You're Top 10 Favorite Movies

After much editing, my finalised list of ten. 

The Mystery of the Leaping Fish (1916) Douglas Fairbanks is Coke Ennyday, drug-addled private detective.  Forget Metropolis & Nosferatu, this is the silent era at its best: short, sharp, transgressive and hilarious.

The Old Dark House (1932)  [replacing A&C Meet Frankenstein on my list]  Universal Studios created an early shared cinematic universe when they crossed over their Frankenstein series and Wolfman series.  With a bit of imagination, over 100 B&W Universal horrors and thrillers can be seen as taking place in the same continuity.  I've chosen the one that gave its name to a sub-genre but (as some critic wrote somewhere) rejects conventions almost as fast as it invents them.  No reading-of-wills, no financial gain, just a night of terror fuelled by booze and madness.

Casablanca (1942).  Almost a cliché to include but freekresge didn't balk and neither shall I.  Every now and then, I test myself to see if I can get through the "La Marseillaise" scene without crying and I never manage it.

The Brides of Dracula (1960). I like the later less-restrained Hammer films as well, but Brides is a near-perfect fairy tale with a career-high performance from Cushing.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (1966)  While rating The Scalphunters (below) much higher, I can't ignore the epic sweep of this brutal but brilliant spaghetti western.

The Scalphunters (1968) was a game-changer for me. Lancaster's Joe Bass deserved more than just one outing, a fascinating character who changed the way I looked at life.  PETA wouldn't approve of his career but he's not a cruel man, just so self-sufficient that he sometimes barely seems civilised.  The film not only takes place entirely outdoors but has no doors, featuring no buildings of any kind.

Barbarella (1968) Goofy, sexy, but ultimately innocent space fantasy.  My only off-world choice and I could just have easily gone with 1980s Flash Gordon but I think this is the more intelligent film.  Even Jane Fonda has grown fond of it over time and an angel has no memory.

La casa dalle finestre che ridono (1976) After considering various Hitchcocks, I've gone for this obscure Italian giallo instead which I liked well enough that I re-wrote the subtitles for it.  Uncontaminated by the misogyny characteristic of the genre, it's a dreamy, scary and ultimately heart-breaking mystery co-starring the luminous Francesca Marciano.  If I had gone with Hitchcock, it would have been North by Northwest, but I'll stick with this one.

Raiders of The Lost Ark  (1981) The first Indiana Jones film, re-inventing the low budget serial thrillers into a Hollywood blockbuster format but also with a central character driven as much by academic enquiry as financial greed (a point lost on the imitators). 

Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)  Robert Redford and Jenny Agutter fighting each other in a 2014 movie?  The MCU movie that threw AoS into traffic, forcing it to duck and dive and become phenomenal.

Approaching the question as 'The only 10 films I can take to a desert island', I've selected from the decades, genres and studios that I like, trying not to pick films just because I like the books (Royal Flash, Quiller Memorandum, The Shadow) or the actresses (Fay Wray, Jane Russell, Raquel Welch, Cheryl Smith, Monica Bellucci and a bazillion others. I've never been able to resist the projection of a beautiful woman.)

Also-rans: As mentioned above, plus The Most Dangerous Game [1932], King Kong [1933], It's a Wonderful World [1939], The Time Machine [1960], The Abominable Dr. Phibes [1971], Dr Phibes Rises Again [1972], The Final Programme [1973], Blazing Saddles [1974], Logan's Run [1976], Star Wars [1977], Time After Time [1979], Roadgames [1981], Possession [Zulawski, 1981], Dragnet [1987], Always [Jaglom, 1985], Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home [1986], Die Hard [1988], Waxwork 1 &2 [Hickox, 1988, 1992],