I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen this iconic Steve McQueen movie. If I have, I remember nothing of it. McQueen was a renowned petrol-head, and having done many of his own driving stunts in Bullitt, having him star in a movie about the famous 24-hour race seems like a natural fit. For added realism,…
The Parallax View
The Parallax View is possibly the most paranoid of a small wave of paranoid thrillers from the 70s. Several of these (including Klute and All The President’s Men) were also directed by Alan J Pakula. Here, Warren Beatty stars as a crusading journalist who comes to realise that all witnesses a political assassination are steadily…
Psycho II
I recall Psycho II being a better movie than it had any right to be. Whilst the idea of making a sequel to arguably Hitchcock’s most famous movie might seem like sacrilege, Psycho II was more than the abject cash-in that might have been expected. I remember the shift from black and white to colour in…
The Final Conflict
The Final Conflict was the concluding chapter in The Omen trilogy (well, it was until someone had the bright idea to flog a dead horse with Omen IV…) I always found it a poor fit with the previous two movies, the basic premise being that the Devil’s son Damien is now a grown adult, intent…
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…
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…
Invasion Of The Body Snatchers
Philip Kaufman’s 1978 version of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers is one of those rare instances where the remake is arguably better than the original movie. Don Siegel’s version is a deserved classic of 50s paranoia sci-fi, justly remembered in particular for its ending, as the hero stands on a freeway shouting to no avail…
To Trap A Spy
i used to watch The Man from UNCLE TV series regularly as a kid. It was an unashamed American James Bond knock-off, featuring spies Robert Vaughn and David McCallum in a new adventure each week. Cheaply made, and largely forgettable plot-wise, it had some decent chemistry between the leads, some fun gadgets and a few…
The Big Heat
Fritz Lang’s 1953 crime thriller is now considered one of the classic film noirs. The movie stars Glenn Ford as a homicide cop. Plus, there’s an early role for Lee Marvin as a heavy who, in the movie’s most famous scene, throws a pot of boiling coffee in his moll Gloria Grahame’s face, badly scarring…
Shivers
Shivers was the first David Cronenberg movie to put him on the map as the master of ‘body horror’. It has a lot of his tropes in place – a chilly Canadian setting, weirdly named mysterious doctors, and a fair selection of truly gross-out moments (see his later Rabid, Scanners etc). The movie was also…