9 Under-rated Horror Masterpieces By Directors You Love

Metal-fuelled romp Shocker sees Wes Craven, usually so serious, cut loose and have a little fun. It's more bombastic than his entries in the Nightmare on Elm Street series, and it's wilder and more confident than his rough and ready grindhouse classics like The Hills Have Eyes or Last House on the Left.

Built around an unhinged central performance by Mitch Pileggi, Shocker follows the life, death and afterlife of Horace Pinker, a brutal serial killer who gains the ability to murder from beyond the grave by inhabiting TV signals.

If you think that's goofy, well, you're right. But it's also tremendously enjoyable.

Craven's work in the 1980s and 1990s was inevitably compared to the bloated franchise that grew out of his creation of Freddy Krueger. Shocker explores many of the same ideas and themes as the Nightmare sequels, but has dream sequences, scares, and action scenes that are superior to anything in the increasingly lame later Nightmare movies, not to mention a sense of humour that doesn't just rely on brainless one-liners.

Although it has a wretchedly low score on Rotten Tomatoes - just 24% - Shocker is definitely worth a watch.