I doubt Dracula director Tod Browning could ever have fathomed that when he convinced MGM to buy the rights to Tod Robbins’ story, Spurs, it would change not just his life, but those of the audiences who encountered it. He certainly could never have known how much it would affect a disabled girl living Sacramento who wanted to write about movies but never expected to see herself represented.

A couple of years ago I spoke to someone who explained why Nightbreed was so important to them as a gay teenager. They said the film gave them hope because someone else understood what it felt like to be an outsider. It was different from other horror movies where the monster is pure evil and is trying to stalk and slash you, or where they’re simply a misunderstood victim. In Nightbreed, a community of monsters are the “good guys”.

With last month’s lackluster reception of Floria Sigismondi’s The Turning, it’s easy to wonder if the film’s source material – Henry James’ gothic novella The Turn of the Screw – has any lasting relevance in today’s society. With a culture as obsessed with Halloween and all things spooky as ours, gothic romance should be considered a timeless genre worthy of our recognition (Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak certainly deserved a better shake than it got at the box office, for instance). But The Turn of the Screw has more going for it than its enduring scares. There’s an urgency, a nowness, to the story’s crucial question: can we believe the woman narrating this ghostly tale?