6. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
With the absolutely dreadful remake out in cinemas at the moment, it seems like an appropriate time to look back fondly at Tobe Hooper's scintillating 1974 masterpiece. Now a fairly familiar narrative set up, a group of teenagers set off on a trip, when they pick up an insane hitchhiker on the way things start to take a turn for the worse. Eventually they find themselves in the home of Leatherface and his cannibalistic family who are eyeing them up as a prospective dinner. Aside from the relative predictability of the plot, the film's set design and cinematic style are superb in creating and sustaining a tone of discomfort. The sequence which sees the grave dodging grandfather of the family attempting to bludgeon a young girl's head in stands out as a particularly unnerving scene. The movie was banned outright in many countries and many cinemas stopped screening the film entirely due to the explicit violence contained therein. At the time of its release The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was the highest grossing independent feature ever, grossing $ 30 million at the domestic box office from a very small $ 300, 000 budget. This, on top of the fact that the image of Leatherface swinging his chainsaw around is one of the most iconic moments of cinema's history, render this film not just one of the most infamous banned movies of all time, but one of the most infamous movies of all time.