Night of the Hunter (1955)

"They abide and they endure!"

This film is, I suppose, unique. Yes, it's a '50s film noir...but it feels like something else entirely. But it's a masterpiece, with Robert Mitchum's "preacher", Harry Powell, being surely one of the most fearsome villains of all time.

Incredibly, it was a flop upon its release, hence its being the one and only film that Charles Laughton ever directed. But I suppose one can see why it may not have been what an audience may have expected. It's fairly short, with a fairly simple plot. It shows a bleak and dark West Virginia of the Depression, suffused with poverty, hypocrisy and lurking evil. One mighy expect a film like this to be shot with gritty realism, but no- the camera angles, the framng and... well, the owls(!) owe far more to the German Expressionism of the silent era than anything of its own era.

Robert Mitchum is superb as a serial killer who hides behind the appearance of respectability, and the combination of his performance and the direction push the menace up to truly intense levels. The cellar scene...brr!

The other standout performance, though, is from Lilian Gish, another totem of the silent era, as Rachel, a surprisingly well-rounded, grizzled yet kindly character who feels very real, and stands for hope, decency, forgiveness and understanding. This is a film of grim beauty, of bleakness, a meditation on the suffering that is life... yet it has heart, too. One of the greatest films I've ever seen.

Airplane II: The Sequel (1982)

"I can help you if you can't get it up..."

Well, there may be no Leslie Nielsen this time (although we get an unexpectedly superb comic performance from William Shatner to make up), but the Police Squad have done their stuff and come up with another hilarious film, just as they always do.

It's the near future from the perspective of 1982, so there are shuttle flights to a base on the moon, yet everybody smokes, payphones are still a thing and the fashions look suspiciously, well, 1982. Never mind, though: I love the Rocky XXXVIII in-joke.

The humour and style are exactly as per the first film, with Elaine, Ted and a few minor characters joining guest stars like Shatner and Sonny Bono. There are lots of pop culture references to obvious targets like Star Wars, E.T and 2001: A Space Odyssey, a cameo from none other than Oddjob, and a joke about a vacuum cleaner that's funnier than it really should be. But you know the drill.

The pop culture references may have dated, although in the best possible way, but the film is as fresh as ever and as funny as anything. As much a comedy classic as its predecessor.

Airplane! (1980)

"I haven't felt this awful since we saw that Ronald Reagan film."

Obviously this is a true cinematic comedy classic from what would become the Naked Gun team, a harbinger of a style of humour that will prove successful and funny, time and time again. Equally obviously, it's a spoof of the many high profile disaster movies of the '70s. And, for my hat trick of pointing out the bleeding obvious, it marks Leslie Neilsen's great career shift from square jawed straight actor to the master of deadpan absurdist comedy.

Watching it today it's very funny, of course, but also very much of its time- a world where everyone smokes, Afros abound and there are copious references to disco and a recent war which is carefully not stated to be Vietnam. The cast are universally brilliant, but the standout turns are from Lloyd Bridges and the extraordinary Nielsen. The jokes about the captain being a pederast are a little disturbing, mind.

Often, as here, there's only so much that can be said about a brilliantly successful comedy, and I admit I'm probably not getting all of the pop culture references, but this is possibly my favourite comedy film not made by the Monty Python troupe. And that's high praise indeed.