BAV Film/American International Pictures "Revenge is a dish best served cold" - or so goes the ancient proverb. There is, of course, something innately appealing about the idea of revenge. Watching somebody who has been wronged, betrayed or screwed over mounting a campaign of vengeance against those responsible clings to a sense of a catharsis that remains unrivalled in any genre; revenge pictures, with their straight-forward narrative dimensions and clear-cut heroes and villains, are about as black and white as motion pictures get. And indeed, some of the greatest movies ever made have fallen into the category of the "revenge flick" - movies that hinge on plots concerning poor souls who have found themselves either mistakenly left for dead, turned over for a promotion, cheated on by a spouse, or - worst of all - have watched their entire families murdered, and have taken it upon themselves to get even in the only way they know how: through bloody satisfaction of the highest order. That's something audiences can really get behind. What follows, then, is an exploration of the greatest revenge movies ever made in any number of genres, ranked from highly recommended to highly essential. What do they all have in common? They all embody the sub-genre to the finest degree; each and every entry brings new meaning to the term "revenge." To qualify for a place, the movies here had to feature revenge, vengeance or retribution as their primary plot points; that's to say, the central drive of the plot had to be about getting even...
Sam Hill is an ardent cinephile and has been writing about film professionally since 2008. He harbours a particular fondness for western and sci-fi movies.
