I often joke to people that That Was A Bit Mental is a site where I review “shite ’80s horror films”, but that isn’t always the case. Sometimes they’re from the ’70s.

In all seriousness though, when I say “shite” I mean it in an affectionate way. “Shite” is how the more serious, professional film critics would describe most of the films I watch, but I adore them.

It can sometimes be tricky finding a diamond in the rough though, and as TWABM grows and the number of reviews increases it may become trickier for you, my dear reader, to come here and get a quick and easy suggestion on what to watch.

As well as this, because plenty of people now know me as a chap who loves horror movies, I get a lot of tweets and emails from people asking me to simply “recommend a good horror film to watch”.

Enter the TWABM Hall Of Fame, a list of every review that earned four, four and a half or – the rarest of rare – five stars on That Was A Bit Mental (yes, including the non-horror films). This is for anyone who doesn’t have time to click through my reviews and just wants to see which films I strongly recommend.

If you ever want to see the Hall Of Fame again in the future, just look up. It’s been added to the menu that runs along the top of the page. Meanwhile, if you’d like to see the WORST films on the site, head to the Hall Of Shame.

Naturally, clicking each title will take you to the full review so you can find out more. Enjoy!

FIVE STAR REVIEWS
(HORROR & NON-HORROR)

Alien (1979)
Mining ship lands on a suspicious planet, parasites get on board and start tearing shit up 

Aliens (1986)
The survivor from Alien joins a group of marines and goes back to the planet to wipe out the rest of the Aliens

Dawn Of The Dead (1978)
The definitive zombie film. Four people find themselves trapped in a mall swarming with the living dead

The Evil Dead (1981)
A group of chums go for a break in a cabin by the woods and inadvertently recite an incantation that awakens the dead

Evil Dead II: Dead By Dawn (1987)
Continuing where the original left off, Ash continues to fight the evil force that led to the possession and death of his friends

The Exorcist (1973)
Little girl is possessed by the devil and starts breaking every taboo known to man

The Exorcist: The Version You’ve Never Seen (2000)
Remastered version of the 1973 original with new, controversial scenes added

Friday The 13th (1980)
A group of nubile, sexually active teens are slaughtered at a summer camp by someone who actually isn’t Jason

Halloween (1978)
Michael Myers escapes from a madhouse and returns to his hometown to try and kill Jamie Lee Curtis

It Follows (2014)
A teenage girl is stalked by a ghostly killer that constantly walks towards her and never stops

Jurassic Park (1993)
Dino theme park goes into meltdown when a fat nerd cuts the power 

Night Of The Living Dead (1968)
Zombies attack a small cabin in the woods in this seminal movie masterpiece

A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984)
Razor-fingered Freddy Krueger stalks the teenagers of Springwood in their dreams

A Nightmare On Elm Street Part 3: Dream Warriors (1987)
Patients in a young persons’ asylum combine forces to fight Freddy as he invades their dreams

One Hour Photo (2002)
Robin Williams plays it serious as a disturbed photo developer who becomes obsessed with the family of one of his customers

Pet Sematary (1989)
A doctor’s cat dies and is mysteriously resurrected when he buries it in cursed ground. Then his son dies: guess what he does next

Poltergeist (1982)
An evil spirit inhabits a family home and kidnaps their young daughter, dragging her to a parallel dimension

Suspiria (1977)
An American teenager travels to Germany to attend a prestigious dance school, but she soon finds it’s run by a coven of witches

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
Five teens encounter a psycho cannibal family. Meathooks, hammers and chainsaws galore

Twin Peaks season 1 (1990)
A teenage girl’s body washes up on the beach of a quiet mountain town, so an FBI agent is sent to investigate

FOUR AND A HALF STAR REVIEWS
(HORROR)

Black Christmas (1974)
A bunch of students living together are terrorised by a weirdo leaving strange messages on their phone. What they don’t realise is that he’s calling from upstairs

The Eye (2002)
Terrifying Asian horror in which a blind woman receives a transplant and is given the eyes of someone who could see ghosts

Halloween (2007)
Rob Zombie’s take on the John Carpenter original goes down the gritty, visually shocking route

The House Of Him (2014)
A misogynist killer prepares to claim his 27th victim, but something more powerful is going on in his house

The Lost Boys (1987)
Corey Haim and Corey Feldman team up to stop a vampire Keifer Sutherland turning teens into blood-suckers

The Omen (1976)
An influential US politician adopts a child who happens to be the son of the Devil

Sleepaway Camp (1983)
Cheesy camp slasher with one of the genuinely greatest endings in cinematic history

FOUR STAR REVIEWS (HORROR)

28 Days Later (2002)
Zombies run (not walk) around a deserted London

The Attic (2013)
A family moves into a house after two children died in its swimming pool… but their dad is still living there. Guess where

Behind The Mask: The Rise Of Leslie Vernon (2006)
Spoof documentary following a wannabe horror slasher

The Beyond (1981)
Woman moves to New Orleans to open a hotel. Turns out she’s only gone and bloody opened one built on a gateway to Hell 

The Blair Witch Project (1998)
Three students go into the woods to film a documentary but go missing, conveniently leaving their scary-as-shit footage behind

Blood Feast (1963)
Arguably the first truly gory movie, in which a crazed party host plans to kill women to resurrect an Egyptian queen

Bride Of Chucky (1998)
Chucky gets himself a wife as a once-straight horror series turns into a horror comedy

Burial Ground (1981)
A bunch of zombies are unleashed on a mansion for no real reason. This results in the most uncomfortable breastfeeding scene in movie history

The Burning (1981)
After a prank at a summer camp goes wrong, a horribly burnt counsellor returns a decade later armed with a pair of garden shears

Creepshow (1982)
George Romeo and Stephen King’s ace five-tale anthology of comic-style horror tales

Curse Of Chucky (2013)
Everyone’s favourite killer doll returns to joke-free horror

Dead Heat (1988)
A cop is killed and turned into a zombie. He needs to stop the man responsible before he rots away

Deadly Friend (1986)
Your typical ‘boy meets girl, girl dies, boy swaps her brain for his pet robot’s CPU and reanimates her’ story

Fright Night (1985)
A young horror-obsessed lad thinks a vampire has moved in next door, so he enlists a TV actor who played a vampire hunter to help him kill it

Ghostwatch (1992)
Fake BBC reality TV show about a haunted house. So convincing it led to some real-life murders

Halloween II (1981)
Michael Myers continues to stalk Jamie Lee Curtis, this time following her to a hospital

Halloween III: Season Of The Witch (1982)
The one without Michael Myers in it. A madman wants to harness the power of Stonehenge to kill children with Halloween masks

Heretic (2012)
A haunted priest returns to the home where two of his parishioners committed suicide

The Human Centipede (First Sequence) (2009)
Creepy German doctor kidnaps three victims and sews them arse-to-mouth to create a single creature

Jason X (2001)
The tenth Friday The 13th film, in which Jason goes to space and is turned into a robotic killing machine

My Bloody Valentine (1981)
A group of teens have a Valentine’s dance, 20 years after a madman said he’d kill anyone who tried to have one

A Nightmare On Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988)
Freddy comes face to face with a teenager who can inherit the abilities of her friends every time he kills one

Paranormal Activity (2007)
A couple record the events on a video camera as a demon tries to terrorise them

Phantasm (1979)
A young lad and his older brother try to figure out what a creepy tall undertaker is doing with the bodies he’s supposed to be burying

Resurrecting The Street Walker (2009)
Fake documentary about a wannabe filmmaker trying to finish an abandoned ’80s video nasty and going slowly insane with the stress

Ringu (1998)
The freaky girl-in-a-dress movie that kickstarted the Japanese horror craze

Rubber (2010)
A rubber tyre rolls around the desert, blowing things up with its psychic powers

Scream (1996)
Teens are killed while making knowing references to horror film cliches

Sin City (2005)
An anthology of film noir stories based on Frank Miller’s stunning comic book series

The Taking Of Deborah Logan (2014)
A medical documentary following a woman with Alzheimer’s takes a dark turn when it turns out she’s suffering from something else

The Thing (2011)
The events leading up to the 1982 John Carpenter classic are finally revealed 

Troll 2 (1990)
A family moves into a town inhabited by trolls in what is famously one of the worst movies ever created (Also in the Hall Of Shame)

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992)
A film based on David Lynch’s hit TV series, showing what happened during the days leading up to Laura Palmer’s death

Unfriended (2014)
On the anniversary of a teenager’s suicide, she returns to torment her friends during their Skype group chat

The Vault Of Horror (1973)
Five men recollect dreams they had which involve them dying in gruesome and inventive ways

Zombie Strippers (2008)
A zombie gets into a strip club and attacks one of the strippers. Guess what happens next

FOUR AND A HALF / FOUR STAR REVIEWS (NON-HORROR)

9/11 (2002)
A gripping documentary capturing events both inside and outside the World Trade Center

Any Given Sunday (1999)
Al Pacino plays an aging American football coach struggling to control his new superstar quarterback 

Argo (2012)
Ben Affleck tries to smuggle six Americans out of Iran during a revolution by pretending they’re a film crew

Battle Royale (2000)
Japanese schoolkids are dumped on an island and made to kill each other

Best Worst Movie (2009)
A documentary recalling the creation of Troll 2, arguably the worst film ever made 

Beyond The Mat (1999)
A surprising documentary exposing the unseen backstage world of professional wrestling

Chronicle (2012)
Three teens get superpowers and struggle to use them responsibly, leading to shit going down 

Confessions (2010)
Incredible Japanese movie about a school teacher who decides to punish two of her students for murdering her young daughter

Cube (1997)
Six prisoners awaken inside a massive cube and have no idea why they’re there or how to get out

The Day After (1983)
A nuclear bomb is dropped on Kansas, so Steve Guttenberg and others have to fight for survival

Death Watch (1980)
Forgotten drama set in Scotland in which a terminally ill woman tries to escape being filmed for a reality TV show by a man with a camera in his eye

Drive (2011)
Part-time stuntman, part-time getaway driver gets caught up in a sticky situation involving his neighbour and her ex-con hubby 

Election (1999)
Matthew Broderick is a beloved teacher turned nasty when he tries to rig an election so prize student Reese Withspoon doesn’t win

The Exterminator (1980)
Vietnam vet decides to fight New York crime after his buddy is mugged

For Y’ur Height Only (1981)
A 2’9″ Filipino spy tries to take down an evil organisation hell-bent on world domination

Full Metal Jacket (1987)
Stanley Kubrick does Vietnam in this shocking and disjointed war epic

Gone Girl (2014)
Ben Affleck’s wife goes missing on their fifth anniversary and the press becomes slowly more convinced he killed her

Hitchcock (2012)
The real-life story of director Alfred Hitchcock and the making of his most famous movie, Psycho

Hobo With A Shotgun (2011)
Homeless chap decides to take the law into his own hands and bring peace to a lawless neighbourhood. With a shotgun

Jurassic World (2015)
The theme park is finally open to visitors, but things go tits-up when a genetically modified super-dino breaks free

The Killers (1964)
A hitman played by Lee Marvin tries to find out why his target didn’t run when he was shot

Major League (1989)
Charlie Sheen joins a baseball team full of no-hopers deliberately chosen to lose and get relocated. Genuine hilarity ensues

The Monster Squad (1987)
Mix the Goonies with Universal monsters to get this fun children’s adventure

The Muppets (2011)
Kermit and crew have to reform for one more show to save their beloved studio 

Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (1985)
Innocent man-child travels across America in search of his stolen bicycle

Phantom Of The Paradise (1974)
Wronged music composer dons a helmet and threatens to destroy a concert hall’s opening night. Cue loads of mental glam rock stuff

Planet Of The Apes (1968)
Charlton Heston goes forward in time and lands on a planet where simians rule the roost

Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes (2011)
Prequel to the ’60s classic which shows how the apes first started their revolt against humans

Robocop (1987)
A hotshot cop is killed by a crime lord, but his body is used to created the robotic future of law enforcement

Rollerball (1975)
In the future, there is no war: only Rollerball, an odd sport in which guys on rollerskates and motorbikes beat the shit out of each other

Snowpiercer (2013)
Following a second ice age, the last surviving humans on Earth struggle to co-exist on a perpetually moving train

Spirited Away (2001)
Amazing Japanese animation in which a young lass tries to rescue her parents from a spirit world

Super 8 (2011)
A group of kids shooting an amateur movie unwittingly become embroiled in an alien conspiracy

Taken (2008)
Liam Neeson’s daughter is kidnapped in Paris, so he goes there and kills loads of people to find her

Twin Peaks season 2 (1990-91)
The case of Laura Palmer’s death is finally solved, but there are otherworldly goings-on yet to be discovered

Voyage Of The Rock Aliens (1984)
A group of music-loving extraterrestrials land on Earth to try to find the source of rock music

Where Do We Go From Here? (2015)
A kind-hearted care home worker decides to bust out three residents to give them the road trip of their life while he tries to find love