What’s your favourite film to watch at this time of year?
The Beyond ticks all the boxes: it has a spooky old house, zombies and an unspeakable secret. It’s creepy but gory, a classic Italian horror movie. Watch it with the lights off and candles on.

Are there any horror icons you think should be better known?
Nigel Kneale wrote lots of intelligent and unsettling films such as the Quatermass films and The Stone Tape, often blending scientific ideas with primal terror. His Beasts TV series is a bit of a lost classic. The Spanish actor and director Paul Naschy also doesn’t get his due in the English-speaking world. He’s possibly the finest actor to don fake fur and fangs.

Do you have a favourite horror scene in a film?
The scene in The Ring where Sadako crawls out the TV must be one of the most iconic in modern horror, literally manifesting traditional horror through modern technology. For something a bit sillier but equally inspired, the underwater zombie fighting a shark in Zombie Flesh Eaters is hard to beat.

There have been many brilliant composers and musicians who’ve worked on horror film soundtracks – which stand out for you?
John Carpenter’s done some great soundtracks to his own films, Halloween being the best, but The Fog is also fantastic, with its creepy, droning synths and haunting piano line. For sheer trouser-browning bombast, Jerry Goldsmith’s soundtrack to The Omen is hard to beat. Also, we’re fond of anything with a Goblin soundtrack, such as Suspiria and Dawn Of The Dead.

And finally, how will you be spending Halloween this year?
At The Banshee Labrinyth, watching Halloween 3 and Night of the Creeps at this month’s Zombie Club! 7.30pm, free in, plus horror films running to closing time in what’s allegedly Edinburgh’s most haunted pub …

Top five Halloween movies

The Edinburgh Zombie Club share some of their favourite scary classics

Night of the Demon

(Jacques Tourneur, 1957)
A genuinely eerie movie, involving a psychologist trying to break the curse of an Aleister Crowley-like cultist. It’s amazingly atmospheric, only let down by some creaky monster effects at its climax.

Halloween III: Season of the Witch

(Tommy Lee Wallace, 1983)
A departure from the other films in the series, this one features a conspiracy to kill the nation’s children using Hallowe’en masks.

Death Line

(Gary Sherman,1973)
A tale of cannibals in the Underground, Donald Pleasence is great as a sleazy cop investigating a spate of disappearances, giving the proceedings a feel of the Sweeney meets The Hills Have Eyes.

The Prince of Darkness

(John Carpenter, 1987)
John Carpenter made a number of stone cold classics but some of his later work, while not as great, is often overlooked. A group of scientists studying a mysterious artefact found in a derelict church unwittingly free an unspeakable evil. Its climax is the stuff of nightmares.

Night of the Creeps

(Fred Dekker, 1986)
Alien brain parasites invade a small town, turning people into zombies, leaving some of the local kids to fight them off. A massively fun (and gory) comedy-horror.