10 Great Filmmakers Best Remembered For The Wrong Films

6. John Boorman

Best Remembered For: Deliverance (1972) Should Be Remembered For: Point Blank (1967) Yeah, it's a taut exercise in colouring the backwoods thriller in as dark a shade as possible, and that duelling banjos stuff is pretty catchy. But for John Boorman's greatest film, one need look further back than 1972's Deliverance - that's back to 1967, to his sophomore effort, Point Blank. Not just because Point Blank has all the requisite thrills of a gangster movie - though a rough-and-tumble, surprisingly brutal night club fight scene and a moment in which the 'hero' quietly infiltrates a henchman's lair are both suitably nail-biting - but because Point Blank is much deeper than that. With a B movie budget and premise - a thief known only as Parker (Lee Marvin) seeks revenge after his best friend betrays him and leaves him for dead - Boorman creates what could be the quintessential movie of 60s Hollywood experimentation. It's chilling and psychedelic, a hazy hardboiled noir set in the California sun, with an eerie soundtrack and masterful, evocative editing. Frankly, no one ever used Lee Marvin as effectively as Boorman did in Point Blank, Boorman playing on the actor's taciturn thug archetype and making him into some terrifying yet strangely sympathetic walking spirit. The imagery and editing technique has influenced others down the line (Soderbergh used it as a touchstone on The Limey), and it's obvious why - the simple sight of Marvin's dead-eyed gangster walking down a corridor, his shoes clip-clopping rhythmically as he goes to kill the man who deceived him, will stick with you for good.