The Exorcist (1973)

Regan McNeill (Linda Blair) is a bright-faced pre-teen living in Georgetown when her bed begins moving on its own accord. Soon Regan is afflicted by seizures and delusions, and disturbing changes in behaviour. When medical science cannot provide an explanation, Regan's mother Chris (Ellen Burstyn) resorts to calling in the priest Father Damien Karras (Jason Miller) and he in turn must rely on the exorcist Father Lancaster Merrin (Max Von Sydow).

The Exorcist is a widely regarded masterpiece of cinema, and one that is regularly cited as the greatest horror movie ever made. It was the first horror film to be nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award. Entertainment Weekly and Time Out both ranked it as the scariest film ever made.

Here's the thing though: The Exorcist isn't really a horror film. Don't get me wrong, it has a few nice scary moments. It does feature supernatural content and themes. At the same time, however, it is also a masterful drama about how a priest almost lost his faith until a demon forces him to take a stand and fight for his beliefs.

To Live and Die in L.A. (1985)

Richard Chance (William Petersen) is an edgy Secret Service agent in Los Angeles. When his partner is gunned down during a money counterfeiting investigation, Chance becomes obsessed with taking down the elusive forger Rick Masters (Willem Dafoe). Teamed with a new partner named John Vukovich (John Pankow), Chance takes every step he can - both legal and illegal - to track down Masters and bring him to justice.

A synopsis of To Live and Die in L.A. makes it sound like an incredible crass and cliche-ridden potboiler, and to a large extent that's a fair assessment of the movie. It's a 1985 action film directed by William Friedkin that really does trade extensively on stereotype. The first half pushed my limit for tolerating this sort of silly machismo. The second half completely redeemed it, as Chance's actions grew more extreme and the film began to push off in unexpected directions.

This is not top-tier Friedkin; the director's earlier works include The French Connection, The Exorcist and Sorcerer, after all, and To Live and Die in L.A. would have to be pretty formidable to hit those peaks. It is a smartly directed film, however, and some clever direction and typically strong editing help to make it much more than the sum of its parts.

Sorcerer (1977)

In the middle of the South American jungle an oil well is burning out of control. To close off the well, explosives are desperately required. The only explosives available started to rot away months ago, and the nitroglycerin pooling at the bottom of each case will explode at the slightest disturbance. So four runaway criminals desperate for money board a pair of trucks - three cases of explosives in each - to make the treacherous 218 mile drive to the well.

William Friedkin's 1977 thriller Sorcerer is a loose remake of the classic French film The Wages of Fear. Or, at least, it's another adaptation of the Georges Arnaud novel. I call the adaptation 'loose' because all it really takes is the basic premise: driving trucks of unstable explosives through a jungle. Friedkin took this concept and added his own cast of four disparate criminals: an American getaway driver (Roy Scheider), a corrupt French businessman (Bruno Cremer), a Mexican professional killer (Francisco Rabal) and an Arabic terrorist (Amidou). The first half of the film introduces their respective back stories, and brings them all to the same backwater Latin American town. The second half is one long, relentless chain of suspenseful set pieces.

The Hunted (2003)

I feel there almost needs to be a sub-genre of action film based around Tommy Lee Jones looking grumpy while chasing people. Clearly he invented the genre with The Fugitive and its sequel U.S. Marshals. He grumpily chased after Ashley Judd in Double Jeopardy and he chased after Benicio Del Toro in The Hunted.

Of the four it's The Hunted that was the least successful. In Australia it didn't get a cinema release at all, instead getting shoved directly to home video. In the USA it flopped, pure and simple. It seems a shame; this is not a film classic by any stretch, but it does what it sets out to do and it achieves it in an efficient and entertaining manner.

Jones plays Bonham, a quiet tracker working in British Columbia. He gets dragged back to the USA when four deer hunters are found brutally murdered. The perpetrator is found: it's a deranged former marine named Aaron Hallam (Benicio Del Toro), who Bonham once trained in survival skills and knife fighting as part of a US army program. When Hallam then escapes custody, Bonham doggedly chases after him.