Happy Mother's Day: 10 Great Horror Moms

In which I channel my inner Buzzfeed (no, I can't even right now) to compile a list of horror moms - good and bad - in honour of it being Mother's Day.

10. Vera Farmiga's Norma Bates - otherwise known as the only reason to watch Bates Motel.

9. Mother? Grandma? Aunt? Sister? 

Who knows, where this family of probable inbreds are concerned.

8. Rebecca DeMornay - the best reason to watch the Mother's Day remake.

7. Lending horror cinema its best bit of trivia in being the original killer of Friday the 13th.

6. Henrietta, Evil Dead 2's best zombie - and played by Ted Raimi, no less.

5. Sure, her daughter got herself killed, but Carol has turned into one of The Walking Dead's best survivors yet.

Ooh, look, flowers!

4. Achieving more post-death than Bates Motel will ever muster, no matter how long it manages to stay on TV. 

3. Poor stressed mom Essie Davies, giving horror cinema its best antagonist/protagonist combo of 2014 in The Babadook.

2. I'll pass on the custard, thanks.

1. Best Mom Ever, courtesy of 1980's Mother Day. 

Happy Mother's Day, moms everywhere! Thanks to my own mother, without whom this piece - and, indeed, my own existence - would not have been possible.

The 30 Minute Horror Challenge

Well, I don't have the patience to do anything for 30 days, let alone regularly update this blog. Which is a shame, because I would have entitled it something witty like 30 Days Of Shite and maybe even done a little picture on photoshop. Instead I'm going to do this in one long post and put a picture of Jack Bauer above all the words I've written. Because, geddit, Jack Bauer had a deadline in 24 just like I had a deadline to write this. Geddit? Get it? GET IT.

This being quite the popular meme, there are a few other blogs that have done this before me, and much better at that. Thanks to all those guys and to whoever started this whole thing off. Come to think of it, I might have done the wrong one, because these questions aren't the ones other people have been answering. Oops.

Disclaimer. This did not take me 30 minutes. It took me an hour.

THE 30 DAY HORROR CHALLENGE

IN 30 MINUTES

1. Your first horror movie: One of the Nightmare On Elm Street movies. After bedtime, forbidden from doing so by my mother. I think it was Freddy's Dead. She cut the plug off've the TV when she found out. But I win because I became a warped asshole of my own doing anyway.

2. The Last horror movie you saw in the theater: It's been awhile since I saw a horror at the cinema. It was either The Crazies or a Saw, whichever was the most recent.

3. Favourite classic horror movie: How do you define classic? If you mean 'old' then Texas Chain Saw Massacre or Evil Dead. If you mean 'really old', then Bride Of Frankenstein.

4. A horror movie you thought you'd love but didn't: House of 1000 Corpses, and then again with The Devil's Rejects and Halloween. Robert sure does love to fuck with people's expectations. Even that episode of CSI sucks.

5. Favourite horror remake: The Hills Have Eyes.

6. Favourite vampire movie: The first Blade. Or, if that's not horror enough for ya, 30 Days Of Night.

7. A horror movie you think no-one has seen: Decadent Evil Dead. You're not missing much, although there is a dwarf vampire hunter.

8. Favourite foreign horror: Ichi The Killer. More of a gangster thriller, but it's still fucking horrifying.

9. Favourite supernatural horror: Evil Dead every time.

10. Horror movie everyone loves but you don't: The first Saw movie. I mean, it's fine enough, but it's no classic. The emperor's wearing no clothes. And also, he's ripping off Se7en. For one I actually hate, see Switchblade Romance.

11. Favourite horror/comedy: Funny Games. No, Shaun Of The Dead, obviously.

12. Most disturbing horror film: I don't really get 'disturbed', but I couldn't finish August Underground. Ew. If I wanted to see *that* I would've watched 2 Girl

s One Cup.

13. Favourite zombie movie: Re-Animator.

14. Favourite Indie movie: Indiana Jones And The Temple of - oh, sorry, I see what you mean. The Taint.

15. Favourite monster movie: Jurassic Park.

16. Horror film with a great soundtrack: Shaun Of The Dead. Two Queen songs, I mean 'nuff said, really.

17. Favourite 80s' horror: Maniac Cop. Underrated as hell.

18: Favourite horror movie filmed in black and white: Night Of The Living Dead, although I've seen embarrassingly few black and white films.

19. Best use of gore: Pretty much all of Braindead, particularly the lawnmower stuff.

20. Favourite horror character: Resisting the urge to say Ash, I'll go with Lefty Enright (Dennis Hopper) in The Texas Chain saw Massacre 2, closely followed by Benny (Ken Foree) in Leatherface.

21. Best horror franchise: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, but not The Next Generation and less so the remake and its sequel.

22. Best death scene: I liked Paris Hilton getting twatted with a pole in House Of Wax, but the final scenes of Freddy Vs Jason are simply sublime. You got either Freddy being decimated by Jason, or the Destiny's Child twat being splatted up a tree.

23. A great quote from a horror movie: "NO. She was so hot!" The Taint. There's also a line about dirty coathangers that made me LOL.

24. Horror movie character that describes you: Well since The 40 Year Old Virgin isn't a horror movie, I guess I'll have to go with The Monster in Frankenstein. Villagers are always chasing me away with flaming torches and my only friends are blind old people. Also, I like drowning children.

25. Favourite Christmas horror movie: Silent Night Deadly Night.

26. Horror movie for a chicken: Twilight.

27. Your guilty pleasure horror movie: The Wicker Man/I Know Who Killed Me.

28. Horror movie you'd like to see remade: I actually would see a remake of Maniac Cop if done right. Bruce Campbell in the old cop role, Timothy Olyphant as the other guy, Danny Glover as the police chief, Zooey Deschanel as the love interest, the big Hills Have Eyes mutant as Maniac Cop. Alexandre Aja to direct.

29. Worst horror movie: Twilight. It's not horror? Then fuck it off out of play.com's 'horror' section. Otherwise, probably one of the many terrible things I don't care to remember.

30. Favourite all-time horror movie: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

Advertorial: Things I like about the Saw Franchise

(Spoiler: silly racist car death is not one of those things)

Saw: The Final Chapter is out on DVD next month. As I re-watched the movie in preparation, I realised that The Review Hole has been quite critical of the franchise over the years. To celebrate its (supposed) end, I proudly present a list for your consideration: Things I Hate Least Don't Hate Like About The Saw Franchise. Some spoilers abounds.

10. The First Three Movies. Otherwise known as the only good Saw movies. The first movie is very good (if Se7en-lite) and the sequel, I actually slightly prefer sometimes. The third stinks a bit, but it feels like a proper arc for the characters involved. If only they'd stopped there.

9. Monica Potter. I like Monica Potter. I liked her in Con Air. I liked her in that silly Morgan Freeman movie. I even liked her relegated to Damsel-In-Distress in Saw. Never mind Doctor Gordon and his plastic foot. Bring back Monica Potter.

8. Hoffman's killing spree. It says a lot for my feelings about Saw's torture guff overreliance that my favourite bit of The Final Chapter was when the torture stopped and crazy Hoffman went slasher movie mode. The final act in the police station is ridiculous but eminently watchable. Black leather gloves? How very Giallo. The most interesting thing Hoffman ever did.

7. The videogame. Haven't played the sequel yet, but Saw: The Videogame wasn't half as bad as I'd expected it to be. You play as Detective Tapp, trapped in an old lunatic asylum and forced to play Jigsaw's games. It's repetetive, overlong and occasionally monotonous, but worth a single playthrough at least.

6. Hoffman's Arrowmobile. That this ended up as nothing more than a dream sequence was one of The Final Chapter's biggest disappointments.

5. The Needle Pit. Actually one of the few traps to make me cringe. Sometimes the low-key traps work a lot better than the overblown stuff (The Final Chapter's Thunderbird incinerator? Really?)

4. Donnie Wahlberg. Yes, and I'm not joking either. Donnie Wahlberg's detective in Saw II is one of my favourite characters in the franchise. That he died in part IV caused great consternation in the Joel H house. Even if his death was one of the best moments in the franchise's history:

3. Ice Block Head Smash. Donnie Wahlberg gets his head smushed inbetween two massive blocks of ice. Enough said. Except for maybe 'ha ha'.

2. Pighead. Because I'm a sucker for slasher icons and people wearing pig head masks. And because the battle between yourself and Pighead in The Videogame is fairly awesome.

1. Danny Glover. I'll be honest. The other 9 bullet points in this list could have been Danny Glover, since I do heart me some Danny Glover. Even in those Orange cinema adverts and especially in Predator 2. Plus, he reportedly thinks Saw is stupid too.

Not too old for this shit? Read the Saw retrospective.

My favourite movies of 2010

Happy New Year, blogosphere. Because I'm unimaginitive and lazy and hungover, here's The Horror Review Hole's official ten favourite movies of 2010. It's not all horror and I have terrible taste and there's some stuff I never got to see. I'm sorry, by the way. The Human Centipede is on this list. I seem to remember liking Daybreakers at the time, but in retrospect, it's not very good, is it? Actually, neither was the movie that kicks off this list. If only I'd seen Splice or Predators. I suspect this thing would have been a helluva lot easier to write.

10. The Expendables: For all of its not-good-ness, it has Stallone going toe-to-toe with Stone Cold Steve Austin and Jet Li kerfuffling with Dolph Lundgren. Also, Terry Crews. (Reviewed here)

9. The Crazies: Not quite as good on repeat viewings, but still a pretty effective zombie horror thriller thing with some good jump moments and lots of Timothy Olyphant. (Reviewed here and here)

8. The Human Centipede: I think I remember saying somewhere that 2010 was the year of The Human Centipede, so I suppose it has to be on this list really, doesn't it? (Look here)

7. The Taint: An incredible tour-de-force of violence, gore, spunk and everything that makes horror good. (It's over here)

6. Scott Pilgrim vs The World: A fun, funny, funky film with lashings of wit, charm, romance and great performances from some unlikely sources. The second most heartwarming thing you'll see all year.

5. The Disappearance Of Alice Creed: Made in 2009 but released (in the UK) in April '10. An extremely tense, uncompromising thriller with an impressive performance from Gemma Arterton at its heart. Almost makes up for Prince Of Persia. (Find Alice Creed here)

4. Inception: Christopher Nolan's Matrix mindfuck movie.

3. Shutter Island: Leonardo's second entry on this list. I guess Mister Titanic must be becoming good in his dotage. Scorsese does horror. Nuff said. The book's pretty good too.

2. A Town Called Panic: No Toy Story 3 here, no Sir Bob. A Town Called Panic is a low-budget little French feature which sees a Cowboy, an Indian and a Horse attempt to recover their stolen house from undersea thieves. Their journey takes them from Arctic Tundras to the centre of the Earth. The most heartwarming thing you'll see all year and quite simply all-around brilliant.

1. Kick-Ass: Kick ass. (Kick some more ass here and here)

Happy New Year all, and thanks for reading.

10 Scary Things of 2010

From the Horror Blogger Alliance, the first of our end-of-year special list things

10. Human Centipedes: For many people, 2010 is the year of The Human Centipede. Not a very good movie but a beautifully disgusting concept to be sure. The Human Centipede combines grisly torture guff with scat porn. I first sawCentipede advertised as a porno, actually ("2 GIRLS ONE GUY GO ASS-TO-MOUTH"). And now there is actually a Human Sexipede. It ne ver could quite live up to that reputation, but Director Tom Six gives it a helluva shot. Bring on the Full Sequence.

9. A Horse: A ha ha ha ha haaa, look, the 24-year-old man's scared of My Little Pony. Shut up and think about it. Last week I had the misfortune of being packed away to a works' weekend in the country. This involved barbeque, camping and orienteering excercises. Being an idiot, yours truly was quickly quite lost. Much of it resembled an episode of L O S T. I wandered around the woods for a good two hours, drenched by rain and under attack from smoke monsters (well, chain smoking idiot colleagues). And then there were the horses. During our misadventures, we ended up traipsing through a big empty field. Well, empty save for the fucking horses. Lots of horses with big horsey penises. I'm not ashamed to admit that the thought of death by horse rape crossed my mind. Until you've had the thousand-yard-stare from a horse, you don't know fear. One of them whinnied and I shat myself.

7. This Is England 86: Shane Meadows' TV sequel to his seminal This Is England movie, England 86 picks up the story ten years later and, episode by episode, emotionally devastates his audience. A man with an evil beard commits two of the most horrible rape sequences I've ever seen. Johnny Harris' Mick is, for my money, the best villain of 2010, and decidedly not in a good way. As much as it adds to the plot and aids Combo's eventual redemption arc, it's a little too overpowering and threatens to derail the whole thing. I actually feel dirty even thinking about it.

6. 2012: Not the movie, which was shitty, but the year. I read Lawrence E. Joseph's Apocalypse 2012 in September, and it actually terrified me. Until I realised that I don't believe in that sort of thing, closed the book and read something about superheroes instead. Still, I'm an idiot and I think I'm going to keep expecting the world to end all the way until 2013. Then I'll find something else to worry about instead.

5. Shitty movies: 2010 has been a bad year for horror. Take a bow Eclipse, 2001 Maniacs: Field Of Screams, Nightmare 2010, Vampires Suck and news of a Buffy remake. Even scarier is the amount of money (most of) those movies made. Really, humanity? This is just like that documentary I watched... Idiocracy.

4. My own mortality: My 2010 kicked off on a bit of a bummer with the tragic death of my brother (too tragic to joke about that one line there nearly rhyming, so don't) and the following funeral. Sorry to bring the mood down, but this site sucks anyway so it's not as if you're here for the shits and giggles. In fact, I don't think there is anyone actually here. Anyway, prior to losing my kid brother, I think I'd sort of assumed that I'd live forever. This year, I learned that I won't. Scary stuff. This one should be #1 on the list actually, but I'd rather not end it on such a downer....

3. The Taint: Simply put, ew. Every bit as disgusting and horrible as The Human Centipede should have been. Hands down my favourite bit of independent horror this year. And I'm not just saying that because they sent me a DVD.

2. Not Freddy Kreuger: So not-scary that it made #2 on my list of the scariest things of 2010. Did we need to see Fred Krueger wailing like a big girl's blouse as the vengeful parents of Springwood immolate him? No we did not. Furthermore, I could've done without that crappy makeup, unimaginative dream sequence and drippy blanket of a final fight. Nightmare 2010: so not scary that it's actually scary.

1. JUSTIN BIEBER: A Lovecraftian little fuck if ever there was one, Justin Bieber represents to me the dumbing down of pop, the mass stupiddening of teenage girls worldwide and the rise of a hairstyle phenomenon known as "the Bieber". And yes, the child does actually, physically scare me. Literally the only good things to have come from JB in 2010 are (1) That South Park skit (2) Someone throwing a bottle at his head (3) Him walking into a door and saying "ow". The scariest moment of the Bieber zeitgeist? When I heard a Galaxy FM presenter compare JB playing Manhattan to Elvis in Vegas. Fuck humanity.

What I'm Thankful For: a Thanksgiving special

Over here in the United Kingdom, we don't really celebrate or care about Thanksgiving. Being a blogger though, I do celebrate and care about any excuse I might have to share my witless opinion. And you get to read it. Although I know no-one actually reads this blog so I'm not sure why I said that. Or am writing this. Also, I'm an athiest and an ingrate, so don't like thanking higher powers for things. We'll forget all about that for this one post, as I take note of all the things I has been thankful for this year and also forever:

- I'm thankful that I live in a world where Machete, The Expendables and The Taint could get made

- I'm thankful that I exist in the same plane of existence as Zooey Deschanel

- I'm thankful for Timothy Olyphant

- I'm thankful for The Walking Dead

- I'm thankful to be seeing Meat Loaf live next month (don't fucking laugh)

- I'm thankful for that video.

- I'm thankful that enough people give a shit about music in England to sabotage The X-Factor by making this man potentially win it

- I'm thankful for Red Dead Redemption's Undead Nightmare and chainsaws in Dead Rising 2.

- I'm not thankful for Jack Fucking Marston.

- I'm thankful for The Oatmeal

- I'm thankful for Bruce Campbell

- And finally, on a soppy note, I'm thankful for my family and friends, to the few of you that read this miserable blog and, well, did I mention Zooey Deschanel?

Shut up, I admit it: this article was nothing but a wafer-thin excuse to post pictures of Zooey Deschanel

SHARK WEEK: My favourite TV & Movie Sharks

The Discovery Channel are doing their yearly "shark week" thing, although every other programme seems to be about sharks on that channel anyway. I suppose this means that there just won't be any programmes about Nazis about to interrupt the shark documentaries. Nevertheless, this lazy hack writer smells a list coming on. Twilighters beware, there will be no Taylor Lautner on this list. At least not until he gets his head bitten off by a Great White.

10. Batman vs Shark - Batman: The Movie

9. Shark - Shark.

8. The Shark that Eats Samuel Motherfucking L Jackson - Deep Blue Motherfucking Sea.

7. Bruce the Shark - Finding Nemo. I'm running out here. Determined not to resort to Shark Tale though.

6. Hammerhead - Spider-man. I'm not entirely sure that having a really flat head is a super power as such, but y'know.

5. That one good joke in My Super Ex Girlfriend

4. Sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads - Austin Powers

3. Mega Shark - Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus

2. Shark vs Zombie - Zombi 2. An outstanding movie idea in its own right, relegated to one minor scene in a movie that was itself pretty good anyway. Wasted idea though.

1. Jaws - Jaws. Obviously. Happy Shark Week, if such a thing exists and doesn't sound stupid. It does, doesn't it? Sound stupid, that is. Well happy Shark Week, anyway.

3 crap serial killers of British TV

An episode of the Review Hole that even your granny can read! The rest of the world might think itself clever with The Wire, Dexter and its Wallander and other such incredible TV, but never let it be said that us Brits can't do compelling telly drama. Whilst our soap operas are mostly content to settle for boring affairs between ugly people, every so often a telly executive will introduce a serial killer to up the ratings and kill off a few less popular characters. Here, dear reader is a list of the three most prolific. No wait, the other thing... really, really shit.

Richard Hillman (Coronation Street)

Eeeh, it's grim up north. Coronation Street details the uninteresting lives of uninteresting people in the fictional district of Weatherfield, Manchester. Aside from Red Dwarf's Dave Lister, nobody has a Mancunian accent, although it does have the Doctor from off've Empire of the Sun and Snoop Dogg lists himself as a fan. The first of our serial killers is perhaps the most famous on the list; the now-infamous Richard Hillman (well, infamous if you're 65 and read The Radio Times). Looking to cash in on a life insurance deal or something, he bludgeoned an old woman and an annoying bimbo woman to death with a crowbar and let some fella die after falling down a flight of stairs. Dastardly.

As his heinous crimes were unearthed by hamster-faced wife Gail, Richard (AKA "Norman Bates with a briefcase") went crazy and tried to kill his family, driving their car into a canal. Sadly for our inept killer, nobody died except for himself. And so ended Coronation Street's tenure of being mildly interesting. Regional dullness would follow, punctuated by the occasional affair and 'comedy' 'interlude'. Until our next offender came along, that is...

Tony Gordon (Coronation Street)

Hoping we'd all forgotten about the virtually identical Richard Hillman killings, Coronation Street brought in its next serial killer character. A one-eyed bumbling Scottish villain named Gordon? No, not that one: I'm talking about Tony Gordon, knicker-salesman cum Resevoir Dogs reject. His initial crimes started off as crappy as they always do. Bits of blackmail, mild threatenings and the menacing of an old man. Then Tony killed some bats and we knew he'd reached the next level of mundane evil. Overcome with a fit of jealousy, Tony a love rival murdered, then went and made himself some advances on the dead man's wife. His plottings were eventually uncovered by a trainspotter, and Tony was duly sent to prison for murder:

Well, for about five minutes. Following his confession, Tony had a change of heart and broke out of prison, looking for bloody vengeance. So he kidnapped his ex-wife, his one true love, and a local transsexual (not all the same person, honest) and set fire to the knicker factory with them all in it. Once more, nobody died except for Tony himself. Go ineptitude.

Lucas Johnson (Eastenders)

A serial killer so recent he's still at large. If I was black/a Christian, I'd be offended by its depiction of preacher Lucas Johnson. There are still relatively few black characters in our soaps, and even less openly Christian characters. And so Eastenders makes one of its most prominent black characters an ex-gangbanger, and then has his Christianity turn him into an actual serial killer. With black leather gloves and everything. Victim no.1 is ex-wife, sometime fuckbuddy and crackhead Trina. Technically not murder, since she steps on a rake (yes, just like in that episode of The Simpsons) and bleeds out. Although his leaving her to die is morally and legally dubious. Second victim is his current-wife's ex-husband and abuser Owen. Poor Owen gets strangled in the back of a car then buried under a tree. His next victim escaped the hangman's noose thanks to a real-life and quite prolific murder case which saw the BBC refilm scenes where Lucas murders a prostitute. Disaster averted.

Well, for about five minutes. Mere weeks later, Lucas lost it again and strangled wife Denise in the back of a car. All this whilst proclaiming himself the second coming of Christ ("I thought you were my Mary Magdeline. You're the whore of babylon")You're probably not supposed to laugh at the sight of her feet flailing against the windows, but I did and you will. He then framed her for his other crimes and went on to act all ("OMG WTF") at the "news" of his "murderous" wife's "suicide". The story hasn't yet come to a close, but expect it to finish in an explosive climax in which no-one dies but Lucas himself.

CLIFFHANGER MOMENT.

THIS HAS BEEN A SLOW NEWS DAY.

TUNE IN SOON FOR ACTUAL ITEMS OF ACTUAL RELEVANCE

RANDOM LISTS: Movies not to eat your breakfast by

A list of movies that are sure to ruin your appetite. And let's face it, if your horror habits are anything like mine, you're sure to be shoving sweets & beer down your neck as you tuck into the latest Friday the 13th. These are movies (or at least scenes) best avoided when in the proximity of food. Warning: here be more gross-outs than One Night in Paris or Sly Stallone's porn movie.

10. Monty Python's Meaning of Life - Not horror, but a classic bit of British comedy from the Pythons. Most of the movie is relatively popcorn-safe, but those with a low tolerance for onscreen vomiting would be well advised to avoid the Mr. Creosote scenes. John Prescott-alike Mr. Creosote arrives in a swanky restaurant and promptly begins stuffing his fat face. Then this happens:

9. Supersize Me - A clever idea I had once: "Oh dude, you know what'd be hilarious? If we totally brought us some Large Big Macs (you can't get 'supersize' in the UK) and watched Supersize Me." Yes, I speak like an idiot. And also, those fucking liposuction scenes almost made me lose that Big Mac all over the cinema.

8. August Underground/Salo - I'd recommend no-one watch August Underground or Salo at all. But if you really must, I'd also recommend that you don't consider eating anything for a few days before watching it. Unless, y'know, you're less iffy about the thought of chewing on turds than I. If you just can't get enough of that sort of thing, then there's also Divine eating doggy doodoo off've a pavement in Pink Flamingos. Also: I hope you're gonna brush your teeth afterwards.

7. Se7en - Nomnomnom, lovely dinner. I wonder what's on TV? Nomnomnom, oh look, Se7en is on. Oh look, it's Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt. All a bit dingy, isn't it? Nomnomnom. That was a lovely dinner I was eating. Well, up until they found the 'Gluttony' victim. Not quite so hungry anymore.

6. The Shining - A different kind of gross-out horror here, but nontheless quite off-putting if you're tucking into a plate of something tasty. It's a universal fear, is it not? You're making out with a total hotty and halfway through she/he turns into a wrinkly ol' granny, complete with saggy tits/ballbag. I think I'll leave that second helping of beef jerky, thanks.

5. Cannibal Holocaust - Thinking of giving Cannibal Holocaust a go? Set down the kebab meat first. If all the violence (and there's a lot) and nudity didn't put you off first, there's a whole lot of (literal) animal guts splayed out everywhere; enough to make even this hardy corpse-chomper consider taking up vegetarianism.

4. 90% of Takashi Miike's cinematic output - Something to disgust everyone here. You got spoons stuck up a man's ass, lactating grannies, abuse of chip fat, the abortions in Imprint, most everything in Ichi the Killer and a whole bunch of other bits and bobs you really don't wanna see while tucking into a tasty nosh. To be fair, if you consider anything Takashi Miike does to be 'popcorn entertainment' then you deserve to lose your dinner, silly person.

3. Dumplings - Nomnomnom, Chinese takeaway. Nomnomnom... remember that film I watched once... what was it called, Dumplings? Fried balls of dough will never be the same again if you've ever watched Fruit Chan's Dumplings. In that movie, the secret to good skin appears to be deep-fried foetuses. Because you're worth it.

2. Megan Fox Braindead - A movie to put you off've custard for a very long time. Trying to keep up appearances for her posho dinner guests, zombie Vera is in attendance for evening dinner. But she doesn't quite notice her ear drop into the custard before her. Yum. Nor does her dinner guest notice as zombie Vera pops a zit right into his dessert. "Lovely custard." Indeed.

1. The Human Centipede - This could've been dumped (HA, dump - geddit?) in with the rest of the scat stuff at no.8, but The Human Centipede is so much more than a bit of poopie porn; it's poopie porn dragged out to feature length. It's far from the most disgusting thing on this list (kudos to director Tom Six for managing to be so restrained) but the potty scenes are truly revolting.

*Nomnomnomnom*

Ten Banalities of Quite Stultifying Terror

For your consideration, ten things that are far more terrifying than a Human Centipede. Sometimes you don't need to camp out at Crystal Lake or buy a house on Elm Street. Sometimes the most horrifying things can be found right under your nose, in everyday life. What follows is ten of the most piddle-inducingly scary - yet utterly banal - things that are out there right now...*

10. The BT adverts - Because nothing says "buy a new telephone" like the crushing, depressing triviality of everyday life. There are few incentives liable to make me upgrade my broadband like social awkwardness and having to put up with someone else's shit children. Since 2005 here in the UK, we've watched Adam and Jane go about their everyday lives. Adam's moved in with Jane and her kids from a previous relationship; he's had to deal with her son taking an initial dislike to him; accidentally flirting with her friends; her shit of a daughter hogging the TV with Hannah fucking Montana. And now they're getting married. We live in a dull, grey little world and the BT adverts incessantly remind us of this. Our lives are dreary, miserable, pointless and plotless; the best you can do is buy a shiny new phone so's you can make those uninteresting telephone conversations sound that little bit crisper.

9. Justin Bieber - A horror of Lovecraftian proportions, this. His increasing popularity can be explained in one of two equally terrifying ways: either the world's children are getting dumber and dumber, or its paedophiles are spending a shitload on CDs. Bieber's meteoric rise to fame is made all the more saddening by the fact that it came just after the death of Michael Jackson. Another slap in the face to the King of Pop, who would've loved a bit of the Bieber.

8. Empty shops - Picture it. You've a day off've work and a wallet full of cash. You wander into town, hoping to splash out on a new DVD, CD, book or jacket. You walk into a shop. Your favourite DVD, CD, Book & Jacket shop. A deafening silence greets you. The shelves are chock full of stock. The aisles are empty. A team of sales assistants stare at you as you try to browse. You either hastily grab the nearest thing to hand and purchase it, or you flee. There's a reason the shop's empty, surely? Now run, before they cut off your legs and sell them.

I too dreamed a dream. Susan Boyle was in it and I pissed myself.

6. Horses - A ha ha ha ha haaa, look, the 24-year-old man's scared of My Little Pony. Shut up and think about it. Last week I had the misfortune of being packed away to a works' weekend in the country. This involved barbeque, camping and orienteering excercises. Being an idiot, yours truly was quickly quite lost. Much of it resembled an episode of L O S T. I wandered around the woods for a good two hours, drenched by rain and under attack from smoke monsters (well, chain smoking idiot colleagues). And then there were the horses. During our misadventures, we ended up traipsing through a big empty field. Well, empty save for the fucking horses. Lots of horses with big horsey penises. I'm not ashamed to admit that the thought of death by horse rape crossed my mind. Until you've had the thousand-yard-stare from a horse, you don't know fear. One of them whinnied and I shat myself.

5. Frozen Prawns - Not such an obvious one, but I had a fear of frozen prawns well into my teenage years. Ever read HP Lovecraft? I swear to thee, his Old Ones and fishy things would blatantly resemble frozen prawns. TRUE FACT: in his foetal stages, Justin Beiber was a frozen prawn.

Our country's newspapers told us to vote for this, and blindly we did. Now we have a Prime Minister called 'Dave'.

3. Live from Studio Five - Sorry, another one for the Brits amongst us. If you're not aware, Live From Studio Five is a late-afternoon talk show in which an ex-footballer, an ex-model and a(?) talk utter bollocks for an hour. Live From Studio Five is Mike Judge's Idiocracy made real and is, like the proliferation of the Justins Beiber and Lee Collins, symptomatic of the nation's stupiddening. It's produced by Sky News and is so trivial and so idiotic that it'll make your brain hurt.

2. That dream where all your teeth fall out - According to a mister Freud, the 'teeth falling out' dream is symbolic of castration as punishment for masturbation. Obviously, I have totally never had that dream...

1. Twilight - Everything about Twilight scares me. Well, save for the things that are supposed to be scary. It normalises emotional abuse and makes it seem aspirational. It was written by a woman that's never read Dracula and couldn't give a fuck about vampire fiction. It has a horrible insidous religious undercurrent (if Meyer was a half-decent writer, that undercurrent might be dangerous). It has a fucking adult fall in love with a baby. Once more, it rewards idiocy and ineptitude with fame and a multi-sequel deal. It has a fucking adult fall in love with a baby. Twilight will bring about the Idiot Apocalypse. You have been warned.

Sucking ass: less terrifying and more preferable than Twilight.

* Well, you might have to go and look for them. But they're there all right.