You will never find a more chillingly suspenseful, perversely funny, or viciously satirical political thriller than The Manchurian Candidate, based on the novel by Richard Condon (author of Winter Kills). The film, withheld from distribution by star Frank Sinatra for almost a quarter-century after President Kennedy's assassination, has lost none of its potency over time. Former infantryman Bennet Marco (Sinatra) is haunted by nightmares about his platoon having been captured and brainwashed in Korea. The indecipherable dreams seem to centre on Sergeant Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey), a decorated war hero but a cold fish of a man whose own mother (Angela Lansbury, in one of the all-time great dragon-lady roles) describes him as looking like his head is "always about to come to a point". Mrs Bates has nothing on Lansbury's character, the manipulative queen behind her second husband, Senator John Iselin (James Gregory), a notoriously McCarthyesque demagogue. -Jim Emerson.

Diabolique is Jeremiah Chechik's 1996 revamped version of the 1955 French film noir tale of two teachers at a boys school conspiring to kill the headmaster (played in the remake by Chazz Palminteri of Jade and The Usual Suspects). The three assemble an intriguing triangle of revenge and deceit as the headmaster's abused and humiliated wife and mistress team up to get even. Mia Baran is the fragile wife with a delicate heart condition, portrayed by Isabelle Adjani (Queen Margot), and Sharon Stone (Basic Instinct) is the plotting, contemptuous mistress. Together they set out to wreak an unfortunate revenge, but as the story reveals itself, miscalculations abound as hidden agendas and secret lives are unexpectedly exposed. Chechik's new look and timeless setting give film noir audiences something neoteric and seductive to play with. A welcomed change to the film's story line is the fresh addition of Kathy Bates as a daunting private detective. Fans of Stone's will not be disappointed with the latest version of her "I-could-give-a-damn smoldering broad" technique and anyone not yet familiar with Chazz Palminteri will love watching him succeed as the ultimately despicable headmaster. -Michele Goodson.

The Grissom Gang is director Robert Aldrich's take on British author James Hadley Chase's once-notorious novel No Orchids for Miss Blandish, which was itself a synthesis of the plot of William Faulkner's Sanctuary with the lurid exposes of the criminal rampage of Arizona Clark "Ma" Barker and her alleged criminal brood. Aldrich sticks surprisingly close to Chase's plot, although he considerably deepens all the characterisations and cuts through the prurient sex sensation to create a surprisingly moving and complicated relationship between kidnapped heiress Barbara Blandish (Kim Darby) and the homicidally psychopathic but also childish Slim Grissom (Scott Wilson), the most feared member of the gang headed by the grotesquely horrible Ma (Irene Dailey). Barbara is abducted after a jewel heist gone wrong by a trio of inept small-timers, who are swiftly rubbed out by the more organised Grissom mob, and though Ma insists that after the girl's father has come across with the million-dollar ransom she will be mercilessly put down, Slim becomes enchanted with the girl, who eventually becomes his lover. In the book, the girl was drugged and raped, but here we get a delicate, creepy shifting of power to the point when Miss Blandish can browbeat her fearsome captor into mixing her a perfect martini, and the new attachment between crook and captive creates a rift with the rest of the gang that inevitably pays off in various hails of machine gunfire as the plan falls apart and the authorities close in. Aldrich manages the kind of claustrophobic black comedy games of terror and flirtation he perfected in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, but attacks the rat-tat-tat tommy gun scenes with action skills honed on The Dirty Dozen. Most of these films trusted costumes, cars and music to evoke the 1920s, but screenwriter Leon Griffiths takes care with period slang and the supporting cast have a real Depression era Warner Brothers feel, with Connie Stevens as a dumb but ferocious blonde showgirl, Tony Musante as the slick-haired official ladykiller in the gang and Robert Lansing as an impeccably down-at-heel but compassionate private detective. On the DVD: The advertised extras-notes, trivia and photo gallery-are disappointingly thin, but the 16:9 letterboxed print is almost flawless, with lovely pastels for the clothes and sets and bright scarlet for the many bursts of blood. -Kim Newman.

Directed by Dennis Hopper, Colors is a superior 1988 action movie set among the street gangs of LA that teams up Robert Duvall as Hodges, the elder cop, with young hothead partner Danny McGavin (Sean Penn). Investigating a murderous feud between the “Bloods” and the “Crips”, Duvall attempts to impress upon the impetuous Penn the value of a more cautious, easy-going approach in dealing with gang members, rather than trying to charge in among them. The film as a whole was one of the first to take a serious, unromantic and unstereotypical look at gang culture, at how youngsters are sucked into it, how few options are actually open to these macho hoodlums and how little they have in the way of family, community and stability other than the gangs. The partnership between Penn and Duvall by contrast, though well played, is pretty much the standard old cop/young cop set-up, right down to Duvall's frequent, ominous remarks about how close he is to retirement. While the action is sometimes disjointed and the relationships between the gangs at times confused, it at least helps to dispel the usual Hollywood good vs. evil dynamic. Instead, there's a more ambient sense of violence, desperation, retribution and recrimination. Penn's doomed relationship with a “homegirl” indicates that while the LAPD may capture a few felons, they've little chance of capturing the hearts and minds of the criminalised poor. Later films such as John Singleton's Boyz 'n the Hood (1991) would go further in exploring how life looks from the gangsta perspective. On the DVD: The films is presented in an anamorphic 16:9 widescreen version, with the usual chapter and language selections. [+]

Lurid thrillers don't get much more shameless than this movie, in which Robert De Niro plays a pathological baseball fan whose obsession is focused on a San Francisco Giants all-star outfielder (Wesley Snipes). While the newly signed baseball star is having trouble getting his favourite uniform number from a competitive teammate (Benicio Del Toro), De Niro is having career troubles at the knife company his father founded, and you can bet that his proximity to high-quality stainless-steel blades will be a factor in the suspenseful plot. Recycling parts of his maniacal roles in Taxi Driver, The King of Comedy and Cape Fear, De Niro takes his idolatry to violent extremes, eliminating any obstacle to Snipes' stardom until the baseball hero is forced to confront his most terrifying devotee. Directed with brutal excess and souped-up style by Tony Scott (Top Gun, Crimson Tide), this manipulative nail-biter pulls all the right strings in predictable fashion, but it does have moments that are effectively intense. -Jeff Shannon, Amazon. com.

One of Alfred Hitchcock's classics, this romantic thriller features a cast to die for: Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant and Claude Rains. Bergman plays the daughter of a disgraced father who is recruited by American agents to infiltrate a post-World War II spy ring in Brazil. Her control agent is Grant, who treats her with disdain while developing a deep romantic bond with her. Her assignment: to marry the suspected head of the ring (Rains) and get the goods on everyone involved. Danger, deceit, betrayal-and, yes, romance-all come together in a nearly perfect blend as the film builds to a terrific (and surprising) climax. Grant and Bergman rarely have been better. -Marshall Fine.