Friday, February 17, 2023

Desert Island Blu-Ray Discs


Can totally relate with poor old Henry Bemis; there just isn't enough time in the world for the things I love, too.

Artistic and intellectual merit be damned, these are forty films I couldn't go without; one film per director.

The Forty:

Frankenstein (James Whale, 1931)

King Kong (Merian C. Cooper & Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933)

The Day the Earth Stood Still (Robert Wise, 1951)

Dracula (Terence Fisher, 1958)

Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)

Black Sabbath (Mario Bava, 1963)

The Great Escape (John Sturges, 1963)

Jason and the Argonauts (Don Chaffey, 1963)

Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (Russ Meyer, 1965)

For A Few Dollars More (Sergio Leone, 1965)

The Dirty Dozen (Robert Aldrich, 1967)

Planet of the Apes (Franklin J. Schaffner, 1968)

Where Eagles Dare (Brian G. Hutton, 1968)

Dirty Harry (Don Siegel, 1971)

Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975)

Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977)

Suspiria (Dario Argento, 1977)

Dawn of the Dead (George A. Romero, 1978)

Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979)

The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980)

An American Werewolf in London (1981)

The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982)

A Nightmare on Elm Street (Wes Craven, 1984)

The Terminator (James Cameron, 1984) 

Ferris Bueller's Day Off (John Hughes, 1986)

Evil Dead II (Sam Raimi, 1987)

Robocop (Paul Verhoeven, 1987)

Predator (John McTiernan, 1987)

Goodfellas (Martin Scorsese, 1990)

Pump Up the Volume (Alan Moyle, 1990)

Iron Monkey (Yuen Woo-Ping, 1993)

True Romance (Tony Scott, 1993)

Dumb and Dumber (Peter Farrelly & Bobby Farrelly, 1994)

Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994)

Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999)

28 Days Later (Danny Boyle, 2002)

Love Exposure (Sion Sono, 2008)

Drive (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2011)

The Raid (Gareth Edwards, 2012)

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Chances of electricity, along with a TV and a disc player are probably zilch on a desert island, but I doubt Lauren Laverne would want to rain on my parade with realism, especially when she thought she could sing during her short lived indie pop career.

8 comments:

  1. Jason & The Astronauts.

    A very Spartan list. Couple of surprises tho.

    Good parlour game to indulge in this. Gonna have a go when I've got some more time.

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  2. No chance I'm going the poncey kino head route and lose all sanity by taking shite like The Bicycle Thieves or with me to a deserted island.

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  3. Bet you snuck a secret copy of Jeanne Dielman onto the island, m8.

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  4. If I couldn't fit classics in French cinema like Ogroff: Mad Mutilator or Devil Story, there's no place for Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles.

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  5. Shout out to Le Samourai, but I reckon La Haine will be the only frog movie which will make my 40.

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  6. Both upper tier French movies, imo. Think I prefer Le Samouraï over La Haine, though.

    Unrelated, but have you seen The Sadist? Low budget gem that I only got to see for the first time on Talking Pictures. Based on the same source material as Badlands.

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  7. Not seen it, but I know of it from one of Joe Dante's Trailers From Hell videos. Never realised the Badlands connection.

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  8. Only knew of its connection with Badlands and Natural Born Killers when Caroline Munro introduced it on The Cellar Club very recently.

    Dante is a huge fan. Owns a 35mm print of the film, apparently.

    Highly recommended as it's surprisingly well made and acted for such a low budget drive-in film from this era.

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