8. Carrie (1976)

The American high school might be my favourite setting for horror films, for all sorts of reasons. Obviously there are going to be sexually attractive actors playing much younger than their real age, which is always fun. I love the idea of a mundane environment being wrecked by evil monsters. But even more than this, I enjoy the peculiar love/hate relationship that Americans seems to have with their school system. There are always bullying jocks, weak teachers, mean slutty girls and put-upon nerds and outcasts. Nobody ever seems to learn anything: they’re too busy being beaten up in the showers. Carrie is one of my ultimate school films, but it has the massive added attraction of a demented religious mother and a girl with unfortunate superpowers. Everyone knows this film by heart, so there’s no point in going over what happens – but God, the set-pieces are so good and Brian De Palma squeezes every last drop of nastiness out of an already grisly story. Like everyone I love the bucket-of-blood sequence and all that follows, but my favourite bit is when Carrie uses the kitchen utensils to fix her mother; it’s such an audacious attack on religious/family values that even now, all these years on, it gives me goosepimples. The final moment of the film may be overfamiliar, but God it packed a punch in the old days of audiences in dark cinemas