The Long Good Friday

An unusually good "making of" feature is the centrepiece for this 25th-anniversary edition. Its star, Bob Hoskins, started the film with a 40ft tapeworm, legacy of his Zulu Dawn role, and Helen Mirren recalls that "I thought the role sucked" before her part developed during filming to something much more than "gangster's moll". Director John Mackenzie says, "They were all paid peanuts but morale was great," and the actors seem to have had an unusual degree of input - the most memorable scene, the interrogation of upside-down villains, was Hoskins' own idea, and he also helped save the film after meeting Eric Idle at a party and asking "D'you wanna buy a film?" At this point Lew Grade's company - its originators - had, unknown to the director, cut it from 110 minutes to 83 and replaced Hoskins' voice with "an actor from Wolverhampton". As so often, it was George Harrison's Handmade Films to the rescue. We owe them all a debt.