Opening with a brilliant sequence in which Segal is reborn on the operating table, and building towards a finale in which the scientists realise that they can do nothing to control this hi-tech monster of their own making, the film's bleak futuristic vision also benefits greatly from some extraordinary sets, and from writer/producer/director Hodges' confident direction.

Despite some insipid characterisation and one or two lapses, things move along at a fair pace and there's a surprising plot all about property speculation in San Francisco. Can Grandma Steinmetz save her home from the grasping magnate Alonzo Hawk? The comedy is on the whole inventive, occasionally aspiring to almost surrealist heights.

With superbly handled action sequences, excellent cinematography, and a Morricone score worthy of his Man With No Name efforts, it's a film to be seen.

Looks like a throwaway Eastwood vehicle, through which he drifts as the older partner, allowing Jeff Bridges to strike most of the sparks and steal the movie as his good-natured sidekick.

There is no real social conflict in the film, and it becomes just a period variant on The Last Picture Show, without the vigour of that film or the irony of the original James novel.

The script, about small-timers who wished they were bigger, is soon totally undermined by Fonda's most complacent performance to date and Susan George's sub-Goldie Hawn antics. By way of compensation, the locations are quite pretty and the car stunts are handled with a certain verve.

Though by no means a perfect film, it is a much more coherent work than it is given credit, held together by Siegel's exuberant eye for the incongruous.

Things begin well, with Fisher adding some atmospheric touches and Cushing suggesting a man undermined by his excessive rationality. Unfortunately the script, which treads a wavering line between jerky comedy and seriousness, soon dissipates anyone else's better intentions.

A small masterpiece that places the mood and general ethos of the '50s with absolute precision and total affection.

The film may be a brilliant visual record of the Floyd playing, but sadly the music works on you more if you just close your eyes.

A percussive, Velvet-y score by John Cale and several casting surprises (including the long-absent Barbara Steele) help keep both pace and interest high. It's no more than passable as a thriller, but the density of invention and energy in other respects is enough to shame a dozen contemporary major studio movies.

A bleak and devastatingly brilliant film.

Grier is an actress able to convey an amazing and unflinching strength, and she reveals the film for the dross it is.

Horror film director Hessler and special effects man Ray Harryhausen combine brilliantly to trace Sinbad's mystical voyage. The effects aren't simply fascinating for their own sake - they genuinely convey a sense of the magical and otherworldly.

The Amicus studio is better known for omnibus horror films like Torture Garden and Tales from the Crypt, and this flaccid feature suggests they would have done better to stick to that winning formula.

The cast is good (though it remains very much Lester's film), the fights appropriately energetic, and it all moves along at a fair pace, sprinkled with a number of good gags.

The story is simple but the imagery more than compensates: from the tragic-beautiful opening – Yuki’s mother dies in childbirth (and in prison) as white flakes drift peacefully by the barred windows – through a series of shocking, angry flashbacks, to the striking, unexpectedly emotive final shot, this is beautifully controlled, almost sedate action cinema.

Never portentous, never a mere spoof, this is a touching, intelligent, and - in its own small way - rather wonderful movie.

The script gradually falls apart into a mess of philosophical pottage under the whimsically pretentious Tolkien influence. But visually the film remains a sparkling display of fireworks, brilliantly shot and directed.

While the cinematography has dated rather badly, the story and the performances of both Tyson and her supporting cast are more than powerful enough to make it worthwhile viewing. [04 Sep 2008, p.72]

William Friedkin’s full-throttle adaptation of William Peter Blatty’s novel works because it fuses the extreme and the everyday.

While never as disturbing as the first film, it fails to convince because of the turnaround in Harry's character, and because it posits in facile fashion degrees of taking the law into one's own hands: Harry's acceptable, the gun crazy kids aren't. That said, it has some fine action sequences, and is far less objectionable than the later Sudden Impact.

All a bit soulless, but at least there's no equivalent of the 'Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head' sequence. All those who liked the earlier film should enjoy this as much.

In its desire to make no concessions to Dirty Harry and its ilk, it destroys any potential interest with almost wilful perversity.

With Schaffner unable to find the necessary perspective to prevent the film from becoming unevenly episodic, it ends up looking as if it were tacked together by at least three different directors.

Despite Robert Towne's often sharp script - about two veteran sailors detailed to escort a young and naïve rating to prison, and showing him a sordidly 'good time' en route - and despite strong performances all round, one can't help feeling that the criticism of modern America hits out at all too easy targets in a vague and muffled manner.

A superbly chilling essay in the supernatural.