The Popcorn Unicorn's Top 50 Most Influential Films (Part Three)

The Innocents

Based on one of Henry James' most well-known ghost stories The Turning of the Screw, The Innocents is a deeply unsettling yet utterly compulsive exercise in psychological horror which does not underestimate its audience by presenting them with the typical "BOO!" scares, instead, it relies upon a gradual and self-assured unfolding of story and building tension. 

Director Freddie Francis made excellent use of the visual and sound medium, one tool of which being the employment of deep focus, extremely bold yet minimalist lighting as well as the first usage of electronic synthesized composed by Daphne Oram. The entire film feels exactly as true blooded Gothic horror romance should with puissant performances by Deborah Kerr, Michael Redgrave as well as stunning work from the two child actors Pamela Franklin and Martin Stephens. 

The Devils

Who doesn't adore a film so controversial that every time it is mentioned in any entertainment-related circle it results in an intellectual and moral bloodbath? 

Only recently I finally managed to buy Ken Russell's pearl-clutcher uncut and it's one of the finest investments I have ever made. When it comes to religion and the basest of human instincts, nothing could be more fascinating to us because The Devils dares to expose the hypocrisy piety spreads among those who claim to be faithful and rubs it in our faces so lusciously. Oliver Reed and Vanessa Redgrave don't so much shine in their roles but burn with the heat of infinite Hells as Father Grandier and Jeanne respectively because The Devils demands absolute commitment to the savage madness it portrays.

Sita Sings The Blues

This delightful, obscure film is a hard sell when it comes to giving recommendations, but it is a film which never fails to cheer me up while enduring difficult times. 

Sita Sings The Blues was written, directed, produced AND animated by American artist Nina Paley who tells her own personal story of a dissolving marriage and eventual divorce from her emotionally distant husband while interspeding it with The Ramayana, an ancient Sanskrit poem. While the latter story is distinctly pared-down from the original source, it not less offers the viewer a fascinating journey of the human experience and how while our lives can be wounded, they can also be restored by perseverance and faith in ourselves. 

Ninja Scroll

Set during Feudal Japan, Yoshiaki Kawajiri's Ninja Scroll is a skull-slammed-to-the-wall (I don't have balls to be pinned to the wall because obviously) adrenaline injection of an anime consisting of badass ronin heroes, supernaturally-imbued ninjas, ker-AZAY physics-defying fights, insanely incredible animation with a surprising, though subtle sense of heart. Oh, and its pretty gory and has tits, so that's awesome.  

The Silence of the Lambs

I did a think piece on this very film a little while ago so I don't think this warrants further explanation. 

Picnic At Hanging Rock

A fever dream or a luxuriously somnambulistic nightmare? 

Peter Weir's extraordinary adaptation of Joan Lindsays' historical fiction weave (no, it's not real, sorry kids) marries a sense of beauty, wonder yet creeping and uncertain fear of ones' presence in the world. Gorgeously shot on location with other-worldly performances, Picnic At Hanging Rock has never failed in making me feel simultaneously (and frustratingly) insouciant and troubled. 

Goodfellas

In my eyes, this remains Martin Scorseses' best film and that is saying a lot. The acting, the visual and audio craft, attention to detail and fearlessness of what is considered by many, me among them, to be the ultimate gangster movie is infectious. 

The entire movie is one of the ultimate exercises in living vicariously; one minute you want to be in wiseguy Ray Liotta's polished shoes living the American Dreammare, the next you fear for your very soul with Joe Pesci breathing down your neck. Just astounding. 

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Let's face it; when you read the title, that theme song played in your head.

While its status as being the ultimate Western will forever continue to be debated, this is undoubtedly Sergio Leones' capolavoro assoluto due to its sheer iconography and mythical pageantry of a godless and savage land which exists between our realm and that of the never.

Black Christmas

At Casa de Harper, Bob Clarks' classic Christmas-themed slasher is as stalwart as stringing entrails mistletoe above the doorway. 

I feel a lot of people these days tend to undermine the fact Black Christmas is a legitimately terrifying and effective film which is as just as packed with dread as it is with liberal bloodshed. Olivia Hussey, Margot Kidder and John Saxon are but three of a very well-assembled cast of characters who are not there for the sake of being canon fodder, but who present as genuinely endearing individuals you enjoy being alive as opposed to dead while the enigmatic 'Billy' and his phone-based harassment of the sorority will never not be grotesquely visceral and vulgar as an anal cavity exam with a snot-covered glove. 

Sorry. 

The Seventh Seal

A contemplation of life, death, belief, doubt and the very notion of existence with the mise-en-scène being one of the worst events of human history taking the form of a chess game? 

Of course, it HAS to be an Ingmar Bergman film, it HAS to be brilliant and it just so happens to feature one of my personal favourite incarnations of Death ever on screen.