With more than a decade of cinema in Basic Instinct's wake it's fascinating to look back at just how influential Paul Verhoeven's "erotic thriller" has been. The director's endless fight with censorship and unwillingness to kowtow to social mores meant his movies became notorious for graphically depicting sex and violence while pushing contemporary boundaries of taste. This whodunit about a bisexual femme fatale (Sharon Stone in a career-best performance) caused an enormous furore on its release; but after years of generally inferior imitations there's not much in it that seems quite so shocking now. It's perhaps best appreciated in retrospect more for its Hitchcockian style than the steamy sex. On the DVD: one of the most welcome elements of the disc is an acknowledgement of the film's own influences-from Hitchcock's Vertigo to Verhoeven's own The Fourth Man. The print is far superior to the previous release, looking magnificent in 1:78. 1. Jerry Goldsmith's Oscar-nominated score sounds terrific in either 5. 1 or DTS, as does Verhoeven's thick accent on the first commentary track alongside then Director of Photography Jan De Bont (Speed), who together reminisce on locations and manipulating their actors' performances. A second commentary from feminist critic Camille Paglia is a brave way of putting paid to the gay/feminist community uproar. [+]

Invasion of the Body Snatchers is considered one of the best science fiction films of the 1950s and 1960s. The classic paranoid thriller was widely interpreted as a criticism of the McCarthy era, which was characterised by anti-Communist witch-hunts and fear of the dreaded blacklist. Some hailed it as an attack on the oppressive power of government as Big Brother. However viewers interpret it, this original 1956 version of Invaders of the Body Snatchers (based on Jack Finney's serialised novel The Body Snatchers) remains a milestone movie in its genre, directed by Don Siegel with an inventive intensity that continues to pack an entertaining wallop. Dr. Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy) is unconcerned when the townsfolk accuse their loved ones of acting like emotionless impostors. But soon the evidence is overwhelming-Santa Mira has been invaded by alien "pods", which are capable of replicating humans and taking possession of their identities. It's up to McCarthy to spread the word of warning, battling the alien invasion at the risk of his own life. Look closely and you'll find future director Sam Peckinpah (an uncredited cowriter of this film) making a cameo appearance as a meter reader! -Jeff Shannon.

This original and hippest version of Shaft cruised onto cinema screens in 1971. John Shaft (Richard Roundtree) is an African-American private eye who has a rocky relationship with cops, an even rockier one with Harlem gangsters, and a healthy sex life. The script finds Shaft tracking down the kidnapped daughter of a black mobster, but the pleasure of the film is the sum of its attitude, Roundtree's uncompromising performance, and the thrilling, Oscar-winning score by Isaac Hayes. Director Gordon Parks (The Learning Tree) seems fond of certain detective genre cliché (e. g. , the hero walking into his low-rent office and finding a hood waiting to talk with him), but he and Roundtree make those moments their own. Shaft produced a couple of sequels, a follow-up television series, and a remake starring Samuel L Jackson, but none had the impact this movie did. -Tom Keogh, Amazon. com.

One of the overlooked films of the 1980s, perhaps because it is such a downbeat tale of an amoral family. Sean Penn plays a kid whose small-time criminal impulses are stoked to a new level when he falls in with his father (Christopher Walken), a vicious career criminal for whom no problem is so large that it can't be solved by a murder. At first exhilarated by the attention from his father (and the jobs he gives him to do), he gradually catches on to just what a bad guy Dad really is. But when he tries to extricate himself, he discovers that Dad now has him squarely in his sights. Penn is terrific in a role of emotional complexity, while Walken, king of the creeps, is positively frightening as this soft-spoken but highly lethal patriarch. -Marshall Fine.

The Eyes of Laura Mars put an original spin on the "women in peril" plot staple by giving us Faye Dunaway as a fashion photographer disturbed by visions of real violence echoed in her flashy, S&M-influenced work. The visions start coming closer to home as her woman friends are butchered and their copies of her work vandalised. Good-looking cop Neville (Tommy Lee Jones) argues that her art is responsible, but nonetheless starts an affair with her. Hints are dropped that the killer might be someone close to her, like obsessive ex-con driver Tommy (Brad Dourif) or her possessive ex-husband Michael (Raul Julia). Evocative scenes of 70s' New York nightclub excess, and the strikingly perverse photographs of Helmut Newton, now create a period 70s' flavour to this flawed psychic thriller. Dunaway's performance is suitably overwrought and the young, slimline Jones is at once attractive and off-key. On the DVD: The DVD comes with subtitles, director's commentary, a publicity short made at the time and an interesting lecturette illustrated with yet more photographs. -Roz Kaveney.