What most people remember is the mix of the live-action tracing within the traditional animation and just how effectively creepy it managed to be, but for the time this did a pretty good job of adapting the dense novels.

Director Alan Pakula's sympathies seem to lie in the landscape, never less than exquisitely framed. But even this mute star can't fill the space left by dour performances.

Halloween remains about as distilled, raw an experience in terror as is ever likely to be committed to celluloid.

For much of its slowburn build there is a classy, intelligent thriller at work, something closer in tone to The Odessa File. Still, you must remain guarded to how over the top and quasi-horror events will finally turn.

Fun, but it mugs too hard.

Hard to call something this gratuitous entertainment but certainly lingers in the memory, thanks mainly to the bombast of Stone's script.

Avant-garde triumph revolving around the seemingly mundane life of a widow in Brussels.

Ustinov may not be the Poirot that we all think of now, after the David Suchet series, but this is pure Agatha Christie, steeped in nostalgia and atmosphere.

Although evidently a rip-off — there were hints of Lucas even taking the matter to the courts — this spacebound wagon train, whose limits are readily apparent, is great fun.

Rarely has a film bared itself to simple majesty...it feels epic yet runs barely over and hour and a half. [22 Oct. 1997]

Like all the best exploitation flicks, Piranha is driven by a ruthless desire to entertain and, in this non-pretentious ambition, it succeeds magnificently.

Too glossy to evoke real sexual tension or, more crucially in this genre, fear, Laura Mars suffers from the over complication of something so simple as serial killing.

From Elmer Bernstein's sweeping dramatic strings - perhaps the first counterpoint score in comedy - to the gleeful mixture of low-brow and lower-brow gags, Animal House is arguably the most influential comedy of our time.

A fair-to-middling auto-noir with a hole in the middle roughly the size of its leading man’s head.

Hammy action yarn with an entertaining performance from Michael Caine.

A noisy but enjoyable destruction derby of a film, sadly with none of the subtlety, invention or skill of Spielberg's Duel.

It's every bit the great songfest it's hailed as, with bucketloads of innuendo thown in behind some of the most energetic musical numbers ever to grace the inside of a movie theatre.

It never comes close to the classic status of its predecessor, but for drive-in horror thrills, this still has sufficient bite.

A rerun of the first one but satan junior is now a teenager.

Clearly not a |Disney classic as almost no-one has heard of it, this is vaguely enjoyable 70s hokum.

Shadowy political trickery is one thing, fabricating an entire NASA mission is near impossible to credit. Get over that and it’s a whole lot of fun watching Hal Halbrook’s — who played supergrass Deep Throat in All The President’s Men — wicked scheming unravel thanks to the gutsy work of Elliot Gould’s tatty hack.

A key film from the movie brats-era, and quite possibly Milius best.

A self-consciously grubby and silly slasher that'll be lapped up by gorehounds, but which really belongs on the rental shelves.

Suffused with the pessimism of Taxi Driver, Blue Collar is one of the most brutally honest films to have come out of 70s Hollywood.

Gothically shot in black and white and numerous shots that have influenced the next generation of directors, this is a classic, no matter how comfortable it is to watch.

A suspense-filled nailbiter that plays on a fear no weapon weilding psycho can top.

As with all great spoofers, you can feel the love the director has for Hitchcock, the thoroughness of his jokes vouches for that and the entire plot is loosely based on Spellbound. Perhaps, he was too devoted, the film lacks daring, it’s soft, Hitch would have sneered at such weakness.

For fans of Cassavetes, Opening night is a must see. As per usual it features a superb cast.