The Universal cycle of horror movies created some of the most memorable monsters in the world. Between 1931 and 1948, iconic creatures of the night…

Scream & Scream Again was possibly the weirdest film ever to come out of Amicus

Avco-Embassy Pictures announced in 1979 that their next project would be the first in a two-picture deal (the second being Escape from New York) from the creator of Halloween, and that film’s title would be The Fog.

Even before it became a critical and commercial success on its original 3-D theatrical run, The Creature From The Black Lagoon was being groomed as the first (and only) Universal genre franchise in the wake of the monster-neutering Abbot and Costello cycle.

“Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.”  – Edgar Allan Poe

After three successful Dracula features, Hammer bring back everyone’s favourite blood-lusting vampire for a fourth instalment in Dracula Has Risen From The Grave (1968).

But surely a contender for worst ever has to be the mutant jellyfish /man creature (were-jelly?) from The Sting of Death. If you haven’t experienced the doubtful pleasure of this film do yourself a favour and track it down now!

The Thing From Another World is one of those handful of films I was exposed to at a tender age on late night TV. Along with Karloff’s Frankenstein, Them! and Dracula Has Risen From the Grave, to this day it still excites me to watch it and it takes me back to being an 11 year full of wonder at the images coming from our black and white TV!

Picture the scene: It’s a Friday morning sometime in the early 70s and I’m sat in school trying my hardest to look interested in a geography lesson. But it’s not ox-bow lakes and waterfalls that are on my young mind. All I can think of is the film that’s advertised on Tyne Tees TV at 10.30pm that night.

If you are ever in any doubt how big the creature is in The Giant Claw, don’t worry….every ten minutes or so one of the characters will tell you “It’s as big as a battleship”!