Real Name: Bela Ferenc Dezso Blasko

Monstrous Moniker: Hollywood's Dark Prince

Ominous Origin: 20/10/1882 in Lugos, Hungary (now Romania)

Died: 16/8/66

Spooky Saying: "I was unruly as a boy, like Jekyll and Hyde. With boys, I was a brute. With girls, a lamb."

Reign of Terror: A shameless yet undeniably magnetic ham, Lugosi was almost 50 when he hypnotized the world as Dracula (1931). Over the next three decades he made more than 50 horror movies, most of them dreadful.

Fearsome Facts: When Lugosi died, a penniless morphine addict, he was buried in his Dracula cape.

Monstrous Moniker: The Man of a Thousand Faces

Ominous Origin: 1/4/1883 in Colorado

Died: 26/8/30

Spooky Saying: "My whole career has been devoted to keeping people from knowing me."

Reign of Terror: A master of early make-up effects, Chaney had already made more than 130 films before electrifying silent cinema with a string of horror hits, most notably The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) and Phantom Of The Opera (1925).

Fearsome Facts: Chaney was director Tod Browning's original choice to play Dracula, but he died shortly before production began.

Real Name: William Henry Pratt

Monstrous Moniker: The Uncanny

Ominous Origin: 23/11/1887 in Camberwell, London

Died: 2/2/69

Spooky Saying: "When I was nine I played the demon king in Cinderella and it launched me on a long and happy life of being a monster."

Reign of Terror: A gentle, cultured man of medium build, Karloff was not the obvious choice to play The Monster in Frankenstein (1931). Fortunately, Lugosi turned the role down, and Karloff staggered cinemagoers with his intense and poignant performance. "He's my best friend," said Karloff of the role he played three times. A lifetime of horror films followed.

Fearsome Facts: Karloff was afraid of mice.

Real Name: Creighton Tull Chaney

Monstrous Moniker: The Master Monster

Ominous Origin: 10/2/06 in Oklahoma

Died: 12/7/73

Spooky Saying: "They expected me to know immediately what it took my father 20 years to learn."

Reign of Terror: Unable to escape his father's shadow, Chaney made a name for himself in horror with The Wolf Man (1941) and stayed close to the genre until he died. His favourite role, though, was Lennie in Of Mice And Men (1939).

Fearsome Facts: Chaney remains the only actor who has played the Wolf Man, Frankenstein's Monster, The Mummy and Dracula.

Monstrous Moniker: King of the Grand Guignol

Ominous Origin: 27/5/11 in Missouri, USA

Died: 25/10/93

Spooky Saying: "I don't play monsters. I play men besieged by fate and out for revenge."

Reign of Terror: A fiendishly charismatic character actor, art collector and gourmet chef, Price's horror career began with 3-D shocker House Of Wax (1953), gathered momentum with The Fly (1958) and House On Haunted Hill (1959) and peaked with a number of psychedelic 1960s Poe adaptations.

Fearsome Facts: Notoriously superstitious, Price once joked that he kept a horseshoe, a crucifix and a mezuzah on his front door.

Monstrous Moniker: The Gentle Man of Horror

Ominous Origin: 26/5/13 in Kenley, Surrey

Died: 11/8/94

Spooky Saying: "If I played Hamlet, they'd call it a horror film."

Reign of Terror: Together with partner-in-crime Christopher Lee, Cushing dominated British horror for more than 20 years thanks to his long association with Hammer and rival horror studio Amicus. His first scary film was 1957's Curse Of Frankenstein.

Fearsome Facts: Nearly every shot of Cushing in Star Wars is from the waist up as his boots were too tight so he wore slippers instead.

Monstrous Moniker: The Count

Ominous Origin: 27/5/22 in Belgravia, London

Spooky Saying: "Peter Cushing and I have made so many horror films that people think we live in a cave together."

Reign of Terror: Fame eluded 6'5" Lee until he embarked with Peter Cushing on Hammer remakes of all the great Universal horror films (from 1957). Despite his recent success as evil sorcerer Saruman in the Lord of the Rings movies, the role he will forever be linked with is Dracula, a character he has played a whopping nine times.

Fearsome Facts: Lee boasts well over 200 screen credits, more than any other actor.

Real Name: Ingoushka Petrov

Monstrous Moniker: The Queen of Horror

Ominous Origin: 21/11/37 in Poland

Spooky Saying: "It's great meeting the fans. They say I'm more beautiful now than I was 25 years ago. All lies, of course, but sweet. Where else is an old bag like me going to find strapping young men and women to whisper sweet nothings in her ear?"

Reign of Terror: A Holocaust survivor with considerable physical attributes, Pitt brought out the saucy side of horror in the early 1970s.

Fearsome Facts: While shooting The Vampire Lovers (1970), Pitt's fangs routinely fell into Kate O'Mara's cleavage.

Monstrous Moniker: Freddy

Ominous Origin: 6/6/49 in California, USA

Spooky Saying: "I was originally typecast as a Southerner. Then I played a lot of rednecks, moving on to sidekicks, nerds and finally monsters."

Reign of Terror: Englund transformed into a star the moment he pulled on the razor blade glove that became his trademark weapon as spectral child killer Freddy Krueger, "the bastard son of a hundred maniacs", in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). He's made eight Freddy movies to date, and lots more horror besides.

Fearsome Facts: Englund's favourite Freddy kill is the disabled Latino boy in movie number 6, because it proved that Krueger was an "equal opportunity" psycho.

Monstrous Moniker: The Scream Queen

Ominous Origin: 22/11/58 in California, USA

Spooky Saying: "I am so sick of the violent and nasty movies being directed at young people."

Reign of Terror: No one screams like Jamie Lee, a wafer-thin horror heroine who, in 1978, deafened audiences as psycho survivor Laurie Strode in John Carpenter's definitive slasher classic Halloween. She did four of the eight Halloween movies, and in the most recent chapter, 2002's Resurrection, finally died at the hands of Michael Myers.

Fearsome Facts: Curtis's mum Janet Leigh was the first person killed in the first ever slasher movie, Psycho (1960).