John Carpenter’s The Thing
With E.T. still in cinemas, the last thing audiences wanted in the summer of 1982 was a horrifying, shape-shifting parasite to sully their newly minted image of aliens as cuddly, cheeky and childlike. It’s a pity, because The Thing was, and is, a superbly realised sci-fi horror, less a remake of Howard Hawks’ 1951 classic The Thing From Another World than a surprisingly faithful adaptation of the 1938 short story which inspired them both, John W. Campbell Jr.’s Who Goes There?. A quarter-century on, Carpenter’s best film has aged not a jot, largely due to the film’s remote setting — a bunch of grizzled, bearded scientists snowed in at an Antarctic outpost look much the same now as they did in 1982 — but also thanks to Dean Cundey’s crisp photography, a gift to Blu-ray’s sharpness. The talented cinematographer wasn’t the only one working at the top of his game, however: Rob Bottin’s exceptionally accomplished practical effects successfully banished all memory of the frankly silly Thing from Hawks’ version; the script, by Burt Lancaster’s son Bill, made the most of the story’s paranoid possibilities, populating it with an all-male cast of memorable characters, each with a nice line in quotable dialogue; finally, composer Ennio Morricone somehow managed to build an almost unbearable sense of dread through the repetition of a solitary note. ‘Making of’ material is laudably plentiful, but the highlight is undoubtedly the classic commentary from Carpenter and his friend and frequent colleague, Kurt Russell.

		Cloverfield This isn’t an obvious Blu-ray candidate — handheld shaky-cam and all — but it works surprisingly well on the format, the transfer cleared up but not losing the monster movie’s immediacy. The extras are also hi-def, with a nifty picture-in-picture mode.
		The Shining Talk about a dream team: Kubrick, Nicholson, King. This is as high quality as horror comes, and the result is a film that worms its way into your brain and stays there, as Nicholson’s writer goes bananas over a long winter. Packed with extras and in a cleaned-up print, this has never been scarier.
		Bram Stoker’s Dracula For the hi-def release, Francis Ford Coppola fiddled with the colour and grade of his operatic vampire adaptation, making the film even more lavish. Equally opulent extras include a commentary and introduction from Coppola, plus documentary The Blood Is The Life.
		The Omen Relive the sound and fury of Richard Donner’s 1976 horror classic with this terrifying, and brilliant, HD transfer. Then you can explore every facet of the Antichrist saga’s birth with exhaustive documentaries, commentaries, deleted scenes and much more.
		Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street Tim Burton adapts Stephen Sondheim’s bloody musical, with Johnny Depp as the homicidal hairstylist. A razor-sharp and deliciously dark transfer helps to transform the ridiculous to the sublime, and there are extras aplenty.
		The Lost Boys “Death by stereo!” In high definition! Need we really say more? Oh, okay then: this classic ’80s teen-horror-comedy retains the power to scare, seduce and amuse in equal measure, and looks better than ever in this spruced-up transfer. A toothsome selection of extras, too.
		Night Watch He’s often referred to, usually by his cast, as a “mad Russian”, but director Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted) sure knows how to deliver a memorable fantasy/horror, as he does in this epic tale of vampires, witches, psychics and the appeal of evil. Marvel at the absolutely demented story, breathtaking special effects and bits that make no sense in this top-notch Blu-ray version.
		Hostel Eli Roth’s torture-horror is going to divide people. On the one hand, people are going to ask why you’d want to see this in high definition. On the other hand, horror fans will be thrilled at the pristine transfer, showcasing every speck of gore. Extras include a commentary with Roth.
		Quarantine Like Cloverfield, Quarantine is supposedly a film of footage from a handheld camera after an attack of… something on a building’s residents, so the picture is deliberately grainy, but what sets this apart is a surround sound mix that’s hugely unsettling. Extras include a commentary with director John Erick Dowdle and producer Drew Dowdle.

		Staff Pick The Fly Kim Newman David Cronenberg’s mutant movie has a lo-tech, rubber-and-slime-on-the-studio-floor feel which perversely reads better in hi def than many more recent horrors. The gooey Brundlefly — Jeff Goldblum segueing into an ace make-up job and animatronics — seems painfully real on Blu-ray.