In the run up to Halloween many stores run some kind of horror related special offer. The witches hats, rubber spiders and candy fill the shelves and people stock up on horror movies. On a recent visit to Poundland I was delighted to find a DVD display packed with horror films. Each one was, as the name would suggest, only £1 (which is about $1.60 right now). So is it possible to buy a decent horror film for a pound?

I went for six movies in the end and to be brutally honest all of them were pretty terrible save one. Here’s what my £6 got me.

Dead Man’s Hand
This one boasted cult horror favourites Sid Haig and Michael Berryman as stars. Berryman is the intensely ugly guy from the original The Hills Have Eyes. To say they starred was a gross exaggeration and this tale about a haunted casino was badly written, acted and directed. There were some nice visual effects but on the whole it was cheap and rubbish.

Doll Graveyard
A bunch of dolls return from the grave as a young boy is comically possessed by a young girl. The dolls kill his big sister’s obnoxious friends in a series of rubbish set pieces. The fantastically stupid premise was squandered in this lacklustre effort which failed to provide scares or laughs.

Skinned Alive
This was a kind of Texas Chainsaw Massacre rip off with a gang of killers riding round in a van and…well…killing people. It had a quirky sense of humour which actually worked for a couple of the gags and although it was cheap it did manage to remain vaguely entertaining.

Skinned Deep
Probably the worst film on the list. This was another Texas Chainsaw Massacre rip off with a family of inbred cannibals randomly killing people. Warwick Davis, who played Wicket in Return of the Jedi, was cast here as a plate obsessed weirdo with a plate filled back pack from which he kept plucking plates and hurling them at everyone. I guess he has also played the Leprechaun six times now so he’s no stranger to bad horror but this was beyond the pale.

Jigsaw
A bunch of art students decorate separate parts of a mannequin for their professor and then get drunk and burn it. The mannequin is not amused and promptly comes back to life and starts chopping them up. This at least had some character development and a vaguely coherent storyline but it was lacking in the horror and gore department.

Phenomena
I have no idea what this total gem was doing in such dodgy company but it is easily the best film I’ve ever bought for a pound. Dario Argento wrote and directed it, a very young Jennifer Connelly stars and Donald Pleasence provides support. The twisted story is about a strange Swiss boarding school where young girls have been going missing. A serial killer is operating in the area and when American Jennifer enrols it seems she is to be the next victim. To spice things up she has a telepathic connection of some kind with insects and makes friends with entomologist Pleasence. His helper monkey is the real star of the show and before the end there is a hideous deformed boy and a slimy pit full of bodies. Phenomena is worth way more than a pound.