Top 5: Movie monsters

1) Hannibal Lecter (Silence of the Lambs) – Okay I know! He’s only human but definitely deserves a special mention. In my opinion there is nothing more terrifying than a psychopath criminal who wants to eat you, but somehow looks like the sort of guy your desperately lonely mother would bring home as your ‘new father’. Talk about awkward atmosphere at the dinner table. ‘More liver anyone?’

2) The Infected (28 days later) – Ah Danny Boyle, you have given us so much! Slumdog millionaires, incontinent crack heads, and most of all, ‘Rage’. The beautiful little virus that combines the best of Tourette’s syndrome with rabies, showing us that zombies need not be the unbearably slow, flesh-craving OAPs of Land of the Dead.

3) The Cave Dwellers (The Descent) – Lots of people are afraid of going into caves. Some people are claustrophobic, others afraid of the dark. But most of the time it’s because there is a grotesque race of albino humanoids with a taste for flesh just waiting in the darkness.

4) Jaws (Jaws) – Torpedoes are scary. Torpedoes with teeth are shit scary. What about a 25ft killer shark with its own tense background music and a taste for anything that happens to be under water, or even just slightly wet for that matter? Yeah that’s pretty damn scary too! Warning; a bigger boat may be required.

5) The Alien (Alien) – Never ignore Sigourney Weaver if you value the lives of your colleagues and/or cat. As if having a giant spider attached to your face with its penis down your throat wasn’t bad enough, your chest will probably burst open at the worst moment, possible producing a terrifying dot on a radar scanner that will stop at nothing to eat you with its deadly tongue.

David Pettifer