I've seen three classics recently, thought i should post some comments here:

Orson Welles' magnificent Touch Of Evil starts with one of the most impressive opening shots you're ever likely to see. From there the rather innocuous event of a car exploding on the US side of the Mexican border leads to murder, corrupt police and an innocent wife being framed for drugs. Charlton Heston and Orson Welles star as the battling protagonists, the moralistic local and the bitter old american cop respectively who hate each other as much as they respect each other. Henry Mancini's music is a wonderful accompaniment (and strangely he conducted the music on the second of my viewings) and a great reminder that he produced more than just dull lounge music in his career. But it's the photography that really stands out here, every shot is like a monochromatic painting that you could freeze and hang in your house. The version i watched is as close as possible to Welles' intentions, but as with a lot of his films the studio re-edited his original cut adding in addition footage to change the tone of the film (which lead to a 58 page memo from Welles asking the new scenes to be removed). This doesn't have the sense of greatness that you get with Citizen Kane, but actually i have to say it's far far more entertaining, intriguing and tense than his earlier masterpiece.

Lifeforce is the Tobe Hooper film time forgot. He made his name with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Poltergeist but Lifeforce is where it's at. Space crew go off to Haley's comet, then come back with a hot naked female vampire intent on turning every person she meets into an exploding zombie. Cheesier than your local deli counter it's simply enjoyable in every sense of the word. It probably has more pull with men, because Mathilda may spends most of the film naked, but for women there's the sheer sillyness of it all; even the great Patrick Stewart snogs a man in it. Miss it at your peril and dont offer naked space vampires a biscuit because they'll probably kill you.

Finally i saw On The Waterfront. Elia Kazan may be a hated director for what he did under McCarthy (he grassed up a whole bunch of left-leaning directors, writers and producers in order to save his own skin) but by george his films were terrific. He made this and Streetcar named Desire, what else is there to know? Well, Brando's as great as you've heard in this, wonderfully backed up by a superb supporting cast and framed by Kazan's immaculate camerawork throughout. The story of a docker who has to chose between what's right and mob is one that grips in the opening scene and never lets go, as great today as the day it was released - along with Casablanca i easily rate this as one of the greatest films ever made. A pure, fierce, intense masterclass in film making.