Bovie Movie

Director Francis Coppola inherited a modest movie about the Vietnam War from writer John Milius and turned it into this phantasmagorical ride, in which Martin Sheen travels up the Mekong river to terminate Marlon Brando’s rebel command “with extreme prejudice”. Working under difficult conditions in the Philippines and running way over budget, Coppola delivered a harrowing masterwork that bursts with malarial, mystical images, such as Playboy playmates in the jungle and the Wagnerian helicopter attack that ends with marines surfing and Robert Duvall famously saying, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.” Notable faces in support include Harrison Ford and Dennis Hopper, the latter playing a photographer among the fanatical Brando followers. Coppola restored a whopping 50 minutes of extra footage for Apocalypse Now Redux, which was released in 2001. 

“In space, no one can hear you scream.” A close encounter of the third kind becomes a Jaws-style nightmare when an alien invades a spacecraft in Ridley Scott’s sci-fi horror classic. On the way home from a mission for the Company, the Nostromo’s crew is woken up from hibernation by the ship’s Mother computer to answer a distress signal from a nearby planet. Capt. Dallas’ (Tom Skerritt) rescue team discovers a bizarre pod field, but things get even stranger when a face-hugging creature bursts out of a pod and attaches itself to Kane (John Hurt). Over the objections of Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), science officer Ash (Ian Holm) lets Kane back on the ship. The acid-blooded incubus detaches itself from an apparently recovered Kane, but an alien erupts from Kane’s stomach and escapes. The alien starts stalking the humans, pitting Dallas and his crew (and cat) against a malevolent killing machine that also has a protector in the nefarious Company.

A Boeing 747 carrying a US space shuttle on loan to the UK crashes into the Atlantic Ocean. When the British examine the wreckage they can find no trace of the spacecraft and send agent James Bond to the shuttle’s manufacturers, Drax Industries, to investigate.

This purports to be a biographical drama about the infamous Roman emperor, but it’s nothing more than toga-dropping soft porn celebrating the most basic of human instincts, despite the presence of such distinguished actors as John Gielgud and Peter O’Toole. Malcolm McDowell glares balefully as the lustful, unhinged emperor, embarking on an increasingly sadistic road to destruction. Writer Gore Vidal had his name removed from the screenplay, leaving it to the sole embrace of Bob Guccione, the film’s co-producer and publisher of Penthouse magazine. Italian director Tinto Brass couldn’t quite plumb the depths demanded, so extra scenes of titillation were allegedly added. A milestone of smut and hugely controversial in its day, this is now worth only a giggle or two.