A film magazine polled its readers for the best horror films ever. Results below. The top five are from the 1970's (yes, I know, but The Shining was filmed in 1979 and released in 1980). I wouldn't have voted for Cannibal Holocaust, Psycho and The Shining. My top three (from that list) would be Rosemary's baby, Don't Look Now and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and my all-time top three would be The Exorcist, Frankenstein (the Boris Karloff one) and Rosemary's Baby. Newer horror films that I would vote for would be The Blair Witch Project, Saw and anything where city-types move to an old house in the country and get slaughtered by rednecks. I used to love/hate horror films when I was a nipper. Mum and Dad used to let me stay up late if they were going out and they often returned home to find every single light on in the house and me curled up on the couch with a pile of cushions acting as a barrier between the TV and myself. I was an impressionable youngster but couldn't help tuning in when a horror was on. I will never forget the night I watched the Hammer classic 'Theatre Of Blood' (Vincent Price as a crappy actor who decides to kill his critics in the manner of classic Shakespeare deaths) and the scene where he fried a woman's head under a salon hair dryer had me jumping up and down on my hands and knees on the sofa trying to tear my eyes off the screen but failing miserably. Luckily, nightmares were never a problem during my dark hours. Incidentally, it was nice to see the stage version of Theatre Of Blood this summer with Jim Broadbent hamming it up in the Vincent Price role.
Now that I'm a proper grown-up (un-raise those eyebrows you lot) the real horror films for me are stuff like Titanic, Spice World and Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy.

1. Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
2. Halloween (1978)
3. Suspiria (1977)
4. Dawn of the Dead (1978)
5. The Shining (1980)
6. Psycho (1960)
7. The Wicker Man (1973)
8. Rosemary's Baby (1968)
9. Don't Look Now (1973)
10. Cannibal Holocaust (1980)