Hollywood hard-man Bruce Willis has managed to cheat death whilst attending a screening of his latest testosterone fuelled blockbuster. What was the source of the action star’s brush with death I hear you ask, an escalator.

No, you didn’t read that wrong, Bruce Willis was nearly maimed by a moving staircase whilst on the way to watch his new film, Red, which sees Willis staring alongside John Malkovic and Dame Helen Mirren as a retired CIA black-ops agent that’s being hunted down. Only in America.

Apparently, whilst attending a movie screening an escalator Willis was travelling on accelerated rapidly to roller coaster like speeds, causing people to jump to safety. Seriously, they had to jump to safety… from an escalator… we’re not making this up!

America is one of those odd countries that doesn’t believe in stairs. Stairs require a person to walk, which is a lot of effort when you weigh as much as a small house, so nearly every step in the entire country is movable, that way it’s easier to eat a bucket of fried chicken whilst travelling between floors.

The details of Willis’ escape from the escalator of certain death are scarce, so we can only speculate, but we here at Hecklerspray are sure that Willis instantly switched into John McClane mode. He obviously saw the escalator as a terrorist plot to ruin his clean vest and so began to stalk it and places plastic explosive between the steps before base-jumping off the handrail to safety.

Meanwhile, Justin Long looked on whilst shouting, “Duuuuuuuuuuude! You totally just jumped off a escalator!” Before Willis dusted himself off and quipped, “I like to stay one step ahead.”

Thankfully, Willis was not hurt in his utterly ridiculous dice with the stairway to hell. He looked the grim reaper right in the eye, before shouting, “yippy kay yay mother…” punching him square in the face and going in to watch his latest film.

Unconfirmed reports are stating that Willis’ vest was not harmed in the assault and that it was in fact cleaner after the incident than it was before.

Next week: Sylvester Stallone squares off against a deadly cream cake.

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With Sly Stallone’s bizarre announcement that he’d like Bruce Willis to appear as a villain in The Expendables 2 (because apparently flogging a dead horse once just isn’t enough) we here at Hecklerspray decided to man up and have ourselves a good, ol’ fashioned Die Hard marathon, to re-acquaint ourselves with one of our favourite action movie icons.

But something troubled us deeply, Die Hard, Die Hard 2: Die Harder, Die Hard 3: Die Hard With a Vengeance and Die Hard 4.0: Life Free or Die Hard, the scenes seemed to be a lot more ridiculous than we remembered. Happily this meant that we can bring you the top 10 most ridiculous scenes from the Die Hard series.

10. Kevin Smith – Die Hard 4.0

Maths isn’t my strongpoint, truth be told it isn’t a lot of people’s strongpoint, so how a cop who’s too stupid to wear anything other than a vest at Christmas and a middle aged man who still works as a shop assistant manage to solve this puzzle is beyond me.

8. Jumping off the Nakatomi plaza – Die Hard

In one of the most iconic scenes from the Die Hard quadrilogy our favourite New York Cop jumps from the exploding roof of the Nakatomi Plaza skyscraper whilst using a fire hose as a safety line, inadvertently giving some nut-cases the idea for BASE jumping. Miraculously the weight of a fully grown man falling doesn’t result in the hose simply breaking off and letting him fall to his death, it holds on for just long enough to give him time to get back inside… typical.

7. The Military Go AWOL – Die Hard 2

6. John Mclane vs Water Pressure – Die Hard With A Vengeance

5. Blowing Up A Jumbo Jet – Die Hard 2

At the end of Die Hard 2: Die-Harder-than-you-would-have-died-originally-even-though-that-doesn’t-make-sense-because-you’d-have-died-the-first-time it appears as if the bad guys have managed to escape. Until McClane turns up with his trusty Zippo to make them explode in the most over the top way possible. Out of all the weapons he had access too, he chose a zippo to destroy a plane filled with evil soldiers.

To celebrate the momentous release of the Bruce Willis aftershave (mostly testosterone-infused sweat, with top notes of blood, inflammable material and rosehips). We’ve taken the time to put together the all-time, Top Ten Die Hard Films. Simple tales of a man with a dream. A dream of running around shirtless, covered in blood and shooting at things, admittedly, but still a dream.

And to those of you who say ‘but there’s only four films. That’s a stupid idea. You’re stupid’.

We say you’re just not trying hard enough. And that’s exactly what the terrorists want.

Top Ten after the jump.

1. Die Hard

Well, duh. Obviously. The original and still the finest. Coming at the end of possibly the most violent of decades – the 80s – Die Hard was the ultimate expression of the ‘man with a gun against everyone else in the entire world’ movies that came in the wake of Rambo. The film that gave us the catchphrase that couldn’t be repeated on TV, so was bowdlerised variously as ‘”Yippee-ki-yay, Mister Falcon” or “Yippee-ki-yay, Melon Farmer”. The wonky accents, the glorious period hairstyles, Bruce Willis in his lovely sweaty vest. Die Hard literally has it all.

All that and it’s quite simply the best Christmas movie there has ever been.

2. Die Hard

What else are you going to follow the best with? That’s right, the best.

Face it; if you haven’t watched back to back Die Hards, you haven’t lived. Or you haven’t lost the DVD remote, and been too lazy/drunk to get up and manually turn it off, which amounts to the same thing really.

3. Die Hard 2: Die Harder

This doesn’t come next because it’s the next best, god no, far from it. This gets the next billing because far more than any other of the films in the series the first and the second go together. Released just two years after the original it keeps much of the same atmosphere, Bruce hadn’t got old; the setting was kept almost as tight and claustrophobic as the original, even at the expense of credibility in some places. Think about it, it’s a national emergency and they could only get in about 12 soldiers? Plus, the body count rose exponentially in this one. Original Die Hard had a mere 18 deaths, Die Hard 2 – 164. It might of well have been called ‘Die Pretty Easily, Come To Think Of It’.

4. Die Hard 4.0 (aka Live Free Or Die Hard)

The latest in the blockbuster series – and hopefully the last. That is, unless anyone wants to see Bruce tottering around on a zimmer frame, shaking his fist at the neighbourhood toughs before having to thrillingly smash through his front window to race to the toilet in time before he messily soils himself on the front porch. Or it comes back in 3D. Oh, God, it’s coming back in 3D isn’t it?

Anyway, this follows on from number 2 pretty well. There are planes and things being blown up. You can’t see it on youtube, so here’s a rough approximation using GTA.

5. Die Hard With A Vengeance

This is where the series starts to go off the rails a little. John McClane gets a real-life buddy, he’s got a whole darn city to traverse, there are far fewer explosions, and it’s not set at Christmas? They make weird stabs at race relations? God, worst of all – he has to think. A Die Hard film with puzzles?

Urg. Best to go back and watch:

6. Die Hard

Think of this as a palette cleanser. No thinking, just sheer mindless action basically reducing McClane to a bare animus, none of this fancy-dan thinking. Would he have chucked a bomb down an elevator shaft if he was thinking?

No, of course not. That’s why this is better.

7. Die Hard 4.0

Now we’ve seen the full canon of pictures, it’s worth coming back to appreciate the full scope of the latest. The series has gone from building – airport – city – country; it’s almost Joycean in its formal structure. Better even, as Leopold Bloom never once drove a car into a lift shaft. Unless it was in the Circe part. Damn difficult to follow that part.

Anyway, saving the country reminds me of other reason why number 3 sucked – he went to Canada? That’s not part of the US of A, you sweaty idiot.

This is basically Grand Theft Auto 3, compared to Die Hard’s Original GTA. Go anywhere, do anything, but still not better. Even though it’s got a fighter jet being taken down with a road of all things.

Actually, that’s probably one of the reasons why it’s not better, come to think of it. In the original he probably would have kicked the plane to death.

8. Die Hard 2

Worth watching again for the period details. Look! People smoking indoors, in an airport of all places! People just strolling into the baggage area.

Also, if anyone can figure out how the underground service passages that he uses that magically manages to connect every part of the airport with every other part, please, please, let me know.

9. Die Hard

Do you really want to watch Die Hard 2 again? Another couple of hours to watch the plane explode again? Number  four? And put up with the irritating sidekick again? Number three? No, you’re right. Sorry I bought it up. Have Hans Gruber’s death remixed in slow motion.

10. Die Hard

Yeah, turns out the other three films were kind of superfluous, weren’t they? Not when you have this to keep you all warm and fuzzy inside

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There are certain places that you’re allowed to swear: in the bedroom of a loved one during some sort of steamy romp, a rum-fuelled pool party round Samuel L. Jackson’s house, a Derek & Clive record.

But there are other places where it’s not so cool to swear: in the bedroom of a dying relative during some sort of last rites, a fundraiser for a Pentecostal Church-sponsored under-eight’s netball team, ON AMERICAN TELEVISION AT ANY TIME AT ALL.

What happens when sweary movies are shown on some of the more sensitive US networks? I mean, the best films feature those dastardly curse-words, don’t they? Whether it’s Joe Pesci telling some ‘C-word’ to go ‘eff his Mother’, Jason Statham telling you to ‘suck his so and so’ or Clark Gable telling Olivia de Havilland in Gone With The Wind that, “Quite frankly, you fucking slag, I couldn’t give a fisherman’s piss!”

So how can television combat this evil, evil language? Awful editing that’s how! They take the offending words, cut them and replace them with re-recorded, inoffensive but audibly similar dialogue. Sometimes they do it well, so that if you’d not seen the movie before and didn’t look at the actor’s face when he says the formerly naughty thing, you just about might not notice. Other times, they’re balls-out-of-the-bath brazen about it. No sync-ing, nothing!

Let’s have a look at the ten funniest examples. C’mon, don’t be shy. LOOK SEE!

Die Hard 2

An extravaganza of cutting-room antics here. The highlight being John McClane’s reaction to a plane about to run him over, “Aaah, shoot!”

Robocop

“So, Mr. TV Exec, can we use the word ‘asshole’? No? How about ‘boner’? Not even that? Blimey. Can we leave in all the people getting their heads kicked in and gunned down in a vicious hail of machine-gun bullets? We can? Oh right.”

Weird Science

Words censored here include: nuts, tongue, studs, whips, bang and nipples. Tee hee hee! Nipples!!!

Casino

I hope the editor here was on commission – Casino had over 750,00 swear words! Fuck!

Scarface

If only it tasted like pineapple, eh lads? Eh? Who’s with me? Yeah! No?

The Usual Suspects

Now this is the kind of thing that should bag you Best Film Editing Oscar. Truly, a thing of beauty…

Big Lebowski

What happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass? Same thing that happens when you fight a stranger in the Alps apparently (your car gets smashed up by the fat bloke from Roseanne).

Pulp Fiction

Those fuckers in the editing suite cut every fucking line out of Tarantino’s brilliant fucking screenplay. With what’s left, you may as well just not bother and watch a couple of old episodes on Hangin’ With Mr. Cooper or something. A Travesty.

Ghostbusters

Not even an innocuous film like Ghostbusters can get past Ol’ Editing Edward Scissorhands.

Snakes on a Plane

This is the classic of the genre. It doesn’t get any better than Big Sam’s “I have had it with these monkey-fighting snakes on this Monday to Friday plane!” If only all hatchet jobs were this good, we could do away with swear words…

Had enough, you fudgin’ Margaret-flippers? Well, you better had ‘cause that’s it. Go on, scram, you fork-lift cake-sniffers…!

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From unstoppable robots with Austrian accents to psychopathic Cuban gangsters, it seems we cannot get enough of badasses on the silver screen.

But what is it about them that we love so much? They are not exactly the chatty types. In fact, they tend not to have too many friends and take themselves a little bit too seriously. And let’s not even mention their taste in clothes.

But, then again, wouldn’t you love to be one of the movie characters listed below for just one day?

Believe us, narrowing the list down was no mean feat. Hollywood is littered with hundreds of would-be badasses.

To make it slightly easier, we’ve tried to steer clear of animated characters and superheroes. But we are sure you will have your own suggestions. Anyway, enjoy!

22. El Mariachi (Antonio Bandera)
Film: Mariachi trilogy

21. Carter (Michael Caine)
Film: Get Carter

20. Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt)
Film: Fight Club

19. Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle (Gene Hackman)
Film: The French Connection

18. The Bride(Uma Thurman)
Film: Kill Bill

17. Leon (Jean Reno)
Film: Leon (aka The Professional)

16. T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger)
Films: Terminator Trilogy

15. Lt. Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver)
Film: Alien series

14. Dae-su Oh (Choi Min-Sik)
Film: Oldboy

13. John McClane (Bruce Willis)
Films: Die Hard series

12. Johnny Rambo (Sly Stallone)
Film: Rambo series

11. King Leonidas (Gerard Butler)
Film: 300

10. Maximus (Russell Crowe)
Film: Gladiator

9. Jules (Samuel L. Jackson)
Film: Pulp Fiction

8. Tony Montana (Al Pacino)
Film: Scarface

7. Boba Fett (Jeremy Bulloch)
Films: Star Wars series

6. The Man with no Name (Clint Eastwood)
Films: Dollars trilogy

5. ‘Dirty’ Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood)
Films: Dirty Harry movies

4. Any character played by Chuck Norris

3. Darth Vader (David Prowse, James Earl Jones)
Films: Star Wars IV-VI

2. The Joker (Heath Ledger)
Film: The Dark Knight

1. Ash (Bruce Campbell)
Films: Evil Dead Trilogy

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December 27. A day even more boring than Boxing Day. The turkey's more rubbery, the decorations are more tatty and you've eaten so much Haribo you've started to hallucinate.

But fear not, because hecklerspray's very own personal best-of-2007 lists are here again to save the day. Literally save the day. Like Superman would. As you know by now, the Spraylist is a chance to shine a light on the essentially contradictory nature of the senior hecklerspray writers by getting them to reveal a bunch of stuff they liked this year, even though chances are all the stuff's been slagged off on these pages within the last 12 months anyway. Probably by the same people who are now saying they liked it. It's a tough life.

Today – our favourite movies of 2007…

Stuart Heritage

In a year when Hollywood seemed to be hell-bent on making issue-bloated movies about the war, along came Michael Clayton – a sombre, autumnal, intelligent thriller that actually managed to be thrilling – and blew everything else away. Compelling performances, tight unpatronising plotting, an exhilaratingly vague ending, some pretty horses - Michael Clayton had it all in spades, plus if there's been a more chilling cinematic death scene in recent years I'd very much like to see it. And, yes, I know it's a George Clooney film, but at least it isn't Ocean's Thirteen so shut up.

C J Davies

It's actually been something of a downright shoddy year for cinema. Tarantino's 'long-awaited' Grindhouse was one of the most tedious and uninvolving things I've ever seen, Spider-Man 3, 300 and Pirates Of The Caribbean: Whatever Sequel We're On set new benchmarks for incoherent pointlessness, while The Simpsons Movie may well go down in history as one of the biggest disappointments popular culture has endured. Ten years in the making and about four good jokes? Well done, guys.

So. The 'good' ones, then. Well… although it was made in 2006, it was only released in the UK in April this year, so I guess I can legitimately claim that The Lives Of Others kicked the arse of everything else released on our blustery shores. Although The Bourne Ultimatum wasn't too bad.

Shawn Lindseth

My choice for movie of the year would have to be Beowulf in 3-D. I found myself ducking spears, dodging arrows, and perhaps most importantly vomiting in my popcorn bucket every time Angelina Jolie seemed to float out of the lake and touch me. Not to worry as that day I'd only eaten sticks of butter.

My chief problem with her is I know she's visited AIDS countries, and I'm not exactly sure how the disease spreads. My friend Joey says he got it from a gas station toilet. Since we're on that topic, poor sick Joey probably needs money from you guys too.

'Tis still the season, after all.

Chris Laverty

There have been a lot of good films this year: Control, The Bourne Ultimatum, Death Proof, Becoming Jane. There was also Elizabeth: The Golden Age, which made me jab my own testicles with my reviewing pen just to stay awake (it felt so good that afterwards I joined a site).

The best of the best for me though has to be Beowulf. Like an old Ray Harryhausen monster movie that charms you awake from a coffee crème-induced coma every festive holiday, Robert Zemeckis' bonkers animated/live action mash-up takes a big thick bite of stupid and runs with it.

Dragons, some icky thing that screams, wenches, sea serpents – it's fun, and that is a damn nice place to visit when sat in a room surrounded by total strangers who smell of nachos for two hours.

Matthew Laidlow

I wasn’t sure what to make of Die Hard 4.0. Sure, it was hyped up from every critic everywhere. Whilst this usually puts me of, I wasn’t at all when I was in the cinema eating my overpriced popcorn and hotdog combo. For any normal person doing what he does, they would have been killed pretty much after the first ten minutes. But not John McClane. It takes a bloke of some calibre to not get injured after being chased by a fighter jet destroying the motorway as he drives a truck in a load of traffic. He’s like an action clown who should do parties for adults to keep them amused. Over the top action + explosions = awesome in my book.

Annette Hyde

After deeply pondering the movies released in 2008, I realised I am lagging in my movie-viewing to a disgraceful degree. How in the name of holy heaven have I seen Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, and pretty much nothing else? Therefore, I have based my Top Movie choice based on the most objective, sophisticated, well respected qualification: actors I think are really hot and stuff. Based on this, my choice is The Prestige. Cool movie, hot Christian Bale. He’s Batman, for the love of Pete. Batman. I am sorry I have no further depth to offer.

Tomorrow – our best TV shows of the year. But, hey, why not leave your best movie choices in the comment box beneath? We might even get around to moderating them sometime before the new year, too.