You are a lifelong action cinema fan. You’ve seen all the Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Steven Seagal and Jean-Claude Van Damme movies there are to see.

You stay current with all the new releases from the world over and yet all this isn’t enough to satisfy your ravenous appetite for action.

You want something different. So what do you do? The answer is simple: go deeper.

Following the same guidelines as my previous article 15 Weird & Wild Horror Movies From The VHS Era Every Adventurous Fan Should See, this article features 15 unique action films from the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s that bold seekers of the lethal cinematic arts would have come across in one form or another during their journeys into the world of VHS.

The films listed are all highly entertaining, some in different ways that others, and are in chronological order by release year.

1. The Street Fighter (Shigehiro Ozawa, 1974, Japan)

Screenplay by Koji Takada & Motohiro Torii

After refusing a job, a lethal mercenary is targeted by the Yakuza.

Every great screen martial artist brings a unique quality to their individual fighting style. Bruce Lee gives us power and intensity, Jackie Chan gives us stunning acrobatic athleticism, Chuck Norris gives us incredibly smooth execution.

What unique element does Sonny Chiba bring? Unparalleled viciousness.

The VHS version of The Street Fighter was a heavily edited affair but the DVD era delivered the uncut film in all its bone-crunching glory including such amazing moments as Chiba driving his fingers deep into the eyes of an opponent, manual throat surgery and a brutal groin strike that takes a body part with it.

During one of the film’s fight sequences, the film cuts to a quick X-ray shot of one of Chiba’s blows crushing an enemy’s skull, a moment later echoed in Ngai Choi Lam’s Hong Kong cult favorite Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky (1991).

The Street Fighter was a huge success, spawning sequels and the spin-off Sister Street Fighter films.

2. Lion Man (Natuk Baytan, 1975, Turkey)

Screenplay by Baytan & Duygu Sagiroglu

Hidden in the wilderness after a deadly coup, the son of slain king is raised by lions and becomes part of a rebellion.

This film is a bizarre but incredibly entertaining combination of Alexandre Dumas, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan character and a touch of the amazing Japanese Lone Wolf & Cub films from the early 1970s.

The story builds to a bloody, action-packed climax as the Lion Man dons a pair of metal claw gloves and leads a band of rebels into a bloody confrontation with the evil king and his army.

Also known as Kilic Aslan, Lion Man stars prolific Turkish actor Cuneyt Arkin, a performer often credited as Steve Arkin or George Arkin for the international releases of his films.

Arkin, who bears a slight resemblance to French film actor Alain Delon, also stars in Cetin Inanc’s notorious 1982 science fiction film The Man Who Saves the World (aka Dunyayi Kurtara Adam), better known in cult film circles as “The Turkish Star Wars”.

3. Master of the Flying Guillotine (Jimmy Wang Yu, 1976, Hong Kong/Taiwan)

Screenplay by Wang Yu

A blind assassin who employs a gruesome and deadly weapon hunts a one-armed adversary.

Veteran martial arts film star Jimmy Wang Yu revived his popular one-armed warrior character he originated in the late 1960s for a series of films in the mid-1970s.

The film rises above the many cinematic competitors of its day with outrageous action sequences including a battle with a man who can extend his arms to superhuman lengths and a climax inside a booby-trapped coffin shop.

Viewers expecting a run-of-the-mill Hong Kong kung-fu film will be very pleasantly surprised by the demented fight scenes in Master of the Flying Guillotine.

The unique weapon of the film’s title had previously been featured in Meng Hua Ho’s Flying Guillotine (1975) and can be seen in a number of subsequent films.

4. Bionic Boy (Leody M. Diaz, 1977, Philippines)

Screenplay by Romeo N. Galang & Bobby A. Suarez

The Return of the Bionic Boy (Bobby A. Suarez, 1979, Philippines)

Screenplay by Suarez & Romeo N. Galang

Severely injured in an attack that killed his parents, a young martial arts champion is mechanically enhanced and joins a group of Interpol agents in his quest for vengeance.

These 2 films are listed as one entry because the Bionic Boy films are best enjoyed as a double feature.

Inspired by the massive popularity of the American television series The Six Million Dollar Man, The Bionic Boy films are very enjoyable romps highlighted by multiple scenes of the child martial arts prodigy Johnson Yap thrashing countless villainous adults.

The climax of both films features the Bionic Boy and his heavily armed companions attacking isolated enemy strongholds with highly entertaining results. The second film features a confrontation with a mechanical fire-spouting dragon.

Screenwriter of the first film and co-screenwriter/director of the second film Bobby A. Suarez was a major figure in the Filipino genre scene of the 1970s and 1980s. He directed the action pictures Cleopatra Wong (1978), The One Armed Executioner (1983), Warriors of the Apocalypse (1985) and American Commandos (1986) among others.

The Cleopatra Wong character played by Marrie Lee appears in The Return of the Bionic Boy (a film sometimes referred to as Dynamite Johnson), making the movie a sequel to two films.

Taken as a whole, the Bionic Boy films are more enjoyable entries in the “diminutive destroyer” action subgenre than more sought out movies like the Weng Weng films For Y’ur Height Only (1981) and The Impossible Kid of Kung Fu (1982) and helped lay the groundwork for later action films centered around protagonists of short stature such as Yuichi Fukuda’s Kids Police (2013).

5. The Octagon (Eric Karson, 1980, USA)

Screenplay by Paul Aaron & Lee Chapman

A martial artist pits himself against a small army of terrorists being trained in an isolated stronghold by his estranged brother.

Chuck Norris famously fought Bruce Lee in Lee’s Way of the Dragon (1972) and starred in a couple of films before hitting it big with Ted Post’s very successful Good Guys Wear Black (1978). This was followed by Paul Aaron’s hit A Force of One (1979) and led to Norris’ masterpiece The Octagon.

The film is highlighted by one of the great action sequences of its day as his character launches a one-man assault on the terrorist training camp. This attack culminates in an amazing two-part fight sequence. The first fight is between Norris’ character and a deadly masked warrior played by Richard Norton before a final confrontation between Norris’ character and his lethal brother played by Tadashi Yamashita.

The Octagon’s narrative is not exactly cohesive as the Lee Van Cleef mercenary character and his heavily armed posse exit the film for no other reason than the filmmakers wanted Norris to launch a solo assault on the enemy stronghold but, make no mistake, this is the greatest of all the Chuck Norris films.

Norris’ cinematic legacy may be primarily based on the Missing in Action and Delta Force military action films but it is his earlier pictures A Force of One, Steve Carver’s An Eye for an Eye (1981) and the amazing The Octagon that are by far his finest achievements in the action genre.

6. Cannibal Mercenary (Hong Lu Wong, 1983, Thailand)

Screenplay by George Lam

A war veteran in need of money for his daughter’s life-saving medical procedure takes a job leading a group of mercenaries into the Vietnamese jungle to assassinate the head of a drug-dealing empire.

Also known as The Jaguar Project, Jungle Killers and The Mercenary, this notorious and highly sought-after cult film was very difficult to find uncut until a composite version surfaced a few years ago.

A very violent, grim and memorable “men on a mission” movie with touches of Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979), the film mixes cannibal horror and action far more effectively than Antonio Margheriti’s more frequently discussed Cannibal Apocalypse (1980) and features some very well-executed action sequences the film simply doesn’t get enough credit for.

The film’s soundtrack contains music stolen from George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1979).

Cannibal Mercenary spawned a little-seen and very hard to find sequel.

7. Golgo 13: The Professional (Osamu Dezaki, 1983, Japan)

Screenplay by Shukei Nagasaka based on the Takao Saito graphic novel series

A professional assassin is targeted by a wealthy industrialist after he fulfills a contract to kill the powerful man’s son.

Some readers may find it unusual to see an animated film in this article but this feature film incarnation of the Golgo 13 character is far superior to the live-action versions directed by Jun’ya Sato in 1973 and Yukio Noda in 1977.

The animation may be crude by today’s standards but the film benefits from a great screenplay that builds to a spectacular climax that sees Golgo 13 go on the offensive and attack his industrialist enemy’s headquarters, confronting some truly bizarre mercenaries who miss out on being widely considered as some of the great villains of 1980s cinema because they are not live-action characters.

Director Dezaki returned to the character in 1998 with the disappointing animated feature Golgo 13: Queen Bee.

The classic 1940s/1950s era of film noir produced some true cinematic treasures such as Jacques Tourneur’s Out of the Past (1947), John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle (1950) and Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly (1955) among others.

After that period passed, the grim heart of the great dark crime films of that era carried over into subsequent decades and continues to live on to this day.

As is the case with the horror genre, arguments will always exist regarding what films should be labeled “neo-film noir”. Suffice it to say that all the crime films considered for this piece contain the same dark core as pictures from the classic film noir era.

This article combines some new material with reprinted and revised material from a number of previous articles I’ve had published on Taste of Cinema that you can check out here.

Please note that films set in a period setting were excluded from consideration for this article so you won’t see pictures like Roman Polanski’s Chinatown (1974) , Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) , The Coen Brothers’ Miller’s Crossing (1990) or Curtis Hanson’s L.A. Confidential (1997) here.

Any readers dismayed by the absence of their neo-noir favorites such as William Friedkin’s The French Connection (1971), Peter Yates’ The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973), Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction (1994), Bryan Singer’s The Usual Suspects (1995) or Martin Scorsese’s The Departed (2006) are advised to keep in mind that, as I’ve stated in many of my articles, film writing on all levels-from the casual to the academic-is driven by personal taste.

That said, be sure to check out the afterword where I list a number of films that didn’t make the top 30 list but are definitely worth seeking out.

The films are listed in chronological order by release year.

1. Dirty Harry (Don Siegel, 1971)

Screenplay by Harry Julian Fink, R.M. Fink and Dean Riesner

An uncompromising police officer tries to stop a psychopath’s killing spree in one of the quintessential hard-edged crime films of the pivotal cinematic decade of the 1970s.

Dirty Harry still holds up remarkably well to this day and one of the keys to the film’s success is the driven performance of Andrew Robinson as the killer Scorpio.

Robinson appeared in director Siegel’s great neo-noir Charley Varrick in 1973 and would go on to create one of the great science fiction television characters with his recurring role as Garak on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

2. Get Carter (Mike Hodges, 1971)

Screenplay by Hodges based on the Ted Lewis novel “Jack’s Return Home”

Skip the horrendous 2000 remake and watch the original starring Michael Caine if you haven’t already.

This story of a London gangster who travels to Newcastle to investigate his brother’s death is one of the greatest British crime films of all time and features one of Caine’s best early career performances.

3. The Long Goodbye (Robert Altman, 1973)

Screenplay by Leigh Brackett based on the Raymond Chandler novel

irector Altman’s quirky take on Raymond Chandler’s legendary detective character Philip Marlowe investigating accusations that his good friend murdered his wife is rightfully considered a classic by followers of neo-noir films.

The Long Goodbye is highlighted by great performances from Elliott Gould as Marlowe and Sterling Hayden as an alcoholic novelist.

4. Serpico (Sidney Lumet, 1973)

Screenplay by Waldo Salt and Norman Wexler based on the Peter Maas book

Al Pacino turns in one of the finest performances of his early career in this fact-based account of an idealistic cop’s fight against rampant corruption in the New York City Police Department.

The film also features Tony Roberts, a great character actor primarily known for his comic roles in a number of Woody Allen films.

Director Lumet and Pacino would team up again in 1975 for another dark crime film based on real-life events in Dog Day Afternoon.

5. Dog Day Afternoon (Sidney Lumet, 1975)

Screenplay by Frank Pierson based on articles by P.F. Kluge and Thomas Moore

Director Lumet and star Al Pacino followed up on the success of Serpico with another fact-based crime film, this one the story of a bank robbery that turns into a hostage situation.

Dog Day Afternoon generated multiple Oscar nominations including Best Actor for Pacino and Best Supporting Actor for Chris Sarandon.

The great character actor Lance Henriksen can be seen here in a brief but important role as an FBI agent.

6. Night Moves (Arthur Penn, 1975)

Screenplay by Alan Sharp

Gene Hackman plays a private detective who becomes more lost the deeper he delves into a missing persons case.
The grim tone of the film can be summed up by a brilliant exchange between the detective and his wife. When she asks him who is winning the football game he’s watching on television he replies: “Nobody. One side is just losing slower than the other.”

Screenwriter Sharp also wrote the script for Robert Aldrich’s superb 1972 Western Ulzana’s Raid. When people are asked what the late director Penn’s masterpiece is, too many answer with Bonnie & Clyde. The real answer is Night Moves.

7. Assault on Precinct 13 (John Carpenter, 1976)

Screenplay by Carpenter

Armed with a great score and unnecessarily remade in 2005, this excellent film about a small group trapped in a police station fighting off a heavily armed gang is unjustly excluded from conversations about the great dark crime films of the 1970s for several reasons including the fact that the film was made by a director who is now almost exclusively known for horror and science fiction films.

Also, the film was not a big financial or critical success and was overshadowed by Carpenter’s legendary mega-hit Halloween (1978). Part of Assault’s appeal is the great acting from Austin Stoker and the late Darwin Joston, two performers who deserved far better careers.

8. Rolling Thunder (John Flynn, 1977)

Screenplay by Paul Schrader and Heywood Gould

The formidable acting duo of William Devane and Tommy Lee Jones play a pair of Vietnam veterans out to avenge the mutilation of Devane’s character and the murder of his wife and son.

Always an undervalued actor and coming off a great supporting performance in the previous year’s suspense thriller Marathon Man, Devane gives a powerful and subtle lead performance here.

9. The Long Good Friday (John Mackenzie, 1980)

Screenplay by Barrie Keefe

The Long Good Friday is on a short list of the greatest British crime films along with such titles as Mike Hodges’ Get Carter (1971) and Jonathan Glazer’s Sexy Beast (2001).

The superb screenplay is brought to life by an outstanding cast led by Bob Hoskins as a crime boss whose world is violently torn apart by unknown assailants. Hoskins’ acting here deserves to be at the very top of any list of the late actor’s notable performances.

10. Nighthawks (Bruce Malmuth, 1981)

Screenplay by David Shaber and Paul Sylbert

Along with Ted Kotcheff’s excellent First Blood (1982), Nighthawks is one of the two best films Sylvester Stallone has ever been involved in.

Stallone stars as a New York cop assigned to an anti-terrorist unit who ends up on a collision course with a ruthless villain played superbly by Rutger Hauer.

Hauer, with highly accomplished performances in this film, Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) and Robert Harmon’s The Hitcher (1986) was the greatest portrayer of villains in 1980s cinema.

One cinephile’s trash is another cinephile’s psychotronic treasure and a legendary haul of said treasure was created in the 1970s and 1980s. This was a landmark age for worldwide horror cinema before CGI domination, before the endless parade of remakes and before the Syfy Channel declared war on most of your favorite horror subgenres.

There are still some high quality survivors out there but the decline of the video store has eliminated one of that institution’s greatest functions: delivering the hands-on discovery process of films of this era.

There are very few opportunities for the adventurous to explore the stock of a mom & pop video store in search of strange and unusual hidden gems. The world of the on-demand film library is in its infancy and even at its eventual pervasive peak will not even be a remote equivalent to physical video store experience.

This article features 15 unusual horror films from the 1970s & 1980s (and one from the 1990s) that seekers of dark cinematic treasure would have come across in one form or another during their journeys into the world of VHS.

The films listed are all highly entertaining, some in different ways that others, and are in chronological order by release year.

1. The Bees (Alfredo Zacarias, 1978, Mexico/USA)

Screenplay by Zacarias

It was the late 1970s, the post-Jaws Revolt of Nature horror film cycle was in full swing and killer bee films emerged as a sub-subgenre in this wave of ecological terror cinema.

Fueled by the real-life American fear of a possible incursion by a particularly aggressive breed of South American bee, apian horror films hit the small screen in the form of TV films like Bruce Geller’s The Savage Bees (1976) and Lee H. Katzin’s Terror Out of the Sky (1978).

One the big screen front, Irwin Allen’s critically panned The Swarm hit theatres in 1978 as did Mexican director Alfredo Zacarias’ The Bees.
The Bees stars John Saxon as a scientist attempting the combat a killer bee invasion with the aid of an elderly bee expert played by John Carradine in a bizarre characterization.

An effort to communicate with the bees is a somewhat interesting element although that narrative maneuver was executed much more effectively in Saul Bass’ classic humans vs. highly intelligent ants film Phase IV (1974) and was also seen in Jeannot Szwarc’s forgettable Bug (1975).

The Bees ends with a scene that prefigures M. Night Shyamalan’s critically derided apocalyptic film The Happening (2008) with the swarm of bees descending on the United Nations with a message for humankind.

Certainly the most unusual of the killer bee film cycle complete with an inappropriate music score and use of stock footage, The Bees still manages to be more entertaining in its own cockeyed way than Irwin Allen’s highly disappointing big-budget attempt.

Note to all film actors: if you are looking for ways to improve your German accent skills, watching John Carradine’s performance in this film is not the place to start. Alfredo Zacarias, who replaced original director Jack Hill on The Bees, went on to make the killer severed hand film Demonoid in 1981, also featured in this article.

2. Crocodile (Sompote Sands, 1979, Thailand)

Screenplay credits unavailable

Lewis Teague’s Alligator (1980) may have been the first truly great crocodilian Revolt of Nature horror film but the previous year’s Crocodile is still a must-see. Two doctors engage in a quest for revenge against the giant crocodile that killed members of their families, ultimately employing a Quint-style fisherman to aid them. This leads to a climactic showdown with the beast in the open sea.

One of the highlights of this obviously Jaws-inspired film is the carnage-filled destruction of a village by the titular creature using gloriously low-tech, pre-CGI miniatures. Director Sands, who incorporated fantasy elements into couple of future killer crocodile movies, also made the Thailand/Japan tokusatsu co-production The 6 Ultra Brothers vs. The Monster Army (1974).

3. Night of the Demon (James C. Wasson, 1980, USA)

Screenplay by Jim L. Ball & Mike Williams

If you love Bigfoot movies but think your favorites don’t have enough penis severing or Sasquatch on human rape scenes, Night of the Demon is for you. A college professor and his students seek to prove the existence of Bigfoot with disastrous and gruesome results as they come face to face with the creature.

Not to be confused with Kevin S. Tenney’s supernatural VHS-era hit Night of the Demons (1988), this film is Sasquatchsploitation at its most extreme and it proudly wears its exploitation film heart on its grimy sleeve.

Night of the Demon capped off the decade of the 1970s that produced a full-blown Bigfoot film cycle including Robert F. Slatzer’s Bigfoot (1970), Charles B. Pierce’s The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972) and Joy N. Houck Jr.’s Creature from Black Lake (1976). This subgenre is making a bit of comeback recently with films like Eduardo Sanchez’s Exists (2014) and Braden Croft’s Feed the Gods (2014).

4. Bloody Birthday (Ed Hunt, 1981, USA)

Screenplay by Hunt & Barry Pearson

No exploration of the “killer kids” subgenre which includes films like Sean MacGregor & David Sheldon’s Devil Times Five (1974), Narciso Ibanez Serrador’s classic Who Can Kill a Child?, Max Kalmanowicz’s The Children (1980) and Tom Shankland’s underrated The Children (2008) would be complete without a viewing of the very offbeat Bloody Birthday.

Three children born simultaneously during an eclipse explore their love of homicide while trying to avoid detection by adults including a sheriff named Brody (don’t you feel like you’ve heard that name for a local law enforcement character somewhere before?). Bloody Birthday is highlighted by some unique & unusual murder scenes including death by bow and arrow.

5. Demonoid (Alfredo Zacarias, 1981, Mexico/USA)

Screenplay by Zacarias, David Lee Fein & F. Amos Powell

Mentioned earlier in this article, Zacarias had previously helmed the strange killer bee film The Bees in 1978, a film intended to capitalize on the anticipated success of Irwin Allen’s The Swarm from the same year.

The director’s killer severed hand film Demonoid, sometimes called Demonoid: Messenger of Death, emerged as lower budget rival to Oliver Stone’s underwhelming The Hand which was also released in 1981 and for the second time in his career, Zacarias makes a film that manages to be more entertaining than a similar bigger budget effort starring Michael Caine.

Demonoid, starring veteran actors Samantha Eggar and Stuart Whitman, follows the murderous influence of an unearthed severed hand as it controls its various owners. The film contains an insane must-see sequence of the hand devising an escape from a medical clinic with pursuers giving chase.

Mexican horror cinema of the 1970s and 1980s was dominated by director Rene Cardona Jr. with such films as the killer shark movie Tintorera (1977), the self-explanatory The Bermuda Triangle (1978) and the very late Revolt of Nature film Beaks (1987) along with exploitation dramas like Guyana: Cult of the Damned (1979) starring Stuart Whitman, none of which are recommended.

If Alfredo Zacarias would have dedicated more of his career to horror films, his off-kilter take on the genre would have very likely produced a horror filmography much more enjoyable than Cardona’s which has a larger cult following than it deserves.

6. Mystics in Bali (H. Tjut Djalil, 1981, Indonesia)

Screenplay by Jimmy Atmaja based on the Putra Mada novel “Leak Ngakak”

Doing research on Indonesian black magic, an American woman falls under the spell of a powerful sorceress and is transformed into a leak-a creature with a disembodied head.

A much rougher, lower budget precursor to the more polished Asian “good sorcery versus evil sorcery” classics of the late 1980s like Ching Siu-Tung’s A Chinese Ghost Story (1987) which is also featured in this article, Mystics in Bali succeeds with bizarre visuals and raw enthusiasm where its cinematic cousins Ho Meng Hua’s Black Magic films (1975 & 1976) fail.

Mystics in Bali is notorious for a scene showing the leak creature eating an unborn fetus. While the effects don’t live up to that description-a problem that afflicts the film as a whole-the scene is still a jaw-dropper for sheer audacity.

Other great moments include a climactic battle between sorcerers featuring a character’s brief but incredibly strange transformation into a bipedal pig creature. Isn’t the international horror film scene ready for an awesome new leak movie? Director Djalil went on to make the Nightmare on Elm Street riff Satan’s Bed (1986) and the cult favorite possession film Lady Terminator (1989).

7. Pieces (Juan Piquer Simon, 1982, Spain/USA)

Screenplay by Dick Randall & Joe D’Amato

With the classic tagline “You don’t have to go to Texas for a chainsaw massacre”, Pieces takes viewers to a college campus that becomes the site of a series of gruesome murders in this delirious, nonsensical and tremendously entertaining horror film.

Spanish director Simon executes some outrageous and highly memorable murder scenes as he simultaneously manages to waste the talent of actor Christopher George.

Sadly, George was no stranger to having his talent wasted on the big screen during this phase of his career. Best known for his work in series television as the star of The Rat Patrol and The Immortal in the 1960s, George turned in a great villainous performance in Howard Hawks’ John Wayne western El Dorado (1966) and went on to appear in two more films with Wayne.

George made memorable television appearances in guest starring roles in episodes of SWAT and other shows but his best big screen work in the mid-1970s/early 1980s was his lead performance in William Girdler’s Grizzly (1976). The actor was cast much less effectively in Girdler’s Day of the Animals (1977) and the 1980 cult favorites James Glickenhaus’ The Exterminator and Lucio Fulci’s City of the Living Dead (aka The Gates of Hell) before his untimely death in 1983.

The improper use of a talented actor who deserved better aside, any serious archivist of jaw-dropping endings in horror cinema would hold the bizarre final moments of Pieces in very high regard. Juan Piquer Simon went on to direct the very unsatisfying Revolt of Nature horror film Slugs in 1988.

The 1970s was a seminal decade in cinema including the horror genre. Sadly pillaged for remakes by film producers looking for “pre-awareness product”, this period remains one of the greatest in the history of horror cinema.

This article will look at must-see horror films of that decade that, while not obscure in most cases, are routinely pushed aside in genre conversations in favor of focus on the widely accepted classics such as William Friedkin’s The Exorcist, Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, Dario Argento’s Suspiria, John Carpenter’s Halloween, George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead and Ridley Scott’s Alien.

When looking at this particular take on select horror films of the 1970s, readers are advised to keep in mind that all film writing-from the casual to the academic-is based on personal taste.

Those looking for Steven Spielberg’s Duel, Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man, Bob Clark’s Black Christmas, Larry Cohen’s It’s Alive, Jeff Lieberman’s Squirm or Don Coscarelli’s Phantasm will not find those films here and this article is not for any reader wishing to argue about whether or not any of the following entries are “true horror films” as they all are.

The films are in chronological by release year.

1. Count Yorga, Vampire (Bob Kelljan, 1970)

Screenplay by Kelljan

2. The Return of Count Yorga (Bob Kelljan, 1971)

Screenplay by Kelljan & Yvonne Wilder

Lead actor Robert Quarry turns in outstanding performances in this pair of highly memorable low-budget vampire films.
The makers of the first Count Yorga film initially had a horror-oriented softcore sex movie in mind but Quarry convinced them to transform the production into a serious horror film with excellent results especially given the limited resources available to the filmmakers.

The film was a hit for distributor American International Pictures and a bigger budget was put into the sequel which is superior to the original.

Quarry went on to appear in the AIP horror films Dr. Phibes Rises Again, Sugar Hill and Madhouse, with the company positioning him as a replacement for their aging horror headliner Vincent Price but AIP stopped making horror films around this time so that plan was never fully realized.

Quarry’s AIP contract prevented him from taking the offered vampire role in 1972’s The Night Stalker TV movie but the actor teamed with director Ray Danton for a non-AIP vampire film called Deathmaster in 1972 which unfortunately falls well below the Count Yorga films in terms of quality.

3. The Andromeda Strain (Robert Wise, 1971)

Screenplay by Nelson Gidding based on the Michael Crichton novel

A group of scientists tries to contain and destroy a lethal alien virus while studying a pair of unlikely survivors who first came into contact with it in this highly underrated film.

Centering on the solid acting ensemble of Arthur Hill, James Olson, David Wayne and Kate Reid, The Andromeda Strain builds to a highly suspenseful climax wherein one of the scientists must navigate his way through a battery of lasers in order to prevent their underground lab from self-destructing. The inevitable remake of this great film took the form of a very lackluster 2008 TV mini-series.

4. Blacula (William Crain, 1972)

Screenplay by Joan Torres & Raymond Koenig

As Robert Quarry had done with the first Count Yorga movie, Blacula star William Marshall convinced the filmmakers to create a more serious-minded horror film than they had originally intended.

A film unfairly dismissed by some, William Marshall’s charismatic performance as the deadly vampire Mamuwalde makes Blacula a 70s horror film must-see.

A lesser sequel co-starring blaxploitation legend Pam Grier was made by the Count Yorga films director Bob Kelljan in 1973. The late William Marshall should have had a much more substantial feature film career and would’ve been the perfect casting choice to play the lead villain in such films as John Carpenter’s Escape from New York (1981) and John Milius’ Conan the Barbarian (1982) over Isaac Hayes and James Earl Jones.

5. Deathdream (aka Dead of Night, Bob Clark, 1972)

Screenplay by Alan Ormsby

The late director Clark had a highly varied career. Best known for the horror film Black Christmas (1974) and the comedies Porky’s (1982) and A Christmas Story (1983), his low-budget take on the classic W.W. Jacobs short story “The Monkey’s Paw” deals with the unexpected homecoming of a young soldier killed in Vietnam.

His return wreaks havoc on everyone around him as the soldier exhibits strange behavior then embarks on a series of killings in order to keep his body from decaying.

Although rough in the way many low-budget films from young directors are, Deathdream is a far better film than Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things-another of Clark’s early career horror collaborations with screenwriter Ormsby.

6. The Night Stalker (John Llewellyn Moxey, 1972)

Teleplay by Richard Matheson based on the Jeff Rice story

Many cite Steven Spielberg’s 1971 Duel as the apex of the 1970s TV horror film wave but the highly accomplished vampire film The Night Stalker holds up much better over time.

Anchored by veteran actor Darren McGavin’s highly memorable performance as newspaper reporter Carl Kolchak, The Night Stalker spawned a lesser Kolchak TV film The Night Strangler in 1973, a fondly remembered 20-episode TV series in 1974 that was an obvious inspiration for The X-Files series, a short-lived TV series reboot in 2005 and an announced feature film.

Legendary writer Richard Matheson-who also wrote the Duel teleplay based on his own short story-penned both of the Kolchak TV movies but was unfortunately not involved in the actual Kolchak television series.

7. The Asphyx (Peter Newbrook, 1973)

Screenplay by Christina Beers, Laurence Beers & Brian Comport

This frequently overlooked British horror gem stars Robert Stephens and Robert Powell as scientists who identify then attempt to capture the spirit of death in the aftermath of a tragedy.

The men create highly dangerous near-death situations to try to draw the creature out with grim and unexpected results. Fans of Stephen King’s novel The Green Mile and Frank Darabont’s screen adaptation of the book will recognize elements from the ending of The Asphyx.

8. A Cold Night’s Death (Jerrold Freedman, 1973)

Teleplay by Christopher Knopf

This outstanding but little-seen TV movie stars Robert Culp and Eli Wallach as a pair of scientists doing primate research in an isolated polar research station.

When inexplicable disturbances start to occur, the researchers start to suspect they are not alone in the station.
Tight and atmospheric, this is an example of a great TV film of the 70s never receiving a proper video or DVD release. Also known by the less compelling title The Chill Factor.

9. Don’t Look Now (Nicolas Roeg, 1973)

Screenplay by Allan Scott & Chris Bryant based on the Daphne Du Maurier story

Highlighted by its rich atmosphere, unique editing and stunning final moments, Don’t Look Now is the tale of a couple played by Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie who travel to Venice in the wake of the accidental death of their daughter.

There they encounter a mysterious figure in the same kind of red raincoat their daughter died in and a psychic who claims to be in contact with the dead girl.

10. The Legend of Hell House (John Hough, 1973)

Screenplay by Richard Matheson based on his novel “Hell House”

Iconic genre writer Matheson adapts his own novel for the screen with this tale of a group hired by a wealthy patron to investigate “the Mount Everest of haunted houses” in an effort to gain evidence about life after death.

Roddy McDowall delivers a strong performance as a psychic who is the only survivor of a previous attempt to uncover the secrets of the deadly Belasco house.

Being a Richard Matheson creation, this particular entry in the subgenre is a more visceral experience than one usually finds in haunted house films. The Belasco house doesn’t merely slam doors and produce unusual sounds, it actively fights back against intruders.

Fans of the fake trailers in 2007’s Grindhouse will find a strong Legend of Hell House influence in Edgar Wright’s supremely entertaining entry Don’t.

At this time more so than any other in film history, it is easy to be overwhelmed with film viewing choices. With the flood of new releases available to audiences in both cinemas and especially at home, it is now easier than ever for excellent horror, crime and suspense thriller films to slip through the cracks.

The 16 films discussed here are not necessarily obscure but are certainly all deserving of a larger audience and more critical acclaim. Please note there are no non-English language horror films listed here as we devoted an entire article to that field here. This article covers 2009 to the present and is in chronological order by release year.

1. Triangle (Christopher Smith, 2009)

Screenplay by Smith

Smith scored his biggest critical hit to date with 2010’s Black Death-a medieval cross between Michael Reeves’ Witchfinder General (1968) and Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man (1973). While Black Death remains substantially overrated, Smith’s far more accomplished Triangle seems to have flown far below the critical radar.

Triangle is the mend-bending story of a group of friends who take shelter on an apparently abandoned ocean liner after being stranded in the open sea by a storm. As the group realizes they are not alone, what follows is altered reality horror at its finest featuring a great lead performance from the always fully committed Melissa George and some brilliant nightmarish imagery.
Complex and very smart, Triangle deserves far more attention than it has thus far received.

2. Bitter Feast (Joe Maggio, 2010)

Screenplay by Maggio

Produced by independent horror cinema icon Larry Fessenden who also acts in the film in the role of a police detective, Bitter Feast is a dark kidnapping film set against the backdrop of the culinary world as a disturbed chef abducts his harshest critic.

Veteran character actor James Le Gros turns in the finest performance of his career as the twisted chef in this overlooked gem.

3. Carancho (Pablo Trapero, 2010)

Screenplay by Trapero, Alejandro Fadel, Martin Mauregui & Santiago Mitre

This grim and affecting slice of neo-film noir about a shady lawyer’s attempt to build a better future for himself with a drug-addicted nurse stars award-winning Argentinian actor Ricardo Darin, who turns in another highly memorable performance to be discussed along with his notable work in Fabian Bielinsky’s brilliant neo-noir The Aura (2005) and Juan Jose Campanella’s Oscar-winning The Secret in Their Eyes (2009).

Carancho is one of a number of films mentioned in this article that demonstrate that neo-film noir is alive and very well. Fans of that subgenre should also see the entries for Point Blank, The Silence, The Yellow Sea and Cold in July elsewhere in this piece.

4. Frozen (Adam Green, 2010)

Screenplay by Green

Best known for the 1980s horror cinema love letter Hatchet and its sequels, Green delivers his most mature work with this film about a trio of friends stuck on a ski lift facing several days of freezing temperatures with no possibility of help.

Complicating matters for the three is the hungry pack of wolves gathered below. A tight suspense thriller of place combined with elements of the revolt of nature horror film, Frozen shows a level of promise regarding Green’s talent that has yet to be realized.

5. A Horrible Way to Die (Adam Wingard, 2010)

Screenplay by Simon Barrett

Wingard and Barrett’s award-winning 2011 take on home invasion horror You’re Next may have received much more exposure and praise but the filmmaking duo’s foray into the serial killer subgenre A Horrible Way to Die deserves at least as much critical attention if not more.

Barrett’s clever and highly accomplished screenplay puts an escaped serial murderer on a collision course with his traumatized ex-girlfriend but all may not be as it initially appears. A tremendous achievement on an obviously very low budget, A Horrible Way to Die remains largely overlooked.

6. Point Blank (Fred Cavaye, 2010)

Screenplay by Cavaye & Guillaume Lemans

A male nurse saves the life of a wounded thief and ends up on a frantic race against time to save his kidnapped wife in the intense and superbly crafted French crime film Point Blank.

The quality of this film attracted much international attention. South Korea’s 2014 The Target is a remake and an undated American version has been announced. One of the major figures in the world of European neo-film noir, Fred Cavaye wrote and directed the acclaimed prison break film Anything for Her in 2008 and re-teamed with his Point Blank lead actor Gilles Lellouche for 2014’s cop film Mea Culpa.

7. The Reef (Andrew Traucki, 2010)

Screenplay by Traucki

A group of friends stranded at sea by a storm attempt to swim to the nearest island. As they do, they are subjected to attacks by a ravenous shark. The Reef exists in the same part of the genre world as Chris Kentis’ 2004 low-budget theatrical hit Open Water but is the superior film in every way.

Traucki previously made another suspense thriller of place/revolt of nature horror film combination in 2007 called Black Water about a group of friends stuck in a swamp menaced by an aggressive crocodile and the screenwriter/director substantially improves on that formula with this suspenseful and gripping film.

8. The Silence (Baran bo Odar, 2010)

Screenplay by Odar based on the Jan Costin Wagner novel

Fans of the dark crime films of the Nordic countries such as the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy will find a lot to like in this slow-burn German film about the disappearance of a young girl that draws the attention of both police detectives and the perpetrators of a decades-old child murder.

The Silence employs a very deliberate pace not unlike George Sluizer’s original 1988 The Vanishing and deserves to be seen by a wider audience. Screenwriter/director Baran bo Odar’s next film Who Am I-a suspense thriller about a renegade computer hacker-is soon to be released.

Non-English language horror cinema has always been an important part of the genre film landscape but never more so than the past quarter-century. The American film industry may look at foreign horror films primarily as targets for remakes but non-English language horror is a vital part of a genre that would be severely if not fatally diminished in quality without it.

This article is devoted to live action films only, eliminating excellent animated films like Hirotsugu Kawasaki’s Spriggan (1998, Japan) and Yoshiaki Kawajiri’s Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust (2000, Japan) from consideration.

As a feature films only article, short films were also excluded but all horror fans should seek out the great non-English language horror shorts including Nacho Cerda’s Genesis (1998, Spain), Victor Garcia’s El Ciclo and T is for Tiles (2003 & 2006, Spain), David Alcalde’s Happy Birthday to You (2006, Spain), Pedro Cristiani’s Deus Irae (2010, Argentina) and Can Evrenol’s Baskin (2013, Turkey) among others. Readers interested in catching up with the world of international horror shorts films can read this.

Mathieu Kassovitz’s Crimson Rivers (2000, France), Na Hong-jin’s The Chaser (2008, South Korea) and Kongkiat Khomsiri’s Slice (2009, Thailand) deserve inclusion in this article as psychopath horror films but were intentionally excluded since I previously covered them in my article The 20 Best Neo-Noir Films of the 2000s.

Film writing being the game of informed opinion and personal taste that it is, some readers might be disappointed by the omission of some of their favorites in this piece such as Takashi Miike’s Audition (1999, Japan), Guillermo Del Toro’s The Devil’s Backbone (2001, Spain), Kim Jee-woon’s A Tale of Two Sisters (2003, South Korea), Bong Joon-ho’s The Host (2006, South Korea), Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth (2006, Spain), J.A. Bayona’s The Orphanage (2007, Spain) and Andre Ovredal’s Trollhunter (2010, Norway).

Note: The films are listed in chronological order by release year and in all but a couple of cases the English language title is used for each entry.

1. Evil Dead Trap (Toshiharu Ikeda, 1988, Japan)

Screenplay by Takashi Ishii

Yes, I can read a calendar. I’ve decided to include a 1988 film in this article because it did not have an official North American release until 2000 and it’s a truly underrated horror film. A news crew travels to an abandoned factory to investigate a videotaped murder that was delivered to their station. The investigation turns lethal as a killer with a surprising secret starts picking off the crew.

Evil Dead Trap‘s Dario Argento-influenced murder scenes are incredibly stylish and gruesome must-sees. The script for the film was written by manga writer/artist Takashi Ishii who would go on to become a highly accomplished screenwriter/director whose credits include the 1995 neo-film noir masterpiece Gonin.

Two follow-up films were made that were sequels in spirit only: Izo Hashimoto’s very disappointing Evil Dead Trap 2 (1992) and the little-seen Evil Dead Trap 3: Broken Love Killer (1993) which reunites director Ikeda and screenwriter Ishii and delivers much better results than the second installment but fails to reach the deranged heights of the original.

2. Gamera: Guardian of the Universe (Shusuke Kaneko, 1995, Japan)

Screenplay by Kazunori Ito

3. Gamera: Attack of Legion (1996)

Screenplay by Kazunori Ito

4. Gamera: Revenge of Iris (1999)

Screenplay by Kaneko & Kazunori Ito

A film series reboot does not always signify the absence of genuine inspiration and creativity. This landmark trilogy moves Gamera out of the kids-oriented realm of the early films that began in the 1960s and represents the absolute apex of the daikaiju subgenre.

One of the advantages these films have is the cohesive nature of having the same director and screenwriter on all three films. The first film finds the titular creature defending mankind against giant carnivorous avian beasts from the early film series called Gyaos, the second and most fully satisfying entry pits Gamera against alien insects and the final film of the trilogy is marred only by a cliffhanger ending that occurs after an incredibly impressive climactic battle between Gamera and the monster Iris.

Director Kaneko went on to make the well-received Godzilla, Mothra & King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (2001) and the very popular but uneven manga adaptations Death Note and Death Note: The Last Name (2006).

5. Cure (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 1997, Japan)

Screenplay by Kurosawa

Genre cinema lends itself to many “what if” scenarios. What if Alejandro Jodorowsky had actually made his version of Dune? What if John Milius had made Conan the Barbarian into a trilogy as he had originally intended? The list of fascinating possibilities goes on and on. Screenwriter/director Kurosawa’s Cure answers the question “what if Andrei Tarkovsky made a horror film about a mass murderer?”.

Kursosawa employs the very slow and deliberate pace that would become his directorial trademark in this story of a police detective played by frequent Kurosawa collaborator Koji Yakusho investigating a series of bizarre murders wherein the perpetrators appear to have been under the influence of mind-control. Kurosawa asks a lot from the viewer and the challenging experience that is Cure is definitely an atmospheric and rewarding one. Kurosawa went on to write and direct the apocalyptic favorite Kairo (2001) which was remade badly in America as Jim Sonzero’s Pulse (2006).

6. Open Your Eyes (Alejandro Amenabar, 1997, Spain)

Screenplay by Amenabar & Mateo Gil

I will resist the strong temptation to ask you to forget Cameron Crowe’s horrendous 2001 remake of this film called Vanilla Sky as I’m confident you already have. Eduardo Noriega plays a successful businessman who starts to question what is real and what is not after being horribly disfigured in a car accident.

Heavily influenced by the classic Twilight Zone television series, Open Your Eyes is a classic entry in the horror of altered reality subgenre and contains one of the most beautiful moments in all of genre cinema. After his life-changing accident, Eduardo Noriega’s character watches his ex-girlfriend played by Penelope Cruz do a mime act for passersby in a public park. She strikes a pose and holds it, unmoving as rain starts to fall. Noriega’s character stands there, a drenched beast watching his lost beauty, his gaze fixed on her as the rain causes her white facial makeup to drip off.

7. Ringu (Hideo Nakata, 1998, Japan)

Screenplay by Hiroshi Takahashi based on Koji Suzuki novel

Suzuki’s novel had previously been adapted into a television film but director Nakata’s theatrical version was enormously successful and influential, helping to ignite the worldwide horror film production explosion of the 2000s and spawning countless imitations.

Being one of the most well-known non-English language horror films of all time and the basis for an American remake in 2002, you are certainly already familiar with Ringu’s deadly curse carried by videotape storyline and the film’s rightfully famous ending.
Nakata re-teamed with screenwriter Takahashi for the uneven Ringu 2 (1999) which despite not coming close to the impact of the original does feature a fantastic climax wherein a team of scientists disastrously attempts to control the deadly supernatural force named Sadako.

8. Hypnosis (Masayuki Ochiai, 1999, Japan)

Screenplay by Ochiai & Yasushi Fukuda based on Keisuke Matsuoka novel

A film that was unjustly lost amid the flood of Japanese horror films that followed in the wake of the tremendous success of Hideo Nakata’s Ringu, Hypnosis is the story of a police detective investigating a series of bizarre suicides that may be the result of mind control.

Among other high points including a great opening sequence, Hypnosis delivers a highly memorable and suspenseful take on the orchestra scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956). Hypnosis remains screenwriter/director Ochiai’s career-best film to date. He wrote and directed the horror film misfire Infection in 2004, directed the ridiculous American remake of the superb 2004 Thai horror film Shutter in 2008 and has a couple of horror films in various stages of completion as of this writing.

9. The Nameless (Jaume Balaguero, 1999, Spain)

Screenplay by Balaguero based on the Ramsey Campbell novel

A woman whose daughter went missing and was presumed murdered receives a phone call from someone claiming to be the young girl. The woman starts to investigate with the help of an emotionally broken detective who worked on the original case and a reporter specializing in the paranormal. Incredibly atmospheric with great cinematography by Xavi Gimenez, The Nameless is a highly memorable film that helped ignite the worldwide horror film boom of the 2000s.

Screenwriter/director Balaguero stumbled a bit with his uneven subsequent supernatural features Darkness (2002) and Fragile (2005) but came roaring back with the great To Let (2006), the contemporary classics Rec (2007) and Rec 2 (2009) and the very creepy psychopath film Sleep Tight (2011).

10. Another Heaven (Joji Iida, 2000, Japan)

Screenplay by Iida

The investigation into a disturbing murder by a pair of detectives reveals the perpetrator may not be human in another overlooked gem in the post-Ringu flood of Japanese horror films. Another Heaven has the feel of The X-Files but is much better than either of the milestone American television series’ trips to the big screen. Screenwriter/director Iida went on to make the almost stunningly grim post-apocalyptic film Dragon Head in 2003.

As alluded to in the introduction to my previous articles on the best neo-noir films of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, getting cinema lovers to agree as to what films should be called horror films, suspense thrillers, classic film noir and neo-noir is a difficult if not impossible task.

The equally Herculean task of determining the best films in a genre category is driven by the same individual taste that drives all film writing on every level. Readers disappointed by not seeing their personal favorites in previous installments of this best of neo-film noir series may disagree with the omission of such titles as Martin Scorsese’s The Departed (2006) from this piece.

Regarding other intentional omissions, there are no Johnnie To titles in this article. For a must-see list of this popular director’s work, check out Emilio Santoni’s in-depth Johnnie To piece here. The grim essence of classic film noir is alive and well beyond the 2009 cutoff for this article.

Be sure to catch up with recent neo-film noir classics made in 2010 and later including Kim Jee-woon’s I Saw the Devil (2010), Fred Cavaye’s fantastic Point Blank (2010) which is not remake of the 1967 John Boorman/Lee Marvin favorite, The Chaser director Na Hong-jin’s severely underrated The Yellow Sea (2010) and Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive (2011).

As is the nature of genre labeling, it should be noted that a number of films mentioned in this article could also be classified in other genres such as heist film, suspense thriller of moral confrontation or even psychopath horror in some cases.

Excluded from consideration were films that take place in a period setting. Also excluded were films that despite the presence of modern noir elements actually fall firmly into the suspense thriller category such as Daniel Espinosa’s highly entertaining Safe House (2012).

Note: The films listed are in chronological order by release year.

1. The Crimson Rivers (Mathieu Kassovitz, 2000)

Screenplay by Kassovitz based on the Jean-Christophe Grange novel

Vincent Cassel and Jean Reno play a pair of detectives investigating a series of murders in an isolated university town in this highly atmospheric French film that culminates in a tense mountainside climax.

Cassel and Reno make a great acting team, the murders-seen in aftermath-recall the best of Italian giallo and the cinematography by Thierry Arbogast is superlative. Arbogast frequently works with director Luc Besson and had previously shot Besson’s Leon: The Professional. A very poor sequel to Crimson Rivers was made in 2004, starring Reno but not Cassel.

2. Memento (Christopher Nolan, 2000)

Screenplay by Nolan based on the Jonathan Nolan short story “Memento Mori”

Issues of memory are frequently found in classic film noir as seen in pictures like Roy William Neill’s Cornell Woolrich adaptation Black Angel (1946) and both screen versions of the Woolrich story “Nightmare”-Maxwell Shane’s 1947 Fear in the Night and Maxwell Shane’s 1956 Nightmare. As accomplished as those films are, Christopher Nolan’s complex and outstanding neo-film noir Memento rightfully stands as the king of memory-oriented dark crime films.

The film is told in reverse order as it begins with the ending and Guy Pearce delivers a great lead performance as a man with chronic short-term memory loss in search of his wife’s killer. If Cornell Woolrich were alive today, Memento would probably be his favorite film.

3. Sexy Beast (Jonathan Glazer, 2000)

Screenplay by Louis Mellis and David Scinto

Ray Winstone stars as a retired British gangster named Gal who now resides in Spain with his wife. His past explodes into his present as his old colleague Don shows up unexpectedly and tries to recruit Gal for an ambitious bank robbery back in England.
Ben Kingsley’s Academy Award-nominated performance as the vicious Don Logan is a sight to behold and Ray Winstone is always solid but Sexy Beast also features a great supporting performance by veteran actor Ian McShane as crime boss Teddy Bass.

The film could do without the brief, superfluous fantasy sequences that occur at several points in Sexy Beast but the film is must-see for fans of British crime cinema and contemporary neo-noir. Ray Winstone and Ian McShane reunited with Sexy Beast screenwriters Mellis and Scinto in 2009 for the very disappointing revenge film 44 Inch Chest, which comes off more as a stage play than dynamic crime cinema.

4. Training Day (Antoine Fuqua, 2001)

Screenplay by David Ayer

This film’s tight and compact narrative takes place over the course of one day as a young police officer named Jake played by Ethan Hawke is taken under the wing of veteran detective Alonzo Harris played by Denzel Washington.

As the events of the day take a very dark and dangerous turn, Jake slowly discovers that Alonzo has much bigger plans for him.
Ethan Hawke’s Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for Training Day may not make a great deal of sense but Denzel Washington’s Best Actor Oscar win for this film does as it is one of the most accomplished and memorable performances of his career. Be on the lookout for an almost unrecognizable Cliff Curtis in a brief but outstanding performance as a Latino gang member.

5. Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (Park Chan-wook, 2002)

Screenplay by Chan-wook, Lee Jae-sun, Lee Jong-yong and Lee Mu-yeong

Having delivered an award-winning performance in Park Chan-wook’s 2000 military drama JSA: Joint Security Area, actor Song Kang-ho reunited with the director for this grim story of the kidnapping of a young girl that turns into a violent downward spiral for all involved.

Song Kang-ho’s great acting anchors the film and the talented actor would appear as a hitman in a brief cameo in Park Chan-wook’s Lady Vengeance (2005) and play the lead in the director’s vampire film misfire Thirst (2009).

6. Oldboy (Park Chan-wook, 2003)

Screenplay by Chan-wook, Lim Chun-hyeong and Hwang Jo-yun based on the Garon Tsuchiya and Nobuaki Minegishi graphic novels

Recently imitated and nowhere near duplicated, director Chan-wook’s brutal tale of revenge features a fabulous lead performance by veteran South Korean actor Choi Min-sik as a man searching for whoever kidnapped him and imprisoned him in a hotel room for fifteen years.

The actor also appears as the villain in Park Chan-wook’s disappointing third entry in the Vengeance Trilogy Lady Vengeance (2005) which cannot match the quality of the unique screenplays of the first two films.

7. 36th Precinct (Olivier Marchal, 2004)

Screenplay by Marchal and Franck Mancuso

Called “The Michael Mann of France”, actor turned screenwriter and director Marchal uses his real-life experiences as a police officer to inform this tale of corruption and revenge starring the great Daniel Auteuil-one of the best screen actors in the world-and revered veteran performer Gerard Depardieu as rival cops.

This outstanding film is unjustly overlooked by most but, unsurprisingly, an American remake that sets the story in the world of the Los Angeles Police Department has been announced.

8. Collateral (Michael Mann, 2004)

Screenplay by Stuart Beattie

A hitman named Vincent played by Tom Cruise forces a cab driver named Max played by Jamie Foxx to transport him to a series of paid killings over the course of one night. The film was directed by Michael Mann, one of the great neo-film noir directors with such classics as Thief (1981), Manhunter (1986) and Heat (1995) to his credit.

Jamie Foxx, clearly the lead character in the film, received a rather puzzling Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his work in Collateral when Tom Cruise deserved that accolade for what is one of the best-if not the best-performance of his career in the supporting but top-billed role of the ruthless hitman.

9. The Aura (Fabian Bielinsky, 2005)

Screenplay by Bielinsky

An epileptic taxidermist who believes he has an infallible photographic memory gets tangled up in a robbery plot in the severely overlooked The Aura. Having starred in screenwriter/director Bielinsky’s clever but decidedly lighter crime film Nine Queens (2000), the great Argentinian actor Ricardo Darin plays the lead here in one of the great performances of his highly accomplished career. Bielinsky’s untimely death in 2006 robbed the cinematic world of a very talented individual and a director/actor collaboration that had incredible potential.

What Daniel Auteuil is to French cinema and Javier Bardem is to Spanish cinema, Ricardo Darin is to Argentinian cinema and be sure to catch his outstanding performances in Juan Jose Campanella’s Academy Award winning The Secret in Their Eyes (2009) and Pablo Trapero’s underrated neo-film noir Carancho (2010).

10. A Bittersweet Life (Kim Jee-woon, 2005)

Screenplay by Jee-woon

A crime boss’ right hand man played by very popular South Korean actor Lee Byung-hun puts his life in danger when he disobeys a set of orders. With its focus on ideas of loyalty and honor, A Bittersweet Life is reminiscent of the 1980s and early 1990s golden era of Hong Kong gangster films and if that piques your imagination, be sure to seek out this film.

Lee Byung-hun reunited with director Kim Jee-woon for the unforgettable and incredibly violent neo-film noir I Saw the Devil in 2010 also starring Oldboy lead actor Choi Min-sik in a tremendous performance as a psychotic villain.

As mentioned in the introduction to our previous articles on the best neo-noir films of the 1970s and 1980s, arguments will always exist over what films should be called horror films, suspense thrillers, classic film noir and neo-noir. Those disagreements naturally extend to what should be the considered the best of a genre or subgenre.

Readers disappointed at the omission of neo-noir favorites such as William Friedkin’s The French Connection, Gordon Parks’ Shaft, Peter Yates’ The Friends of Eddie Coyle, Walter Hill’s The Driver and Lawrence Kasdan’s Body Heat from the previous articles may disagree with our choice to omit several films generally considered classics from this list including Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction (1994), Bryan Singer’s The Usual Suspects (1995) and The Coen Brothers’ Fargo (1996).

Those that are should be reminded that film writing on all levels is a game of knowledge filtered through individual taste and other neo film noir enthusiasts would certainly make their own choices for a “best of” list as they research the dark crime films of any decade that followed the classic film noir period of the 1940s and 1950s.

As is the nature of genre labeling, it should be noted that as with the previous articles, a number of films mentioned here could also be classified in other genres such as heist film, suspense thriller of moral confrontation or even psychopath horror in some cases.

Excluded from consideration were films that take place in a period setting such as The Coen Brothers’ entertaining Miller’s Crossing (1990), Carl Franklin’s excellent Devil in a Blue Dress (1995) and Curtis Hanson’s superb L.A. Confidential (1997).

Also excluded were films that despite the presence of modern noir elements actually fall firmly into the suspense thriller category such as Andrew Davis’ The Fugitive (1993) and Wolfgang Petersen’s In the Line of Fire (1993).

Note: The films listed are in chronological order by release year.

1. King of New York (Abel Ferrara, 1990)

Screenplay by Nicholas St. John

Christopher Walken delivers one of the great performances of his legendary career in this tale of a crime boss named Frank White being targeted by a trio of police officers upon his release from prison. The film also features a spectacular supporting cast including Laurence Fishburne as White’s trigger-happy right hand man and David Caruso, Victor Argo and Wesley Snipes as the cops targeting White.

Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant (1992) garnered high critical praise, primarily for the courageous lead acting performance by Harvey Keitel, but King of New York is a far more successful film.

2. Q&A (Sidney Lumet, 1990)

Screenplay by Lumet based on the Edwin Torres novel

Timothy Hutton plays a young district attorney trying to connect a corrupt police detective to a murder in this overlooked gem.

The film features an excellent performance by Armand Assante as a Puerto Rican crime boss but the film’s greatest strength is the acting of Nick Nolte. The highly respected actor delivers the performance of his career in this film as investigation target Captain Mike Brennan.

3. State of Grace (Phil Joanou, 1990)

Screenplay by Dennis McIntyre

Looking for a film about an undercover cop inside the Irish mob that’s better than Martin Scorsese’s The Departed?

You found it with State of Grace. Director Joanou’s film may not have the complex screenplay of Scorsese’s Hong Kong film remake but it does feature better overall acting across the board courtesy of Sean Penn, Gary Oldman and Ed Harris. Director Joanou would return to the world of neo film noir in 1996 with the solid Heaven’s Prisoners starring Alec Baldwin.

4. Point Break (Kathryn Bigelow, 1991)

Screenplay by Rick King and W. Peter Illiff

This story of a young FBI agent who enters the world of Southern California surfing culture in pursuit of a group of bank robbers is a film with so many strong elements that it survives the weak lead acting performance of Keanu Reeves.

Aside from an excellent screenplay, Point Break also features the late Patrick Swayze in the best performance of his career as the surfing guru villain Bodhi. Soon to be victimized by an inevitable remake, Point Break is a crime film classic.

5. The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme, 1991)

Screenplay by Ted Tally based on the Thomas Harris novel

Here’s the problem with this highly regarded film about the hunt for a twisted serial murderer: when Anthony Hopkins or Ted Levine aren’t on screen, The Silence of the Lambs loses steam. The Jodie Foster lead performance is overrated and the film is really in the hands of its now legendary villains, both of which are brought to life by the riveting acting of Hopkins and Levine as lethal psychopaths Hannibal Lecter and Jame Gumb.

The follow-up film Hannibal, again based on a Harris novel, severely drops the ball by missing the opportunity to bring author Harris’ Will Graham, a far more interesting character than Clarice Starling in every way, into the hunt for Lecter.

6. Full Contact (Ringo Lam, 1992)

Screenplay by Yin Nam

Casting aside the wilder and more acrobatic approach to action sequences favored by Hong Kong colleagues such as John Woo, director Lam instead employs a gritty, hard-edged style in this story of a betrayed criminal out of revenge. Star Chow Yun-Fat had previously worked with Lam on the influential City on Fire (1987) as well as Prison on Fire (1987) and Prison on Fire II (1991) and veteran Hong Kong actor Simon Yam is unforgettable as the deadly villain Judge.

When looking at Hong Kong crime cinema, Full Contact tends to be unfairly overlooked in favor of the works of John Woo and Johnnie To.

As mentioned in the introduction to our previous article on the best neo-noir films of the 1970s, arguments will always exist over what films should be called horror films, suspense thrillers, classic film noir and neo-noir.

Those disagreements aside, the milestone cinema decade of the 1970s produced some classic neo-noir films and the 1980s kept the dark crime ball rolling with many gems in the subgenre that possess the same dark heart found in the classic film noir pictures of the 1940s and 1950s. As is the nature of genre labeling, it should be noted that a number of films mentioned in this article could also be classified in other genres such as heist film, suspense thriller of moral confrontation or even psychopath horror in some cases.

Excluded from consideration were films that take place in a period setting either historical or futuristic which eliminated Ridley Scott’s classic Blade Runner (1982) from contention. Also excluded were films that despite the presence of modern noir elements actually fall firmly into the suspense thriller category such as William Tannen’s underrated Flashpoint (1984).

Note: The films are in chronological order by release year.

1. The Long Good Friday (John Mackenzie, 1980)

Screenplay by Barrie Keefe

The Long Good Friday is on a short list of the greatest British crime films along with such titles as Mike Hodges’ Get Carter (1971) and Jonathan Glazer’s Sexy Beast (2001). The superb screenplay is brought to life by an outstanding cast led by Bob Hoskins as a crime boss whose world is violently torn apart by unknown assailants. Hoskins recently retired due to health reasons and his acting here deserves to be at the very top of any list of his notable performances.

2. Cutter’s Way (Ivan Passer, 1981)

Screenplay by Jeffrey Alan Fiskin based on the Newton Thornburg novel “Cutter and Bone”

The witness to the aftermath of a murder and a bitter Vietnam veteran team up to investigate a powerful local millionaire they suspect is involved in the crime. Barely promoted during its initial release, Cutter’s Way’s reputation as an overlooked neo-noir gem has justifiably grown over the years. One of the keys to the film’s quality is the incredible performance of John Heard as the abrasive Vietnam veteran Alex Cutter. While better known as the father in the Home Alone films, Heard’s performance here is the finest of his career.

3. Nighthawks (Bruce Malmuth, 1981)

Screenplay by David Shaber and Paul Sylbert

Along with Ted Kotcheff’s excellent First Blood (1982), Nighthawks is one of the two best films Sylvester Stallone has ever been involved in. Stallone stars as a New York cop assigned to an anti-terrorist unit who ends up on a collision course with a ruthless villain played superbly by Rutger Hauer. Hauer, with highly accomplished performances in this film, Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) and Robert Harmon’s The Hitcher (1986) was the greatest portrayer of villains in 1980s cinema.

4. Thief (Michael Mann, 1981)

Screenplay by Mann based on the Frank Hohimer novel “The Home Invaders”

James Caan delivers one the great performances of his long career as an expert thief who tries to establish a normal life for himself against all odds. Caan’s character is an ex-convict who adopts a highly disciplined approach to his criminal lifestyle, creating a less refined version of Robert DeNiro’s Neil McCauley character from director Mann’s 1995 Heat.

5. Bad Boys (Rick Rosenthal, 1983)

Screenplay by Richard Di Lello

Bad Boys was heavily influenced by Alan Clarke’s two versions of the film Scum starring Ray Winstone. Sean Penn, showing the intensity that would become his career trademark, stars as a teenage criminal sentenced to a brutal juvenile correction facility after a disastrous and deadly robbery attempt. The great character actor Clancy Brown can also be seen here as fellow inmate with a score to settle with Penn’s character.

6. Blood Simple (Joel & Ethan Coen, 1984)

Screenplay by Joel & Ethan Coen

A love affair between a married woman and a bartender results in murder in this critically lauded debut of the Coen Brothers highlighted by the incredible performance of character actor M. Emmet Walsh as a lethal private investigator. Having previously done an outstanding job as a parole officer in Ulu Grossbard’s Straight Time (1978), the veteran actor is usually found in smaller but memorable roles such as Deckard’s boss in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982).

7. To Live & Die in L.A. (William Friedkin, 1985)

Screenplay by Gerald Petievich and Friedkin based on Petievich’s novel

A federal agent played by William Petersen becomes obsessed with taking down a deadly counterfeiter brilliantly played by Willem Dafoe. Not a box office success in its day, To Live & Die in L.A. holds up over time much better than Friedkin’s The French Connection (1971). The late character actor Steve James can be seen here in a supporting role. James also appeared in Friedkin’s later collaborations with Petievich on the entertaining but almost completely overlooked television films C.A.T. Squad (1986) and C.A.T. Squad: Python Wolf (1988).

8. 52 Pick-Up (John Frankenheimer, 1986)

Screenplay by Elmore Leonard and John Steppling based on Leonard’s novel

By far the darkest film adaptation of an Elmore Leonard novel ever produced, 52 Pick-Up stars Roy Scheider as a businessman being blackmailed by a trio of ruthless criminals unforgettably portrayed by John Glover, Clarence Williams III and Robert Trebor. The acting across the board is excellent but Glover’s intelligent and twisted ringleader is one of great villains of 1980s cinema.

9. At Close Range (James Foley, 1986)

Screenplay by Elliott Lewitt and Nicholas Kazan

Christopher Walken delivers one of the best performances of his legendary career as a rural Pennsylvania crime boss who welcomes his son played by Sean Penn into his illegal business in this film based on real-life events. Despite being a box office failure in its day, At Close Range is an American classic highlighted by superb acting.

10. Blue Velvet (David Lynch, 1986)

Screenplay by Lynch

Much has been written and discussed about Lynch’s unique story of a college student drawn into the dark world of brutality that lies beneath the wholesome façade of his hometown. Dennis Hopper’s driven performance as the twisted kidnapper Frank Booth should have netted the actor an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Instead, Hopper received that accolade for his work that year in David Anspaugh’s Hoosiers, the far more safe and Academy-friendly choice.

Film critics, film writers and ardent fans are bound to disagree as to what films should be classified as being part of a particular genre. Arguments over what films should be called horror films or suspense thrillers are commonplace as are disputes over what films should fall into the category of film noir.

Naturally these disputes extend to films in the modern film noir or neo-noir classification. In selecting the best neo-noir films from the very fertile and revered years of the 1970s, We picked the finest crime films that share the same grim preoccupations and the same dark heart found in classic film noir pictures of the 1940s and 1950s such as Jacques Tourneur’s Out of the Past, John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle and Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly to name just a few.

As is the nature of genre labeling, it should be noted that a number of films mentioned in this article could also be classified in other genres such as heist film or suspense thriller of moral confrontation. Excluded from consideration were films that take place in a period setting. Sorry, Chinatown fans.

Also excluded were films that are occasionally included in writing about neo-noir films that, despite the presence of modern noir elements, actually fall firmly into the suspense thriller category such as Alan J. Pakula’s excellent political suspense thriller The Parallax View (1974) and William Friedkin’s masterful suspense thriller of place Sorcerer (1977).

Note: The films are in chronological order by release year.

1. Dirty Harry (Don Siegel, 1971)

Screenplay by Harry Julian Fink, R.M. Fink and Dean Riesner

One of the quintessential hard-edged crime films of the pivotal cinematic decade of the 1970s, Dirty Harry still holds up remarkably well to this day. One of the keys to the film’s success is the driven performance of Andrew Robinson as the killer Scorpio. Robinson appeared in director Siegel’s great neo-noir Charley Varrick in 1973 and would go on to create one of the great science fiction television characters with his recurring role as Garak on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

2. Get Carter (Mike Hodges, 1971)

Screenplay by Hodges based on the Ted Lewis novel “Jack’s Return Home”

Skip the horrendous 2000 remake and watch the original starring Michael Caine if you haven’t already. One of the all-time great British crime films, this story of a London gangster who travels to Newcastle to investigate his brother’s death is one of the greatest British crime films of all time and features one of Caine’s best early career performances.

3. Across 110th Street (Barry Shear, 1972)

Screenplay by Luther Davis based on the Wally Ferris novel

An incredibly underrated film about the aftermath of a deadly robbery, Across 110th Street deserves to be talked about like the classic crime film it is. This film features superb acting by leads Yaphet Kotto and Anthony Quinn as pair of very different New York City detectives, Anthony Franciosa as an unbalanced mob enforcer and Paul Benjamin as a machine gun-wielding thief.

4. The Mechanic (Michael Winner, 1972)

Screenplay by Lewis John Carlino

The finest film of Charles Bronson’s lead acting career is unjustly overshadowed by the legendary actor’s highly overrated 1974 collaboration with director Winner Death Wish. The grim tale of a professional assassin and his young protégé, The Mechanic is a better film in every way than Death Wish. An attempt to recreate this film as a Jason Statham action movie was made in 2011.

5. Charley Varrick (Don Siegel, 1973)

Screenplay by Howard Rodman and Dean Riesner based on the John Reese novel “The Looters”

When people think Don Siegel in the 1970s they think Dirty Harry. They should also think Charley Varrick, the director’s underrated classic about a gang of bank robbers targeted by the mob. In addition to providing crime cinema with the first reference to going to work on someone with a pair of pliers and a blowtorch, the film features all-around great acting, highlighted by a too-often overlooked villainous performance from Joe Don Baker as a mob enforcer.

6. Electra Glide in Blue (James William Guerico, 1973)

Screenplay by Robert Boris and Rupert Hitzig

An Arizona motorcycle cop gets promoted to homicide detective and investigates the murder of a hermit in this too little discussed entry in the world of 1970s crime cinema. In the lead role here, Robert Blake gives one of the best performances on his career.

7. The Long Goodbye (Robert Altman, 1973)

Screenplay by Leigh Brackett based on the Raymond Chandler novel

Director Altman’s quirky take on Raymond Chandler’s legendary detective character Philip Marlowe investigating accusations that his good friend murdered his wife is rightfully considered a classic by followers of neo-noir films. The Long Goodbye is highlighted by great performances from Elliott Gould as Marlowe and Sterling Hayden as an alcoholic novelist.

8. Magnum Force (Ted Post, 1973)

Screenplay by John Milius and Michael Cimino

A great sequel to the legendary Dirty Harry, this film pits the deadly Inspector Callahan against of a group of vigilantes who seem to represent what Callahan himself might have turned into had he chosen a different path. Hal Holbrook gives a great performance here as Callahan’s boss. Sadly, the subsequent Dirty Harry sequels really declined in terms of quality.

9. Serpico (Sidney Lumet, 1973)

Screenplay by Waldo Salt and Norman Wexler based on the Peter Maas book

Al Pacino turns in one of the finest performances of his early career in this fact-based account of an idealistic cop’s fight against rampant corruption in the New York City Police Department. The film also features Tony Roberts, a great character actor primarily known for his comic roles in a number of Woody Allen films. Director Lumet and Pacino would team up again in 1975 for another dark crime film based on real-life events in Dog Day Afternoon.

10. Busting (Peter Hyams, 1974)

Screenplay by Hyams

Lead actors Elliott Gould and Robert Blake show real on-screen chemistry in this overlooked film about a pair of vice cops who risk everything in their pursuit of a Los Angeles crime boss. An early example of what would, for better or worse, become known as a “buddy cop” film, Busting could be seen as a more serious version of Richard Rush’s Freebie and the Bean which was also released in 1974 and featured James Caan and Alan Arkin as a pair of detectives in pursuit of a highjacker in San Francisco.