5. Superman (1978) & Superman 2 (1980)
What's the scariest thing in Superman? Is it Gene Wilder's wigs? Jimmy Olsen's bow-tie? For me it's a spinning plate of glass that can trap you for eternity, leaving you looking like the cover of Bohemian Rhapsody. Yep, the good old Phantom Zone, the inescapable iPad of its time. A brilliant piece of minimalist design, the idea of being trapped in a bit of uber-thin double glazing, furiously hammering on the glass like a drunk who's forgotten his keys, totally freaked me out as a kid. And the thought of being crammed in with one of the best film lunatics of all time - Terence Stamp's Zod - kept me awake many nights , especially if he was going to lapse into
that cockney voice that he does when he taunts Superman. I'm not ashamed to admit that the Phantom Zone sometimes had me drawing the curtains extra tight to make sure the window wasn't going to come alive and get me. I did it last night in fact (it's really starting to annoy the wife). And the clincher? The fact that the only thing that could get you out was an atom bomb blast. Lovely, the choice of perpetual entombment or nuclear destruction, how much grimmer do you want?