Bluegrass pioneers' LPs 3-5 on two CDs

Johnny Cash is the criminal holding a banker's wife to ransom in this extraordinarily low-budget 1961 B-flick. Originally christened Door-To-Door Maniac, Cash is only too convincing as its eponymous gun-waving psycho, a-leerin' and a-sneerin' and even a-singin' the title tune. Look out, too, for an absurdly young Ron Happy Days Howard as the irksome brat who saves the day.

Bertolucci's epic tracing the life of Pu Yi, who became China's last Godlike emperor aged three and then, deposed by revolution, had to learn to live as a gardener. Contrasting the splendour of the Forbidden City with the greyness of Communism, it almost gets lost in surfaces, but Peter O'Toole excels as Pu Yi's tutor

This unintentionally funny French heist movie is mired by its late-'70s aesthetic. Francis Huster is the swaggering hero, all but popping out of super-tight beige slacks and ruefully mouthing lines that mention "the poetry of the cash balance". The earnest political radicalism seems dated and risible now, but the direction is competent and the bank heist itself is good fun.

Kurosawa's bold take on King Lear, with the action relocated to 16th-century feudal Japan, still packs a punch 19 years after its original release. DVD transfer showcases the master's lush visual palette to great effect and, while the pace flags over 160 minutes, the two major pre-CGI battle sequences have to be seen to be believed. Glorious stuff.

Filmed in 1943, with memories of Pearl Harbor still raw, this WWII submarine movie sees Commander Cary Grant steering his boat into Japanese waters. Directed by no-nonsense action man Delmer Daves, the sub warfare is tightly handled, but the film is just as interested in the close interaction of the itchy crew, among them the great John Garfield.

Bizarre documentary atmospherically recreating strange events that took place in a small Wisconsin town in the 1890s. Economic depression and an epidemic spark off a succession of murders and suicides, and insanity is rife—most memorably in the form of the cocaine-fuelled Mary Sweeney, who travelled the whole state killing windows. Compelling.

In present-day China, two drifters run a murderous scam, luring unsuspecting marks into working alongside them down the coal mines. There they kill their prey, fake a cave-in, then collect hush-money from mine-owners terrified about being shut down. Shot guerrilla-style in China's bleakest provinces—and promptly banned by the country's authorities—former documentarist Li Yang's feature debut is a spare, stunning slice of naturalist noir.

In October 1992, Brazil's notorious São Paulo Detention Centre—aka Carandiru—erupted in a full-scale riot which left 111 inmates brutally slaughtered by trigger-happy military police. Director Hector Babenco's movie charts the events that led to the uprising, using the arrival, some 12 years earlier, of Drauzio Varella, a doctor employed by the authorities to quell the rapidly rising AIDS epidemic in the facility, as our entry point into the story of this hellish, overcrowded facility.

When her daughter's kidnapped by murderous types in this odd, grisly gothic western, frontierswoman Cate Blanchett saddles up and gives chase, accompanied by estranged father Tommy Lee Jones. A tiresomely grim offering from Ron Howard, whose fussy, pointlessly tricksy direction is a consistently irritating distraction. Very poor.