In the history of the horror genre, Wes Craven's low-budget rape-revenge movie The Last House On The Left has long been revered as one of the nastiest of the Video Nasties, a film so depraved and immoral that it remained at the top of the British Board of Film Classification's banned list for 30 years. Teenagers Mari and Phyllis are abducted by a gang of vicious criminals, then tortured and killed. The twist comes when the killers stop off at Mari's parents house by accident, and her middle-class parents extra bloody revenge.

Read our review  |  Buy the DVD

A butter-lubricated sex scene made the film infamous, but Bernardo Bertolucci's movie is far more than just porn. Marlon Brando delivers an astonishing performance as Paul, a middle-aged man whose wife has committed suicide – Bertolucci coaxing him in to revealing far more of his inner self than he would have liked. Brando begins a brutal affair with Maria Schneider, which, at his insistence, remains as impersonal as possible. The film was deemed an arthouse breakthrough on its release.

Read our review  |  Buy the DVD

Martin Scorsese's film about what Jesus really got up to irritated everyone from the Pope to Alvin Stardust. The thing that most upset believers initially - Christ's crucifixion fantasy about renouncing his divinity to live a normal life with Mary Magdalene - now plays like a superb recruitment advertisement for Christianity. It's incredible he liked mankind enough to give up any chance of marrying that nice Mary Magdalene and save himself from the cross. William Defoe gives a fine performance as Jesus, and even David Bowie turns up as Pontius Pilate.

Read our review  |  Read feature  |  Buy the DVD

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.

Read our review  |  Read feature  |  Buy the DVD