17. A Clockwork Orange

(Stanley Kubrick, 1971)

Stylised, ultraviolent adaptation of Anthony Burgess' controversial novel about freewill and gang violence.

Danger, danger! So dangerous it was banned by its own director! Well, sort of. After Clockwork's UK release in 1972, the tabloids reported several - dubious - incidents of copycat violence...

A vagrant was beaten to death by a man wearing a droog-style bowler hat and black boots. Another was attacked by a youth claiming to be obsessed with the film, while a woman was raped while her attackers sang 'Singin' In The Rain'.

The press coverage led to Kubrick receiving death threats and, contrary to popular belief, it was this – rather than the crimes' link with his film – that prompted the director's self-ban.

16. Triumph Of The Will

(Leni Riefenstahl, 1935)

Flag-waving and puffed-up parading in notorious Nazi rally doc.

Danger, danger! Widely regarded as the most powerful propaganda film ever made, Riefenstahl's technically impressive presentation of the 1934 Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg sold Hitler's manic vision of an ascendant, militarily mighty Germany to millions of the population who couldn't make it on the day.

Hollywood director Frank Capra, who hit back with Allied riposte Why We Fight, said that Triumph... “fired no gun, dropped no bombs, but as a psychological weapon aimed at destroying the will to resist, was just as lethal.”

15. Child's Play 3

(Jack Bender, 1991)

Low-grade horror threequel featuring Chucky the killer doll.

Danger, danger! The murder of two-year-old Jamie Bulger in February 1993 by Jon Venables and Robert Thompson – both aged just 10 – left the British public appalled and mystified.

A smug Sun newspaper offered an answer when it ran a front-page story explicitly linking the boys' actions to Child's Play 3, wrongly suggesting the pair had seen the film in the weeks leading up to the murder.

Similar scapegoating had greeted the Hungerford massacre in 1987, with tabloids quick to pin blame for Michael Ryan's shooting spree on First Blood (Ryan had never seen it).

Next: A Fish Called Wanda, Battle Of Algiers, Passion Of The Christ...