Jack MacGowran

One of Roman Polanski's more overt comedies, this 1966 monster spectacle stars Jack MacGowran and Polanski as a clunky but heroic pair of vampire killers. Called upon to rescue the beautiful and buxom daughter (Sharon Tate) of an innkeeper from a Draculalike bloodsucker, the duo muddle through all sorts of scrapes, the most intense being a scene in which a room full of dancing vampires realize the human interlopers are the only ones in the room who are reflected in a mirror.

Gene Wilder and Donald Sutherland play two sets of identical twins who are mismatched at birth shortly before the French Revolution. One pair is reared as royalty; the other is raised as the children of peasants. The plot in this film by Bud Yorkin is a wonderful mishmash of Dumas, Victor Hugo, and Moli?re, with the peasant brothers joining the revolutionaries while their bizarrely foppish siblings eat cake and ignore the events around them.

Director William Friedkin was a hot ticket in Hollywood after the success of The French Connection, and he turned heads (in more ways than one) when he decided to make The Exorcist as his follow-up film. Adapted by William Peter Blatty from his controversial bestseller, this shocking 1973 thriller set an intense and often-copied milestone for screen terror with its unflinching depiction of a young girl (Linda Blair) who is possessed by an evil spirit.