50. Badlands (1973).
This is Terrence Mallick's debut masterpeice which he made a few years before Days of Heaven. The way he uses voice narrative and music is kind of a revelation, theres no other filmaker like him. Badlands is the supposed true story of a couple of young misfits who went on a murder rampage in the 60's. Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek are both great.
49. What? (1972)
Roman Polanski's What? is a kind of absurd comedy, similar in tone to his earlier film The Fearless Vampire Killers if you replace the gothic horror aesthetic with a kind of modern day Alice in Wonderland, and add lots of gratuitous nudity. I think it might be his take on the kind of European sex comedies of people like Tinto Brass, only funnier and much more elegantly directed. I'm a fan of Polanski's kind of subtle camera style, I could have just as easily included Frantic or The Ninth Gate in a list of my favourite films, and infact I probably will. Sydne Rome plays a young American tourist called Nancy who is almost raped while hitchhiking through Italy and finds herself seeking refuge in a coastal villa filled with strange characters. Marcello Mastroianni plays Alex (also sometimes referred to as Coco the Mashed Potato) a clap ridden pimp and Polanski appears as a perverted greek scuba diver called Mosquito: "..they call me that because I sting things mith my big stinger". Hugh Griffith plays Noblart, the elderly owner of the villa. After being "defiled" several times by Alex, Nancy falls in love with him only to find him indifferent. Like most of the characters, he seems to repeat the same frases and actions daily as if stuck in limbo. This theme is enhanced when it's suggested that they are infact waiting for the iminent death of Mr Noblart in the hope of inheriting some of his seemingly vast wealth. Sydne Rome is both hilarious and adorable as Nancy, who seems to gradually lose all her clothes during the course of the film and is forced to take this and the many other calamities in her stride. The themes of limbo and claustrophobia are offset by the light humour and the film is incredibly watchable and funny.
48. Kill Baby Kill (1966)
Arguably Mario Bava's greatest film, Kill Baby Kill is a masterpiece of gothic horror. Infact it's one of the best examples of this genre ever, long with other Bava films like The Mask of Satan (a.k.a. Black Sunday), Black Sabbath and The Whip and the Body. It's bursting with atmosphere and the cinematography is beautiful, Bava started as a cinematographer and his films have a trademark, beautiful kind of garish quality: deep black shadows complement primary colours. Shots in deep focus, the texture of objects and walls are vividly represented. Whithout Bava there would be no Dario Argento or Jess Franco and infact there would be no giallo film genre. He also invented the slasher film with Bay of Blood, influencing people like John Carpenter. Copolla's Dracula also has alot of blatant homages to Black Sabbath and The Mask of Satan, although Bava was a director who was under appreciated and remained fairly obscure during his lifetime. Most of his films were made with a tiny budget, he famously once used a wheelbarrow to achieve a tracking shot.
47. Dust Devil (1992).
Dust Devil is a kind of bizarre horror love story from Richard Stanley, the maverick director/writer responsible for Hardware. It revolves around three main characters: ageing police detective Ben Mukarob, housewife Wendy Robinson who is fleeing her abusive husband Mark and a mysterious hitchhiker who is also the enbodiment of a kind of desert spirit that kills people in order to take their souls. Wendy meets the drifter, who's murders are being investigated by Mukarob. Subsequently, Wendy's husband Mark teams up with Mukarob in order to find Wendy and they all come together in a kind of Tarkovskyesque climax. The film is narrated by Mukarob's friend Joe, the owner of a drive-in cinema. I think apart from just being a tripy horror film it's also a bit of an aesthetic homage to the Leone western. In the comentary Stanley admits to have been inspired to write Dust Devil after watching The Good, The Bad and The Ugly under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs.
46. The Serpent and The Rainbow (1988)
A largely unnoticed early gem from Elm Street and Scream director Wes Craven, The Serpent and The Rainbow is a really entertaining, fun horror film and also a kind of fascinating look into the world of Haitian voodoo and zombies. The late Zakes Mokae (Ben Mukarob from Dust Devil) gives an extaordinary performance as Mr Paytraud, the villanous witchdoctor and head of the secret police who terrorises Bill Pullman.
45. The Brides of Dracula (1960).
The Brides of Dracula is definateley my favourite Hammer movie, it's directed by the legendary Terence Fisher. He made most of the other good Hammer films including Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, The Devil Rides Out, Curse of The Werewolf and the Dracula films. This is the only Dracula film made by Hammer without Christopher Lee in the title role (in fact the character of Dracula never appears), although Peter Cushing does turn up as Dr Van Helsing about half way through. I think its one of the few Hammer films to have a genuinely engaging plot and it doesn't rely on the same old Universal monsters. It's a true oddity. David Peel is excellent as Baron Meinster, a suave young vampire who becomes captivated by the new school mistress Marianne, played by the french actress and sex symbol Yvonne Monlaur. Monlaur also starred in another macabre gem of the same year: Circus of Horrors.
44. The Long Goodbye (1973).
Robert Altman's adaptation of the novel by Raymond Chandler. Elliott Gould is amazing as private detective Philip Marlowe, the role made famous by Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep. It's just a great detective story updated from the early 1950's of the book to Altman's 1970's hollywood. Altman is one of the greatest directors ever, having been responsible for some of the best American movies of the 70's, nameley: M*A*S*H, McCabe and Mrs Miller, Theives Like Us and 3 Women. In the early nineties he made The Player, a kind of satire of the hollywood film industry and followed it up with probably his greatest film: Short Cuts, inspired by the short stories of Raymond Carver.43. Requiem for a Gringo (1968)
Requiem for a Gringo a.k.a. Duel in the Eclipse is a classic spaghetti western by Spanish director Jose Luis Merino. It was also rumoured to be co-directed by another Spanish director, Egenio Martin, the man behind the infamous spaghetti western The Ugly Ones. Regardless, Requiem is one of the most violent and unique spaghetti's from the heyday of this sub-genre, and remains one of the earliest and best examples of non linier storytelling in a comercial film. Ross Logan, a civil war veteran (played by Lang Jeffries), returns home to Mexico from travelling through central and south America. He soon clashes with a band of outlaws, the Carranza gang, after they kill his younger brother. One by one the distinctive characters in the Carranza gang disapear as Logan takes revenge, but not in the usual way. As he reveals in a final confrontation with the gangs leader (Fernando Sancho), he has used his extensive knowledge of astronomy and almost supernatural connection to the elements to trap and kill each one. By no means a typical western hero, Logan is a 'brujo', with his distinctive jaguar skin poncho as the apparent source of his power.
42. The Diabolical Doctor Z (1966)
Highly atmospheric and beautifully shot, this is my favourite film from one of my favourite cult directors, Jess Franco. He is the undisputed king of Euro-sleaze horror-exploitation films and alot of people mistake him for a hack. His films, particularly those from the 70s and onwards, often feature long meandering seaquences, or shots that are completely out of focus. These are both symptomatic of films where a director has only filmed one or two takes per shot (your average hollywood director might film between ten and fifty). The reason for Franco's thriftieness in filming was offcourse to save time and therefore money. It seems he rareley takes more than a week to make a film, from initial idea to final cut, the entire filming taking no more than two or three days. Apparently, during his busiest periods he also often made more than one film at the same time, and infact he claims to have tricked actors into being in more than one film whithout their knowledge. This was possible as Franco would often write each days scenes in his hotel room the night before, giving the actors little knowledge of the overall plot of the film, or films, they would eventually appear in. To date he's directed something like 150 movies. By his own admision a lot of these are trash but his best films, of which The Diabolical Doctor Z is one, are truly incredible.
41. Angel Heart (1987).
Angel Heart is a terrifying gothic noir thriller writen and directed by Alan Parker. It's about a private detective in 1950's New York called Harry Angel (played by Micky Rourke) who is hired by the demonic Louis Cyphre (Robert De Niro) to find Johny Favourite, a 30s jazz crooner who has been missing since the end of the war. The whole movie feels incredibly bleak and dark, a bit like a nightmare. As if the characters are already in hell. Lisa Bonnet of The Cosby Show plays Johny's morose/sexy daughter Epiphany who'm Harry meets when the hunt takes him to New Orleans.40. Aguirre, The Wrath of God (1972)
One of Werner Herzog's early films, I think like the best of his work it's truly original. Herzog claims to have never seen a film until he was in his teens, as bizzarre as this sounds I think it's given him a unique perspective and approach to film making. Aguirre is a perfect example of this. Like many of his films its contemplative, water breaks on the rapids of a river for a full minute. It's the Amazon river and the film, almost a documentary, follows a group of sixteenth century conquistadors on an ill fated mission to find a city of gold. Apparently it's also partially a comment on the Vietnam war. The music by krautrockers Popol Vuh is beautiful, Klaus Kinski gives another memorable performance.
39. Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974).
One of my favourite examples of a Sam Peckinpah film. The opening scene featuring a man breaking the arm of his pregnant daughter sets the tone for the rest of the movie. It's a very dark tale about the power of money over a couple of outcast losers. Bad things happen. The amazing Warren Oates plays Bennie, a pianist in a Mexican bar who is approached by two sinister hitmen, Sappensly and Quill, to track down and kill an old aquantance of his, Alfredo Garcia. They offer him one million dollars in exchange for his head. Like in other Pekinpah classics like Straw Dogs, The Wild Bunch and Cross of Iron, the action/violence is beautifully stylised. Incedentally, in the opening scene of From Dusk Till Dawn, George Clooney's character threatens a shopkeeper by stating that he will "turn this place into the fucking Wild Bunch".38. The House by The Cemetery (1981).
One of my favourite horror films of all time is Lucio Fulci's The House by The Cemetery. I can't begin to express how scary this film actually is. The funny thing is, it shouldn't be: it has an atrocious English language dub (like alot of Italian movies) and it centres around alot of aesthetic horror cliches (a cemetery and an old house with a haunted cellar). The fact that some sequences still make my hair stant on end is a testiment to the directing of Lucio Fulci. The film is incredibly atmospheric. A New York professor researching suicide takes his wife and their young son Bob to stay at an old mansion in a small town. Offcourse, one hundred years ago Dr Fraudstein lived there with his family, which he murdered in order to use their body parts in his experiments. They were buried in the house (apparently a common practice in the 19th century) and now it is haunted by a mysterious creature living in the basement.
37. The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (1978).
Yes! this is a wonderfully uplifting kung fu movie about triumph over adversity and the importance of perseverance and self discipline. Gordon Liu plays San Te, a young student in medieval China who comes to the Shaolin temple in order to learn their form of advanced kung fu so that he can create a resistance force against the invading northern Han empire. It features what is probably the all time greatest training sequences ever that takes up about half the movie. Liu is a legend.
36. Phenomena (1985).
My favourite Dario Argento film, and probably one of his most bizarre. A teenage Jennifer Connelly stars as a young American girl at a boarding school in Switzerland who finds she is capable of telepathy with insects. She teams up with a wheelchair bound Donald Pleasance to solve the murders that have begun to occur in the area. Highlights include a homicidal chimpanzee, general weirdness from Pleasance and a truly astonishing score that seems to mainly consist of Iron Maiden songs.
35. The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)
Not considered one of Scorsese's best films, nevertheless The Last Temptation of Christ is a favourite of mine and one that I seem to end up watching alot. It's an adaptation of the novel by the Greek writer and philosopher Nikos Kazantzakis. While I haven't read the book I think films often benefit from having the structure and concept of a novel behind them. Willem Dafoe's performance as Jesus is quite incredible and Peter Gabriels 80's score still sounds amazing. The minimalistic art direction is also remarkable, the film seems stripped down, spartan. A far cry from the traditional hollywood epic. This seems to suit the subject and recalls another great film based on the life of Jesus: Pasolini's The Gospel According to Saint Matthew.
34. Vertigo (1958)
Vertigo is the most emotionally satisfying of all Hitchcock's movies. I think it was his personal favourite, his magnum opus, and it's my favourite aswell, along with The Birds. James Stewart plays an ex-San Fransico police detective John "Scottie" Ferguson who is forced to retire after an incident on a roof top causes him to suffer from a fear of hights. One day he's approached by an old college friend to act as a private investigator and follow his wife in order to get to the bottom of her strange behaviour. The man believes that she has become obsessed with her dead ancestor Carlotta Valdes, and possibly even possessed by her spirit. It's a truly convincing portrayal of obssession and features one of the greatest unspoken sequences ever, along with one of the greatest musical scores by Bernard Herrmann.
