An Antarctic research team become the unwitting hosts of a body-invading alien in John Carpenter's gore-drenched remake of the 1950s B-movie. The isolated location means that tension mounts as more and more of the team are infected. By the time that Kirt Russell is left to fight for the fate of mankind one-on-one with the creature, your nerves will have been shredded. There are scenes in this film that will stay with you forever – a husky dog, which mutates and a man's stomach, which turns into a mouth, and then bites off someone's arms are particularly scary. The Thing has gone on to become as influential as Alien for its blend of action, sci-fi and chilling horror. Read our review  |  Buy the DVD

Gore-fest in which the dead rise up from their Caribbean hide-away and take over New York City. Exactly what you'd expect from the classy title. There is something just wonderful about the Italians' filmmaker's attitude to horror. Little bothered by political correctness, good taste or the necessity to get past stuffy censors, they just go for the essentials, and if some good action gets in the way of the plot, so be it. It must have been proud to be singled out as a video nasty by the Video Recordings Act in the 1980s.

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Kubrick's controversial and deeply ironic black comedy stars James Mason as a middle-aged professor obsessed with a precociously sexual minor. In filming a book derided at the time as paedophiliac pornography, Kubrick put both his artistic and commercial reputation on the line, but the result is a sophisticated and moving tragi-comedy riddled with queasy wit. Incredible performances and Kubrick's meticulous attention to detail ensures that Lolita remains the definitive depiction of tragic transgression.

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Zombie master George A Romero rounds off his classic trilogy with a typically understated gore fest. Zombies, now in the ascendant, outnumber humans by 400,000 to one. A group of grotesque scientists (protected by an edgy military) desperately try to find an antidote to the nightmare, experimenting on captured creatures, hoping to subdue them. Work out your own historical or social analogy of that!

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Even by his high standards, the column inches dedicated to David Cronenberg's adaptation of JG Ballard's tale of autophilia were notable. Agitation from the usual reactionary suspects came in response to the film's provocative deviance - in the form of fetishising car crashes and turning them into auto-erotic experiences. Cinema and automobiles were born in the same year - 1897 – and so it's fitting that Cronenberg managed to find a way to unite the two. The media storm surrounding Crash failed to comprehend the film's power. People driving themselves to destruction in cars, isn't that rather fitting?

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