the likes of Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, Dune and Possession .

Say what you like about 1976's King Kong, but his great ape was the best thing about it (along with Jeff Bridges' beard) - and it scored him a third special achievement Oscar.

(Okay, even his brilliance couldn't save 1986's King Kong Lives, but it's pretty funny so check it out anyway when you line up your Rambaldi tribute DVDs this weekend.

For all of his accolades, it was perhaps his work on Lucio Fulci's 1971 flick A Lizard In A Woman's Skin that really proved his genius.

Rambaldi's mutilated dogs were so realistic that the director faced court on animal cruelty charges, which required the effects man to exhibit his canine props to save the filmmaker from doing jail time!

The highest accolade, surely, for any special effects whiz - to prove in court, that they aren't real. If you're a scholar of Sci Fi, Carlo Rambaldi is one of the greats.