griggs's - Horror Films (Available on Cinema Paradiso) Everyone Should Watch Once List

When health official Elizabeth Driscoll (Brooke Adams) notices that her lover has become strangely distant, this sets in train a series of shocking discoveries that sees both her and colleague Matthew Bennell (Donald Sutherland) fleeing for their lives to the sound of ear-piercing alien screams.

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When Ellen, the matriarch of the Graham family, passes away, her daughter Annie (Toni Colette) and her husband (Gabriel Byrne) and their two children begin to unravel cryptic and increasingly terrifying secrets about their ancestry.

The more they discover, the more they find themselves trying to outrun the sinister fate they seem to have inherited.

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When the seaside community of Amity finds itself under attack by a dangerous great white shark, the town's chief of police (Roy Scheider), a young marine biologist (Richard Dreyfuss) and a grizzled shark hunter (Robert Shaw) embark on a desperate quest to destroy the beast before it strikes again.

Featuring an unforgettable score that evokes pure terror, 'Jaws' remains one of the most influential and gripping adventures in motion picture history.

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Browning, a former circus contortionist, cast reai-life sideshow professionals.

A living torso who, nimbly fights his own cigarette despite having no arms or legs, microcephalics (whom the film calls "pinheads")-they and others play the big-top troupers who inflict a terrible revenge on a trapeze artist who treats them as subhumans.

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If you think Lionel seems o.k.. then you haven't met his family! Mother's boy Lionel Cosgrove is 25 and has never been kissed. Then, one fateful day in 1957, Lionel's uneventful existence changes forever.

Drawn to the lovely Paquita, a young Spanish girl from the local corner shop, the couple plan a tryst at the nearby zoo. Thinking themselves alone at last, the young lovers are unaware that their every move is being observed from the bushes by Lionel's possessive Mum. Sneaking close, Mum stumbles against a cage, which contains a vicious Sumatran Rat monkey, which duly sinks its toxic fangs deep into her flesh. When the strange wound transforms into putrefying virus, Lionel and the unwitting Paquita are sent spiralling into an endless nightmare.

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Light years from Disney, Juraj Herz's singular adaptation of the classic tale is an altogether darker interpretation.

The film follows the familiar story - innocent girl presents herself as sacrifice to a cursed man-beast hiding in exile, and learns to live with and eventually even love her captor - but it is transformed into something entirely more twisted and terrifying in Juraj Herz's macabre re-imagining. Aided by wonderful sets and costume design, superb cinematography and evocative score, this is a fairy-tale turned horror-story from Czechoslovak cinemas most wryly subversive artist.

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Jessica Harper stars as Suzy Banyon, a young American ballet dancer who arrives at a prestigious European dance academy run by the mysterious Madame Blanc (Joan Bennett) and Miss Tanner (Alida Valli).

But when a series of bizarre incidents and horrific crimes turn the school into a waking nightmare of the damned, Suzy must escape the academy's unspeakable secret of supernatural evil.

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The unforgettable original version of acclaimed filmmaker Michael Haneke's classic exploration of screen violence is an uncompromising, sometimes uncomfortable, but never less than compelling experience.

Arriving at their remote lakeside holiday home, a middle class family are alarmed by the unexpected arrival of two young men who soon begin to subject them to a twisted and horrifying ordeal of terror. With characteristic mastery, Haneke turns the conventions of the thriller genre upside down and, directly challenges the expectations of his audience, forcing viewers to question the complacency with which they receive images of casual violence in contemporary cinema.

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One night, musician Marcus Daly (David Hemmings), looking up from the street below, witnesses the brutal axe murder of a woman in her apartment. Racing to the scene, Marcus just manages to miss the perpetrator...

or does he? As he takes on the role of amateur sleuth, Marcus finds himself ensnared in a bizarre web of murder and mystery where nothing is what it seems...

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Now two are left: Susy, recently blinded and still learning how to live in a sighted world, and Roat, a psychopathic killer. Roat wants a heroin-stuffed doll he thinks Susy has. All Susy wants is to survive.

Dim the lights, check the door's chain lock, and brace yourself for a chiller as polished as the steel of Roat's blade.

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Carol (Catherine Deneuve), a young French girl living in Sixties' London, is repelled, yet fascinated by men. Her radiant beauty attracts the opposite sex, but she shrinks from their advances.

Her days are spent in an intensely feminine atmosphere: working in a beauty salon, and clinging to her sister Helen (Yvonne Furneaux) for love. Things start to unwind however when Helen goes away with her married boyfriend (Ian Hendry). As Carol incarcerates herself in her sinister, shadowy flat, men begin to invade her dreams night and day, mixing her terror with delight as bizarre hallucinations take hold of her mind. The walls start to crack, literally, before her eyes. Finally, racked and depraved through her delirium, she is left with only one instinct towards the men who invade her life - that of a killer...

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One of the most visually striking of all the later silent films, 'The Man Who Laughs' reunites German Expressionism director Paul Leni and cinematographer Gilbert Warrenton from their horror hit the previous year, 'The Cat and the Canary' (1927).

Both films are often considered to be among the earliest works of legendary horror classics from Universal Studios, yet the undeniably eerie 'The Man Who Laughs' is more accurately described as a Gothic melodrama. However, its influence on the genre and the intensity of the imagery - art director Charles Hall and makeup genius Jack Pierce would go on to define the look of those 1930's Universal horror landmarks - have redefined it as an early horror classic, bolstered by one of the most memorable performances of the period. Adapted from the Victor Hugo novel, 'The Man Who Laughs' is Gwynplaine (an extraordinary Conrad Veidt), a carnival sideshow performer in 17th-century England, his face mutilated into a permanent, ghoulish grin by his executed father's royal court enemies. Gwynplaine struggles through life with the blind Dea (Phantom of the Opera's Mary Philbin) as his companion - though she is unable to see it, his disfigurement still causes Gwynplaine to believe he is unworthy of her love. But when his proper royal lineage becomes known by Queen Anne, Gwynplaine must choose between regaining a life of privilege, or embracing a new life of freedom with Dea. The startling makeup on Veidt was the acknowledged direct inspiration for The Joker in the 1940 Batman comic that introduced the character, and film versions of The Joker have been even more specific in their references to Leni's film. While 'The Man Who Laughs' contains powerful elements of tragedy, doomed romance, and even swashbuckling swordplay, its influence on horror cinema is most pronounced. Leni died suddenly at the age of 44 a year after this film (with Veidt also unexpectedly passing away too soon in 1943), and 'The Man Who Laughs' endures as one of the most haunting and stylish American silent films, made just as that era was coming to a close.

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"Witchhammer" transforms the horrific tale of a notorious 17th Century witch trial into a powerful allegory of life under totalitarian rule.

In a small Czech village, an investigation into a simple superstition unleashes a tide of hysteria and cruelty, as Inquisitors exorcise their own greed and lust through gruesome torture and execution. The beautiful, stark cinematography of Witchhammer echoes both Bergman and Dreyer, and like Ken Russell's The Devils and Michael Reeves' Witchfinder General, the film transcends horror to create a chilling political fable, revealing power to be the ultimate weapon of evil.

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When Angela begins researching her thesis on violence in TV and Cinema she enlists the help of her tutor, Figueroa, who searches through the University library for violent material for her to watch.

Upon finding Figueroa dead in the University projection room, Angela takes the tape he has been viewing and, too shocked to watch what she glimpses of it, forces herself to play it back with the contrast turned down, only allowing her to hear the bloodcurdling screams that fill the soundtrack. When a fellow student, Chema, persuades her to view the tape properly, they discover the horrifying truth of what she has in her possession: a "snuff" movie.

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The latest film from visionary director David Lynch, 'Island Empire' is a labyrinth mystery which reunites him with Laura Dern, star of his earlier masterpieces 'Blue Velvet' and 'Wild at Heart'.

Dern plays Nikki Grace, an actress preparing for her biggest role yet; a Hollywood movie from an acclaimed director (Played by Jeremy Irons) opposite an amorous leading man (Justin Theroux), but when she finds herself falling for her co-star, she realizes that her life is beginning to mimic the fictional film that they're shooting, adding to her confusion is the revelation that the current film is a remake of a doomed polish production, 47, which was never finished due to an unspeakable tragedy.