Not sure where to start? Having trouble decided between Jack Nicholson's portrayal of a writer-turned-haunted-hotel-custodian-turned-slasher in The Shining and Robert De Niro's portrayal of an ex-con psychopath with a grudge in Cape Fear?

Fear not! British movie magazine Total Film recently conducted a poll to find out what movie fans thought were the greatest horror films of all time. Topping the poll was the original 1974 movie The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The most chilling thing about this movie is that it's based on the real life chainsaw-toting exploits of serial killer Ed Guin. Little wonder this movie rated No. 1. The film follows five teenagers on a car trip, who pick up a creepy hitchhiker and then wind up at a farmhouse with a family of cannibals who, to quote one reviewer, "make up in power tools what they lack in social skills".

The remaining movies in the Top 10 were Halloween (1978), Suspiria (1977), Dawn of the Dead (1978), The Shining (1980), Psycho (1960), The Wicker Man (1973), Rosemary's Baby (1968), Don't Look Now (1973) and Cannibal Holocaust (1980).

Don't assume that a movie needs an unhinged serial killer armed with assorted cutlery to be scary. Sometimes all it takes is a hungry bunny.

In Night of the Lepus (1972) a rancher gets distressed when "mongrel" rabbits are taking over his property. Naturally, a zoologist is called in and in an effort to disrupt the rabbits' reproduction, he injects them with hormones and genetically mutated blood. Before you can say "myxomatosis" there are giant killer rabbits hopping around. Interestingly, this movie was adapted from a novel called Year of the Angry Rabbit - a slight understatement considering one of the rabbits eats a whole cow.

Not into killer rabbits? How about sea monsters? According to the folks at mostersagogo.com, The Horror of Party Beach features large blood-drinking mutant sea monsters which, for whatever reason, seem to have hot dogs in their mouths. Anyway, the great thing about this horror flick is that it was billed as the "first horror monster musical" and in-between all the killing and blood-drinking, it featured six songs including The Zombie Stomp.

Then there's Dark Water, which is in cinemas now and has been dubbed, "the year's creepiest, most unsettling thriller". Starring Jennifer Connolly, it centres on a single mother who, with her five-year-old daughter, moves into a dilapidated house and finds herself terrorised by - wait for it - rising damp. That's right. Sometimes, with the right lighting and some suspenseful music, even a puddle is menacing.

The real question is why are we all so obsessed with horror movies in the first place? In an interview with USAweekend.com, director Wes Craven explained why audiences can't get enough of horror films.

"We enjoy things that are scary in a safe way," says Craven, who is famous for Nightmare on Elm Street, the Scream trilogy and Cursed. "We're surrounded in our minds, and sometimes in reality, by things that are really scary, that really can hurt us. We can be stalked by somebody. Our bodies can be attacked by a germ. We can get hit by a bus. One of the ways to deal with it in a way that's relieving - and therefore funny or fun - is to go through it in a situation where you know you're going to come out safe in the end."