Exploitation films

Switchblade Sisters

Jack Hill doing Othello with teenage gangs. Much smarter than it needs to be.

Street Law

Castellari's Death Wish. An ordinary engineer, brutalised and ignored, arms himself.

Vigilante

Lustig doing it straight. Robert Forster deserves better and knows it.

Across 110th Street

Grim, well acted, and the best film in the cycle by some distance.

Rolling Thunder

Paul Schrader script, and the last twenty minutes are perfect.

Thriller: A Cruel Picture

The eyepatch Tarantino copied. Contains real hardcore inserts and a real animal death.

Coffy

Pam Grier's arrival. Jack Hill knows exactly what he has.

Ms. 45

Ferrara's best. Zoë Lund is extraordinary and the ending is a genuine image.

The Exterminator

A flamethrower and a meat grinder. Death Wish with the restraint removed.

Walking Tall

One sheriff, one hickory club, and the blueprint for every Southern vigilante picture after it.

Class of 1984

Death Wish enrols at high school and the faculty loses.

Maniac Cop

A dead cop stalks New York in uniform. Larry Cohen writes, Robert Z'Dar's jaw does the rest.

Death Wish 3

Abandons realism entirely. Bronson defends a housing block with a machine gun.

I Saw the Devil

Revenge as a chew toy. Nobody in Korean cinema has been crueller for longer.

Assault on Precinct 13

Carpenter remaking Rio Bravo for $100,000. The ice cream scene is still shocking.

Death Wish

Bronson as a liberal architect who buys a gun. A phenomenon, and reactionary.

The Warriors

Barely exploitation, entirely brilliant. A subway ride as Greek epic.

Dirty Harry

The vigilante with a badge. Pauline Kael called it fascist and was not wrong.

Taxi Driver

The same story told by people who knew the protagonist was unwell.