Rated: PG

An Edinburgh professor and assorted colleagues follow an explorer's trail down an extinct Icelandic volcano to the earth's center.

Edinburgh university professor Sir Oliver Lindenbrook believes he has found an very old message from a long lost scientist who may have found the way to journey to the center of the Earth. With his assistant, student Alec McKuen, he sets off for Iceland where an entrance in a volcanic range is to be found. They are soon joined by Carla Goetabaug, whose scientist-husband was recently murdered, and Icelander Hans Belker as they descend into the bowels of the Earth. There they will find fantastic creatures, exotic plants, the lost city of Atlantis and a foe who wants to keep knowledge of this underworld to himself. — garykmcd

Director: Henry Levin

Rated: PG

A Jewish prince is betrayed and sent into slavery by a Roman friend in 1st-century Jerusalem, but it's not long before he regains his freedom and comes back for revenge.

Judah Ben-Hur lives as a rich Jewish prince and merchant in Jerusalem at the beginning of the 1st century. Together with the new governor his old friend Messala arrives as commanding officer of the Roman legions. At first they are happy to meet after a long time but their different politic views separate them. During the welcome parade a roof tile falls down from Judah's house and injures the governor. Although Messala knows they are not guilty, he sends Judah to the galleys and throws his mother and sister into prison. But Judah swears to come back and take revenge. — Matthias Scheler

Director: William Wyler

Rated: G

A teenage boy grows to love a stray yellow dog while helping his mother and younger brother run their Texas homestead while their father is away on a cattle drive. First thought to be good-for-nothing mutt, Old Yeller is soon beloved by all.

Young Travis Coates is left to take care of the family ranch with his mother and younger brother while his father goes off on a cattle drive in the 1860's. When a yellow mongrel comes for an uninvited stay with the family, Travis reluctantly adopts the dog. After a series of scrapes involving raccoons, snakes, bears, wild hogs and wolves, Travis grows to love and respect Old Yeller, who comes to have a profound effect on the boy's life. — David Mullich

Director: Robert Stevenson

Rated: G

A successful farmyard revolution by the resident animals vs. the farmer goes horribly wrong when the victors create a new tyranny among themselves.

Britain's second animated feature, which, despite the title and Disney-esque animal animation, is in fact a no-holds-barred adaptation of George Orwell's classic satire on Stalinism, with the animals taking over their farm by means of a revolutionary coup, but then discovering that although all animals are supposed to be equal, some are more equal than others... — Michael Brooke

Directors: Joy Batchelor, John Halas

Rated: PG

A small-town sheriff in the American West enlists the help of a disabled man, a drunk, and a young gunfighter in his efforts to hold in jail the brother of the local bad guy.

Sheriff John T. Chance has his hands full after arresting Joe Burdette for murder. He knows that Burdette's brother Nathan, a powerful rancher, will go to any lengths to get him out of jail. Chance's good friend Pat Wheeler offers to help but within 20 minutes of making the offer is gunned down in the street, shot in the back. That leaves his elderly deputy Stumpy, the town drunk Dude - once a deputy and a pretty good shot when he was sober - and a young hand, Colorado, who used to work for Wheeler. Nathan Burdette meanwhile has a couple of dozen men at his disposal. Chance does his best to prepare all the while romancing a pretty gambler who goes by the name of Feathers. — garykmcd

Director: Howard Hawks

Rated: PG-13

A millionaire offers $10,000 to five people who agree to be locked in a large, spooky, rented house overnight with him and his wife.

Eccentric millionaire Fredrick Loren and his 4th wife, Annabelle, have invited 5 people to the house on Haunted Hill for a "Haunted House" party. Whoever will stay in the house for one night will earn ten thousand dollars each. As the night progresses, all the guests are trapped inside the house with ghosts, murderers, and other terrors. — Tony Mayer

Director: William Castle

Rated: PG

A starship crew in the 23rd century goes to investigate the silence of a distant planet's colony, only to find just two survivors, a powerful robot, and the deadly secret of a lost civilization.

When Commander Adams and his crew are sent to investigate why there were no communications from a previous mission to a planet explored 20 years earlier by scientists, he finds only two survivors, Dr. Morbius and his daughter. Unknown to Adams, Morbius has made a discovery, a discovery of great power, and has no intention of sharing it with anyone. — huutheheckcares

Director: Fred M. Wilcox

Rated: PG-13

After his employer is murdered by rival cattlemen, a troubled and uneducated young cowboy vows revenge on the murderers.

William Bonney - Billy the Kid - gets a job with a cattleman known as "The Englishman", and is befriended by the peaceful, religious man. But when a crooked sheriff and his men murder the Englishman because he plans to supply the local Army fort with his beef, Billy decides to avenge the death by killing the four men responsible, throwing the lives of everyone around him - Tom and Charlie, two hands he worked with; Pat Garrett, who is about to be married; and the kindly Mexican couple who take him in when he's in trouble - into turmoil, and endangering the General Amnesty set up by Governor Wallace to bring peace to the New Mexico Territory. — Gary Dickerson

Director: Arthur Penn

Rated: PG-13

British POWs are forced to build a railway bridge across the river Kwai for their Japanese captors in occupied Burma, not knowing that the allied forces are planning a daring commando raid through the jungle to destroy it.

During WW II, allied POWs in a Japanese internment camp are ordered to build a bridge to accommodate the Burma-Siam railway. Their instinct is to sabotage the bridge, but under the leadership of Colonel Nicholson they're persuaded the bridge should be built to help morale, spirit. At first, the prisoners admire Nicholson when he bravely endures torture rather than compromise his principles for the benefit of Japanese Commandant Colonel Saito, but soon they realise it's a monument to Nicholson, himself, as well as a form of collaboration with the enemy. — alfiehitchie

Director: David Lean

Rated: PG

The timeless tale of the seductive gypsy Esmeralda and the tortured hunchback Quasimodo.

Paris, 1482. Today is the festival of the fools, taking place like each year in the square outside Cathedral Notre Dame. Among jugglers and other entertainers, Esmeralda, a sensuous gypsy, performs a bewitching dance in front of delighted spectators. From up in a tower of the cathedral, Frollo, an alchemist, gazes at her lustfully. Later in the night, Frollo orders Quasimodo, the deformed bell ringer and his faithful servant, to kidnap Esmeralda. But when the ugly freak comes close to her, he is touched by the young woman's beauty. — Guy Bellinger

Director: Jean Delannoy