Sleepers and shockers

MARQUEE

I know it's a little late in the year to revive the Halloween spirit, but if you're a DVD buff winter is always a good time to catch up with some genuinely scary films "" a double shiver being good for the liver and so on.

So here's a personal list of must-have shockers. I've tried to avoid the titles everyone already knows about (The Exorcist, The Omen, Nightmare on Elm Street etc) in favour of cult films (some of which aren't horror movies in the most conventional sense).

But nor are these so obscure that you won't find them in your preferred bootleg haven.

Eraserhead and The Elephant Man (a double bill)
David Lynch is one of the most distinctive American (okay, technically Canadian) directors of the last 30 years and these are two of his early works, both shot in stunning black and white.

Re-watching Eraserhead a few days ago, I realised how often we overuse words like "unsettling" or "bizarre" when describing even moderately unusual movies.

This is a truly unsettling film "" one that stealthily works its way into your subconscious, so that you'll find bits and pieces of it coming back to haunt you long after you thought you'd forgotten them.

Set in a world that could either be a dystopic future or pure nightmare, it seems to tell a relatively straightforward story "" earnest young man (with a very weird hairstyle, even by 1970s standards) finds he's got his girlfriend pregnant, marries her and tries to deal with this new life "" but tells it so strangely that you can never be sure exactly what is going on.

The soundtrack (industrial noises, all whirrs, hisses and clangs; the continuous hum of machinery) adds to the effect, and some of the surreal imagery recalls the Bunuel-Dali collaborations.

The Elephant Man is the true story of the deformed John Merrick, who was treated as a figure of the grotesque, a freakish public attraction, in 1880s London.

The real horror here lies not in Merrick's deformity (though that's always good for a shudder or two "" the makeup won a special Oscar) but in the way he becomes a pawn in the hands of a cold, unfeeling society.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: First of all, this isn't anywhere as gruesome as its title and its reputation suggest. That said, it is a great title (you don't agree? Why are you still reading this column?) and this is a great film of the macabre.

Teenagers travelling through the lonely American hinterland (always a good horror premise) pick up an oddball hitchhiker and shortly afterwards stumble on a cannibalistic family, including the chainsaw-wielding Leatherface.

This movie was based (very loosely) on the real-life Ed Gein murders in Nebraska in the 1950s, but in the final analysis it's a unique piece of work. However, numerous sequels and rip-offs have diluted its impact slightly.

Dawn of the Dead: George Romero's 1968 Night of the Living Dead was the original modern zombie movie, filmed on a low budget, and in atmospheric black-and-white.

It's still deservedly a cult classic but this sequel, made in 1979, is a superior film "" full of genuine chills and a brilliant dig at the American consumerist culture of the 1970s. Zombies lurching around a shopping mall "" movie metaphors don't get much better!

jaiarjun@yahoo.com