Psycho. #38

I have a theory that the more impressive Kurt Russell's facial hair is, the better the film. I've found this to be a useful metric, but not perfect. The Thing? Masterpiece. Bone Tomahawk? Incredible. Escape from L.A.? Oh dear. Death Proof? Absolutely not. Christmas Chronicles? Brilliant. Christmas Chronicles 2 is the same facial hair, but a much worse film, so you can see there are flaws. But it's by no means bad.

Can you think of any other similar metrics for judging the quality of a film without seeing even a second of it?

I love the way you have shared a theory that you yourself recognise is flawed. Thank you. That’s as things should be where this stuff is concerned: what you want is a rule of thumb that kind of works, which keeps the game alive and contributes to its own legend. My own Kurt Russell rule would be to mostly avoid films starring him. I don’t get him at all! Don’t you find him to be a terrible, limited actor? I dunno, maybe it’s just that thing I have where I sometimes don’t understand straight people. I love The Thing (1982), however, and I will grant you that his hair is extremely impressive in it. I’ve just looked it up because I am nothing if not a thorough journalist, and my word, the volume and gloss on that do are just sensational. He looks like an action figure of Kris Kristofferson crossed with a baby doll — and the locks simply tumble from his head, don’t they, great pelmets of hair, flopping this way and that, a great shiny bush of hair that falls in various lightly waved tendrils that come to frame his neck and commingle with his scarcely less impressive beard. How on earth is my guy getting such a sheen on his barnet at the South Pole, is what I would like to know! I would be incredibly pissed off if I had to wait my turn for ages at the showers because a colleague on our mission to Antarctica was elaborately working his way through all the steps of the Curly Girl routine, for no better reason than to look irrelevantly sexual out there on the ice-caps.