Reviews by Kyle Ellis

Played by: Joe Pilato

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Joe Pilato's blackhearted soldier is insane when we first meet him, and only spirals downwards from there, his raging bloodlust way more dangerous than any zombie. His comeuppance, yelling "CHOKE ON 'EMMMMMMM!'" at a group of zombies as they rip him in two and feast on his intestines, is iconic, influential and still not half of what the bastard deserves.

Played by: Gunnar Hansen

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The poster child of Tobe Hooper's horrifying original (and all the unfortunate sequels, remakes and remake prequels that followed), Leatherface is the sort of guy who gives DIY enthusiasts a bad name. A maniac of a manchild who, in the original at least, has a mask for every occasion (made out of the skin of former victims, a trait nicked from the real-life killer Ed Gein), Leatherface is the attack dog of the Sawyer family, looming out of the darkness to kill people with one blow of a hammer, hang others on hooks, and wave a chainsaw around in a manner that would frankly infuriate Tim The Toolman Taylor. Played with genuine menace by Gunnar Hansen, Leatherface was divested of much of his scariness in the subsequent sequels, but we'll always have Texas.

Played by: Robert Mitchum

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Robert Mitchum's preacher has 'love' tattooed on one hand, and 'hate' on the other, but there's never any doubt in Charles Laughton's superb directorial debut (and one-off) about which way Harry Powell leans. A cold-blooded killer who bashes more than the Bible, Powell is an implacable, unstoppable predecessor of characters like The Terminator, taking his sweet time to hunt down two cute kids who have run off with a bag of cash that he thinks should be his. Often seen in silhouette, Mitchum is never more chilling than in the sequence where he sings hymns with Lillian Gish's Rachel, as she stands guard over the children with a shotgun at her lap and God by her side.

Played by: Donald Pleasance

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"I met this six-year-old child, with this blank, pale, emotionless face, and the blackest eyes... the devil's eyes. I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up because I realized that what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply... evil." With that one statement, Donald Pleasance's psychiatrist, the man charged with finding out just what the hell is wrong with impassive killer Michael Myers, blows doctor-patient confidentiality out of the window. Later on, he blows Myers himself out of the window with six shots from a revolver, and hippocratic oath be damned. Sam Loomis is, of course, the only person who knows how dangerous Michael Myers can be, and so tracks him all the way from his escape from the lunatic asylum to Haddonfield, where he's fairly sure Michael is going to go loco once more. Pleasance, here starting a fruitful relationship with John Carpenter, is brilliant: part Basil Exposition, part hero, never unafraid to show that Loomis is utterly bricking it and, perhaps more importantly, that prolonged exposure to those blackest eyes, the devil's eyes, has driven Loomis more than a little bit mad himself.

Played by: Tobin Bell

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Walter White isn't the only cancer victim to break bad. When Tobin Bell's John Kramer is diagnosed with an inoperable tumour, he attempts to take his own life, but fails. In that moment, he becomes his very own Heisenberg as The Jigsaw Killer, a twisted genius who traps his victims in elaborate scenarios designed to make them appreciate the fact that they're alive - if they survive, of course. Kramer's curious moral code (look back at the films and you could even argue that he never directly kills anyone; his victims all contribute to their own downfall) makes him, by some distance, the most interesting screen monster since Freddy Krueger. It's a shame that Bell was relegated to flashback work for the last few instalments.

Played by: Robert Shaw

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Robert Shaw was a force of nature as a man, so it's only fitting that his most memorable screen role follows suit. Quint, the Ahab-a-like shark hunter who becomes obsessed with hunting down the Great White munching on tourists in Amity, has one of the most memorable entrances (nails down the blackboard) and exits (bitten in half, blood spurting from his nose in distressing fashion) in movie history. Inbetween, Quint is a roaring, raving maniac, singing old sea shanties and snarling for New England. And then comes the speech about the Indianapolis, the origins of which have been forever debated. But here's one thing that's incontrovertible: whoever wrote the words, Shaw says 'em with a gusto and a gravitas that tips Quint over from larger-than-life a-hole to tragic hero. Genius.

Played by: Mia Farrow

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An unforgettable Mia Farrow is the gentle soul driven to distraction and madness when she suspects that she's at the centre of a supernatural conspiracy. Of course, she's absolutely bang on about that, but the most disturbing moment in Roman Polanski's movie comes at the end when the conspiracy is revealed and Rosemary comes face-to-face and eye-to-lizardy-eye with her baby, the scion of Satan, and begins cooing like any devoted mother would.