Roman Polanski:"Rosemary's Baby" (1968)

In Roman Polanski's first American film, adapted from Ira Levin's horror bestseller, a young wife comes to believe that her offspring is not of this world. Waifish Rosemary Woodhouse (Mia Farrow) and her struggling actor husband, Guy (John Cassavetes), move into the Bramford, an old New York City apartment building with an ominous reputation and only elderly residents. Neighbors Roman and Minnie Castevet (Sidney Blackmer and Ruth Gordon) soon come nosing around to welcome the Woodhouses to the building; despite Rosemary's reservations about their eccentricity and the weird noises that she keeps hearing, Guy starts spending time with the Castevets. Shortly after Guy lands a plum Broadway role, Minnie starts showing up with homemade chocolate mousse for Rosemary. When Rosemary becomes pregnant after a mousse-provoked nightmare of being raped by a beast, the Castevets take a special interest in her welfare. As the sickened Rosemary becomes increasingly isolated, she begins to suspect that the Castevets' circle is not what it seems. The diabolical truth is revealed only after Rosemary gives birth, and the baby is taken away from her. Polanski's camerawork and Richard Sylbert's production design transform the realistic setting (shot on-location in Manhattan's Dakota apartment building) into a sinister projection of Rosemary's fears, chillingly locating supernatural horror in the familiar by leaving the most grotesque frights to the viewer's imagination. This apocalyptic yet darkly comic paranoia about the hallowed institution of childbirth touched a nerve with late-'60s audiences feeling uneasy about traditional norms. Produced by B-horror maestro William Castle, Rosemary's Baby became a critically praised hit, winning Gordon an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. Inspiring a wave of satanic horror from The Exorcist (1973) to The Omen (1976), Rosemary's Baby helped usher in the genre's modern era by combining a supernatural story with Alfred Hitchcock's propensity for finding normality horrific.

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Alfred Hitchcock:"The Birds" (1963)

The Birds features a classic Alfred Hitchcock setup: average people placed in circumstances turned upside down. And of course, there are the requisite dark insinuations and strange psychological underpinnings. Though we're never sure why the birds are rising up, their behavior seems to be a response to humankind's complacency and arrogance. It's a frightening yet sportive vision of Judgment Day. As in Psycho, Hitchcock's previous film, the normalcy of the setting is allowed to set in before the audience is thrown into the perverse drama. When the bird violence comes, Hitchcock pulls out all the stops to make it as realistic as one could imagine. There are 371 trick shots in the film. Some have dated, but for the most part the effects are still effective. The last shots are especially memorable. And the movie features a unique soundtrack from frequent Hitchcock collaborator Bernard Herrmann: no music, only bird sounds organized as if they were music, for maximum creepy impact. The Birds stands as the end of an unprecedented period when Hitchcock could no wrong; he made only five more features, with decidedly mixed artistic and financial results.

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CULT MOVIE: HALLOWEEN (1978)

The daddy of all those 1980s slasher movies(including its own five sequels-- Part III, Season Of The Witch doesn't count), this grips from the opening long single take that introduced the world to Michael Myers. Fifteen years after slashing his sister to death and being institutionalized, Myers returns to his hometown of Haddonfield for a knife-wielding reunion. Shot in only three weeks for just $300,000, Halloween marked the feature debut of "scream queen" Jamie Lee Curtis (who also starred in Carpenter's The Fog and two of Halloween's sequels) and became an incredibly influential horror movie. From the stalk-and-slash "he's behind you" shocks that have been ripped off ad infinitum to Carpenter's unforgettable score and direction, this classic has caused whole generations to check what's behind the wardrobe door before going to bed.
Director: John Carpenter Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasence

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CULT MOVIE: THE EVIL-DOLL ( 1936 )

Best known for Freaks and 1931's Dracula, director Browning's 20-year career also included this oddity. His last but one film before retirement, it was originally titled The Witch Of Timbuctoo but the title was changed when the script was altered because of censorship concerns.. Co-written by actor/director Erich von Stroheim, the story follows a Devil's Island escapee (Barrymore) who hits upon the idea of shrinking humans to doll size for his own evil ends (can't think why no one's thought of it before). Undeniably silly, the bizarre film mixes horror, sci-fi, melodrama and revenge thriller all into one, and contains a plethora of ideas and images ( Barrymore in drag being one of them) that were considered shocking in 1936.
Director: Tod Browning Cast: Lionel Barrymore, Maureen O'Sullivan

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CULT MOVIE: EVIL DEAD (1982)

The Evil Dead had a budget of less than $100,000 and was essentially director Raimi, his brother Ted and a group of mates ( including star Cambell and then-assistant film editor Joel Coen) making a jokey horror movie set in a woodland cabin. Despite the lack of cash, they produced some great effects as Cambell and pals accidentally unleash abominable demons. (Many of the crew returned five years later to do it all again as semi-remake Evil Dead II-- Budget $3m -- with even more gore and humor. Evil Dead III: Army of Darkness cost $30m. ) Some have complained about the graphic gore (especially the raped-by-a-tree scene ) but no-one can deny that all three are the funniest, most cleverly made horror movies around.
Director: Sam Raimi Cast: Bruce Cambell, Ellen Sandweiss

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CULT MOVIE: THE EXORCIST (1973)

Regularly voted the scariest movie of all time, thanks to William Friedkin's taut direction, wonderful performances ( especially from Jason Miller as Father Karras and Burstyn, who damaged her spine carrying out one effect) and the gripping source material by William Peter Blatty (who has a cameo as the producer of the film Burstyn is acting in). Many scenes have become the stuff of legend: possessed child Regan (Linda Blair) vomiting pea soup or getting a bit graphic on the bed with a crucifix-- but the creeping horror of the movie remains embedded in your mind well after the credits have rolled. A director's cut version is available, featuring Regan's infanous "spider walk" and an altered ending.
Director: William Friedkin Cast: Ellen Burstyn, Max Von Sydow

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CULT MOVIE: NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968)

Filmed on a shoestring budget of little more than $100.000, George Romero's black-and-white zombie flick remains one of the most unforgettable horror movies ever made. Shot in Pittsburgh using local talent to keep costs down (one investor was a butcher: he supplied the blood and guts), its premise is simple. Seven people shut themselves inside a farmhouse as zombies intent on death and destruction close in on them. It was Romero's first film; followed it 10 years later with the daft but enjoyable Dawn Of The Dead and 1985's Day Of The Dead, while Tom Savini used Romero's script to remake the first film with flashier effects in 1990.
Director: George A Romero Cast: Judith O'Dea, Duane Jones

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CULT MOVIE: PSYCHO( 1960 )

"Wimpy", as this production was known during filming, is both typically Hitchcockian and something of a departure for the director. He made it for just $800,000, using the crew for his TV show, in a deliberate (and successful) attempt to recreate the feel of the exploitation thrillers which were developing a cult audience. He was quite shameless about the effect his film had, telling Truffaut he played the audience like an organ. As usual, there is a lot else going on. The way the audience is led to beleve that the real story is what happens to Janet Leigh's character is clever. There are squillions of references to birds (a plug for his next film?) and, of course, there's Norman Bates and his mother. For Perkins, this role was a breakthrough and a trap: he would usually play Bates ( in name or in character) from now on. By the way, the slashing noise you hear in the shower is the sound of a knife slashing into a melon.
Director: Alfred Hitchcock Cast : Anthony Perkins, Vera Miles

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CULT MOVIE: THE CORPSE GRINDERS (1972)

"Turn bones and flesh into screaming, savage blood death!" yelped the publicity blurb for this outrageous horror comedy from legendary exploitation movie mogul Ted V Mikels. The plot rotates around the crippled owners of a failing cat-food company who, to spice up their product, employ a couple of grave-robbing maniacs to supply them with dead bodies which they then grind up and sell to cat-lovers. After a few cans the felines develop a craving for human flesh and start attacking their owners. This leads to a factory visit by veterinarian Dr Howard Glass (Kenney) and his nurse assistant Angie Robinson (Kelly), whose covert investigation uncovers the entire ghastly scheme. The star of this movie is the prop of the title: a painted cardboard box which, every time a body is pushed through it, has hamburger meat dropping out of the other end into a bucket.
Director: Ted V Mikels Cast: Sean Kenney, Monika Kelly

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CULT MOVIE: HAXAN(1922)

Eighty years on, Christensen's use of real life, animation and dramatic sequences for his disturbing documentary about witchcraft through the ages has lost none of its ability to shock. His silent scenes of demonically possesed nuns and friars--and the tortures which they were forced to suffer to extract sorcery confessions--are  made more upsetting by the fear-filled expressions of the actors. Elsewhere, his re-enactment of a witces' sabbat and the horrors surrounding it, gives you the uneasy feeling that the Danish director could have been present at such events in real life.
Director: Benjamin Christensen Cast: Maren Pedersen, Oscar Stribolt

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CULT MOVIE:VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED(1960)

More than four decades after it was made in Letcmore Heath in England, this adaptation of John Wyndham's The Midwich Cuckoos remains astonishingly creepy. One day, everyone in an English village falls asleep during the middle of the afternoon; months later all the women capable of having children give birth to sinister blond tots with penetrating eyes and the ability to communicate telepathically. Brunette children were given blond wigs to get a striking contrast for black-and-white cinematographer Geoffry Faithfull, and the young actors give skin-crawling perfomances as the little monsters with unblinking stares. Shun the 1963 sequel Children Of The Damned and John Carpenter's 1995 remake with Kirstie Alley.
Director: Wolf Rilla Cast: George Sanders, Barbara Shelley

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CULT MOVIE:THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE(1974)

Real-life killer Ed Gein was the inspiration for Jame Gumb in Silence Of The Lambs, Norman Bates in Psycho, and (here) Leatherface--a member of a srange family who slice and dice a group of travellers who make the mistake of coming near their Texan farm. Not as scary or gruesome now as it seemed at the time, this was nonetheless refused a certificate by the British Board of Film Classification and only allowed an uncut release in the UK in 2000. Perhaps the censors' problem with the film--apart from a long scene near the end when the surviving girl is chased, or perhaps the theme of cannibalism--is that there is no explanation for the attacks. A terrific exercise in terror, and one that should be played to all teenagers and young adults planning a road trip for their summer holidays.
Director: Tobe Hooper Cast: Marilyn Burns, Gunnar Hansen

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CULT MOVIE:BLOOD FEAST(1963)

Herschell Gordon Lewis has been justly dubbed the Godfather of Gore for creating the cellyloid equivalent of the French theatrical form grand guignol.Blood Feast is his most notable (and notorious) creation.A ludicrously OTT fable of sacrificial slaughter, cannibalism and violent death, it centres around the murderous mission of psychotic Egyptian cateter/high priest Faud Ramses (Arnold).Hired to sypply an exotic banquet, Ramses takes the hacking out the vital organs of young girls as an offering to his Goddess (a shop-window mannequin) which he then serves up as an "Egyptian Feast" to the unsuspecting diners. Ramses gets his just desserts, however, by falling into a garbage truck compacter where he is crushed to a pulp. A terrible end that mirrors his acting ability.
Director:Herschell Gordon Lewis Cast:William Kerwin,Mal Arnold

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CULT MOVIE:THE SHINING(1980)

The best adaptation of a Stephen King book is actually a miniseries (The Stand), but The Shining is the most memorable movie based on one of his horror novels. Devoted fans were upset that the ending was changed, but director Kubrick brings his own charm and foibles--and the jaw-dropping tracking shot of the boy on the tricycle-- to this psychological horror that is essentially a haunted house movie of the first degree.Nicholson chews up the scenery as Jack Torrance,who becomes caretaker of the remote Overlook Hotel during the winter months when it's closed and cut off from the rest of civilisation by snow drifts; Duvall is the wife who goes through hell when he begins to lose his marbles.Most impressive of all, however, is six-year-old Danny Lloyd as their son who has the gift of "shining" (clairvoyance).Legend has it that Kubrick kept a carefull eye on Lloyd so he didn't realise he was involved in the making of a horror movie until a few years later(Lloyd didn't get bitten by the acting bug: he is now a science teacher).
Director:Stanley Kubrick Cast:Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall

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CULT MOVIE:THE WICKERMAN(1973)

A horror fantasy classic that plays on what we've always feared about people living on remote islands.Edward Woodward  is the Christian policeman who's investigating the disappearance of a girl on the Scottish island of Summerisle.He arrives to find the islanders have strange rituals and different stories about what happened to the girl.Beautifully written by Anthony Shaffer ("You'll simply never understand the true nature of sacrifice") and tautly directed by Hardy, this has stood the test of time thanks to a terrific twist and fine performances from Woodward and Christopher Lee as the island's leader, Lord Summerisle.Atmospheric and unforgettable,although usually only available in an 85-minute version(the original was 105minutes).
Director: Robin Hardy Cast:Edward Woodward,Britt Ekland

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CULT MOVIE:EL BARON DEL TERROR(1962)

Probably the weirdest and most disturbing horror movie ever created.Made in Mexico on a shoestring budget, El Baron Del Terror tells the grisly tale of an evil baron (Salazar) from a few centuries back who is reincarnated and,riding on a meteor, returns from outer space as a brain-eating monster with an enormous forked tongue.He uses this gruesome appendage on his unsuspecting dinner-guest victims,first killing them with a campy kiss before scooping out their grey matter and gulping it down.What the creature can't manage sitting is saved in a secret cupboard for seconds.The hallucinatory feeling that one experiences while watching this movie is certainly hard to shake off.And here's a fascinated fact: cult rock musician Captain Beefheart (aka Don Van Vliet) paid lyrical homage to El Baron Del Terror in a song called Debra Kadabra,which he co-wrote with Frank Zappa for the Bongo Fury akbum(1975)
Director:Chano Urueta Cast:Abel Salazar,Ariadna Welter.

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