Invasion of the Body Snatchers is considered one of the best science fiction films of the 1950s and 1960s. The classic paranoid thriller was widely interpreted as a criticism of the McCarthy era, which was characterised by anti-Communist witch-hunts and fear of the dreaded blacklist. Some hailed it as an attack on the oppressive power of government as Big Brother. However viewers interpret it, this original 1956 version of Invaders of the Body Snatchers (based on Jack Finney's serialised novel The Body Snatchers) remains a milestone movie in its genre, directed by Don Siegel with an inventive intensity that continues to pack an entertaining wallop. Dr. Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy) is unconcerned when the townsfolk accuse their loved ones of acting like emotionless impostors. But soon the evidence is overwhelming-Santa Mira has been invaded by alien "pods", which are capable of replicating humans and taking possession of their identities. It's up to McCarthy to spread the word of warning, battling the alien invasion at the risk of his own life. Look closely and you'll find future director Sam Peckinpah (an uncredited cowriter of this film) making a cameo appearance as a meter reader! -Jeff Shannon.

Loch Ness is the setting of this very traditional 1975 Doctor Who monster story, even though it was actually filmed in southern England with local atmosphere provided by Scottish character actor Angus Lennie (The Great Escape). The Doctor (Tom Baker) is called in to investigate a mystery involving the destruction of several oil rigs and it's not too long before the Loch Ness Monster is revealed as the culprit. But it's actually just a biomechanical weapon being manipulated by the evil Zygons who have been living at the bottom of the Loch plotting world domination. The organically designed sets and monsters are very striking, as are the visual effects with one notable exception: Really Big Creatures have always been a bane for the series with its limited budget to pull off and this story's reliance on an obvious puppet monster, especially during the climax, diminishes its impact. But there is still much to relish, particularly the dialogue of writer Robert Banks Stewart (who would go on to create the long-running BBC series Bergerac) that provides a number of gems including the Doctor admonishing the Zygons that if they succeed in their plans, "you'll have to come out on the balcony sometimes and wave a tentacle". With much derring-do, the Doctor saves the day as usual but not before four exciting episodes of fun and action. -Ryan K. Johnson.

It took a long time for Hammer's 1958 version of Dracula to turn into a franchise, and it was ten years before Dracula Has Risen From the Grave, the third film in the series, continued where Dracula-Prince of Darkness (1965) left off. The vampire count is accidentally resurrected by the blood of a priest when Monsignor Muller (the excellent Rupert Davies replacing Peter Cushing, whose Professor Van Helsing is absent) exorcises Castle Dracula. The Lord of the Undead soon has the priest under his power, and sets about claiming the Monsignor's niece Maria (Veronica Carlson) as his bride. Maria is in love with Paul (Barry Andrews), more a 60's English "angry young man" than a Victorian hero, yet only he can save the day, the film contrasting his atheism against much Catholicism. Working as a taut, Gothic thriller, the intensity is maintained to a large degree by James Barnard's excellent score and, of course, by Christopher Lee's magnetic interpretation of Count Dracula. The eroticism is stronger than in previous Hammer Draculas, the palpably electric blood-lust marking the movie as a high-point before the series' gradual decline, beginning with Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970). -Gary S. Dalkin.

This is the first (it dates from 1957) of the many films which were to identify Christopher Lee with Bram Stoker's undead anti-hero and, in many ways, it remains the best. Tied reasonably closely to that of Stoker's novel, the plot sees the English academic Jonathan Harker (Van Eyssen) entering the employ of Dracula, secretly aware that the nobleman is a vampire and with every intention of destroying him. Sadly, it doesn't work out and Harker, in one of the film's several gentle structural conceits, becomes Dracula's servant in more senses than one, prompting one Doctor Van Helsing (Peter Cushing, of course) to investigate his disappearance. The rest, of course, is a slightly wobbly version of history. This is the only film of the series to retain its roots in theatrical melodrama-the clipped, "ack-torly" exchanges between Lee and Van Eyssen are a joy-but it remains gripping in spite, or because of that. Best of all, it allows Lee to present Dracula as a real character-a haunted, tragic figure, impatient with the mortal world and its trivia-before camp tomfoolery, likeable enough in its own way, came to dominate the series. -Roger Thomas.

A vengeful witch and her fiendish servant return from the grave and begin a bloody campaign to possess the body of the witch's beautiful look-alike descendant. Only the girl's brother and a handsome doctor stand in her way.

Certain to remain one of the greatest haunted-house movies ever made, Robert Wise's The Haunting (1963) is antithetical to all the gory horror films of subsequent decades, because its considerable frights remain implicitly rooted in the viewer's sensitivity to abject fear. A classic spook-fest based on Shirley Jackson's novel The Haunting of Hill House (which also inspired the 1999 remake directed by Jan de Bont), the film begins with a prologue that concisely establishes the dark history of Hill House, a massive New England mansion (actually filmed in England) that will play host to four daring guests determined to investigate-and hopefully debunk-the legacy of death and ghostly possession that has given the mansion its terrifying reputation. Consumed by guilt and grief over her mother's recent death and driven to adventure by her belief in the supernatural, Eleanor Vance (Julie Harris) is the most unstable-and therefore the most vulnerable-visitor to Hill House. She's invited there by anthropologist Dr. Markway (Richard Johnson), along with the bohemian lesbian Theodora (Claire Bloom), who has acute extra-sensory abilities, and glib playboy Luke Sanderson (Russ Tamblyn, from Wise's West Side Story), who will gladly inherit Hill House if it proves to be hospitable. Of course, the shadowy mansion is anything but welcoming to its unwanted intruders. Strange noises, from muffled wails to deafening pounding, set the stage for even scarier occurrences, including a door that appears to breathe (with a slowly turning doorknob that's almost unbearably suspenseful), unexplained writing on walls, and a delicate spiral staircase that seems to have a life of its own. The genius of The Haunting lies in the restraint of Wise and screenwriter Nelson Gidding, who elicit almost all of the film's mounting terror from the psychology of its characters-particularly Eleanor, whose grip on sanity grows increasingly tenuous. The presence of lurking spirits relies heavily on the power of suggestion (likewise the cautious handling of Theodora's attraction to Eleanor) and the film's use of sound is more terrifying than anything Wise could have shown with his camera. Like Jack Clayton's 1961 chiller, The Innocents, The Haunting knows the value of planting the seeds of terror in the mind, as opposed to letting them blossom graphically on the screen. [+]

Fantastic Voyage is the original psychedelic inner-space adventure. When a brilliant scientist falls into a coma with an inoperable blood clot in the brain, a surgical team embarks on a top-secret journey to the centre of the mind in a high-tech military submarine shrunk to microbial dimensions. Stephen Boyd stars as a colourless commander sent to keep an eye on things (though his eyes stay mostly on shapely medical assistant Raquel Welch), while Donald Pleasance is suitably twitchy as the claustrophobic medical consultant. The science is shaky at best, but the imaginative spectacle is marvellous: scuba-diving surgeons battle white blood cells, tap the lungs to replenish the oxygen supply, and shoot the aorta like daredevil surfers. The film took home a well-deserved Oscar for Best Visual Effects. Director Richard Fleischer, who had previously turned Disney's 1954 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea into one of the most riveting submarine adventures of all time, creates a picture so taut with cold-war tensions and cloak-and-dagger secrecy that niggling scientific contradictions (such as, how do miniaturised humans breathe full-sized air molecules?) seem moot. -Sean Axmaker.