Those 'bloody doors' top best film lines poll

A new survey of British movie buffs is set to ignite decades of debate by attempting to identify once and for all the nation's best loved – and most hated – film lines.

The poll of 1,300 cinema-goers, carried out over the past month, has thrown up hundreds of suggestions – from films as varied as Apocalypse Now and Carry On Cleo.

The winner is one of cinema's most oft-quoted lines. Edging ahead of Clark Gable's closing words in Gone with the Wind is Michael Caine's famous rant from the cult 1969 caper The Italian Job: "You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off."

Sir Michael Caine, who turns 70 this week and is competing for a best actor Oscar for The Quiet American, said yesterday he was delighted. "It's amazing over time what one funny line can bring," he said. "At the time of filming, I never thought it would become so famous."

The worst line of all time, according to the poll, is: "Is it raining? I hadn't noticed," delivered by Andie MacDowell, the dewy-eyed American in the final reel of Four Weddings and a Funeral.

The most quoted film of all was Withnail and I, writer-director Bruce Robinson's comedy about two unemployed actors, from which 20 different lines were nominated. At number three in the poll was Withnail's drunken demand in a village tea shop: "We want the finest wines known to humanity. We want them here and we want them now."

Though he is pleased by the film's performance in the poll, Robinson confesses to being mystified by its enduring popularity.

"I'm bemused," he said. "Withnail was a very important film for me at the time, and it's great that new audiences keep discovering it, but I don't sit there thinking, 'oh what bliss to have been involved in it'. This is damned nice, but astonishing."

Taken as a whole, the poll's results will likely provoke further debate rather than consensus. Those expecting most of the highest entries to hail from the golden age of the screen will be disappointed.

Neither Citizen Kane nor Casablanca appears anywhere in the top 10. In fact, the only pre-1950s film that does is Gone with the Wind, whose immortal line from Rhett Butler – "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn" – is at number two.

Instead, the field is dominated by a mix of gangster movies, action films and comedies, ranging from GoodFellas through to Gladiator.

The bottom 10 is equally curious. According to the poll, the worst lines include "I'll be back", Arnold Schwarzenegger's catchphrase from science fiction classic The Terminator, and the pearl of homespun wisdom that sealed Tom Hanks's best actor Oscar for Forrest Gump: "Life is like a box of chocolates."

The results of the poll, carried out to coincide with the Orange Word season of screenwriters' events at the British Library, have not convinced everyone.

Dismissing the inclusion of The Terminator in the bottom 10 as "stupid", movie critic Mark Kermode said: "These polls are always, by their nature, ridiculous. What's interesting is that, rather than being great, insightful quotes, most of these lines are 'zingers' – the one-liners that writers were hired by studios to come up with in the 1980s.

"Also, the best and worst lists are almost interchangeable. I'd sum that up by quoting a film that includes lots of classic lines, This is Spinal Tap: 'There's a very thin line between clever and stupid'."