Joe Dante has forgotten more about movies than most of us will ever know. He directed his first two features for Roger Corman’s New World Pictures: ‘Hollywood Boulevard’ and the horror classic ‘Piranha’. Both are ripe with the sense of fun that runs through all his work, from bloody werewolf satire ‘The Howling’ to ‘Gremlins’, a horror movie for all the family.

1. The Innocents (Jack Clayton, 1961)

2. The Devil and Daniel Webster (William Dieterle, 1941)

3. Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale, 1935)

4. Night of the Demon (Jacques Tourneur, 1957)

5. The Body Snatcher (Robert Wise, 1945)

6. The Wolf Man (George Waggner, 1941)

7. The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955)

8. Lisa and the Devil (Mario Bava, Alfredo Leone, 1974)

9. Dracula (Terence Fisher, 1958)

10. Eyes Without a Face (Georges Franju, 1959)

‘Ask me tomorrow and I’d list ten different titles. With all due respect to “The Haunting”, Jack Clayton’s multi-layered Henry James adaptation, “The Innocents”, is the finest ghost story movie, period. “The Devil and Daniel Webster” is a film maudit for sure. A poetic adaptation of Stephen Vincent Benet’s fable, it features the greatest of all Mr Scratches, Walter Huston. Whether you’re in the show-the-demon or don’t show-the-demon camp, “The Night of the Demon” (or “Curse of” in the US), Jacques Tourneur’s beautiful masterpiece, proves he learned a lot from Val Lewton. It’s one of the smartest and most atmospheric of occult movies (as opposed to cult movies, which this also is). Charles Laughton’s only directorial effort “Night of the Hunter” is an American Gothic nightmare and certainly the most terrifying film I saw as a child. Its critical and commercial failure robbed the world of any subsequent Laughtonian exercises in expressionistic terror.’