It might be hard to believe it today, but this tale of youth rebellion starring Marlon Brando was actually banned in the UK in 1954. Brando stars as Johnny Strabler (he also narrates), the leader of the biker gang Black Rebels, taking over a town for a day and inciting confrontations with the locals. Johnny falls for the Sheriff's daughter, Kathie (Mary Murphy), but the ensuing promise of peace is short-lived, for soon a rival gang, headed by Chino (Lee Marvin), rides into town. Tame by today's standards, but it caused moral panic in Britain on its release.

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Dario Argento's brutal horror film follows the unfortunate demise of Rose Elliot, a young poet who discovers that her New York opponent belongs to the Three Mothers witches coven. Inferno boasts some stunning set pieces, such as the scene where Rose goes swimming in the flooded basement, and a man being eaten alive by rats. What the plot lacks in cohesion Argento more than compensates for with his highly inventive use of colour and his stomach-churning visual aesthetic.

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Joe Spinell stars as social misfit Frank Zito who, abused by his mother as a child, grows up to collect the bloody scalps of New York women. By day he lives in a slum basement room with only shop window mannequins, dressed in severed scalps, for company. By night he prowls the streets of New York on a killing spree. Maniac set a rarely equalled standard for slasher films and helped define a decade of seedy cinema in the 1990s.

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Gérard Depardieu begins an affair with a professional dominatrix, or maîtresse, who keeps a dungeon below stairs to entertain her masochistic clients, in this comic tale of transgression and sexual-emotional entanglement. But can he accept his lover's job, fulfilling the fantasies of perverted, wealthy men? Even though the BBFC refused to give this film a certificate in 1976, they admitted that it was "an extraordinary film, both in theme and execution."

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A quintessential, low-budget, lesbian rich piece of Eurotika from the Pope Of Perversion himself, director Jose Benazeraf. Tormented by incestuous fantasies, a woman makes love to her brother's wife and then kills herself. This bizarre piece of 1970s artporn defies analysis, but does feature rather a lot of the wonderful Elizabeth Tessier.

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