Martyn Pick's Favourite Films

Rufus T. Firefly is named the dictator of bankrupt Freedonia and declares war on neighboring Sylvania over the love of his wealthy backer Mrs. Teasdale, contending with two inept spies who can't seem to keep straight which side they're on.

When a mysterious entity possesses a young girl, her mother seeks the help of two Catholic priests to save her life.

The demon Mephisto wagers with God that he can corrupt a mortal man's soul.

A circus' beautiful trapeze artist Cleopatra agrees to marry Hans the leader of side-show performers, but Hans' deformed friends discover that she is only marrying him for his inheritance. So they seek revenge.

During the Johnson County War in 1890 Wyoming, a sheriff born into wealth does his best to protect immigrant farmers from rich cattle interests.

Four historical tales depict the ongoing human struggle against prejudice and inhumanity.

During the early part of his reign, Ivan the Terrible faces betrayal from the aristocracy and even his closest friends as he seeks to unite the Russian people.

A film crew goes to a tropical island for a location shoot, where they capture a colossal ape who takes a shine to their blonde starlet, and bring him back to New York City.

The Prince of Salina, a noble aristocrat of impeccable integrity, tries to preserve his family and class amid the tumultuous social upheavals of 1860s Sicily.

When she is reduced to appearing in a circus, a notorious beauty thinks back on her past loves.

An ex-prize fighter turned New Jersey longshoreman struggles to stand up to his corrupt union bosses, including his older brother, as he starts to connect with the grieving sister of one of the syndicate's victims.

A former Prohibition-era Jewish gangster returns to the Lower East Side of Manhattan 35 years later, where he must once again confront the ghosts and regrets of his old life.

A mysterious stranger with a harmonica joins forces with a notorious desperado to protect a beautiful widow from a ruthless assassin working for the railroad.

Unable to find the war he's been asked to cover, a frustrated war correspondent takes the risky path of co-opting the identity of a dead arms-deal acquaintance.

A violent East London gangster undergoes a transformation of identity while hiding from his former colleagues in the home of a jaded Bohemian rock star and his two girlfriends.

Pierrot escapes his boring society and travels from Paris to the Mediterranean Sea with Marianne, a girl chased by hit-men from Algeria. They lead an unorthodox life, always on the run.

In World War II Italy, four fascist libertines round up nine adolescent boys and girls and subject them to 120 days of torture.

A gang of Nazi bikers prepares for a race as sexual, sadistic, and occult images are cut together.

An American Civil War veteran embarks on a years-long journey to rescue his niece from the Comanches after the rest of his brother's family is massacred in a raid on their Texas farm.

Farmers from a village exploited by bandits hire a veteran samurai for protection, and he gathers six other samurai to join him.

A notorious woman rides a train through a dangerous situation with a British captain she loved.

A family heads to an isolated hotel for the winter, where a sinister presence influences the father into violence. At the same time, his psychic son sees horrifying forebodings from both the past and the future.

An American newcomer to a prestigious German ballet academy comes to realize that the school is a front for something sinister amid a series of grisly murders.

A mentally unstable veteran works as a nighttime taxi driver in New York City, where the perceived decadence and sleaze fuels his urge for violent action.

After picking up a traumatized young hitchhiker, five friends find themselves stalked and hunted by a deformed chainsaw-wielding loon and his family of equally psychopathic killers.