As this terrifying and undeservedly neglected picture proves, there was much more to British cinema in the early 1960s than angry young men prowling round the grim north. Truman Capote and John Mortimer both had a hand in the script for this adaptation of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw, in which a governess fears her young charges may be possessed by the spirits of dead lovers. Deborah Kerr is excellent as the haunted Miss Giddens, Pamela Franklin and Martin Stephens send shivers down the spine as the sinister orphans in her care and Peter Wyngarde is evil personified as the brutal Quint. Never has horror looked so beautiful, with Freddie Francis reinforcing the eerie atmosphere with his unforgettable photography. The film bristles with menace as it draws you inexorably towards its chilling conclusion.

In a mid-19th century Essex country house, a young governess for two children becomes convinced that the house and grounds are haunted by ghosts and that the children are being possessed.