Wicked, nasty, delicious fun. Laurence Olivier is a wealthy, veddy English mystery writer. He invites Michael Caine to his elaborate country house, in order to settle some rather unpleasant business between them: Caine is having an affair with Olivier's wife, and she is about to divorce the older man. Olivier, smooth as brandy, suggests that there might be a way the two men can help each other, ...

Manufacturer: Video Treasures
Starring: Laurence Olivier, Michael Caine, Alec Cawthorne, John Matthews, Eve Channing
Directed By: Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Baron von Sepper (Richard Burton, who seems to sleepwalk through the film), a European aristocrat of vaguely Germanic heritage, marries and murders a succession of international lovelies (among them Raquel Welch, Virna Lisi, Nathalie Delon, and Marilù Tolo) before his seventh bride, peppy but coy showgirl Joey Heatherton, discovers his secret in a frozen basement museum. Would you believe ...

Manufacturer: Starz / Anchor Bay
Starring: Richard Burton, Raquel Welch, Virna Lisi, Nathalie Delon, Marilù Tolo
Directed By: Edward Dmytryk, Luciano Sacripanti

Though it will always be remembered as the movie featuring the "other" Hannibal Lecter, Michael Mann's 1986 thriller Manhunter is nearly as good as The Silence of the Lambs, and in some respects it's arguably even better. Based on Thomas Harris's novel Red Dragon, which introduced the world to the nefarious killer Hannibal "the Cannibal" Lecter, the film stars William Petersen ...

Manufacturer: Starz / Anchor Bay
Starring: William Petersen, Brian Cox, Kim Greist, Joan Allen, Dennis Farina
Directed By: Michael Mann

This sensuous mystery made Peter Weir's (The Truman Show, Witness, Dead Poets Society) reputation and brought Australian film into the worldwide spotlight. Set in turn-of-the-century Australia, Picnic at Hanging Rock dramatize

Manufacturer: Homevision
Starring: Rachel Roberts, Anne-Louise Lambert, Vivean Gray, Helen Morse, Kirsty Child
Directed By: Peter Weir

True-blue Agatha Christie fans know better than anyone that the creator of Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot did not always write crime-solving procedurals. Endless Night, published in 1968, is a perfect example of the moody, psychological thriller Christie sometimes explored, particularly in the late years of her career. This 1972 adaptation, scripted and directed by seasoned British ...

Manufacturer: Starz / Anchor Bay
Starring: Hayley Mills, Hywel Bennett, Britt Ekland, George Sanders, David Bauer
Directed By: Sidney Gilliat

Stanley Kubrick was only 31 years old when Kirk Douglas (star of Kubrick's classic Paths of Glory) recruited the young director to pilot this epic saga, in which the rebellious slave Spartacus (played by Douglas) leads a freedom revolt against the decadent Roman Empire. Kubrick would later disown the film because it was not a personal project--he was merely a director-for-hire--but ...

Manufacturer: Universal Studios
Starring: Kirk Douglas, Laurence Olivier, Jean Simmons, Charles Laughton, Peter Ustinov
Directed By: Anthony Mann, Stanley Kubrick

Typically categorized as a horror film, The Wicker Man is actually a serious and literate thriller about modern paganism, written by Anthony Shaffer (Sleuth) with a deft combination of cool subjectivity and escalating dread. (Despite this promising directorial debut, British filmmaker Robin Hardy didn't make another film until The Fantasist, a little-seen thriller released in ...

Manufacturer: Starz / Anchor Bay
Starring: Leslie Blackater, Roy Boyd, Peter Brewis, Juliet Cadzow, Ian Campbell

Although it wasn't a box-office success when originally released in 1958, Vertigo has since taken its deserved place as Alfred Hitchcock's greatest, most spellbinding, most deeply personal achievement. In fact, it consistently ranks among the top 10 movies ever made in the once-a-decade Sight & Sound international critics poll, placing at number 4 in the most recent survey. ...

Manufacturer: Universal Studios
Starring: Isabel Analla, Raymond Bailey, Barbara Bel Geddes, Paul Bryar, Ellen Corby

Lars von Trier's (Breaking the Wavesand Zentropa) debut film has enjoyed cult status in Europe since its intial relases in 1984. Fisher (Michael Elphick, Buddy's Song), an ex-cop living in Cairo, is called to his old beat somewhere i

Manufacturer: Homevision
Starring: Duke Addabayo, Gotha Andersen, Jon Bang Carlsen, Maria Behrendt, Frederik Casby

One of the truly oddball artifacts of the early talkie era, either a cockeyed fluke or a surrealist masterpiece. Producer-director Roland West had already done a silent film version of The Bat (1926), Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood's creaky stage melodrama about a fiendish criminal haunting a lonely Long Island mansion. The coming of sound cued a remake--now The Bat could ...

Manufacturer: Milestone Video
Starring: Chester Morris, Chance Ward, Una Merkel, Richard Tucker, Wilson Benge
Directed By: Roland West