Terence Stamp was suitably creepy in William Wyler's '65 I've-kidnapped-a-girl-and-stuck-her-in-the-basement-'cause-I'm-a-wee-bit-lonely sub-genre movie, The Collector (available at Boîte Noire). It seems this nutjob has been a social reject for years and, upon winning the lottery, he does what any standard repressed British male of a certain generation did: he bought a nice, big house in the country, one equipped with a dank basement and neighbours who were far enough away that they couldn't hear the screams.

Enter nubile young art student Samantha Eggar, and Stamp, with the help of some chloroform and a van, has his kidnap target. She's soon stuck in the basement, wondering how to out-wit her captor. Much of The Collector is extremely well done, but a word of warning: this one was made back when people actually had something our ancestors quaintly referred to as "attention spans." Thus you may have trouble, as I did, with the film's deadening pace for the first two-thirds. The final plot twists, however, are unexpected and worth the wait.

» Matthew Hays