Empire's 50 Greatest 18-Rated Movies

1763   8.6   9.2 

Indisputably, The Godfather is the, er, Godfather of 18-certificate movies. Sure, the boundaries of what the American censor would allow had already been pushed a few years earlier by the likes of Bonnie And Clyde and The Wild Bunch, but, in setting the benchmark for the modern Mafia movie it surpasses any of those. For a start, we had a picture in the mobster genre which didn't provide convenient moral comeuppances for its anti-heroes, as was compulsory for all the movies of the '30s gangster boom.

Not to say it's amoral as such (Sonny arguably gets what he deserved when bloodily swiss-cheesed at the toll booth), but to have the film climax with our supposed hero, Michael (Al Pacino), sacrificing his soul for the family hardly makes it the 'crime doesn't pay' lesson you'd want to be teaching your youngers.

Then, of course, there's the fact that, in that brave new age of movie-brat film-making, director Francis Ford Coppola was able to show the brutal execution of unrefusable offers and other business disagreements with nary a flinch, whether they involve horse-decapitation, point-blank gunshots to the head, severe beatings or the aforementioned machine-gun hit - which involved so many squibs being applied to James Caan that Coppola had to make one of cinema's finest death scenes a one-take affair...

AFIoscar's rating:

2678   8.2   8.9 

If you've ever seen Quentin Tarantino do an interview, the one thing that comes across above all else is the man's boundless energy. That exhilaration comes across in much of his work, but never more clearly than in Pulp Fiction, a film with three distinct stories spread over two-and-a-half hours that doesn't let up for a single moment. The triumvirate of tales would have stood up separately and chronologically, but what raises Pulp Fiction from good to great is Tarantino's flair as a storyteller. The threads are intertwined, chopped up and told back to front, resulting in a chaotic barrage of fragments that only enhance the overall narrative.

It doesn't hurt that the entire script crackles with Tarantino's pop-culture laden dialogue either, allowing an observation on McDonalds' international product branding to stretch over several minutes of highly entertaining banter. The persistently dark sense of humour that underlies the morbid themes and explosions of graphic violence is a similarly winning ingredient, making the whole experience feel more accessible and intimate while drawing out the brutality when it inevitably arrives. This is undeniably Tarantino's crowning achievement: hugely entertaining, endlessly quotable and, God dammit, the coolest film in years.

AFIoscar's rating:

1317   7.8   8.5 

Not only does Alien contain the greatest '18' moment in cinema (see the current issue of Empire) with John Hurt's case of killer indigestion, it stands as one of the greatest '18' experiences all round. It's true that the argument of which is better, Alien or Aliens, has seen the end of many an otherwise solid friendship, but, since our preoccupation here is with the 18 certificate, it's clear that it's Ridley Scott's original masterpiece that truly fills out the rating. The quintessential sci-fi horror, Alien is a film that has been imitated ad nauseum but no other has truly reached the dizzy heights Scott achieved here. Aliens stands as the definitive sci-fi action movie, but it's Alien's focus on horror and its pervading sense of creeping menace that make this an emotionally exhausting ride.

Scott uses every tool at his disposal to ratchet up the tension, from the vacuous silence of the Nostromo drifting through space juxtaposed with the primal shrieks of the alien itself, through the ship's dingy, industrial interior - the perfect hiding place for an extraterrestrial predator. Eclipsing even the ironclad performance from Sigourney Weaver, it's the creature itself who is the real star here. A million light years from B-movie alien killers, HR Giger's biomechanical beast is a singularly terrifying spectre and one of the most enduring images in all of cinema.

AFIoscar's rating:

1115   8.3   8.8 

De Niro lies snoozing on the passenger seat; Pesci twitches behind him; Liotta tries to focus on the road. Seconds later the trio stand over the open trunk of the car, their faces drenched in the blood-red tail lights. Pesci holds his mother's carving knife; De Niro brandishes a pistol. As the pair begin to work on the spluttering "piece of shit" crumpled in front of them, you know from here on in GoodFellas is going to get seriously brutal. It's testament to the masterly skill of Martin Scorsese that within ten minutes of this gruesome opening, you're already caught up in the world of this motley band of New York mobsters, even when the killing becomes increasingly visceral, crazed and perhaps most tellingly - frequent.

To this day, who can hear Eric Clapton's Layla without seeing Morrie and his wife's executed corpses in their pink Cadillac or Carbone hanging frozen in the meat truck? Scorsese's stylistic supremacy may define this masterpiece, but it's the anticipation of violence, exemplified by Pesci's immortal "funny how?" rant, which cements Goodfellas as one of the most riveting crime flicks to ever hit the screen.

AFIoscar's rating:

380   7.2   7.5 

Banned during the video nasty furore - despite being relatively bloodless - Tobe Hooper's debut remains one of the most disturbing horror movies of all time. This is partially because it was shot in a near-documentary style by DP Daniel Pearl, which lent the Ed Gein-inspired tale of a group of teenagers who ill-fatedly stumble upon a cannibalistic family in the rural deep South, an air of grimy, grueling reality, as people are suspended on meathooks, skinned alive and - yes! - massacred by a chainsaw. It's truly unsettling stuff, with the final sequence brilliantly subverting the notion of a hero riding off into the sunset - yes, Marilyn Burns' sole survivor hitches a lift in a jeep to get away from chief baddy Leatherface, but it's hardly calm and serene: she's screaming in terror, a hair's breadth from insanity.

But the genius here is not just in the creation of Leatherface, but the entire family of kooky cooks, especially the senile and dithery old Grandpa who make the film's central setpiece, the dinner table scene in which Gramps is invited to bash Burns' brains in with a hammer, squirming and near-unwatchable. You can see why the censors got hot under the collar, but film-making this good should never be banned.

2004   8   8.7 

It was never meant to win five Oscars. The book on which it was based was generally regarded as unfilmable, too pulpy and violent to make the leap to the screen. The director was coming off a flop. The guy playing the psychopath was some Welsh actor no-one had ever heard of. And the leading lady only came onboard after half of Hollywood had passed. So what was the secret to Silence's success?

Most of the credit generally goes to Anthony Hopkins, who parlayed 11 minutes of screentime into an Oscar and a career on the A-list, not to mention two sequels. Creating one of history's most memorable screen villains by dint of, he says, "not blinking", Hopkins undoubtedly made the biggest splash of the film, but it's Foster's quietly strong performance and Jonathan Demme's assured direction that really make this a classic.

The violence, however, definitely helped with the short-term impact. While the shock value may have lessened over time, that long shot of the crucified and flayed guard is still a masterful piece of elegantly gratuitous gore, and all those crime scene photos and glimpsed body parts do more than any number of gory death scenes to leave the viewer thoroughly wigged out.

AFIoscar's rating:

745   8.4   9 

The final part of Sergio Leone's hard-bitten Dollars trilogy originally had a far less kickass title: The Two Magnificent Tramps. Luckily, co-writer Luciano Vincenzoni had a brainwave and replaced that rather soggy sobriquet with one that perfectly reflects the film's wry nilhism. The Good, The Bad And The Ugly turns out to be a story about three men who are barely distinguishable - all obsessed with finding a secret stash of treasure and none of them particularly bothered about distinctions between 'good' and 'bad'. It's as blackly funny and morally muddy as anything by Quentin Tarantino, and with easily as much style to burn.

The sequence where Tuco (aka Ugly, aka Eli Wallach) sprints around a cemetery hunting desperately for a crucial gravestone is a masterclass in cinematic kineticism, while Leone turns on a dime only minutes later to deliver the coolest build-up to a gunfight ever - all flinty close-ups, inserts of gun-hands twitching and Ennio Morricone's triumphantly epic score. The music throughout is nothing short of staggering, Morricone basing the soundtrack's haunting (and oft-whistled) main riff on the cry of a hyena. More than 30 years later, this Western looks and sounds as hip as ever, and Clint Eastwood has never had so much charisma.

AFIoscar's rating:

2885   8.3   8.8 

The thing about the first rule of fight club is that everybody breaks it. It's impossible not to talk about a film this inventive, this daring, this bat-shit crazy. Consider its many achievements. It's managed to get itself accused of both anarchy and fascism. It's been accused of misogyny, despite featuring one of the most memorable female characters of the 1990s. It's a studio film that no studio in their right mind should ever have touched. And it features an awful lot of scenes of good-looking and not-so-good-looking men beating each other to a bloody pulp.

But somehow, you suspect that the violence isn't the only reason this film got slapped with the big one-eight. Sure, scenes like the one where Jared Leto gets his pretty face caved in make for brutal viewing, but it's the air of mischief that pervades Fight Club, the sense of outrage and irresponsibility and a childlike glee in mayhem, that's (supposedly) the real danger to public health and morals here. How can a few scenes of sex or violence compare to the film's basic message that we don't have to be drones - we could be destroyers instead? Even apart from the flashy editing and balls-out direction and even ballsier performances, this is one of the most radical films ever made.

AFIoscar's rating:

1229   7.8   8.2 

Very few great comedies - out-and-out comedies, that is - warrant an 18 certificate. Typically, your big, daft, gut-busting 'laughfest', as we believe the industry calls them, tends not to bother the BBFC too much; even when they feature gore, as Monty Python And The Holy Grail does, or sex - like, say The Tall Guy - its comedy value turns the censor's frown upside-down.

Kudos, then, to the Coen brothers for delivering the most outwardly raucous comedy in their canon - barely a minute goes by without a laugh - while ensuring it's planted firmly in 18 territory, a result no doubt of its heady mix of drug references, nihilism, toe removals, marmot abuse, rug-micturation, liberal use of the word "vagina" and the way it somehow makes a comedy icon of a paedophile ("eight year-olds, Dude"), in the form of John Turturro's purple jumpsuit-clad Jesus.

Of course, as scene-stealing as he is, Turturro can't steal the movie from The Dude himself, Jeff Bridges. Appearing in every scene bar one (in which the Nihilists get together in a café), he is the movie, even if he isn't the "Big" Lebowski of the title, with Bridges' shambolic, bovine performance oozing comedy from every pore. The Dude abides indeed.

AFIoscar's rating:

443   7.4   7.9 

Sam Raimi is a smart man. Like his Kiwi contemporary Peter Jackson, he realised that, if you push horror far enough you get great comedy. And so, in this bigger-budget sequel to Evil Dead, we get a whirlwind of virtuoso slapstick sequences which wouldn’t look out of place in a Jacques Tati or Three Stooges pic – except they involve possessed matriarchs, dismembered hands, chainsaws, lots of blood, and, in one superb moment – possibly the film’s best – an eyeball flying into someone’s mouth. Then, of course, you have the mighty Bruce Campbell, who hurls himself into it all with such gusto and with so little evident concern for his own saftey that he’s guaranteed himself a position as cult hero. His square-jawed Ash is a superb creation, an hilarious parody of movie action good guys, who quickly goes from being terrified by the Evil Force that’s attacking him to simply being really pissed off – it’s a wonderful idea: throw enough nightmarish demonic crap at someone, and their fear will soon turn into irked jadedness (something Raimi and Campbell milk in part three, The Medieval Dead). Evil Dead II may be an adult movie, but it certainly ain’t grown-up – and that’s why it’s still a classic.

1308   7.7   8.3 

Considering the kind of movies that blag themselves 12 ratings these days (including, it would seem, Die Hard 4.0…), it's surprising Die Hard remains in the 18 club when the likes of The Terminator no longer do. After all, it is a Christmas movie. And it's so obviously rooted in the '80s, it might as well be treated as a period piece. Still, it's not so much the violence that keeps this action-masterpiece 'adults only'. It's more in McClane's wry, cynical wisecracks, all borne out by Bruce Willis' deft handling of the black comedy and, most importantly, his artful delivery of the word "motherfucker". It's poetry in explosive motion…

AFIoscar's rating:

125   7.3   7.6 

From Alfie to Charlie Croker, much of Michael Caine's appeal as a movie star has been based on his irrepressible cheeky Cockney chappy charm. Yet his finest role strips all that away, to leave us with Jack Carter: a soulless, dead-eyed shark of a man, back on his old hunting ground of Newcastle, hellbent on avenging the rape and murder of his niece - and woe betide anybody who gets in his way. Especially if they're Alf Roberts. And yet Caine's performance as Carter is so powerful and charismatic that Carter, aided and abetted by a surfeit of quotable lines, becomes likeable, to an extent, and undeniably iconic.

116   7.7   7.8 

"The only really satisfactory way to dispose of Peeping Tom would be to shovel it up and flush it swiftly down the nearest sewer," wrote Derek Hill in The Tribune on the film's release. Such reviews killed Michael Powell's career, but Peeping Tom has been rightfully reappraised as a masterpiece. The story of a serial killer who films victims as he stabs them with a tripod, Peeping Tom makes explicit the link between movies and voyeurism implied by a 1,000 Hitchcock movies. Heavily edited by the BBFC on release, the movie has never been shown as Powell intended - which is the deepest cut of all.

414   7.6   8 

Night Of The Living Dead, with its grueling conclusion and scenes of matricide, and Day Of The Dead, with its stark scenes of gore, are obviously classics, but it's the second film in George A. Romero's zombie saga that remains his best. It may be cheesy and dated in parts, but its EC Comics sensibility and sly satirical look at America's consumerist society set it apart from the shuffling, drooling crowd: all zombie movies have brains, but Dawn is one of the few to use them instead of liberally spraying them over walls and furniture...

AFIoscar's rating:

174   8.2   7.9 

John Woo's action-packed thriller retains some of the themes that give his best films soul - redemption through violence, brotherhood, honour among thieves - but really, they're just window dressing for scenes of spectacular gunplay and violence that boggle the mind. From an opening tea-house massacre to the final 40-minute blast-a-thon in a hospital, Woo unleashes more heavy firepower, squibs and explosions than you would find in your average war scene, co-ordinating it all with the timing of a magician, aided by action stars (lChow Yun-fat and Tony Leung,) action stars who can not only act, but who make American action heroes look like girlymen.

1752   8.2   8.5 

Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Anthony Burgess' 1962 novel was a film so incendiary, the thought, that he withdrew it from release in the UK and it went unseen here for an astonishing 27 years. It was only after the director's death in the Spring of 1999, that the iconic images of Malcolm McDowell's exposed eyeballs returned to our screens, alongside the coldly disturbing scenes of rape and beating that pepper the movie's ultraviolent landscape of rampaging thugs, stark, social conditioning and giant penis sculptures. All made somewhat the worse by Kubrick missing out Burgess' redemptive epilogue…

338   6.9   7.5 

Hard to believe, but until John Landis' movie debuted in 1982, horror and comedy were like Jose Mourinho and humility: they just didn't mix. But An American Werewolf In London straddles the two genres effortlessly, flitting - for example - from funny banter between its two leads, Griffin Dunne and David Naughton, to a truly scary scene where Dunne is dismembered by a lycanthrope. And that's just the first five minutes. From then on, we get wisecracking zombies, the best fake dream sequence in movie history and of course the famous transformation scene, with Rick Baker working overtime to make rubber and fake hair convince and shock. It still does. Masterful.

261   7.5   7.4 

For its first half, Audition could be a family film. The tale of a widower who's trying to get over the death of his wife by 'auditioning' women for a film that doesn't exist, it's almost heartwarming. Then - with one shot - everything goes pear-shaped. As he talks on the phone with his new girlfriend, we see a large sack in the background behind her. Suddenly it jerks with life, and we realise that there's a person trapped inside it. From then on it becomes apparent that she's intent on unleashing a gruesome fate on our hero. Once you've sat through the deeply yucky climax (involving cheesewire, needles and much screaming), you will never forget it - and that's a guarantee.

305   5.6   6.6 

Forget Top Gun - this was the movie that made Tom Cruise a star. Like an adult version of Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Risky Business revolves around a confident young buck who gets into deep trouble when his parents are out of the picture, but unlike Bueller, Risky Business involves dangerous and, frankly, very sexy hijinks with a prostitute - in this case, Rebecca de Mornay's astonishingly sultry Lana. It's a notch above the countless sex comedies that could have made the list because, in two sequences - where a naked De Mornay first seduces Joel and another where they have sex in an empty subway car - it achieves a genuine erotic high.

AFIoscar's rating:

356   7.5   7.9 

Don Siegel's gripping police thriller has endured accusations of fascism but it never strays into the murky and reprehensible vigilante territory of, say, Death Wish. Instead, it's a sly attack on a system clogged up by petty bureaucracy that doesn't allow cops to do their jobs properly. Elsewhere, though, this is a gripping policier, depicting a compelling battle of wits and wills between the inordinately cool Callahan - who, when he's not delivering //that// speech about his Magnum .44 just to get his jollies from terrified criminals, is spying on half-naked housewives (hence the nickname) - and Andrew Robinson's psychotic serial killer, Scorpio that culminates in one of the great showdowns.

391   6.9   7.6 

Boy, does Richard Donner have his cake and eat it with The Omen. On the one hand, the director was aiming to make an eerie and understated '70s conspiracy thriller about a US Senator who gradually becomes unhinged and begins to believe that his adopted son may be the antichrist. On the other hand, he can't resist all these COOL death scenes, in which people are HANGED, and IMPALED, and BITTEN, and CHUCKED OUT OF WINDOWS, and in the real show-stopper, DECAPITATED IN SPECTACULAR SUPER SLO-MO. The wonder of The Omen is that Donner managed to marry both approaches successfully and make a truly classic chiller.

998   8.2   8.8 

Proof, if any were really needed, that movies for grown-ups don't have to be about grown-ups. After all, there's few things more chilling than the sight of a child firing a gun - let alone one mercilessly massacring a room full of cowering people while giggling like he's watching a puppet show. Still, Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lund knew the power such scenes would exert when they took on a movie which masterfully exposes the daily tragedies that occur for those growing up in the slums of Rio. Its true triumph, though, is the way it avoids documentarian po-facedness, with Meirelles keeping things snappy and absorbingly vivid in a manner reminiscent of Scorsese at his most vital.

AFIoscar's rating:

937   7.5   8 

It's always surprising how many people profess to hate Magnolia, missing the point completely of this melancholic look at modern life. The episodic structure inevitably means that there are going to be bits you like more than others, but by god they're all finely acted (it's unquestionably Tom Cruise's bravest performance), uncompromising in their willingness to be downbeat and united by Aimee Mann's gorgeous soundtrack. But there is a moral to this story, and it's one we can all get behind: sometimes life sucks, but that's when you suck it up and keep going.

214   7.7   8 

The only X-rated movie to ever win a Best Picture Academy award, Midnight Cowboy, along with Easy Rider and Bonnie And Clyde brought a whole counterculture into the mainstream. If the sex (it's just T&A) and violence (a smack in the mouth with a phone) now seem tame, the film's tender telling of a Texas stud (Jon Voight) befriending a diseased street hustler (Dustin Hoffman in only his second flick) has lost none of its power to move. Marked by brilliant improvisatory performances, a vividly realised sense of time and place and a subtle interplay of emotions and yearning, it dives headlong into gritty street culture and finds a true grace amongst the grime.

1195   8.4   8.9 

Eighteen-rated movies don't have to be violent, horrific or full of language that would make Mary Whitehouse do backflips in her grave. Sometimes the most adult themes are those that make us look at the terrible things that people can do to each other without any physical violence. Milos Foreman's film of a crim (Jack Nicholson) who chooses to enter a mental institution over prison is in many ways a comedy, but the way in which the hospital eventually takes a perfectly sane man and turns him into a vegetable is, in it's own way, terrifying.

AFIoscar's rating:

496   7.6   8.2 

John Carpenter's best film, The Thing is the ultimate counter-argument to the theory that you should never remake great films. Carpenter idolises Christian Nyby's (really, Howard Hawks') Arctic-set The Thing From Another World, but it still didn't stop him saying, 'you know what? This needs more gore, more ground-breaking effects, more paranoia, and more beards'. And he was right. Sure, it's a showcase for Rob Bottin's astonishingly freaky practical effects, but it's Carpenter who's the star, maintaining tension throughout (the blood-test scene springs to mind), even when the gore comes to the fore.

1018   7.9   8.5 

James Cameron's genius extension of Ridley Scott and Dan O'Bannon's Alien is the ne plus ultra of sequels: take a great idea, sharpen its edges and hurl it in a whole new direction. Cameron's key contribution to the Alien canon is sustaining its strictly adult appeal; Fincher and Jean-Pierre Jeunet both did the same with less success, but at least their instalments resisted the teenifying of the franchise we've seen with the AvP development. Plus he gave us his finest creation of all: the Bitch herself, the towering, hissing, stiletto-toothed Alien queen, mistress of all movie monsters.

AFIoscar's rating:

1110   8   8.6 

Perhaps surprisingly, there are relatively few 18-certificate war movies - usually the historical context leavens the violence, while a sense of respect on the part of the film-maker normally prevents them from merely making it a gore-fest exercise. But Coppola's 'Nam-relocated Heart Of Darkness is so harsh, searing and brutally hallucinary that even now it (rightly) maintains its 18 certificate. Sheen's Willard isn't on a mission to bash the bad-guys; he's out to assassinate one of his own. Squatting in the shadows of the human psyche it depicts a war without reason, without cause and - crucially - without any sense of victory.

1924   8.1   8.6 

In the world of David Fincher's Seven, it never stops raining. Pretty much sets the tone, doesn't it? But really it's the stomach haemorrhages, forced self-mutilation and knife-dildos which really provide the movie with its atmosphere of repugnant dread. But Fincher plays it cool, preferring to mess with your mind rather than simply splay blood and guts across the screen. The killings are never shown. Instead, we only glimpse a series of grizzly aftermaths as seen through the eyes of Detectives Mills (Pitt) and Somerset (Freeman). The director's masterstroke is, of course, saved until the nerve-crunching end...

AFIoscar's rating:

573   7.7   7.8 

In 1985, David Lynch pitched Blue Velvet to his producer with a single sentence: "I told him I had always wanted to sneak into a girl's room to watch her into the night, and that maybe, at one point or other, I would see something that would be the clue to a murder mystery." Right from the start, Lynch knew what the core of the film would be - the disturbing, arousing and unforgettable scene in which Kyle MacLachlan's teenager spies on a nightclub chanteuse… and witnesses her getting mauled by Dennis Hopper's demented, gas-guzzling Frank. It's the dark heart of a textured and deeply freaky masterpiece.

566   6.9   7.4 

Two decades of reflection have rightfully identified a tragic love story beneath the chilling horror mechanics of David Cronenberg's masterful remake, but let's not forget the visceral power this movie exhibited upon its release. A 'dare you to see it' campaign, revolving around a resoundingly enticing tagline ("Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid"), even led to tabloid featurettes pronouncing The Fly the scariest movie ever made. And it sure delivered - in buckets. From the twitching inside-out baboon to the squirmy baby-maggot birth (and let's not forget the penis in a jar), The Fly revels in its certificate, and still offers a refreshing, if upsetting, antidote to scrubbed family sci-fi.

AFIoscar's rating:

294   7.6   7.6 

Two words: zombie monkey. Two more words: zombie baby. And two last ones: zombie vicar. This trio of characters tells you everything you need to know about Peter Jackson's Braindead: it's very, very gory, and very, very funny. Dragging the undead into genteel suburbs for humorous effect way before Shaun Of The Dead was conceived, the movie delights in breaking taboos and mixing up its big laughs with sick thrills. The sight of a man using a lawnmower to decimate multiple human bodies should be off-puttingly disgusting, but somehow Jackson manages to turn it into a comedy set-piece with the panache of a Marx Brothers skit. Bloody genius.

AFIoscar's rating:

1126   7.3   8.1 

Not only is The Exorcist a perfect example of a great 18 movie, it's also one that fought tooth and nail for no less than 26 years just to attain that rating in the first place. It brought gore, blasphemy, violent pubescent self-abuse and chilled viewers to the core with a horror so deeply rooted in the religious psyche. This is not a film that was banned from videos for more than two decades for being some dodgy nasty, but one that was so good, so convincing and so soul-twistingly terrifying, the censors were reluctant to unleash it on a god-fearing public.

AFIoscar's rating:

1638   8.1   8.4 

Calling cards don't come any louder than Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, which knocked the filmgoing and filmmaking community on their collective arse and proved that liberal swearing and chopping bits off policeman could be considered art. Incredibly simple in basic plot - a heist goes wrong and the surviving crims know one their number is to blame - it turns the heist genre inside-out by ignoring the actual crime and focusing on the paranoia that seeps in when things go wrong. By closing credits the world knew that the strongest new cinematic voice of the decade had arrived.

AFIoscar's rating:

1198   8.2   8.6 

Born out of the unholy trinity of writer Paul Schrader, director Martin Scorsese and star Robert De Niro, Taxi Driver is a testament to the thrill of adult moviewatching. Travis Bickle/Scorsese's vision of New York as Sodom And Gomorrah thrums with X-rated taboos. In some senses, Scorsese does his job to well. There are only four deaths in the entire film but the atmosphere of violence makes it seem like more. By the time we come to the climactic bloodbath - desaturated by the MPAA which actually makes it more unsettling - Taxi Driver takes on the feel of a fever dream you'll never wake up from.

AFIoscar's rating:

838   7.4   8 

"Whispers In The Wind… To Each His Own… Ass-Worshipping Rim-Jobbers… Cum-Gargling Naked Sluts… and, uh, oh yeah, All Holes Filled With Hard Cock…" That's just edited highlights of videostore owner Randall's (Jeff Anderson) lengthy rental VHS order, all loudly read out in front of a poor mother and her little kid, who just wants a copy of Happy Scrappy Hero Pup. It's wonderfully typical of Kevin Smith's brazen, unrestrained and gut-bustingly lewd humour - which is at its finest in this, his lo-fi debut. Back over to Dante (Brian O'Halloran) and Randall: Dante: "My ex-girlfriend is catatonic after fucking a dead guy. And my present girlfriend has sucked 36 dicks." Randall: "37"...

AFIoscar's rating:

594   7.1   8 

John Carpenter's masterclass in stalk'n'slash may not be as original as we all think (it was prefigured by the late Bob Clark's Black Christmas), but it set the gold standard for exquisitely framed and soundtracked chills, and has yet to be surpassed. Despite its reputation, there's barely a drop of blood spilled onscreen, and the death scenes are relatively simple, but the real chill factor comes from Carpenter's masterful control of his widescreen compositions, his malevolent and oft-imitated soundtrack, and his creation, in the dead-eyed, semi-demonic Michael Myers, aka The Shape, of one of the great screen villains: cold, clinical, utterly unstoppable, the Boogeyman brought to life.

AFIoscar's rating:

771   7   7.8 

Say what you will about '80s Arnie films but they perfectly encapsulate a time when action really meant action and the kill-count was never dialled down just to place 13 year-old bums on seats. Of all the Austrian Oak's 18-rated endeavours, Predator is without doubt the crowning achievement. Introducing one of the most iconic creatures in cinema, John McTiernan's tense tale is a glorious celebration of raw, untempered machismo. From the initial arm wrestle to the unveiling of the alien this is pure willy-waving from start to finish, not to mention one of the most quotable films of its decade.

242   7.6   7.9 

Set during one long, incendiary summer summer night in a Brooklyn neighbourhood, Spike Lee's molotov cocktail of rap, race and pizza is explosive as 18 movies get. Kickstarted by Public Enemy's block-rockin' Fight The Power, Do The Right Thing portrays a community at war as an argument between Danny Aiello's pizzeria owner and his young black customers escalates into flashpoints of unforgettable violence. There is swearing - the straight to camera racist abuse is powerful - there is sex (Spike Lee, as pizza delivery boy Mookie gets it on with Rosie Perez in a sultry sesh) but this delivers on its 18 certificate through its ability to confront controversial issues head on.

1514   8   8.2 

Drugs are bad, kids. We all know that. But from them great things can come. With a story of bored wasters frittering away their lives on heroin and shooting dogs in the park, Danny Boyle created the greatest youth film of the decade. Everything falls perfectly into place: a script of both bizarre fantasy and unflinching realism; a director with original ideas leaking from every pore; a cast all caught on the verge of great things; a soundtrack that would plug teenage CD players for at least a year; and even a poster campaign that proved the greatest cover for damp student walls since that tennis player hoiked up her skirt.

1747   8.2   8.5 

When, in 1993, Sam Peckinpah's gloriously gory Western was resubmitted to the MPAA ratings board, the movie went up from an R to an NC-17. As such, with its sense of cowboys operating at the turn of the century, The Wild Bunch should have been the last ever Western, as it took the sense of debunking Western mythology and intense violence to levels that have never been surpassed. The climactic shootout boasts 239 guns, 90,000 rounds of ammo (more than in the Mexican revolution) and 3,642 edits, and is justly hailed as a masterpiece of adult-orientated action - without it, John Woo would not have a career.

AFIoscar's rating:

2882   7.6   8.2 

Without wanting to ignore the rest of the movie, Kill Bill Vol 1's placement on this list has more to do with the House Of Blue Leaves massacre than virtually anything else (except, perhaps, the Pussy Wagon). It was so bloody that Tarantino presented it for Western audiences in cut-avoiding black-and-white (check out the Japanese DVD for the full-blooded version). But gore aside, it's a balletic piece of action cinema in which QT shows off with enjoyable abandon. The film might be an experiment in style over content, but, oh, such style!

199   8.2   8.2 

When, in 1993, Sam Peckinpah's gloriously gory Western was resubmitted to the MPAA ratings board, the movie went up from an R to an NC-17. As such, with its sense of cowboys operating at the turn of the century, The Wild Bunch should have been the last ever Western, as it took the sense of debunking Western mythology and intense violence to levels that have never been surpassed. The climactic shootout boasts 239 guns, 90,000 rounds of ammo (more than in the Mexican revolution) and 3,642 edits, and is justly hailed as a masterpiece of adult-orientated action - without it, John Woo would not have a career.

211   7.6   7.4 

If you have a list like this, it's almost impossible not to have an Italian horror movie on there. And it has to be one by Dario Argento, the grand old master of OTT gore and shrieking soundtracks. And if it's gotta be Dario, then it has to be Suspiria, his most unsettling, disturbing and finest film, in which a young American girl enrols at a dancing school in Rome, only to find it's a front for a… witches coven! Best bit? When a blind man gets senselessly butchered. By his own guide dog. Down, boy!

752   8.2   8.3 

The credits to all Western films contain the words,"No animals were hurt during the making of this film." Well, Korean movies obviously have rather more lenient rules - during the making of OldBoy four octopus were eaten alive by lead actor Choi Min-sik (he did, however, say a prayer for each one). It's not the only controversial thing about the film. The scene in which our hero fights his way through a corridor jammed with baddies using a hammer can be difficult to watch. And the ending, with a truly twisted twist is definitely one for those with strong stomachs only...

2196   7.7   8.4 

Frank Miller's graphic novel was generally considered too violent, too bloodsoaked, too downright nasty to film - even if the author was willing to give up the rights. But along came Robert Rodriguez with a way of making it that was so faithful to the comic that Miller couldn't say no - although the perfect casting and involvement of Quentin Tarantino probably didn't hurt either. What's more, the hyper-stylised, ultra-monochrome look of the film made the violence on show bearable - it's still disturbing in black-and-white with flashes of colour, but imagine if this thing had been attempted in a realistic manner. We'd still be in therapy...

721   7.6   8.4 

The true definition of 18 is 'suitable for adults only', not 'dismemberment and boobies ahoy'. LA Confidential is categorically a film only suitable for grown-ups. Curtis Hanson puts full trust in his audience's intelligence with a murder mystery centred on two cops, one by-the-book, the other by-the-fist. The story twists in myriad directions, but Curtis never loses control for a second and pulls terrific performers from both old hands (Kevin Spacey, James Cromwell) and brilliant newcomers (Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce). Titanic beat it to the Oscar, but this was hands down the best film of 1997 - and still the best of Hanson's career.

AFIoscar's rating:

180   7.1   7.3 

More than Robert De Niro's long-fingernailed, egg-scoffing depiction of the devil, and more than its unsettling, chicken-abusing voodoo sequences, Alan Parker's mephistophelean film noir is best remembered for one scene. And that'll be its particularly steamy and revealing sex scene, in which Mickey Rourke gets his back (and front) clawed by the feline Lisa Bonet… All while blood drips down from the ceiling, no less. The problem? Well, at the time Ms Bonet was best-known for playing Bill Cosby's sweeter-than-thou daughter in TV's The Cosby Show. Talk about coming of age...

AFIoscar's rating:

788   6.3   7.6 

Having grown up in occupied Holland, Paul Verhoeven knows a thing or two about fascism and the future of RoboCop's Old Detroit is a clear reflection of the fact. More subtle than the screaming satire of Starship Troopers, RoboCop's digs at authoritarianism are beautifully conveyed by its line-up of mock television commercials, as well as the corporate dictatorship of OCP. But beyond the social commentary is a gripping thriller about bringing law to the lawless and a man struggling to recover his lost identity. This is Dirty Harry with cybernetic implants - the ultimate maverick cop, one who's incorruptible, bulletproof and thoroughly pissed off.

AFIoscar's rating:

318   6.9   7.6 

Eighteen-rated because of the brutality of some of its action scenes (not to mention the bit where a guy gets his head sliced in two by a razor-tipped boomerang), George Miller's startling sequel - rather aptly for a film known as The Road Warrior in the States - is the ultimate road movie. Not in an introspective, navel-gazing, Jack Kerouac way, but in a pedal-to-the-metal, scenery-whizzing-past, unstoppable force kinda way. Famed for sparse economy of dialogue, Mad Max 2 is a grim mixture of siege movie and sustained car/truck chase, with Miller marshalling the incredibly intricate vehicular mayhem with military precision.