The best Paul Bartel’s thriller movies
If you love cinema, you will share this ranking of the best Paul Bartel’s movies, although you may have ordered them differently. In any case, we hope you love it and with a little luck discovering a movie that you still don’t know about Paul Bartel.
The Usual Suspects
8.5/10
Held in an L.A. interrogation room, Verbal Kint attempts to convince the feds that a mythic crime lord, Keyser Soze, not only exists, but was also responsible for drawing him and his four partners into a multi-million dollar heist that ended with an explosion in San Pedro harbor – leaving few survivors. Verbal lures his interrogators with an incredible story of the crime lord's almost supernatural prowess.
Escape from L.A.
5.7/10
This time, a cataclysmic temblor hits Los Angeles, turning it into an island. The president views the quake as a sign from above, expels Los Angeles from the country and makes it a penal colony for those found guilty of moral crimes. When his daughter, part of a resistance movement, steals the control unit for a doomsday weapon, Snake again gets tapped to save the day.
Into the Night
6.4/10
Ed Okin used to have a boring life. He used to have trouble getting to sleep. Then one night, he met Diana. Now, Ed's having trouble staying alive.
Twin Sitters
5.9/10
An evil business executive (played by George Lazenby), is releasing dangerous toxins and the Barbarian Brothers set out to stop his evil work.
Shakedown
6/10
When a local drug dealer shoots a dishonest cop in self-defense, lawyer and renegade undercover cop join forces to clear him. But when their investigation leads them into a maze of greed and corruption, they learn that in a town where everything is for sale, anything can happen.
Out of the Dark
5.3/10
A deranged killer wearing a clown mask begins preying on a group of young women working at a phone-sex company.
The Devil's Child
4/10
A woman's mother makes a last-minute deal with the Devil to save her daughter's life, not realizing that her daughter's life is her stake. The daughter lives but with no chance of children. 20 years later, she mysteriously becomes pregnant after meeting a dashing stranger. Yet people are dying around her...
Hollywood Boulevard
5.9/10
Joe Dante and Allan Arkush direct this story of the glamour, the glitter, the magical allure of Hollywood... and not a speck of it rubs off on Miracle Pictures, where "If it's a good picture, it's a Miracle." This is a hilarious tribute to the unsung heroes who grind out the B movies massacred by critics, but nursed fondly in the hearts of film fans everywhere.
A Bucket of Blood
4.9/10
Walter Paisley, a busboy at a cappuccino bar called the Jabberjaw, is praised as a genius after he kills his landlady's cat and covers it in plaster. Pressured to produce more work, he goes after bigger subjects.
Prey of the Jaguar
3.7/10
When his wife and son are brutally murdered by a fugitive drug lord that he helped put behind bars, former Special Ops agent Derek Leigh vows to avenge their deaths. After mastering lethal fighting skills at the hands of a martial arts instructor, he assumes the identity of The Jaguar - a vigilante superhero from his son's drawings - and with nothing more to lose, sets out on a fierce, one-man blood hunt to bring the criminals to final justice.
Number One Fan
4.3/10
A movie star is being stalked by a one-night stand.
Liquid Dreams
5.1/10
In a slightly future America, a woman goes to the big city to visit with her sister, who is dead in her apartment. In order to find out what happened to her sister, she gets a job working at a dance club, a lower notch in the strip joint circuit. Some of her colleagues begin showing up dead as she uncovers a sinister hierarchy in the strip club management that is harnessing the sexual activity for their own twisted ends.
Acting on Impulse
5.4/10
An erotic thriller actress becomes the prime suspect in the murder of a B-movie producer, leading her to hide out and engage in sexual thrills with a pair of innocents.
Skeletons
5.2/10
A heart attack moves a Pulitzer winning journalist to leave NY for the peace of a small New England town, but he soon finds himself pulled into a case of a man accused of killing his gay lover with the blade of a shovel. Wanting to keep the case quiet, the town turns against the journalist and his family when he begins digging into its secrets, until finally the accused man is found hanging in his cell and the truth comes out about more than just the killing.
Lewis & Clark & George
5.3/10
A sultry woman joins an illiterate killer and a brainy hacker, both escaped convicts, to search for gold.
Desire and Hell at Sunset Motel
5/10
Right after Disneyland opens in Anaheim, California, in 1955, a toy salesman in town for a convention brings his wife with him so they can both go to Disneyland. They stay at a rundown place called the Sunset Motel nearby. Soon the wife is having an affair with a man staying at the motel. The husband hires a psychotic criminal to spy on them, the wife and her lover plan to murder the husband, and the voyeuristic motel manager is spying on everybody.
