I’ve had a little think about my favorite films, and what makes them my favorites. As you will see, my choices are on the whole rather fluffy, but these are the films that I return to time and time again for comfort, or as a way to reset my brain. I’d be very interested to find out if any of my favorites align with any of your own – please let me know in the comments below!

Read Part 1 here. Without further ado, in no particular order, and no ratings (because they are all 10s), let’s get cracking!

Taxi Driver (1976)

Who’s in it?

Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, Harvey Keitel, Cybill Shepherd

What’s it about?

Travis Bickle (De Niro) is a Vietnam Vet, suffering from PTSD, driving a cab for a living, and growing increasingly detached from reality day by day. He lives alone, on a diet of cornflakes and scotch, and writes in his diary the thoughts that trouble him nightly; the state of the New York City streets, the perceived inhumanity of its residents, and brief phrases and idioms to live his life by.

When he meets Betsy (Shepherd), a campaign assistant for a presidential candidate, he is fascinated by her, and attempts to take her on a date. The failure of their unformed relationship is due to his social awkwardness and choice of venue (an adult film theatre). Rejected by Betsy, he falls further into delirium as he becomes obsessed with ‘saving’ a child prostitute (Foster) from her pimp (Keitel). His mental breakdown concludes in the botched assassination of the candidate, and the successful liberation of the young girl in a bloody shootout.

Why do I love it?

Everyone remembers their first Scorsese, and this was mine. It is still my favourite Scorsese film, and the fella has made quite a few good ones (sarcasm)!

Taxi Driver is an utterly dreamy film for me, not in the gossamer nightgown and watercolour pastures sense, nor in the David Lynch stream of consciousness sense, but more of an intangible mosaic of sound and light and shadow. Just thinking about it now, having not actually watched in over a decade, I can see the neon-drenched streets and hear the melancholy wail of Herrmann’s brass (my favourite score of his, completed mere weeks before his death).

I fell in love instantly with Cybill Shepherd and wanted to take her out for a coffee and apple pie with a slice of cheese (which still seems utterly alien to me), although I had a hard time separating Jodie Foster from Bugsy Malone. De Niro’s raw performance, years before he became a facsimile of himself, is hypnotic, and although I couldn’t possibly identify with him, I could certainly empathise.

There are so many quirky elements in this film that add to the dreamstate; the afore-mentioned cheese slice, corn flakes and scotch, custom wrist holsters, and Bickle’s own reaction to pornography, and these have all lingered with me like half-forgotten personal memories.

Silent Running (1972)

Who’s in it?

Bruce Dern, Cliff Potts, Ron Rifkin, Jesse Vint

What’s it about?

In the future, all of nature on Earth has been eradicated by the advancement of humanity, and the last remaining forests, along with a clutch of animals, have been sent into space in vast geodesic domes attached to giant star freighters. The custodians of these last biomes are a motley bunch of blue-collar workers, including an obsessive biologist who seemingly prefers nature over humans, Freeman Lowell (Dern), and a trio of robotic gardener drones, Huey, Dewey, and Louis. When the order comes through to destroy the habitats (for ‘business’ reasons), Lowell flips and turns on his crewmates, determined to keep the forests alive.

Why do I love it?

There have not been many films that made me blub uncontrollably at the end (Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983) is one of them), but when Joan Baez’s ‘Rejoice in the Sun’ kicks in as we watch Dewey, the last surviving drone, caring for a little garden with Lowell’s old watering can, the waterworks inevitably begin. It’s an ending both depressing and profoundly optimistic, and caps off a truly groundbreaking hard sci-fi flick that paved the way for many cultural touchstones, not least R2-D2, the stoned bomb operators of Dark Star (1974), and the crew of the Nostromo.

Following Star Wars, little me devoured any and all science-fiction I could find, and Silent Running felt like one of the few ‘realistic’ settings; less catsuits and rayguns, more industrial grime and hardware. It certainly helped that director Douglas Trumball shot many of the interiors in a real-life decommissioned aircraft carrier, the USS Valley Forge, blending the claustrophobic corridors and cabins with stunning, large-scale, greeblie-heavy spaceship models, and the talented performers, all bilateral amputees, imbued the little drones with so much character that they became more than machines, they were the characters that we empathized with the most. A stunning film.

Re-Animator (1985)

Who’s in it?

Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton, Bruce Abbott, David Gale

What’s it about?

VERY loosely based on H.P. Lovecraft’s 1922 novelette “Herbert West – Reanimator,” this version features West (Combs) as a brilliant, obsessive, young scientist who has developed a glowing green serum that can reanimate dead things.

Having secured a spot as a medical student at the famed Miskatonic University, West ropes his fellow student, Dan Cain (Abbott) into a series of experiments that soon grow wildly out of control. When one of the professors, Dr. Hill (Gale) learns of West’s discovery, he covets it for himself, but soon falls foul of West’s vengeance. However, death doesn’t stop him from continuing his quest to steal not only the formula, but Dan’s girlfriend, Megan (Crampton), and he literally unleashes bloody hell upon the university in his efforts.

Why do I love it?

The first of Brian Gordon’s utterly bonkers reinventions of Lovecraft classics (see also From Beyond (1986), Castle Freak (1995), and Dagon (2001)), Re-Animator popped onto the scene when I had just hit 18, and was one of the first legitimate ‘adult’ certificate films I went to see. I was already frothing at the mouth having had the film’s insane effects teased by Fangoria magazine, but I really wasn’t prepared for the sheer sticky madness of the whole affair. Not only was it gory as all heck, but the gore itself was used in such an imaginative and hilarious way, that it altered my brain chemistry forever. Remember, this is a kid who grew up with the horny grue of Hammer films, so I was used to a little more restraint in the bloodletting (barring the occasional The Thing (1982) highlight).

Re-Animator however decided to not just disembowel someone, but then had their reanimated entrails loop out and grab someone, it had a headless corpse steady its own head by slamming it onto a desk paper spike, the undead are dispatched with bone saws. Of course, much of this visceral lunacy would be turned up to 11 in the better of the two sequels, Bride of Re-Animator (1990), but this film was the O.G. — the one that kicked off my passion for over-the-top gore, and my enduring infatuation with Barbara Crampton.

Jaws (1975)

Who’s in it?

Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss, Lorraine Gary

What’s it about?

When the sleepy seaside town of Amity Island in New England is rocked by a shark attack, the local sheriff, Martin Brody (Scheider), must contend with the town mayor who wants to keep the beaches open for the 4th of July, while trying to convince the townsfolk of the very real danger of stepping into the ocean. A failed shark hunt leads him to recruit a student oceanographer, Matt Hooper (Dreyfuss), and a grizzled seadog, Quint (Shaw), in a last desperate attempt to destroy the toothsome terror before it can do more snacking.

Why do I love it?

In this complete list of favourite movies, I would argue that all of them are fantastic, but only a handful of them are perfect. Jaws is undoubtedly one of the perfect ones.

My dad (in one of his rare moments of doing something cool with me) took me when I was 9 to see Jaws in the cinema. This was in the first week of release, when the hysteria hadn’t quite kicked in yet, and it had an ‘A’ certificate (the UK equivalent of a PG film), shortly before it was recertified to ‘AA’ (no one under 14 allowed). Naturally it scared seven colours out of me, especially old Ben Gardner’s noggin popping out of the boat hull.

Later that year we holidayed in Cornwall, and I recall the sheer panic when someone yelled “Shark!” at the beach and the sunburned throng erupted from the surf, mimicking a scene from Spielberg’s masterpiece. We did indeed see a dorsal fin, but it was probably a basking shark, harmless. We don’t get great whites off the English coast. Still, it was a lovely snapshot of the ongoing shark obsession that had gripped the world, and a perversely happy memory for me.

Jaws is a regular watch for me, it’s one of those comfort films that I can put on and just wallow in the mastery of all concerned; the stellar cast, the music, the cinematography, and Spielberg’s supernatural blocking skills. The film means so much to me, and has been present in key moments in my life — my early introduction to horror, as a learning tool in film school, as a teaching tool for my own son. I think I’d like it to be one the last things I watch before finally shuffling off. Guess I should be making plans.

Starship Troopers (1997)

Who’s in it?

Casper Van Dien, Denise Richards, Neil Patrick Harris, Dina Meyer

What’s it about?

The future expansion of the human race has brought us into contact with a highly-evolved alien insect species, which is now hellbent on destroying our planet. The war with the ‘Arachnids’ is ongoing, and the world government, run by a fascist corporation born from the ashes of a failed democracy, puts military service above all else. Only through fighting for your planet can you truly be perceived to be a citizen, and thus embrace the benefits that come with that status.

Into the fray is thrown Johnny Rico (Van Dien), a blond-haired, blue-eyed jock who doesn’t quite have the smarts for officer material, but is a good fit for the fodder known as the General Infantry. Rico enlists partly to impress his crush, Carmen (Richards), but is fully onboard after his parents and home town are destroyed in a bug attack. Once thrust into the brutality of close combat with the Arachnids, all that remains is for Rico to try to survive each encounter, save his friends, and eradicate the bug menace once and for all (spoiler alert — two out of three ain’t bad).

Why do I love it?

The third in the holy Verhoeven trilogy, following Robocop (1987) and Total Recall (1990), and although I love the others equally, Starship Troopers is the one I’ve returned to the most times (and that’s saying something).

For all of my inherent anti-war feelings, I am always completely swept away on a jingoist wave of blood lust when this film gets going — much like rooting for the Colonial Marines when a swarm of xenomorphs is advancing. Nothing beats this film for sheer, bombastic military mayhem, and yet at its core are some sneaky anti-fascist themes, sandwiched between the violent layers like warm syrup in a stroopwaffle. Verhoeven’s great at this, he did something similar with Robocop, and here he manipulates (let’s face it) a Beverly Hills soap cast in a savage deconstruction of the military machine and Robert A. Heinlein’s alleged right-wing fantasies in his original 1957 novel on which this film is based.

But enough of my pseudo-analysis of themes, what really probes my brain bug are the effects, stunning for the time and further proof that for the best CG effects you need to place them in the hands of a traditional artist. Phil Tippett’s bugs still hold up today — it’s hard not to marvel at the swarms of Arachnids thundering across the rocky plateaus on their way to slice and dice the hopelessly outnumbered soldiers. Add to this spectacle some of the best military vehicles ever put on screen, gnarly animatronic gore, and Michael Ironside shoving his metal fingers into a hollowed out bonce and growling, “they sucked out his brains,” and you have the recipe for a damned good time. POPCORN, STAT!

Previous Murky Movie surveys from Neil Baker include:

My Top Thirty Films, Part 1
The Star Warses
Just When You Thought It Was Safe
Tech Tok
The Weyland-Yutaniverse
Foreign Bodies
Mummy Issues
Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes
Monster Mayhem
It’s All Rather Hit-or-Mythos
You Can’t Handle the Tooth
Tubi Dive
What Possessed You?

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See all of Neil Baker’s Black Gate film reviews here. Neil spends his days watching dodgy movies, most of them terrible, in the hope that you might be inspired to watch them too. He is often asked why he doesn’t watch ‘proper’ films, and he honestly doesn’t have a good answer. He is an author, illustrator, teacher, and sculptor of turtle exhibits.