Some of these films fly so far under the radar, they’re covered with dirt.
Here’s to the forgotten, the neglected, the overlooked and undermarketed movies doomed to purgatory on late-night cable TV or in the dusty corners of video stores. (Or, to be more 21st-century about it, buried on a sketchy streaming service that cuts it up with randomly placed commercials.) A lot of these movies maybe deserve this fate – for every good film, there are probably a half-dozen lousy ones – but some of them are like land mines, waiting for us to accidentally step on them and blow our minds.
Some of my most memorable movie-watching moments occurred not when a huge franchise blockbuster played to a fired-up audience (although I have experienced a few of those) , but rather when I stumbled across a lost gem on TV or had a friend press a battered old VHS tape in my hand and say, “Just watch it.” I came up with this list in the spirit of the latter sentiment, to pass on the knowledge of movies few people (outside basement-dwelling film obsessives like myself) have seen.
Be forewarned: some of these movies are strange, the type of cult aberration that makes your eyes widen until they threaten to leap from your sockets. Some are true charmers that would’ ve won Oscars if the world was a just place. They either lurked on grindhouse screens, played to a few film buffs at the arthouse, or took a stab at the big time and unjustly flopped. Either way, I’ ve deemed these 20 films to be original and essential for anyone with a healthy love for the art form.
