The films

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Phase IV

Saul Bass's only feature. The ants are shot like a nature documentary and it is deeply strange.

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The Blood on Satan's Claw

Something is dug up in a field and the village children form a cult. One third of the unholy trinity.

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The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue

Zombies caused by an agricultural radiation device, shot in the Lake District. Much better than it sounds.

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Theatre of Blood

Vincent Price as a hammy actor murdering the critics who denied him an award, each death staged from Shakespeare.

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The House That Dripped Blood

Four stories tied to one house, written by Robert Bloch, with Christopher Lee and a very young Jon Pertwee joke.

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The Sentinel

A model moves into a Brooklyn brownstone that turns out to be the gateway to Hell, guarded by a blind priest.

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Thriller: A Cruel Picture

Banned outright in Sweden. The coldest film in this category and the one Kill Bill is built from.

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Burnt Offerings

A family rents a summer house that heals itself by consuming them. Karen Black, Oliver Reed and Bette Davis.

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Death Trap

Hooper's follow-up to Chain Saw, shot entirely on a sound stage lit in red. A hotel, a scythe and a crocodile.

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Martin

Romero's own favourite. A vampire film in which there may be no vampire, only a disturbed boy with razor blades.

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Prophecy

Mercury poisoning produces a mutant bear in the Maine woods, and it is angrier about logging than most activists.

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The Driller Killer

Ferrara's debut, and mostly a film about being broke in New York. The sleeve got it prosecuted.

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Twins of Evil

Peter Cushing as a witch-hunter who is worse than the vampires, and the Collinson twins were Playboy's first.

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Vampire Circus

A plague-quarantined village visited by a travelling circus, and it is the strangest film Hammer made.

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A Lizard in a Woman's Skin

Fulci's best giallo, a fever of LSD dreams and a murder that may not have happened.

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Faces of Death

A mondo compilation whose most famous scenes are staged. Sold as real and marketed on being banned.

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Flesh for Frankenstein

Shot in 3D with Udo Kier and a spleen. Warhol's name on it, Paul Morrissey's film.

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Torso

The giallo at its most slasher-like, and the last act is a genuine masterclass in silent suspense.

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The Abominable Dr. Phibes

Vincent Price murders the surgeons who let his wife die, each death based on the plagues of Egypt. A gorgeous, deranged art deco comedy.

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Valerie and Her Week of Wonders

A Czech surrealist film about a thirteen-year-old girl, vampires and menstruation, and it is not what that sounds like.

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Don't Torture a Duckling

Fulci's best film, and it is about a village killing the wrong person.

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Prisoner of the Cannibal God

Ursula Andress and Stacy Keach in New Guinea. Real animal deaths, which is why it stays notorious.

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Rabid

Cronenberg's second feature, with an experimental skin graft, a stinger in an armpit, and a plague across Montreal.

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What Have You Done to Solange?

The most upsetting giallo, and the one with an actual moral centre.

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Four Flies on Grey Velvet

The third of Argento's Animal Trilogy, and the least seen because it was legally locked away for decades.

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Shivers

Publicly funded, debated in the Canadian parliament, and filmed with complete clinical calm.

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The Brood

Cronenberg's divorce, filmed. The angriest thing he ever made and he has said so.

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The Cat o' Nine Tails

The middle of Argento's Animal Trilogy, and the one he liked least. A blind man and a reporter chase a killer.

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A Bay of Blood

The hinge between giallo and slasher. Friday the 13th Part 2 lifts two murders almost shot for shot.

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Piranha

Joe Dante's Jaws cash-in, written by John Sayles, and it is far smarter and funnier than it needed to be.

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Phantasm

A tall undertaker, a flying silver sphere, and a film that runs entirely on dream logic. Don Coscarelli was 23.

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The Devils

Ken Russell's best film, cut in every territory it has ever played, and still not properly released.

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Zombie Flesh Eaters

A zombie fights a shark. There is also an eye and a splinter. Fulci's most purely entertaining film.

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The Bird with the Crystal Plumage

Argento's debut, and the film that turned the giallo into an export industry.

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Deep Red

Argento's best. Goblin's score does half the work and is fully aware of it.

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I Spit on Your Grave

Ebert called it the worst film ever made. Clover argued the camera is with her throughout. Both cases are live.