cripplethreat

Hello, beautiful lady - I'm always tempted when someone asks about movies. I have watched far too many in my lifetime, and a lot of them over, and over again. Cutting it down to three is difficult, but here goes: 1] 'Jaws'. This is a movie, that I have watched literally hundreds of times. If it is on TV, I have an odd compulsion to sit down and watch it to the end. I don't know why, but I do - and I still get the same pleasure from it as I did when I first saw it, in a traditional 'fleapit' cinema, in 1976 [I was 13, and only got in because I knew the bloke on the door]. [2] 'Quatermass And The Pit' [US: 'Five Million Years To Earth']. First watched on TV, it really got me thinking, big ideas that a horror movie shouldn't set off - and, over the years, repeated viewings still thrill, and disturb; it's very tame compared to today's fast edited hack 'n' slash offerings [it was made in 1967, from a 1959 BBC TV serial], but the ideas behind it are big and disturbing, and it is seriously creepy for most of it's length. I saw a new print of it in my local cinema, a few years back, and it was simply astonishing - a DVD on a large HD TV doesn't even come close. [3] 'Theatre Of Blood'. As I couldn't really have a list that didn't feature my all-time favourite filmstar, Vincent Price, I went for this, one of the blackest of all black comedies, from 1973. His 'Doctor Phibes' movies are great - but this is better. Price plays the embittered [and presumed dead] barnstorming actor Edward Lionheart, who hacks his way through the theatre critics who [rightfully, as Lionheart is a dreadful ham], ignored his performances, and gave him terrible reviews. All the deaths are ones featured in the plays of Shakespeare, altered for the modern age. Some killings are amusing: some are properly nasty. I love Price's performance here - there is a sense of glee in everything he does in this movie. Again, I have watched this far too many times, but it still makes me happy.