A mine haunted by spriguns, an orphan menaced by a stranger who vanishes at will and the shadow cast over a village by the Black Death. Each is the backbone for the three films gathered on Scary Stories, the BFI’s fourth collection drawn from the archives of the Children’s Film Foundation (CFF). Although aimed at children, around an hour long and made with limited budgets, these subtle, well-crafted films sold no one short. All three are packed with shocks – and still pack punches for children of all ages.

Losing your pet mouse would be distressing enough. But misplacing the white rodent on a school trip to the Tower of London is beyond careless. It’s downright irresponsible. But that’s routine compared with turning yellow and then encountering a man who travels via the electric current he feeds from. Obviously, the errant school kid ends up set for a beheading in the Tower. All of which happens to John in The Boy Who Turned Yellow, a 1972 Children’s Film Foundation (CFF) production that’s bizarre, even by their eccentric standards.

While it’s impossible to know the effect of Captured on the few who originally saw it, you can be damn sure it packed a punch. It still does. This unforgettable film was made in 1959 for the Army Kinema Corporation to train personnel in resisting interrogation. Classified as “restricted”, it was seen only by a relevant and limited forces audience. Instead of making a dry, instructional film, director John Krish fashioned a drama with clearly defined characters and a slow-burn intensity which climaxes disturbingly.

Both on screen and off, Montgomery Clift was sensitive, hesitant, introspective, self-destructive and often tortured. A personality that expressed itself on film as if afraid of what the camera would reveal. There were at least three faces of Clift. The early public one of the dark, romantic, handsome star of the fan magazines; the face of extraordinary beauty marred after a car accident in 1956, and the private face of drink, drugs and a series of unloving homosexual encounters.

Jacques Tati is probably the most famous French comic of all time. Monsieur Hulot is one of those well-loved outsiders, rebels by default rather than vocation and melancholy clowns pitted against the conventions of bourgeois society and the false promises of progress.

Featuring a towering, Cannes-award-winning performance from Mads Mikkelsen, The Hunt (Jagten) is a humane and horrifying story of the power of accusation from Danish director Thomas Vinterberg (Festen).

Clare Stewart arrived in London from Australia a year ago this month, into one of the biggest jobs in the UK film industry. For film buffs, it might seem like she entered a giant playground, a job to die for. Stewart is Head of Exhibition at the British Film Institute, a newly-created role that brings together responsibility for the day-to-day programming of the BFI Southbank and IMAX and for the institute’s festivals, including the London Film Festival, of which she is the festival director.

Described by Peter Falk as, “a love story between a woman who’s half wacky and a guy who’s inarticulate”, John Cassavetes’ seventh feature from 1974 is without doubt one of his finest achievements. It’s one of several collaborations between Cassavetes and his actor wife Gena Rowlands, here giving a performance of show-stopping complexity.

Alfred Hitchcock famously loved his blondes, and they didn't come much more lovable than Barbara Harris. A Broadway star during the 1960s who later shifted her attentions towards film, Harris was at the peak of her talent in Family Plot, a delightful if minor Hitchcock entry distinguished by a fine quartet of American leads (Karen Black, William Devane and Bruce Dern are the others) among whom Harris stands apart. Indeed, by the time of the conspiratorial wink from Harris that closes the film, audiences will surely find themselves already grinning right back.

Never one to underestimate the potency of a cameo (as evidenced by his own appearances in his films), Alfred Hitchcock had a particular genius with supporting roles – generating menace, intrigue or comedy with the fewest of brush strokes. Two of his earliest, and slightest, creations would also prove two of his most enduringly popular: cricket-obsessed duo Caldicott and Charters from 1938’s The Lady Vanishes.