Psycho (1960)
An entire generation of women were put off showers for life by Alfred Hitchcock's grim horror yarn, which introduced a new level of violence to the screen by slicing and dicing a naked Janet Leigh halfway through the movie. (The blood, by the way, was chocolate sauce.) But there are many more scares in store thanks to Anthony Perkins' Norman Bates (it's always the quiet ones!) and his unseen mother's unfortunate habit of turning his motel into a mortuary.
Ring (1998)
Not the glossy Hollywood remake but the nerve-jangling Japanese original, a masterly exercise in mounting dread from director Hideo Nakata that will make you think twice the next time you pop down to your friendly local video store. A journalist investigates a deadly videotape with the power to kill anyone who watches it in seven days, knowing she and her son will become its next victims if she doesn't unlock its secret. Spooky.
Scream (1996)
Kudos to horror maestro Wes Craven, who brilliantly revived the genre with a tongue-in-cheek romp which mixes black humour with authentic scares. A masked lunatic hacks his way through the usual line-up of brainless teens, whose only hopes of survival depend on learning lessons from the slasher pictures of the past. "Do you like scary movies?" asks the killer. On this evidence, the answer would have to be yes.
The Shining (1980)
"Here's Johnny!" Jack Nicholson gives perhaps his most unhinged performance to date as the writer-cum-janitor driven slowly round the bend by the haunted hotel he shares with wife Shelley Duvall, psychic son Danny Lloyd and the ghosts of its former residents. Stanley Kubrick turns Stephen King's bestseller into a disconcerting saga of supernatural strangeness that ultimately explodes in an orgy of axe-wielding terror.
The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
"A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti..." Who else but Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter, the ultimate psycho gourmet? Jonathan Demme's multi-Oscar winner might be hijacked by Anthony Hopkins' remarkable performance, but it's still a highly polished chill ride that gives an all-too-plausible insight into the mind of a serial killer. Hopkins would return as Lecter in Hannibal and Red Dragon.
