Like a lot of Kubrick films, Eyes Wide Shut suffered because of raised expectations. Here you have a film with the world’s most famous director and the world’s most famous actor, and it’s all about sex. Therefore it must be an amazing two hour bonk-a-thon, right? But instead Kubrick delivered a quieter, more sombre film. It wasn’t the perverted fuck fest that everyone expected.

I can’t say that Eyes Wide Shut is one of my favourite Kubrick films. Some of the acting is poor, the writing occasionally is clunky and it runs out of steam with about thirty minutes of film left, but despite this, it doesn’t deserve the flack that it received from some of the critics – some consider it a piece of shit. It’s not the masterpiece that everyone hoped for, but it’s a mature look at marriage and sexual jealousy – it’s an adult film, but without the capital ‘A’.

The film’s central scene is the one where Alice (Kidman) and Dr Bill (Cruise) smoke a bit of weed together in their bedroom. They begin talking about a party they attended the night before and the members of the opposite sex they were flirting with. Bill was being hit on by some models and Alice was being seduced by a rich Hungarian. They both want to know what happened. But although it begins as a light-hearted discussion, things suddenly become more serious when Bill fails to show any jealousy over the Hungarian. His explanation that Alice is the mother of his child and that he knows she’d never fuck another man, is far too confident and far too smug. So Alice decides to cut him down to size and show how wrong he is. She tells him about a Naval Officer she wanted to fuck. And she wanted to fuck him so bad that she would have given up her husband and her child for him. Suddenly Bill’s happy, comfortable life comes falling around him. He realises that he doesn’t really know what goes on in his wife’s head and that his marriage isn’t anywhere near as solid as he thought it was. He gets smacked in the face with a heavy does of reality – women have just the same sexual hunger as men and they’re just as likely to be unfaithful.

This scene is one of the best in the film. Kidman is excellent in the way that she blasts a hole through Cruise’s smug self-certainty, and Cruise, while listening to Kidman’s story, radiates suppressed rage. For the first time he’s beginning to understand his wife – if he takes her for granted, everything will be over. And he also understands that he can no longer coast along like he used to. He might have a nice apartment with all the trappings of success, but if he neglects to work on his marriage, if he fails to take any notice of his wife and thinks that he’s indestructible, the most important thing will be lost.

To illustrate how clueless Bill is, there’s a scene where Alice and Bill make out in front of a mirror. Bill comfortably and smugly thinks that his wife is thinking about him, but we can tell that her mind is straying – it’s not only men who fantasise about fucking everything in sight.

After Alice’s confession, the film turns into a bad dream. Bill wanders the streets, consumed with jealousy at the thought of Alice being with another man. All he can think about is her cheating on him.

It’s here, as Bill goes from one strange encounter to another, that the film becomes uneven. First of all you have a scene with a bereaved woman who then declares her love for Dr Bill. The scene doesn’t work particularly well because the actress is so bad. She rolls her eyes and stares wildly, but it’s far too over the top. Then Bill bumps into a prostitute who offers her services to him. This doesn’t really work that well for multiple reasons. First of all, the prostitute is far too good looking. Since when have you ever seen a street whore who looks that cute? Then you have the fact that she seems quite clean, that she’s too shy to talk about sex and that she tenderly kisses Bill. It’s strange to say this for a Kubrick film, but it’s far too sentimentalised. I know the film is basically a dream, but even in your dreams a whore wouldn’t be this sweet and innocent.

Thankfully, though, just when you’re despairing, you have the orgy sequence. It’s not particularly sexy, but that’s missing the point. It’s a nightmare. It’s a vision of how despairing ‘free’ sex would be. There’s no passion to it. Everyone has a wall up – everyone’s masked. Therefore the sex is bleak and cold and depressing. This is what Bill thinks he wants. He thinks he wants an easy fuck. But unfortunately there’s no such thing. Everything has a price.

The orgy sequence is a showcase for Kubrick’s mastery of cinematic language. One of the best shots in the film is when Bill looks up to a balcony and we cut to a slow zoom onto a couple of masked figures. Here the film feels like a horror movie – the shot has a quiet dread that few directors could conjure. And then you have Bill’s tour of the mansion. The music, the camerawork and the lighting are all perfect.

The only negative in the orgy sequence is some of the dialogue. At one point a woman comes up to Bill and asks him if he’s enjoying himself. He says that he’s had an interesting look around. It’s banal in the extreme.

But then much of the dialogue is clunky. For instance, throughout the whole of the film, Bill has the habit of repeating what other people say to him. He does it so often that you begin to anticipate it and begin tearing your hair out when he does it for fiftieth time. ‘Would you like to come inside with me?’ ‘Come inside with you?’ Argh!

And like I say, some of the acting is atrocious. I’ve already mentioned the eye-rolling woman, but then there’s Alan Cumming. He’s supposed to be a hotel clerk that flirts with Bill. But Cumming’s accent slips a handful of times and he seems to think he’s in a remake of Are You Being Served? He’s so overwhelmingly camp that I’m surprised that he didn’t just reach over the desk and wank Bill off right there and then. It’s a buffoonish, tic-ridden performance – a complete caricature of a homosexual.

But worse than this are the two models at the beginning of the movie. There’s an English one who sounds plumier than Elizabeth Hurley and who natters endlessly about what a great guy Bill is because he got some crud out of her eye with a handkerchief (more crushingly banal dialogue), and then there’s another one with a silly name who genuinely seems handicapped. Her attempts at flirting seem like the wild flailings of someone with Parkinson’s.

Oh, and have I mentioned that the Hungarian Count is played by someone who resembles an Eastern European Roger Moore? Yes, in a way this is strangely cool, but for a serious film it’s a bit of distraction. The smarm made me almost keel over.

Another annoyance is the piece of music that seems to play every ten seconds. You know, the piano one. The one that sounds like it’s played by a chimp trying to learn to play a musical instrument. He’s so confused by the strange contraption that sits before him that he can only hit a key every five seconds. But yeah, although most of the music is great, this one piece appears over and over again when something ‘important’ is meant to be happening (like when someone is very slowly delivering a letter). A bit more variety was called for, Stanley.

So with all of these distractions it’s sometimes easy to overlook all the great stuff in the film.

Other wonderful bits are the scene when Alice tells Bill about a dream she had, one where she fucked other men and mocked her husband. And then there’s the scene where Bill watches his wife do homework with his daughter. He pretends to look lovingly at her but he can only think about the dream she told him about, and so this idyllic sight has been corrupted for him. And I also love the moments where Bill is stalked through the streets of New York by a strange man. No one can do quiet horror like Kubrick.

And there’s a pleasingly adult message to the film. That we shouldn’t take each other for granted. That we shouldn’t coast along in our lives and assume that everything will be okay. We need to work constantly on our relationships. We need to put the effort in. Because it’s easy to give in to temptation. But what’s more difficult and ultimately more fulfilling, is to maintain a deep connection with one’s partner. I mean, all through the film, almost every character responds sexually to Bill. But what would be the point of any of the liaisons? How would they make anything better? They wouldn’t. So people need to wake up and realise the importance of what they have. They need to stop drifting blinding through life, hoping that everything will turn out for the best in the end, because it probably won’t.

But still, that damn piano music and Alan Cumming and the models and the repetitive dialogue. You almost had another great film Stanley.

When I first watched it as a teenager, I didn’t enjoy The Thing. I can't really recall what it was I didn't like about it, but I seem to remember finding it a little confusing and I can remember not being a fan of the special effects (some would consider that last statement heresy). But since then, I’ve come to like it a great deal. I wouldn't place it at the top of the genre like some people would, but it wouldn't be far off.

First things first, I appreciate the special effects a lot more now. I think the problem when I first watched it was just how bizarre it all was. Tentacles? Bloody flower guts? Giant snapping mouths? Maybe I found it hard to suspend my disbelief, or perhaps I found it repulsive – I don't mind gore in horror films, but I'm not a fan of what I'd call 'gloop'. For some reason I can happily watch limbs get blown and sawn off, or see people get shot, stabbed and eaten, but my sick trigger is sensitive to 'gloopy' film monsters. For instance, I love David Cronenberg's version of The Fly, but I do actually come close to gagging when watching it.

So perhaps I didn't appreciate the special effects for those reasons. But they're actually pretty great. One of the best bits has to be when an imitation human head sprouts a tentacle from its mouth and pulls itself along – and earlier on when the head begins to detach itself from its body. It's nasty and unpleasant and great to watch. And then there's the bit when Palmer's face rips apart and a giant alien mouth sprouts and bites a guy in the head. Sweet. (And to make it even better, the man who's getting bitten is shaken from side to side like a rag doll.)

But not all the special effects work great. Although I love the head being ripped off and I love it when it shoots a tentacle from its mouth, it does look silly rather than disturbing when it sprouts antennae and spidery legs. There's a fine line between great and crap. And the bit at the end isn't particularly impressive either – the bit where we see huge tentacles and a massive monster. It's overkill and the effects don't match what has come before.

Much better are the little bits. Right at the end, right before the silly tentacle business and the unconvincing alien dog, is a bit where Garry encounters an assimilated Blair and Blair sticks his hand in his head. It's brilliantly done. And then after that you see Blair dragging Garry along by his face like he’s sack. Again it's sick and nasty, but in a much more believable way.

However, it's not the monster that makes The Thing such an enjoyable film. It's the confusion and the paranoia that its presence generates in the humans (I guess when I first watched it as a kid, I didn't realise that confusion was the point – it’s kind of a take on the AIDS crisis). After all, seeing as The Thing is a shape-shifter, and it can take on any form, everyone's a suspect – anyone could be a carrier.

This climate of paranoia and suspicion is best illustrated in the scene where MacReady (Kurt Russell) ties the surviving scientists and workers to chairs so that he can check their blood to see who's human and who's not (it’s like a homemade AIDS test). The scene really is tense, as you haven't got a clue who's been assimilated and who hasn't. You're not even sure if MacReady is who he says he is, as even he's been built up as a suspect. But it literally could be anybody and the scene's a powder keg.

Another great scene is when MacReady declares that he knows for certain he's human and the camera slowly pans across the rest of the group. Do we believe him, and who among the group isn't what he says he is?

As well as these nail-biting scenes, I love the creepy moments too (they're often a lot better than the 'scary' bits). My favourite is when a half assimilated Bennings is caught trying to escape the camp – he's almost a perfect copy but his hands are deformed – and he lets off an eerie howl before he's burnt to a crisp (there are a lot of torchings in this film, which, needless to say, I love – and one brilliant torching is immediately followed by an exploding). And there's also the bit where MacReady visits Blair, who's been locked in the tool shed. MacReady opens a slit and Blair's sitting there by a noose while eating cans of food. He then begs to be let out. He insists that he's much better. It's a superb scene. And as simple as they are, I love all the lingering shots of the dog. It's a creepy mutt. It's got a thousand yard stare.

Also rather creepy is the ending. After all the pyrotechnics, MacReady thinks he's the sole survivor. But then Childs shows up. Childs’ explanation is that he got lost in the snow. There's a bit of an awkward conversation, and even though Mac kind of knows that it isn't the real Childs, he's become resigned to his fate and shares a smoke. It's an ending that, in the best way, keeps you wondering.

And on a final note, I must say how much I enjoy Mac's snow-sombrero and his bad geography. "Hey Sweden!" he shouts when he visits a Norwegian camp. There aren’t many laughs in the film, but the ones that are there do the trick.

Choppy, choppy your pee-pee - words that would strike fear into the heart of any man, but words that are made even more terrifying when the chopping comes from gnashers that are in some young girl’s cooter.

I guess most teenagers are a little afraid of sex. You know, what with the weird organs, the smelly bodily fluids and the female fear of having one’s hymen pierced by a throbbing shaft of man meat and the male fear of busting a nut before contact with the hairy love cave has been established. Sex is fraught with danger.

Some adolescents respond by excessively masturbating, others conquer the fear of their first sexual encounters by turning to booze and drugs, and some just fuck everything in sight. A few, though, decide to ignore sex all together.

Dawn is one of these people. In order not to deal with her burgeoning sexuality, she decides to suppress it by committing herself to a life of chastity. She won’t have sex until her wedding night. She’s going to remain ‘pure’.

Now this might sounds like madness to some. You might marry someone with a micropenis, or someone with a cunt-splittingly huge dong. Or they might not be able to get it up or they might need you to dress as a Cardinal in order to achieve orgasm. Surely you should try before you buy. But no, Dawn lectures children on the benefits of purity. Apparently virginity is a special gift and you shouldn’t give it to anyone. That’s true enough, but building sex up to giant proportions is enough to drive someone mad. It’s not something to be frightened of. After all, it’s not like you’ve got teeth in your twat.

Oh wait, Dawn does. Not that she knows it, though. Hell, she doesn’t even know what a vagina looks like.

There’s a scene early in the film where the kids are learning about sexual reproductive organs. The teacher has no problem talking about the penis, but he recoils at talking about the vagina. And the pictures of the vagina in the textbooks are censored by a foil sticker. The very notion that we’re protecting children by keeping them ignorant is suitably mocked in Teeth. The best protection is education – teenagers should know all the facts.

But alas Dawn doesn’t know anything about sex and even admonishes herself for fantasising about a boy and for being tempted to masturbate. ‘Purity, purity,’ she mutters to herself. Doesn’t she know that there’s a beast between her legs?

Teeth isn’t a particularly coherent film, but if it does have a point it’s that bad things happen when teenagers either rush into sex or if they don’t educate themselves. For instance, Dawn’s half-brother seems to spend all day banging his girlfriend, and he prefers to do it up the arse. This kind of rampant sexuality has all kinds of negative consequences. But at the same time, Dawn’s head in the sand mentality isn’t healthy either. It means that when she finally meets a boy she likes, she isn’t able to deal with the situation and bad things happen.

Of course, Teeth takes things to an extreme. Dawn doesn’t just find a boy and then gets a little pissed off when he tries to look down her knickers. No, she finds a boy who decides to attack her. She’s attracted a rapist. But as dark as the scene sounds, it’s played for laughs. ‘I haven’t jerked off since Easter!’ yells the boy as he forces himself on her in a cave. You see what happens when you bottle things up? Tsk, tsk. But although the boy’s reaction to her plea for self-control is a little over the top, so is her response to his illegal entry. She bites his cock off…with her vagina. And then we have a hilarious moment where the two scream at each one – the girl because she didn’t realise she had teeth and the boy because, well, his cock has left his body.

Following this encounter, Dawn goes home, not really sure of what happened. But upon her return there’s a brilliant one-liner. ‘There’s dinner if you want a bite,’ says one of her parents. ‘I ate,’ is Dawn’s reply. That made me chuckle like only a brilliant one-liner can.

And there’s also a wonderful visual gag. Dawn still isn’t really sure what happened and goes back to the cave to see if she really did castrate her boyfriend. At first she doesn’t see anything, but then she finds a piece of her boyfriend’s cock being eaten by crabs. Got crabs? Yeah, unprotected sex is murder.

Another hilarious scene is when Dawn goes to see her gynaecologist. He’s a right sleazy bastard and states that, seeing as this is her first visit, she probably doesn’t know what to expect. Taking advantage of this, he sees her without a female nurse present and he even begins fingering her without gloves on. Cue some amusingly skeezy dialogue where he tells her to breath through the pain and where he comments on how tight she is. But my favourite bit is when he tells her to relax. It’s the way he says it. It’s like the word is split into two: ‘Re-lax’. It has the coldly condescending tone that only men can manage.

But Dawn gets her own back on the man and bites the doctor’s fingers off. But not before he drags her around the room for a bit, unable to free himself from her nether regions. And then once he’s free and his fingers are on the floor, he repeatedly shouts, ‘Vagina dentata!’ Oh my god, it’s true! Women do have teeth!

We’re told that vagina dentata is a common myth and that it’s up to a male hero to come in and break the female’s power. But there isn’t such a hero here. We just have pathetic, sleazy man after pathetic, sleazy man, and when Dawn finally meets a seemingly decent guy and safely has sex with him, he turns out to be a scumbag and she snips his knob off. Finding a decent man is hell these days!

But the dick-snipping hilarity peaks when Dawn fucks her half-brother. You see, he’s had the hots for her since they were children and Dawn gets a little mad at him when he fails to give a shit about their mother dying. So to get revenge, she has sex with him and then castrates him. And this leads to many wonderful images. The first is the image of Dawn releasing the hacked cock out of her vagina – it goes ‘plonk’ on the floor. And then after this we have the shot of the boy’s dog picking up the severed penis in its mouth. The boy gasps and tells him to drop it, but instead the dog gobbles the dick up, leaving just the head on the floor. And this leads to the final wonderful image – the shot of a sad head lying on the floor with a bolt running through it – damn Prince Albert made that part inedible.

So unfortunately no one gets to break this girl’s power. But then that’s kind of the point. None of these men are worthy of Dawn. They’re all just trying to use her. And so therefore they can hardly complain when she bites.

And so while the film rightly mocks the trend for young people to devote themselves to a life of chastity, it also rallies against misogyny. You don’t have to wait until you get married before you give yourself to someone, but you have to make sure that the person is worthy of your affections.

Beware the trees, the bushes, the blades of grass and the shrubbery for they shall wreak a terrible vengeance. Beware the wind, too, for it shall be the vegetation’s chariot and shall spread death all over the land.

The Happening features many lingering shots of trees and bushes. It also has a high frequency of scenes where people run from gusts of wind. Thrilling the film isn’t, but silly it is.

In his latest film, M. Night Shyamalan tries to tap into our fear of an ecological disaster, but his movie is so ham-fisted, so badly written and so woodenly acted that it ends up being an unintentional comedic tour de force. M. Night has really outdone himself this time.

The film begins with a couple of women in Central Park. They talk amongst themselves and then suddenly everyone around them stops. Then one of the women begins to look confused. ‘What page was I on?’ she says like she’s summoning the spirit of Captain Kirk. And then she stabs herself in the neck. Hmm. Awful acting and ‘ominous’ shots of trees as someone…absolutely…must…kill…themselves. Yeah, it’s not scary.

Immediately following this scene is a sequence where people throw themselves off a building. We start with a bunch of construction workers and then bodies begin to fall around them. It tries its best to tie itself to the terror of 9/11 but the horror is constantly undermined by the ridiculous acting. The head construction guy, rather than go through any sort of disbelief, which I guess would be the normal reaction, seems to cry almost immediately. And then as he looks up and bodies rain on him, he says in hushed tones, ‘God in heaven.’ Who talks like that? Only people in Shyamalanland. For some reason he tries to make every piece of dialogue seem incredibly profound - instead it comes over as corny.

However, there are greater moments of silliness. One of the best features a man who lies down before a massive lawnmower and lets it run over him, splattering lots of blood all over a beautifully manicured lawn. Yeah, did no one think that this might look ridiculous? Oh no, not a giant lawnmower lumbering very slowly towards an incapacitated man! Such visions haunt my dreams. That and the thought of breaking my spine in a flower-watering incident and having malicious squirrels stuff nuts up my anus until I explode.

But even more sniggersome is the scene where a man gets his arm ripped off by a lion. Okay, so this has a more believable bend to it, as many a crazy bastard has tried to make ‘friends’ with the wild animals before. But here the horror is immediately diluted by the way the scene is filmed. Alright, so we have Mark Wahlberg talking to the young daughter of a friend of his and he does his best to cheer her up. He even succeeds. But then some stranger next to Markie Mark taps him on the shoulder and shows him a video on her iphone. We then see grisly footage of a lion ripping a man’s arm off. Yeah, don’t worry kid, everything will be alright. You’ll just either stab yourself in the head, javelin into a minefield, crucify yourself with a nail gun or rip your belly open and have vultures feast on your innards. Nothing bad is going to happen. Smile that smile again!

Another death scene that had me guffawing was the one where John Leguizamo dies. He’s trying to rescue his wife, and he drives off with some strangers in a Jeep, but then everyone succumbs to the toxins the plants have released. We see the Jeep stop and then it speeds towards a tree and people go flying through the windshield. However, Leguizamo survives the crash and slashes his wrists. Again, any potential horror is undermined by the way the crash is filmed. It’s speeded up! It looks like something out of The Cannonball Run. And because Leguizamo’s character is such an idiot, I found myself beaming when he cut through his cables.

However, I think the pièce de résistance comes near the end. Wahlberg and his idiot wife hide in the house of a mad old woman. She spouts nonsense and behaves irrationally and then she gets infected by the toxin. We then see her enter a trance and start circling the house from the outside. Okay, so this is the one unsettling moment in the film. It actually has a bit of tension. But then the woman appears at the window and headbutts it, a shard of glass sticking out of her eye. But this doesn’t kill her so she walks to the next window and headbutts that one. The wind then rushes into the room and Markie Mark has to run for his life. The scene, like most of the film, is insane, and unintentionally hilarious at the same time. Never mind Shyamalan’s heavy handed attempts to preach to us (our self destructive instincts are going to kill us and our planet!) – just watch the nonsense that is a mad old lady committing suicide by trying to destroy her glazing.

But just to show out of synch Shyamalan is with his audience, take the scenes where he tries to generate real laughs. There’s one scene where Wahlberg is in a room with a plant. He almost shits himself and then begins talking to it, saying that he only wants to use the toilet and that he’s trying to send out good vibes. He then touches it and realises that it’s plastic. I almost wanted to cry, so inane was the laboured attempt at humour and so amateurish the acting.

And Wahlberg is horribly miscast in this film. He’s meant to be a Science teacher. Fair enough, Wahlberg is okay when he’s cast properly (basically he has to either play a moron or a thug). But a Science teacher? Every time he talks scientifically he gazes into the distance, like someone on the far horizon is holding a massive idiot board. Either that or he’s trying to concentrate and he needs to somehow relax his facial muscles so that he can reach inside his mind, scratch his brain and remember his dialogue.

But then at other times he changes his inflections. Normal statements suddenly become questions. It’s like Shyamalan accidentally italicised his dialogue when he sent it to the printers.

However, Zooey Deschanel, who plays Wahlberg’s wife, turns in an even more embarrassing performance. Her character is a complete airhead and demands a horrid death – maybe she could take her mobile phone, connect it to a charger, stick it in her vagina and pee herself so that she dies of electrocution. But no, she bumbles her way through the film and gets through unscathed. She doesn’t even lose bladder control. And to add insult to injury, these horrifying events solidify their marriage. Once again traumatic events strengthen a rocky union. What a load of bollocks.

The end leaves the two main characters remarkably content. Never mind the fact that they saw many people commit suicide. Never mind the fact that one of their best friends slashed his wrists. Never mind the fact that two children they befriended got their heads blown off with a shotgun. No, that means nothing. These events made them grow as people. The Happening was a good thing.

But of course, this wouldn’t be a Shyamalan film if it didn’t have a sting in the tail. At the very, very end, after the crisis is over in America, France gets attacked. The film ends with a bunch of Frenchies about to kill themselves. Can we look forward to a sequel where men in striped shirts, riding bicycles with onions around their necks, ride in unison into the Seine? One can only hope.

This is how subtle Death Wish 3 is: there's a bit where the stupid police chief stamps on a cockroach. That kind of says it all really. Why bother with laws, why bother with a constitution and why bother with a police force – they only get in the way. What you really need to keep the streets safe is a big gun…and lots of bullets…and maybe a machine gun… and perhaps a grenade launcher too. Because, hey, if those liberal pinkos have their way there will only be anarchy.

Paul Kersey's day starts off really badly. Not only do synthesisers, weeping saxophones, twangy guitars and a smarmy piano accompany his trip to New York, but by the time he gets there his best mate has been killed. How unlucky can you get? Well, to make matters worse, one of the people that kills his best mate is Bill S. Preston, Esq. Oh, and when he gets there, just as his friend is dying in his arms, he gets arrested for his murder. Damn. But then, after getting beaten up by the police, and ramming a fat porker's bulbous head through prison bars, and enraging the head of a local gang, he gets unofficial approval from the stupid police chief to go on a one man killing rampage…which is nice.

Death Wish 3 is a guilty pleasure. After all, it's dumb, it's fascistic and it's badly filmed, but a number of people greater than the population of San Marino get brutally killed, so it rules. I mean, how can you not dig a film where people are set on fire, thrown off buildings and shot at point blank range with grenade launchers? Anyone with a penis should enjoy this. So if you don't like it, you're probably either a woman or Dale Winton.

Where do I start when it comes to the best death in Death Wish 3? The grenade launcher killing is a classic, but the firebombing is probably even better – the punks firebomb the flat of an elderly couple and they come running out, in flames, and then get mowed down with Uzis. But then there's death by broom and all the machine gun slayings. However, I also dig the bit when a bunch of bikers, in leather daddy gear, get blasted to pieces by a bunch of disgruntled neighbourhood residents. An armed society is a polite society.

But this praise for other characters takes away from the Bronsoninator's contribution. Never before has one man killed so many people. He mows down punks with his mate's Browning machine gun and then he blows them away with his unfeasibly huge Magnum – normally I'd suggest that Bronson was making up for certain shortcomings, but there's no way the man wasn't hung.

And it's his Magnum technique that impresses most. He can dodge a hail of bullets simply by slowly crouching down on one knee. Genius! And then there are the people he kills. One man, who's trying to rape a black woman, is the spitting image of Freddie Mercury. Another, who he throws off a roof, is Frost out of Aliens. And he even kills The Giggler…while eating an ice cream! "They killed The Giggler, man! They killed The Giggler!"

But perhaps the best Bronson killing is the one where he coolly kills a couple of punks who are trying to nick his car. At the time he's having dinner with a Jewish couple, but he politely excuses himself, shoots the punks and then returns to finish his grub. What a gentleman.

But it's not all fun and games. Bronson's lady gets killed. But the woman should have known better. Any woman that gets close to the Bronsoninator is immediately doomed. It's the James Bond rule. I mean, we can't have our bloodthirsty heroes suddenly become happy and content, can we? So she has to die. And at least she goes out in style. She gets a headbutt for her troubles and then succumbs in a car crash. Of course, just in case she might survive, the car spontaneously blows up. You've got to make sure these damn women die, haven’t you?

Not that any of this seems to bother Bronson. He merely goes along with his bloodthirsty rampage, squinting at the targets he's going to blow into bloody pieces. And what of his targets? Well, the gang he takes on is isn't especially formidable. In fact, they're rather camp. They wear bandanas, headbands, string vests, fingerless gloves, sleeveless shirts, leather jackets, chain belts, lots of studs and one even wears a cute little cut off vest so that he can show off his rock hard abs. Actually, now that I think about it, they dress and prance like a bunch of failed Fame auditionees. Perhaps that's why they're so mad. They just want to be in a chorus line but they can't get a gig. Maybe that's why they kidnap, rape and kill a poor Mexican lady. They want to get their own back on any tang they can get their hands on. The way they emerge from their hiding place – the bushes, of course – certainly suggests this. They leap out like coked-up ballerinas. But then they all get brutally killed, so their Broadway ambitions sadly go unfulfilled.

Oh, and the leader of the gang looks like Hawk out of Legion of Doom. Unfortunately, though, his facepaint doesn’t look as cool. He just has a red line running down his skull and he has a couple of black lines on his forehead. It makes him look like a menstruating woman has rubbed her vagina on his cranium and then he’s fallen on a couple of pieces of coal. It’s not the most formidable of looks.

But hey, who cares about the punks? Not I. Indeed, Death Wish 3 has made me see the light. All we need to keep the streets safe are vicious vigilantes, dispensing their wonderful brand of arbitrary justice. Only then will we be free from the tyranny of punks, hoods and lowlifes. I never knew that a Jewish food critic could be so delightfully fascist.

"The underprivileged are beating our goddamned brains out. You know what I say? Stick 'em in concentration camps. That's what I say."

Ah, the wisdom of Death Wish.

However, not everyone thinks that way. Paul Kersey certainly doesn't. At the start of Michael Winner's vigilante wet dream, Kersey is a 'bleeding heart liberal'. He even has sympathy for people who aren't fabulously wealthy. What a fool!

Death Wish starts with Kersey on holiday with his wife. Everything is idyllic – the sun is shinning, waves are lapping on the beach and Kersey's wife poses for several snapshots. Then they go back to their hotel room to have sex. What a mistake. You never have sex with Paul Kersey and live to tell the tale.

But despite this well-known fact, the Kerseys are oblivious. They just finish their holiday and return to New York. Then five minutes later, Kersey's wife and daughter are attacked by the monster that is Jeff Goldblum (playing 'Freak #1'). The rape scene that follows, if it weren't filmed by a filmmaker that is wholly incompetent in the art of movie making, should be hard-hitting, but instead it's hilarious. Basically you have a skinhead, a Jew and a moron in a bandana raping and pillaging while spouting lines like, "Don't jive, mother." Has Michael Winner ever met anyone that doesn't drive a Rolls-Royce or anyone who doesn't dine at The Ivy? His idea of 'punks' is so quaint, so out of touch and so naive that all the hard-hitting scenes are extraordinarily camp – bandanna has an obsession with spray-painting things ("Let me paint her ass"). I guess this is what criminals do in Winner's world. They're children who have to paint swastikas everywhere.

After the rape, Kersey's wife dies (Goldblum beats her around the head while spouting the best dialogue in the film – “Goddamn rich cunt! I kill rich cunts!”) and Kersey's daughter is reduced to a catatonic mess after being forced to taste the delights of Jeff. But how does Kersey react to this news? Well, he shakes a little bit, but he hardly seems fazed (Bronson is such an expressive actor). However, there's a deeper change in Kersey. He realises that to be a liberal is to be a fool. He realises that to have sympathy is to have weakness. And he realises that the only way you can make the world a better place is to blow large holes in the heads of goddamn punks. In other words, liberalism gets you nowhere, fascism gets you everywhere.

But Kersey doesn't immediately become a killing machine. First he walks the streets with a cosh – he fills a sock with coins. But although the effects are pleasing, heavy sock killings are time consuming, energy sapping and far too messy. What any good vigilante needs is a gun. And Kersey gets his gun on a business trip to Arizona.

The Arizona sequence is actually one of the funniest. There's one bit where you have a long close-up of a noose. Do you see what those do-gooders have done to us? There was a time when you could just lynch a man. There was a time when you could string criminals (or suspected criminals) up by their neck and get instant justice. But then people had to come along with laws and courts and foolish notions like 'innocent until proven guilty'. Look what they've done. But then Kersey watches a fake cowboy stunt show. He positively glows when he sees men shooting themselves in the streets. What a much better place the world was back then: you could settle everything with your fists and a gun. Those were the days.

And so, tooled up, Kersey returns to New York (or "that toilet" as one character says). And no sooner has he landed than he's confronted by his son-in-law. How's his daughter? "She's almost a goddamned vegetable." Ah, such kindness and understanding.

So, with this news, Kersey is in the mood to start killing. However, after his first killing, like the pussy liberal that he is, he pukes. But he soon gets the hang of it (he gets plenty of practice; in the space of a ninety minute movie he gets mugged four times). Soon he's shooting black men in the back with great aplomb. And he enjoys it so much that he redecorates and starts listening to chirpy music. Killing is a great cure for depression.

Pity, though, that the police aren't impressed. For some reason they want to apprehend Kersey, even though crime rates are down. But we soon understand why. They fear that Kersey is too effective. They fear that there will be a wave of vigilantism and that the public will no longer have a need for the police. What scumbags. They're denying us a utopia, a utopia where muggers, perverts, poor people and people who look at you funny are shot on sight by squinty-eyed madmen. The world needs more Kerseys!

However, the film doesn't broach the subject that if there was widespread vigilantism that the criminals would become more desperate, more ruthless and more dangerous. That would be too sensible and would require too much thought. Plus it would get in the way of a great wet dream, one where the pampered middle classes can shoot punks at will. If only...

When I was at school, there was nothing more exciting than a fight. It was better than being picked for the school football team or getting an A in English. A surge of excitement would burst through the entire year group. It would be the only thing on everyone’s lips.

The problem, though, back then, wasn’t trying to prevent an awful event from happening or trying to calm everyone down. The problem was trying to ensure that both parties remained angry enough to continue with the fight at the end of the school day. Yes, we were bloodthirsty little bastards.

But while I saw many fights at school – one that involved lots of biting, one that involved a boxer fighting a fat kid, one that involved karate and one that ended in a single punch – I never had to take part in one myself. Maybe if I had, I wouldn’t have been so quick to encourage adolescent brawling.

Three O’Clock High takes this frenzied excitement and filters it through a poor kid who is unlucky enough to have to fight school bully Buddy Revell. You see, the kid here, Jerry, is a bit of a nerd, and when he’s assigned to write a piece on a new student by the editor of the school paper, he does what his job demands of him. He talks to the kid. But Buddy Revell looks more like a caveman in a leather jacket than a child. He’s not the sort of person who wants to answer questions. And if school rumour is to be believed, then Buddy has broken necks and put people in hospital for touching him. So when Jerry makes the mistake of touching Buddy’s shoulder, he’s thrown into a mirror and told that he’s going to get beaten up when the bell rings at 3 o’clock. The fight is on.

Three O’Clock High is a simple film, but there is a tiny bit of ambiguity when it comes to Buddy Revell – he’s not your typical school bully. The typical school bully is the kid who instigates trouble, but here you have someone who just wants to be left alone and who doesn’t want to be touched. So therefore he runs against the grain of cinematic school bullies. At the same time, though, the film doesn’t go to any lengths to understand him. But seeing as the film is shot through Jerry’s perspective, this decision is the right one. Buddy is just a characterless bogeyman. He’s every nerd’s nightmare come to life – the unyielding, unstoppable giant that’s going to box your ears.

Quite what the point of the film is, I don’t know. That the only way to become a man is to fight? That sometimes you have to solve your problems with violence? I’m not sure. But it doesn’t really matter. The film only wants to entertain. And besides, when you’re a kid, you often find yourself in ridiculous situations. What matters is whether you learn anything from them.

But like I say, Three O’Clock High isn’t really concerned with things like this. As its title suggests, it’s a high school spin on a western and as such the final confrontation is inevitable. There’s no getting out of it. A date with destiny is etched on the school’s clock face.

Not that Jerry doesn’t try and worm his way out of the fight. And there are lots of amusing scenes that feature Jerry’s increasingly desperate attempts to avoid his date with Buddy. At first he tries to drive home, but he finds a knife stabbed into the steering wheel of his car and his engine is vandalised. Then he tries to reason with Buddy. That doesn’t work. But his best attempt to not have to fight is when he bribes a football player to beat Buddy up. Jerry watches from behind a couple of bookcases as the football player confronts Buddy in the library. But when the football player pokes Buddy in the chest, the football player gets his finger broken and he gets thrown into the bookcases. The bookcases then topple over and eventually reveal our hero cowering behind them. It’s a very funny moment.

Another great scene is when Jerry decides to get a detention. The reasoning behind this is that if he’s in detention, he can’t fight after school. So he’s in his English class and has to give a book report. Cue the massive nerd picking up some sunglasses and smoking a cigarette as he tries to give a rebellious interpretation of the novel he’s read. But I love how even when he tries to sound cool he still ends up sounding like a geek: ‘I was thinking about the syntax and how it affected the overall mood.’ What jock would talk like that?

But unfortunately for Jerry, his English teacher, who looks like a prim, young librarian, is aroused rather than insulted by his report. And so instead of getting detention, he gets kissed.

But although I like the book report scene, I do think that the kissing takes things a bit too far. I know the film is supposed to be surreal, but the moment is a little queasy. I’m well aware that every boy has fantasised about one of his teachers, but to see the fantasy filmed as some sort of reality gives the scene a slightly unpleasant vibe. And the ending, where the teacher comes in all glammed up and snogs Jerry in front of his girlfriend feels even worse. Sure the film could be interpreted as some sort of fevered dream where weird and wonderful things happen, but it gives the ending a slightly distasteful, predatory paedo feeling to it.

In fact, the women don’t come off very well at all in this film. Jerry’s girlfriend is a goth who thinks she talks to a guardian angel. Oookay. Then you have the girl that Jerry has a crush on. The girl in question is a vapid blonde with poodle hair who talks in a such a hushed way that it sounds like she’s had a stroke. Quite what the kid sees in her, I don’t know. And then of course you have the horny teacher who jumps a child in public.

But thankfully there’s lots of other good things, like Mitch Pileggi playing a weird security guard who has a possible homoerotic relationship with the Dean (the Dean is called ‘The Dean of Discipline’ and has a Hitler fixation), Jerry having to break an unbreakable cash register with a fire extinguisher and a group of cheerleaders beating a piñata in the shape of an American football player with sticks as the baying crowd shouts ‘kill it!’ I was also impressed with some of the camerawork. There are some really inventive visuals, even if once or twice it felt like needless showboating. And the fight at the end is great fun as well. Jerry, with the aid of some brass knucks, topples the Giant and becomes a modern David.

And at the end, Jerry even gains the respect of Buddy. But again, this could possibly leave a bad taste in the mouth. Is the film saying that the real way to gain respect is to win a fight rather than to show intelligence or reasoning? Maybe. Maybe not. But thankfully Three O’Clock High is an amusing film with a lot of visual verve. There isn’t a whole lot to it, but for the most part it pushes the right buttons.