THE APPALOOSA (1965) Horseplay and gunplay in Old Mexico

In THE APPALOOSA, a bandito kingpin (John Saxon) steals a rancher's (Marlon Brando) prize stud stallion. Brando gets it back and tries to vamoose ... with Saxon's unhappy runaway wife along for the ride. Needless to say, Saxon isn't happy with either loss, and the struggle between the two powerful men quickly escalates. Watch for an early "Ouch!" scene when Brando and Saxon arm wrestle, with the loser getting his forearm ground down onto the stinger of a deadly scorpion. Not a great film, but great fun watching Brando masquerade as a Mexican with coffee ground stain on his face. Saxon won a Golden Globe Best Supporting Actor nomination for his performance - and deservedly. (Trivia note: In his younger days, Saxon often appeared in parts which emphasized his "beefcake" appeal. In 1959's THE BIG FISHERMAN, for example, he was stripped to the waist and flogged in a scene which ranked 39th in the book "Lash! The Hundred Great Scenes of Men Being Whipped in the Movies." Sadly, Brando is gone, but Saxon is still going strong. Not long ago he appeared in an episode of CSI: Las Vegas, directed by Quentin Tarantino.)

THE NAKED PREY (1966) Wilde prey

A group on safari crosses paths with a Zulu tribe and offends the chief by refusing to gift him. As punishment, the men are chased down one by one time by and each killed in a particularly gruesome, hard-to-watch way. Only one man is spared from immediate death (Cornel Wilde, who also directed) because he had tried to talk his s.o.b. companion into giving the gift. Nevertheless, he’s sentenced to be hunted down like an animal by a party of tribal warriors. Naked and weaponless he’s set loose, the hunters hot on his heels, and so begins a life-or-death hunt for Wilde through the wild. To find out the hell he goes through and how it all turns out, I pray you see THE NAKED PREY. It's about as tense and exciting a chase movie as you’ll ever see.

DETECTIVE STORY (1951) Tough day in the squad room

"Homicide: Life on the Street," "Barney Miller" and many other TV shows and movies owe their look and feel to DETECTIVE STORY. Based play, this is a gritty and well-acted film spans one day in a police station in which we meet a variety of good buys and bad guys. There's a batty old lady; a petty embezzler and his adoring girlfriend; a pair of slightly comical but ultimately lethal burglars; and a charmingly naïve shoplifter played by Lee Grant who, along with one of the burglars, Joseph Wiseman, had been in the Broadway cast - and the title character, a hard-nosed, by-the-book detective named Jim McLeod (Kirk Douglas). McLeod has no mercy for lawbreakers and discovers, ironically, that his obsessive pursuit of an abortionist leads him to personal crisis. Great cast, great writing, directed by the great William Wyler - and though dated, repeatedly watchable.

THE DESPERATE HOURS (1955) Bogie pays an uninvited house call on the Cleavers

A tale about armed and dangerous escapees terrorizing a suburban family isn't novel today – neither in reel or real life – but 54 years ago, THE DESPERATE HOURS was genuinely shocking. All the more so because it was based on a true incident. After years of playing good guys, Humphrey Bogart reprises the hard-bitten gangster type he had created in PETRIFIED FOREST (1936), also about a gang of baddies holding a group of people (in a café). Bogie’s character in DESPERATE HOURS is marginally a more articulate and sensitive version of FOREST's Duke Mantee, you still wouldn't want him dropping by. Ditto one of his two cohorts, lumbering Sam Kobish (Ray Middleton), a psychopath if ever there was one. Trust me, this one’s a nail-biter. (Trivia note: The exterior of the house used in the film is the same set used in the TV's "Leave It to Beaver" two years later.)

12 ANGRY MEN (1957, 1997) x 2

Both versions of the classic jury room drama 12 ANGRY MEN are top-notch and full of suspense, despite the fact there's basically only one set, no sex or violence, and not one single special effect. Twelve male jurors, clearly mirroring a cross-section of society, must determine the guilt or innocence of a young Latino accused of killing his father. Eleven of the men are positive it's an open-and-shut case of guilt. But one man (Henry Fonda in '57, Jack Lemmon in '97) isn't sure; and over the course of a steamy day and into the rainy night, turning each piece of evidence inside and out and introducing some of his own, he finally convinces all but one of his fellow jurors of reasonable doubt. It is a powerful moment when these 11 men voting for acquittal stare at the lone holdout for conviction, which is exactly how the day started – in reverse.

MY DINNER WITH ANDRE (1981) Delicious!

In MY DINNER WITH ANDRE, directed by Louis Malle and co-starring director/actors André Gregory and Wallace Shawn (who together wrote the unscripted-sounding script), two men reunite in a chic restaurant and, over a fine and many-coursed meal, talk about their lives. Some say the film is deadly boring; others find it thoroughly engaging. I'm in the second camp. André and Wally could not be more different, yet I see them as two sides of one person: dreamer, pragmatist. Over the course of the evening, interrupted occasionally by an elderly, cadaverous waiter (whose tics and blinks suggest that he is bewildered by the men he's serving), each diner does his best to explain how he’s coping with the world – André talks to trees and Wally is happy if there’s not a dead fly in his cold cup of coffee. When they finally part, Wally treats himself to a taxi ride home. It’s nighttime. Gazing out the window, he narrates that he remembers every block, every shop front from his childhood, it's if he’s seeing the world for the very first time. It's as if, over his dinner with André, Wally had somehow been, in a tiny way, reborn.

JACOB'S LADDER (1990) Long hard climb

Is Jacob Singer a soldier or vet? Alive or dead? Awake or hallucinating? Married or divorced? Living in the past or present? Sane or nuts? In heaven or hell? Watch the eerie JACOB'S LADDER and you may learn the answers - but it's sure to take you more than one viewing. Tim Robbins stars.

BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK (1955) Never underestimate a one-armed man. Or a lousy movie title

One blazingly hot day, a one-armed stranger dressed almost comically in tie, white shirt and rumpled black suit deboards off a train in a pothole-of-a town in Arizona, and thus begins a suspenseful movie called BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK – and for both the stranger and blue-jeaned townspeople, a very bad day indeed. Determined to solve the mystery of the town's missing citizen, a Japanese man, government man John J. Macreedy (Spencer Tracy) quickly discovers in various unpleasant ways how equally determined the town is to prevent his doing so. Risking life and remaining limbs at the four hands of two very nasty town bullies (Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine), McCready winds up arresting half the town and re-energizing hope to the other half. Watch for the barroom scene when McCready is forced to reveal his karate moves.