2) ALIEN: No less deserving of gross-out notoriety than the John Hurt chest-burster, frankly. Ian Holm’s gone haywire – flailing, milk-spurting, weirdly violating a prone Sigourney Weaver – so Yaphet Kotto knocks his block off. Revealed as a robot, science officer Ash can in fact still function, once his crew members plug him back in. So he explains himself, and wishes them luck. They’ll need it.

3) THE EVIL DEAD: Another Ash – Bruce Campbell’s character, terrorised on all sides by shrieking, putrefied loons where his friends used to be. One of them disinters itself, leaps at his flesh, and with a swing of a shovel, its head goes flying. Damn funny, a scene Raimi can’t resist remaking in the sequels. With a zombie granny.

4) SLEEPY HOLLOW: (poem) There’s this local legend that Christopher Walken gives good head. People queue up, but he actually chops them off, instead.

5) BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA: Loads of obligatory severings – it’s a plot point, you know. Got to laugh when Hopkins comes out of the castle swinging a handful of undead babes by the hair and chucks them over a precipice. And, come on, Sadie Frost was asking for it – blatantly a vampire.

6) HIGHLANDER: A key text. Sean Connery has been earnestly exhorting protegé Christophe Lambert not to lose his head, as it’s the only way to properly die. But he fails to take his own advice, and it is operatically lopped off against a backdrop of stormy weather and cardboard turrets, which then soggily collapse. Few heads in this film remain on shoulders, but it at least meant less chance of appearing in the sequel for the decapitees.

7) GLADIATOR: It’s all over in a very flashy flash – swords cross round his neck, and another Crowe foe bites the dust, head-first. Makes an impact. In fact, a friend of mine stood up and applauded in the front row. Are you not entertained?

8) BLACK RAIN: A mid-movie, briefly tedium-dispelling shocker. Andy Garcia, meet samurai sword. Sword, meet Andy’s head, in some suspiciously atmospheric car park, and dislodge it unexpectedly from body. Ridley Scott obsession emerging here.

9) BRAIN DEAD: One prays for this kind of carnage in Lord of the Rings, but it’s doubtful, somehow. Rudely disembodied by a pair of garden shears, a bespectacled zombie head gets kicked around on the floor, amid sundry other body parts, some dead, some undead, all extremely mushy and garish. Later, it gets liquefied in a blender.

10) FINAL DESTINATION: Love this one. Dawson’s Creek guy was supposed to die on a train track, but Eminem Stan video man intervenes in the nick of time. So death’s sadistic design (someone actually says that) gets screwed up. Instead, American Pie guy interfaces with a shard of flying metal (makes a change from semen in his beer, anyway). The others are a bit grossed out, but quickly turn to discussing what’s up with that: can they actually cheat death? Because being dead, like, totally bites, dude.

Tim Robey