There’s been a pointless poll about films that are regarded to be guilty pleasures. Topping the list is Striptease, the ’96 Demi Moore film where she shows her terrifying boobs to the world while they all laugh. And of course, secretly enjoy it.

Swordfish, House Of Wax and Carry On Cleo also made the cut (more about all that jazz here). It’s outrageous that Showgirls didn’t top the poll as it is quite clearly one of the finest films ever made.

However, this notion of ‘guilty pleasure’ doesn’t sit well here. If you like something, you like it. Big deal. There’s no accounting for anyone’s taste. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a massive jerk. We’re more concerned about Guilty Displeasures, namely, the things that seem to have been canonised and everyone loves… but really, we just don’t get it.

There’s so many films out there that are deemed universally great, leaving some people to nod along and agree because they don’t wanna feel like a tool for voicing their real opinion of it.

So here’s a list of films that we’re told we should like and feel bad for not enjoying them in any way.

1. Shawshank Redemption

This film has virtually been given a sainthood, leaving even the most laissez-faire of movie goers breathless and muttering about how powerful and moving a picture it is. However, this writer has never been able to enjoy it once. Tim Robbins? Don’t care. Morgan Freeman? Beyond listening to his nice speaking voice, don’t care. It’s a slow film that plods on and on abzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

2. Napoleon Dynamite

Not very funny ugly kid in not very funny stupid clothes displays not very funny social awkwardness while being taunted by his not very funny and not very smarmy brother who talks to girls online and it all drags itself painfully slowly toward a not very funny dance routine and a not very funny wedding. Success of film prompts not very funny people to wear not very funny Vote For Pedro t-shirts.

3. Lord of the Rings Trilogy

The books, which are also not particularly enjoyable, give a sense of hugeness and a whole other world to get lost in. Not figuratively. The feeling of Tolkien’s writing makes you think of planet sized problems. However, the film feels piddly and small and features rubbish CGI monsters, too much average looking rain and wind, actors mistaking their roles for Shakespearean ones and… the whole thing is just really, really boring.

4. Donnie Darko

Handsome but crashingly dull boy has dreams and shit which involve a bloke dressed up like a rabbit. Then a plane engine kills him, thereby because cinema’s first plane engine hero. Has double meaning which stoned teenagers like to froth up about. Effectively, the film is the most needlessly complicated suicide in film.

5. The Matrix

Oooh! Is everything real? Or not? Yes! NO? Hang on. Keanu Reeves says “Whoa!” and wears the kind of leather jacket that metal fans are generally mocked for.

6. Fight Club

Oooh! Is it him? Or not? Yes! NO? Hang on. People get punched in the mouth repeatedly, Helena Bonham Carter has manky teeth. No-one admits that the only reason 90% of people liked the film was because Brad Pitt wore a grubby vest. Ed Norton can add this, along with American History X, to canonised films that aren’t actually that great.

7. Godfather

5000 hour long film that basically was summed up in a much more fun way by Goodfellas and Casino.

8. All Kevin Smith Films

Kooky-stoner bollocks with a sprinkling of Jedi jokes, or, people in plaid shirts trying not to be pricks around a girl, or The One Where It Took Him Ages To Tell Us That Alanis Morrisette Is Our Lord. Clerks was an impressive independent hit, but really, nothing about it deserves the status it enjoys.

9. The Princess Bride

Irritatingly quotable film that is adored by anyone who watched it when they were little. Of course, it’s not much better than any other saccharine love-story with occasional barbed asides, but that hasn’t stopped this fantasy romp being held in high-esteem. Unfathomably, no-one seems to mind the awful Mark Knopfler soundtrack.

10. Romeo and Juliet

We’re talking about the ’96 Baz Luhrmann effort here which manages to make a brutal and savage tale of love and woe into something that looks like the wet-dream of just about any ’90s teenager. Bad curtain hair-dos, mewing and a soundtrack that is just as overrated as the film itself. Especially that awful Radiohead song about fucking packed-lunches.

Feel free to add your own guilty displeasures in the comments or, of course, add your ‘HOW DARE YOU?’ diatribes.

Violence in movies – terrible, isn’t it. No! We all like to see a good old-fashioned scrap once in a while.

Don’t even try to deny it. You may try and act like you abhor violence in movies, but deep down the sight of two people kicking the crap out of each other really gets you going.

Well, hecklerspray understands. There’s been many a time when we have pictured ourselves beating Sting to a bloody pulp. See kids, violence is fine as long as it’s in your mind, not on the streets. Anyway, to celebrate the fact that we all love to see someone evil get a good hiding, we have come up with our 10 favourite fight scenes in films.

And if you disagree, we’ll come around your house…

10. From Russia With Love (1963)

James Bond has had many brutal encounters on his way to saving the world, but none quite as thrilling as this punch-up against Robert Shaw‘s assassin in a narrow train compartment. Shaw’s crime: asking for red wine with fish. That’ll teach him.

9. The Big Country (1958)
You see, men really were men back in the old days. This manly jaw-breaker between Gregory Peck and Charlton Heston goes on so long the people watching it go to bed. Even the following morning they are still slugging away at each other.

8. Kill Bill Volume 1

To us, this scene in which Uma Thurman kills off an entire army of deadly assassins is when Quentin Tarantino came of age as a director. Without his superb dialogue to help him, he still managed to come up with a superbly co-ordinated and creative fight sequence, which culminates in the spectacular demise of Lucy Liu’s character. Oh, and it’s got lots of limbs being chopped off

7. Bridget Jones’ Diary

We do feel a slight amount of shame for putting this pathetic excuse for a brawl between Bridget Jones’ would-be suitors in a list of the finest fights in movie history. But, let’s face it, we all like to think in a fight situation that we would kick ass like Bruce Lee. However, in reality we probably fight more like fucking Ang Lee

6. King Kong

King Kong kicking the crap out of three T-Rexes is the monster of all fight scenes.

5. Oldboy (2003)

Armed with just a hammer, the main character in this 2003 South Korean film has to somehow find his way past a narrow corridor cluttered with baddies trying to stop him. All in one take. It’s hammer time

4. Empire Strikes Back

It’s possibly the most iconic chapter in the entire series. After an exhausting duel with Darth Vader, Luke gets his hand cut off and is told the truth about his father. Hecklerspray remembers walking out of the cinema still in shock.

3. Happy Gilmore (1998)

After constantly bickering throughout a round of golf. Adam Sandler finally punches Bob Barker in the mouth. It leads to one of the funniest fight scenes in history. “The price is wrong, bitch.”

2. Evil Dead 2

Beaten up by your own hand – what a slap in the face that is. But that’s just what happens to hero Ash after his hand is bitten by one of the, er, evil dead. He thinks he has the final laugh when he cuts off it off with a chainsaw, but that is only the start. Very funny.

1. They Live

We’re pretty sure this is the longest fight sequence in history. It just goes on, and on, and on…

They also fought the good fight:
The Bourne Supremacy
Eastern Promises
Fight Club
Enter The Dragon
Hard Times
Predator