The Italian Job has so many great moments, its one of the most memorable British films of the 60s, I reckon. Who doesn’t love the endlessly quotable dialogue (“You’re only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!”), or cheeky thief Michael Caine and his gang’s escape from a gridlocked Turin in a fleet of Mini…
Man Of 1000 Faces
Lon Chaney was one of the greats of silent cinema. A master of disguise, he would go to extreme (and – for him – extremely painful) lengths to transform himself into The Hunchback Of Notre Dame and The Phantom Of The Opera, amongst other horror movie icons. Still, he was perhaps an unusual subject for…
Forbidden Planet
Memorabilia from Forbidden Planet makes for some of the most collectible movie items out here. If I had an original release US poster I would be a rich man. But I have to make do with this rather less valuable 60s re-release Spanish herald (plus my Australian poster for The Invisible Boy – not a sequel…
Frenzy
Frenzy, Alfred Hitchcock’s penultimate film, is somewhat divisive. Hitchcock returned to the UK after many years in Hollywood to deliver undoubtedly the nastiest (and arguably most misogynistic) of his movies. Hitch takes advantage of relaxing censorship to deliver some very graphic, brutal murder set-pieces. Its something of a return to form, however, after the very boring…
Scum
Scum remains one of the toughest and most disturbing watches of all British movies of the 70s. A harsh look at the brutal life inside borstals, it was originally planned for TV, but it got banned and was subsequently remade to be released in cinemas. I still remember the scene where a pre-fame Ray Winstone…