To explode a myth: in 1966 Antonioni's first English film was pitched not on the Italian director's vision or its meditations on the interface between reality and fantasy, but on its 'unflinching' portrayal of Swinging London—ie, much nudity. The original trailer, included here, makes that perfectly clear: it was popular because of breasts, not because it asked what 'meaning' meant.
And photographer David Hemmings' romps with models and Vanessa Redgrave remain icons of "yeeeah, baby" wish fulfilment for lensmen everywhere.
It all feels as dynamic and mould-breaking as it did 10 years ago. ER has kept itself fresh with regular transfusions of new characters, but it's amazing how good the original cast was (take a bow Noah Wyle, Sherry Stringfield; Anthony Edwards and that Clooney guy). And we forget how radical ER's multiple-stories-on-the-fly technique was, using long, fluent steadicam shots to give shape to a maze of powerful interlocking narratives. Holby City, get stuffed.
So-so sci-fi rom-com from John Carpenter, with Chevy Chase as a stockbroker who gets caught in a nuclear accident that turns him invisible; Daryl Hannah plays his love interest, Sam Neill the CIA heavy chasing him. Totally dependent on hackneyed visual gags and special effects that were superseded long ago, what remains is indulgent fluff.
Utterly predictable slapstick-laden festive fare as Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) prepares to spend an old-fashioned non-stop domestic disaster of a Christmas with his extended family (including Randy Quaid and an extremely young Juliette Lewis). If you'd like to see Mr Chase being hit repeatedly over the head, this could be the movie for you.
William Friedkin's original was dazzling, intelligent and scary; John Boorman's train wreck of a sequel is none of the above. Richard Burton is at his hammiest as the priest investigating the death of Father Merrin at the end of the first movie, Louise Fletcher plays Regan's psychiatrist, and the screenplay is one of the worst ever committed to paper. Avoid.
Released as part of an Eastwood box set, this finds Clint and Richard Burton breaking into a Nazi-held Alpine fortress to rescue a US general, then spectacularly blazing their way out. With bombings, knifings, shootings and that famous fracas atop a cable car, the body count is gratifyingly high. One wonders, given the bloody duo's amazing strike-rate, why they didn't ride their luck and continue straight on to Berlin.
Pre-Star Wars, '70s Hollywood loved its post-apocalyptic sci-fi dystopias—think The Omega Man, Rollerball and Logan's Run. With a brilliant cast—Charlton Heston, Edward G Robinson in his final role—and a superbly ghoulish twist, few come bleaker or better than this.
Camp Crystal Lake reopens 20 years after the tragic death of young Jason Vorhees and no one is safe from the ingenious butchery. There's no hip hockey mask and few cute one-liners—just a catalogue of slaughter and a neat double-twist ending as director Sean Cunningham attempted to replicate the success of John Carpenter's Halloween.
Charlton Heston plays the Last Man On Earth after everybody else has been transformed by a plague into albino vampires in this so-so adaptation of Richard Matheson's novel I Am Legend. Some nice post-apocalyptic moments in the first half, but the vampires really aren't scary enough and the allegorical ending is on a par with a flying mallet. Disappointing.
