knowing you guys, we can think up some real doozies, here.
personally, right now, i'm thinking of "lifeforce". it certainly has it's weak spots, but i love how it blends aliens, vampire, and zombies. it has a few really great special effects sequences, and the small roles played by patrick stewart and aubrey morris are enough to make any film geek perk up. oh, did i forget to mention the near-flawless beauty of mathilda may? how silly of me.
The last hidden gem I saw was Bloodsucking Pharaohs in Pittsburg. There is no bloodsucking, nor pharaohs, but it does take place in Pittsburg. It's a gore film but with Airplane!/Naked Gun-style comedy. It's actually a very good movie, good acting, surprisingly good plot, some of the gags had me laughing my ass off, good gore. No nudity, though several scenes would seem to be set up to provide it, but that's fine with me.
Plus, Veronica Hart plays a fairly large role. If you ever snuck a peek at your Dad's or older brother's porno movies in the 80s, you might have had a crush on Ms. Hart.
How about all of Uwe Boll's flicks? And no, I'm not just talking about the video game films.
I will now run before the badmovies mob hunts me down and tortures me.
Equilibrium
This movie didn't get near the respect it deserved.
odinn7 Wrote:
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> Equilibrium
> This movie didn't get near the respect it
> deserved.
>
>
Very true. I rented this one not to long ago because of what people here on the board were saying about it. I really liked it myself.
A reason why I don't think it got alot of respect it because it came out during the the Matrix craze were movies were starting to copy cat it. This one got chalked up as a knock off and basically no one saw it. I still don't know alot people besides the board who have seen it.
Ha! As I was reading the name of the thread, my first thought of an underrated gem was also Equilibrium!
Must be true then...
I can think of several noirish films I've recently added to my collection.
1) Cop (1988), an adaptation of the novel "Blood on the Moon" by James Elroy, much before he became famous with "L.A. Confidential". Elroy's book is an attempt to build a rogue cop a la Dirty Harry, and the plot anticipates many of the traits of the Cop vs. Psycho that would appear like rats after Thomas Harris' success. The movie is more a vehicle for James Woods, who plays the main character, but it is as trimmed, morally ambiguous and nasty as any film of this kind can be. Woods is fantastic, and the 80s cinematography and music add a lot to the film.
2) "Heaven's Prisoners", a 1996 film starring Alec Baldwin as a retired cop who needs to get back into the streets of New Orleans to find out what's hapenning around him. It's not a perfect film, as it is, for instance, a bit too long, but it is otherwise a very competent adaptation of the James Lee Burke novel in which is based. Dialogues are fantastic.
3) "Twilight" (1998), another noirish film, this time starring an aged Paul Newman as a PI who keeps an eye on a couple of old friends, only to find himself into trouble again. The plot is standard Marlow fare, but the cast is great (the film also features Gene Hackman, Susan Sarandon, James Garner and Reese Witherspooon) and the direction is also very good. Watch for some great dialogue as well, specially the final exchange between Newman and Garner.
My list of overlooked/underrated gems comes courtesy of America's film critics. Each of the films listed made both the critics' "10 Best Films of the Year" and "10 Worst Films of the Year" for the year in which they were released.
And in the order in which they were released, from newest to oldest . . .
Brotherhood of the Wolf
Moonlight Mile
O Brother, Where Art Thou
Snow Falling on Cedars
Beloved
Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas
Bram Stoker's Dracula
The Fisher King
Vampire's Kiss
Lair of the White Worm
The Last Temptation of Christ
The Mission
Return to Oz
BoyScoutKevin Wrote:
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> O Brother, Where Art Thou
> Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas
> Bram Stoker's Dracula
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those three stuck out as films that really wouldn't fit on the list, in my opinion. i don't think it's really fair to call any of them "overlooked" or "underrated".
My vote goes to a movie called ANGEL OF THE NIGHT (or NATTENS ENGEL), a Danish vampire flick from the improbably named director Shaky Gonzalez.
Put simply, the film is what the FROM DUSK TILL DAWN sequels should have been; fast, funny and violent. The dubbing is pretty bad, but the film looks surprisingly good, considering what the budget must have been.
I picked it up off the shelf knowing nothing about it and was surprised by how much I enjoyed the damn thing. Usually when I do that I predict pain, so it was a pleasant surprise. I don't know anybody else whose seen this movie.
What about Event Horizon. Sure it had a pretty dodgt premiss (hell dimensions with warnings in Latin are more something for Buffy that for SF). However, it was convincingly creepy and both Sam Neill and Laurence Fishburne were quite good. Also, the ending wasn't your average ghost ship story.
People keep telling me Event Horizon was atypical in some way, but I found it to be an incredibly typical sci-fi horror movie. There was not one moment I didn't know exactly what was going to happen, I knew exactly who would survive at the end, and I even knew they'd stick on the dream just before the credits.
If anything, IMHO, Event Horizon is an *over*-rated movie. It isn't bad per se, just more of the same with nothing to especially recommend it. (Except Sam Neil. Anything with Sam Neil is worth seeing once.)
Maybe it's not original, but I found it to be far more effective (specially on the big screen) than many people say. It's not a personal favourite, but I think it's underrated myself.
i just saw "dreamcatcher" on television yesterday, and i thought it was surprisingly good, so i'd put it in the "underrated" folder.
My vote goes to a movie called ANGEL OF THE NIGHT (or NATTENS ENGEL), a Danish vampire flick from the improbably named director Shaky Gonzalez.
Saw it last week. Low budget and poorly dubbed but suprisingly energetic and fun
Victor Salva's The Nature of the Beast would be a great candidate for this thread, as I think it's both underrated and overlooked.
The movie revolves around Jack (Lance Henriksen), a middle-class executive traveling on business, who stumbles on a murder scene. The policemen at the scene advise him to be careful, as there is a serial killer in the area hitch-hiking in search of his next victim. After being warned by the police, Jack meets Adrian (Eric Roberts) at a nearby diner, and from then on, continues to follow Jack wherever he goes. Coincidentally (or not?) the murders continue everywhere the two go.
It sounds pretty straightforward, but Salva does a nice job in setting a bleak, dreary landscape surrounding the characters, adding a bit of creepiness to the movie. Henriksen does a great job as always and Roberts is decent as well. That and the movie contains a nice little plot twist at the end to keep things interesting.
Runaway Train is another one. More overlooked than underrated, I'd say. This is, without a doubt, the best legitimate movie that's ever come out of the Cannon Group. The movie focuses on two escaped convicts (Jon Voight and Eric Roberts - again) who bust their way out of a prison in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness. The two end up catching a ride on a train, expecting to ride their way to freedom. One slight problem: the engineer dies of a heart attack, leaving the duo, and a female railway worker, to try to stop the train, which is speeding out of control toward a dead end. Check this one out if you can.
Hard to say, I lke a lof of bad stuff most people never hear of; are those overlooked/underated gems or just my bad taste?
Fearless Freep Wrote:
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> Hard to say, I lke a lof of bad stuff most people
> never hear of; are those overlooked/underated gems
> or just my bad taste?
>
> =======================
> Going places unmapped, to do things unplanned, to
> people unsuspecting
Since discovering the internet back in October 2000, and particularly since joining this board last summer, I'm often pleasantly suprised to discover just how many people tend to share my enthusiasm for particular films.
Case in point, for about fifteen years of my life, I never met anyone who liked Mad Max. Every time I mentioned it, people would just roll their eyes at me, some even going so far as to tell me how dumb it was & how dumb I was for liking it. Then I would counter by pointing out that scene where Mudguts (or rather his stunt double) takes a spill & gets whacked across the head by the back wheel of his own motorbike, and they would roll their eyes and grudgingly agree with me on that one scene.
So, no Fearless, it's not a matter of bad taste, just people's aprehension of the unknown.
As for me, I would've gone with Mad Max or Galaxy of Terror, but I've discovered over the past few years that too many people like those to fall under the overlooked/underrated category, so I'm going to have to go with Huntress: Spirit of the Night. Even though the plot (if you can call it a plot) is completely cheesey & unoriginal, I found it to be well directed by Mark Manos, with an excellent soundtrack by Fuzbee Morse, and of coarse, actress Jenna Bodnar has a nice rack.
Another one I really liked was "The Mechanic".
Since we have a lot of folks in here who liked "Equilibrium", this one will keep you happy, as Christian Bale was in it as well.
The script called for a 'walking skeleton' for the part, and that's EXACTLY what Bale looked like. He barely ate for a few months to look like he did.
Check out the trailer, give it a watch. It's really good.
http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount_classics/the_machinist.html
Does Hudson Hawk count?
Does Hudson Hawk count?
As underrated or just overlooked :)
I love Hudson Hawk.
AUUAUAUUUUUGHHH!!!!!! HUDSON HAWK DOES NOT COUNT!!! IT SHOULD BE BURNED AT THE STAKE!!!!
Overblown, overbudgeted Bruce Willis ego trip. Sandra Bernhard--blech!!
Anyway, Runaway Train, certainly overlooked. Based on a script by Akira Kurosawa. Terrific.