A fading Southern belle comes to stay with her sister on the seedy side of New Orleans. Tension erupts as her brutal brother-in-law forces to the surface her shabby pretensions and the neurosis which threatens her sanity. A totally absorbing tale with outstanding performances from the all-star cast. find out more...

Many people consider this to be superior to Scorsese's recent remake; Mitchum is superb as the sadist, newly released from jail and determined to exact a hideous revenge on the prosecutor (Peck) that sent him down. This aroused enormous controversy when first released in Britain in 1963. find out more...

Torrid passion and family feuding in the Deep South from the novel by Tennessee Williams. Taylor is the bitchy wife of Newman, the favourite son, who is unable to face the responsibility of marriage, and Jack Carson connives for the favours of his dying father, superbly played by Burl Ives. Melodramatic. find out more...

Charlotte Hollis has been closeted in her mansion, a deteriorating Southern plantation, since the grisly murder of her married lover many years earlier. When the county wants to tear down the house to build a highway, the spinster's relatives and friends appear to rally behind her but each slowly preys on her mind until the gruesome rumours of the last forty years appear to be coming true. On hand are cousin Miriam, Dr Drew Bayliss, Jewel Mayhew and the scariest inhabitant of all, loyal serva find out more...

A sweaty and atmospheric adaptation of Carson McMullen's novel, 'The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter', a bizarre tale of sex, betrayal, and perversion at a military post. Major Penderton's wife is having an affair with his superior officer, a situation that the Major seems strangely unconcerned by, and much more. It is on one sultry evening when adulterers and cuckolds join together for drinks that the repressed desires and emotions of those present are finally given vent. Reflections In A Golden Eye i find out more...

Based on a Tennessee Williams play and touching on all manner of depraved horrors. Taylor plays the girl driven to madness by what she's witnessed and Clift is the shrink being pressured to lobotomise her, but Hepburn steals the show as the unnervingly genteel aunt trying to sweep everything under the carpet. find out more...

Laughton's only stab at directing, with Mitchum giving a stunning performance as the psychopathic preacher who, whilst in jail for a minor offence, hatches a devious plan to get his hands on the loot stashed by his condemned cell-mate. Set in '30s rural America, the film polarises into a struggle between good and evil for the souls of innocent children. Laughton's deliberately old-fashioned direction throws up a startling array of images: an amalgam of Mark Twain-like exteriors (idyllic riversid find out more...

One of the finest adaptations of a Tennessee Williams play. Burton is the defrocked priest working as a tour guide and escorting a group of teachers, with one of whom he is caught inflagrante. Holing up in a shabby hotel with the bus broken down he gets trapped in a complicated set of relationships. find out more...

A lawyer raising his children alone in the midst of racial hatred, injustice and hypocracy is the only man prepared to defend a young black man accused of rape by a white trash family. A superb study of racism in Americas deep South boasting a wonderful script, photography and acting in an adaptation worthy of the book; A total classic. find out more...

When a Woman Ascends the Stairs might be Japanese filmmaker Mikio Naruse's finest hour, a delicate, devastating study of a woman, Keiko, played heartbreakingly by Hideko Takamine, who works as a bar hostess in Tokyo's very modern post-war Ginza district. Sly, resourceful, but trapped, Keiko comes to embody the conflicts and struggles of a woman trying to establish her independence in a male-dominated society. A profoundly moving masterpiece. find out more...