griggs's - 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die List

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A revelation of staggering force, lyrically composed by one of the leading poets of the 20th century, Forough Farrokhzad. Her first and only film, it depicts the lives and bodies of people tragically deformed by leprosy.

A film of stirring and powerful images, and a beautifully, tragically poetic narration that heavily influenced the modern Iranian cinema of Abbas Kiarostami and Mohsen Makhmalbaf.

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As beautiful blonde Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) rolls into Bodega Bay in pursuit of eligible bachelor Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor), she is inexplicably attacked by a seagull.

Suddenly thousands of birds are flocking into town, preying on school-children and residents in a terrifying series of attacks. Soon Mitch and Melanie are fighting for their lives against a deadly force that can't be explained and can't be stopped in one of Hollywood's most horrific films of nature gone berserk.

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A man fondles objects, looks at himself in the mirror, poses in different clothes, smiles and makes faces at the camera while his voice on the soundtrack speaks of his despair, makes impressionistic statements and little songs, quotes Greta Garbo and Maria Montez, tells the story of a lonely little

boy and (in drag) tells the story of a woman (Madame Nescience) who dreams of herself as the mother superior of a convent of sexual perversion.

A short film documenting the seas and shores of the Mediterranean Sea...

One of the most controversial short film of all time, an experiment contains scenes of a group of people who do things that are considered bizarre, strange and taboo, including sexual activity, Jack Smith's 'Flaming Creatures' is regarded comedy with setting a haunted music studio.

Seven Oscar nominations were the result as celebrated director Martin Ritt guided Paul Newman to an Academy Award-nominated performance as Hud Bannon, the rebellious son of a respectable rancher who's continually at odds with his aging father.

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Jerry Lewis directed, co-wrote arid stars in this riotously funny movie that set a new standard for screen comedy. Lewis plays Dr. Julius Kelp, a homely and nearsighted chemistry teacher who's ignored by the ladies and ridiculed by his students and fellow professors.

All of that changes one day when he concocts a magical potion that can transform him into a sophisticated and handsome Romeo, a confident, self-assured swinger dubbed "Buddy Love". But the Jekyll-and-Hyde routine soon creates double the trouble for the bumbling professor and the girl of his dreams (Stella Stevens), a student who's fallen head-over-heels for the conceited, debonair Buddy.

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In 1943, the Germans opened Stalag Luft North, a maximum security prisoner-of-war camp designed to hold even the craftiest escape artists.

In doing so however the Nazis unwittingly assembled the finest escape team in military history - brilliantly portrayed here by Steve McQueen, James Carner, Charles Bronson and James Coburn - who worked on what became the largest prison break-out ever attempted.

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"It was an evil house from the beginning, a house that was born bad". The place is the 90-year-old mansion called Hill House. No one lives there. Or so it seems. But please do come in. Because even if you don't believe in ghosts, there's no denying the terror of 'The Haunting'.

Robert Wise returned to psychological horror for this much admired, first screen adaptation of Shirley Jackson's 'The Haunting of Hill House'. Four people come to the house to study its supernatural phenomena. Or has the house drawn at least one of them to it?

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Filmed with a strong sense of compassion for the impoverished and an underlying hatred for the injustice which forces them into the lives they must live, this is one of the first works from Brazil's Cinema Novo.

A poor Brazilian family struggle to earn a living when they take a job overseeing the livestock of a wealthy rancher. They move into an abandoned house, and their fortunes begin to take an upward turn. The father is duped into a card game with a crooked local policeman. The ranch hand protests, and a fight ensues that results in his beating by the cop. Despite being the victim of injustice, the man believes there should be some semblance of law and order and makes no protest about the incident. A severe drought has the man moving on from the ranch with his family to earn their living elsewhere.

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Filmmaker Shirley Clarke ("The Connection") directs this powerful, stark semi-documentary look at the horrors of Harlem ghetto slum life filled with drugs, violence, human misery, and a sense of despair due to the racial prejudices of American society.

There is no patronizing of the black race in this cinematic cry for justice. A fifteen-year-old boy called Duke (Rony Clanton) is ambitious to buy a "piece" (a gun) from an adult racketeer named Priest (Carl Lee), to become president of the gang to which he belongs, and to return them to active "bopping" (gang fighting) which has declined in Harlem. It is a clearly patent allegory of an attempt by Duke to attain manhood and identity in the only way accessible to him - the antisocial one.

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Experienced manservant Barrett (Dirk Dirk Bogarde) starts working for foppish aristocrat Tony (James Fox) in his smart new townhouse. Much to the chagrin of Tony's girlfriend (Wendy Craig), Barrett slowly insinuates himself in the house and manipulates his master by slyly rearranging the decor.

The arrival of Barrett's alluring and sexually permissive 'sister' (Sarah Miles) fatally severs the class barriers and the boundaries between master and servant, as Tony succumbs to the will of his stronger adversary.

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Johnny Barrett (Peter Breck), an ambitious journalist, is determined to win a Pulitzer Prize by solving a murder committed in a lunatic asylum and witnessed only by three inmates, from whom the police have been unable to extract the information.

With the connivance of a psychiatrist, and the reluctant help of his girlfriend, he succeeds in having himself declared insane and sent to the asylum. There he slowly tracks down and interviews the witnesses - but things are stranger than they seem...

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Described as 'one of the most audacious fictions ever made about the Holocaust', Passenger is a classic of Polish cinema. Director Munk died, aged just 39, in a car crash in the middle of filming.

His friend and colleague Witold Lesiewicz decided to complete the film to what he believed were Munk's intentions and assembled it using the existing footage, Munk's photographs and a voice-over narration. On release the film won main awards at the Cannes and Venice film festivals and is widely considered a masterpiece. Unseen for far too long, this is the first-ever DVD release of this unique film.

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Decried as obscene upon its initial release, this short documentary style feature from avant garde filmmaker Kenneth Anger contains no dialogue and rapidly inter-cuts images against a score of slyly selected pop tunes, predating the advent of the music video by a decade and a half.

Delving into the homoerotic world of bikers, Anger focuses his camera on Scorpio (Bruce Byron), a leather-wearing, crystal methamphetamine-snorting bad boy who is alternately compared to Jesus Christ, Adolf Hitler and the Devil, depending on his activities. Scorpio is seen strutting his stuff, racing his bike, vandalising a church and attending a rowdy party where a fellow reveler is tortured and humiliated by the bikers. Through it all, Anger draws clear parallels between Scorpio's crowd, sadism and homosexuality, with alternately subtle and obvious montages depicting snippets of other films, comic strips, plenty of gleaming phallic chrome, and symbols like the Nazi swastika. Considered by many to be one of the first post-modern films, Scorpio Rising (1964) was a controversial hit only on the underground circuit, but its style greatly influenced a generation of popular filmmakers, most notably director Martin Scorsese.