Hey, you know what we caught last night thanks to the good folks at Netflix? 2007's supermarket chiller The Mist, which wasn't great, but was sort of amazing in a "World's Most Expensive Twilight Zone Ever"-way. Like, it's a way imperfect movie, but there's a lot of stuff in it that's great: the sneaky way it gets into all the gore, Toby Jones, that "Shadow of the Colussus"-type shot. It surprised us how much we got into it -- that's something that its failure at the box office and poor word-of-mouth hadn't prepared us for.
And that got us thinking about movies that don't get the cred that they deserve. Maybe they came out at the wrong time. Maybe they've been overshadowed by another movie. Maybe they were just bonkers. But whatever the reasons, click on through for our Top 10 list of flicks that we don't think get the respect they deserve.
(IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER)
POPEYE
If Robert Altman and Harry Nilsson had used pseudonyms, would this comics adaptation have gotten such a bad rap? Everyone's perfectly cast, the story moves along at a healthy clip, the songs are great, and the set -- built on a Maltese island -- is pretty much the most successfully immersive in comic-book movie history. Yeah, the whole enterprise is a bit of a goof, but you know what? No one's looking to see Christian Bale with oversize forearms. If you ever see it on a good TV, be sure and pause the scene where Bluto sees red; your mind will be thoroughly and irretreivably blown.
THE HAUNTING (1963)
If we remember correctly, this haunted house movie is almost totally devoid of special effects -- and yet it's as claustrophobic and strange as the second Portishead record. You probably know what's gonna happen from the first few scenes, but dammit, most horror's like that really. Stay for the atmosphere and the acting, which is superlative -- and by all means, skip the remake at all costs. It's as much an affront to the classiness of the original as X-Men 3 was to the previous two installments.
FIRST BLOOD
In a just world, John Rambo wouldn't have devolved into a bi-syllabic nationalist joke. He would have featured only in this film -- a well-acted, surprisingly engrossing post-traumatic siege movie that stands toe-to-toe with Death Wish, High Plains Drifter, Get Carter, and the best of the Wronged Men movies of the '70's. Sylvester Stallone, weeping to his former commander that the war was "never over," got to the cold, hard truth of the Vietnam conflict in an abrupt, articulate way that, for example, Charlie Sheeen never did in Platoon.
AMERICAN GIGOLO
Let's be honest here. There's an entire generation of people -- possibly two -- that just don't get Richard Gere. We were like that. "How did he get to be a thing?" "Hasn't he just been that guy from Pretty Woman forever?" Well, answer B is "No," and Answer A is this movie, which has a lot going against it (a dumbfoundingly repetitive soundtrack, a crummy ending, Jerry Bruckheimer...) but draws you in with its quiet, come-hither confdence anyways. Less a movie than a landscape portrait devoted to the neon-lit, morally and sexually ambiguous terrain of the 1980's -- if we were coke dealers, we'd skip Scarface and loop this endlessly in our lounge/walk-in humidor.
ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST
We're not complaining about everyone that loves The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly. It's amazing, and Clint Eastwood will always be a more arresting presence to hang a dusty and violent frontier epic on than Charles Bronson, who's great here, but whose tanned, unemotive face isn't inscrutable so much as it is indifferent. All we're saying is: you know how Raging Bull is to The Godfather? One messy and operatic while the other is all clean lines and grandeur? Well, this is that to Good, Bad, Ugly, with Henry Fonda as the bad guy and Claudia Cardinale in the nude to boot. We dare you not to whistle "Addio a Cheyenne" on the way out.
OSCAR
Yes. There are two Sylvester Stallone movies on this list. What do you want from us? We think this is genuinely funny movie -- probably the most convincing recreation of a screwball comedy this side of the first season of Moonlighting -- and Sly acquits himself with grace and a bit of class. The exemplary work from Marisa Tomei, Peter Reigert, Harry Shearer, and (behind the camera) John Landis (who we think has never really gotten his due as one of the great orchestrators of film comedy) don't hurt either. Fans of Clue -- we know you're out there, and you shouldn't miss this.
CATCH-22
OK, so it's not the mind-blowing experience that the novel is. Nor is it as politically incisive as Robert Altman's M*A*S*H, which came out the same year and stole a lot of its thunder. But it's a movie that sticks in your craw, and the scenes with Bob Newhart and Orson Welles are genuinely funny. And along with Elliott Gould in The Long Goodbye, Alan Arkin's central performance ranks as one of the most overlooked leading turns of the '70's.
DUEL IN THE SUN
This overheated Selznick production gets a bad rap for its overly operatic melding of melodrama and western, but cripes -- it's use of Technicolor rivals anything in Gone with the Wind, and Gregory Peck (back when he was dangerous) and Jennifer Jones seem genuinely horny for each other. Which is nice, because they happen to also be smokin' hot. Definitely a good one to rent if you've got a nice TV.
GHIDRAH: THE THREE-HEADED MONSTER and BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS
Actually, we don't know which is the better 60's freakout: the one with all the crazy people in crazy getups wreaking primal, violent havoc on each other, pausing only for girl-group musical numbers or... the other one. Here's what we do know: either one's more fun than Hair.
Got some of your own? Let's hear 'em!