Tele's List of 100 Lesser-Known or Under-Appreciated Films Everyone Should See (THE LIST IS COMPLETE! p26)

[Dementeleus]

16. Lady Snowblood (1973)

written by: Norio Osada (story by Kazuo Kamimura & Kazuo Koike)

directed by: Toshiba Fujita

starring: Meiko Kaji

 

Synopsis:

A young girl is born and raised to be an instrument of revenge.

 

LADY SNOWBLOOD is set in Japan, in the Meiji Restoration, a period filled with turmoil and political upheaval as Japan reorganized its political and social structures, restored imperial rule, and rapidly advanced Japan into the technological modern age.

 

Quentin Tarantino has openly talked about how much of an influence LADY SNOWBLOOD was on his KILL BILL movies. And when you watch it, the influence is really clear. It’s a story about a young woman who’s born and raised to be a pure instrument of revenge. Her mother died during childbirth — in prison — but was able to communicate some fundamental desire to her newborn daughter, and that desire was fulfilled by her cellmates, one of whom raised the girl with the aid of a martial arts monk. Now fully grown, she sets out to find and kill the criminals who raped her mother and killed her father and infant brother.

 

At its core, LADY SNOWBLOOD is a straight-up exploitation movie — it’s not afraid to pile on the blood and gore by the bucketload, but it’s also a pretty stylish and arty one. The sort of movie one slice of a blade unleashes a spray of blood like a firehose (but that blood sprays in a beautiful artistic splash upon a white wall).

 

The movie was successful enough in Japan for a sequel, one that isn’t as good as the original but still worth checking out as well. (And it has one of the best titles ever: LADY SNOWBLOOD: LOVE SONG OF VENGEANCE).

 

This isn’t really the sort of movie that depends on great acting, but Meiko Kaji delivers a great performance, all the more remarkable because her character is supposed to have a neutral expression almost the entire time. She acts with her eyes, and she’s got a great screen presence. @The Stingray

 

 

 

[RandomCat]

This has been on my to buy list for several months from Criterion. I'll have to speed that up.

[RascarCapat]

Another I've seen, I guess because I heard Tarantino talking about it.

 

And yeah, that lady is pretty creepy if you ask me, I'd rather have to fight Beatrice Kiddo with a spoon than have Lady Snowblood stare into my soul.

[Dementeleus]

15. Dark Star (1974)

written by: Dan O’Bannon, John Carpenter

directed by: John Carpenter

starring: Dan O’Bannon, Brian Narelle, Cal Kuniholm, Dre Pahich

 

Synopsis:

In the far reaches of space, a small crew, 20 years into their solitary mission, find things beginning to go hilariously wrong.

 

Another one for you, @Baumer? Or have you seen it?

 

DARK STAR is set in the distant future, on a space ship with the same name. Four astronauts are the crew, and they’re bored out of their minds. They’ve been stuck in space for twenty years without being replaced, and their main mission of seeking out unstable planets and blowing them up is just monotony at this point. Adding to their frustration is a weird alien they found on one planet. They thought it might be intelligent, but all it seems to do is eat and wander around their ship.

 

This clever, goofy little black comedy was the seed that would change the science-fiction and horror genres. John Carpenter and Dan O’Bannon were film students at USC when they collaborated on this script, which became a 16mm short film while they were still in college. The movie was pretty impressive for a student short, and was seen by producer Jack Harris. He bought the feature rights and paid not only for a transfer to 35mm, but also to shoot some expanded sequences desired to bring the movie to a sufficient length for festival and theatrical distribution. While this was successful (and on the whole the movie works), Carpenter has since lamented that their “great-looking student film became a terrible-looking feature film”.

 

So, how did this change horror and sci-fi? Well, it gave Carpenter his start, and (combined with his work on John Longenecker’s Oscar-winning student short “The Resurrection of Bronco Billy”) got him enough recognition in the industry to move on to his first professional feature, ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13. Dan O’Bannon, the co-writer, actor, and special effects technician of DARK STAR (the budget was so small that Carpenter and O’Bannon ended up doing a great amount of the technical stuff themselves), was a bit frustrated that the final version of DARK STAR didn’t quite affect audiences the way he intended, and he recalled thinking “If I can’t make ‘em laugh, then maybe I can make them scream”. So he took a major section of DARK STAR’s middle act, featuring an odd-looking alien wandering through the spaceship, and re-worked it into ALIEN. The VFX on DARK STAR, while primitive, were also impressive given the movie’s crazy-low budget, and George Lucas took notice, hiring O’Bannon to help out with a little movie called STAR WARS. And lastly, the ship Dark Star was designed by Ron Cobb, an artist who had dabbled around with a variety of jobs (junior “in-betweener” animator for Disney, political cartoonist, assistant for a sign painter, graphic designer for album covers) until DARK STAR. This gave him the impetus to finally transition into production design for films, and he promptly became one of the most famous and influential designers in movie history. (His credits include STAR WARS, CONAN THE BARBARIAN, ALIEN, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, BLADE RUNNER, THE ABYSS, TOTAL RECALL, BACK TO THE FUTURE, and others.)

 

Random bit of trivia: In SUNSHINE, the captain of the doomed Icarus I is named Pinbacker, a direct homage to DARK STAR’s crewman Finback (played by O’Bannon himself).

 

DARK STAR. Watch it.

 

 

 

[Dementeleus]

14. The Thief of Bagdad (1924)

written by: Douglas Fairbanks (as Elton Thomas), Achmed Abdullah, James T. O’Donohoe

directed by: Raoul Walsh

starring: Douglas Fairbanks

 

Synopsis:

A recalcitrant thief vies with a duplicitous Mongol ruler for the hand of a beautiful princess.

 

The Thief of Bagdad (1940)

written by: Miles Malleson, Lajos Biro (story by Miklos Rozsa)

directed by: Ludwig Berger, Michael Powell, Tim Whelan (also Alexander Korda, Zoltan Korda, and William Cameron Menzies)

starring: Sabu, Conrad Veidt, June Duprez, Rex Ingram

 

Synopsis:

After being tricked and cast out of Bagdad by the evil Jaffar, King Ahmad joins forces with a thief named Abu to reclaim his throne, the city, and the Princess he loves.

 

Okay, so I’m cheating here. (It won’t be the last time.) Two movies in one slot. You’ll just have to deal. But I couldn’t make up my mind between the two. They’re both great (for different reasons), and both worth seeking out.

 

The 1924 silent film features an awesome (and hilarious) performance by Douglas Fairbanks, one of (if not the) original action stars. He did all his own stunts, and really the story is just an excuse to get him to do some climbing, jumping, and all sorts of acrobatics. To the modern eye, Fairbanks is… well, “hammy” would put it mildly. But that’s part of the charm. He just cranks all his facial expressions and acting up to 11. It’s scenery-chewing without speaking. Part of the charm of this is also the huge-scale sets. When you consider that they didn’t film on location at all, everything is more impressive. THIEF OF BAGDAD was one of the most expensive and extravagant productions of the 1920s, and it was a huge box-office hit as well… basically, a Jim Cameron movie of the 20s.

 

The 1940 version, while technically a remake, goes its own path and doesn’t make any effort to follow the original movie. In the Fairbanks version, for example, the thief and the prince are the same (Fairbanks himself). In the 1940 version, they’ve been split into two characters: John Justin’s Prince Ahmad and Indian child star Sabu’s Abu, a thief. This version was also fairly influential on Disney’s own version of the story, keeping the elements of the Prince, Abu (turned to a monkey), the evil Grand Vizier Jaffar, and so forth.

 

The 1940 version was also a huge hit at the box-office and has received grand critical praise from critics then and now.

 

And as a side note, since we’re so obsessed with “troubled productions” these days, and worry about every little possible pickup and reshoot and delay and extra expense as evidence that a movie will suck, check out how absolutely insane and troubled this production was:

 

(condensed and edited version, taken from Wikipedia)

Producer Alexander Korda, chose German filmmaker Ludwig Berger in early 1939, but by the early summer found himself dissatisfied with Berger's overall conception of the movie and, specifically, the score that Berger proposed to use. Essentially behind Berger's back, British director Michael Powell was brought in to shoot various scenes—and Powell's scheduled work grew in amount and importance while, in the meantime, Korda himself did his best to undercut Berger on his own set; and while publicly siding with Berger on the issue of the music, he also undercut Berger's chosen composer by bringing in Miklos Rozsa and putting him into an office directly adjacent to Berger's with a piano, to work on a score. Eventually, Berger was persuaded to walk away from the project, and American filmmaker Tim Whelan was brought in to help augment Powell's work. But with the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, work was suspended.

 

By the end of the year, Korda found himself running out of money and credit, and in the spring of 1940 he arranged to move the entire production to Hollywood. Powell had remained in England, and so direction was taken up in Hollywood by Menzies and Zoltan Korda during the summer of 1940—including shots of the heroes in the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley and The Painted Desert; the scenes in the Temple of the Goddess of Light, among the very last to be written, were done late in the summer, and the film was being edited and re-structured into the fall of 1940.

 

So for those of you keeping track at home: that’s six different directors, two different composers, and a production that began in England, stopped for the war, and then started up again in California. Crazy.

 

 

 

 

 

[Dementeleus]

13. The Vanishing (1988)

written by: George Sluizer, Tim Krabbé (from Krabbé’s novel)

directed by: George Sluizer

starring: Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu, Gene Bervoets, Johanna ter Steege, Gwen Eckhaus

 

Synopsis:

A young couple are on vacation. They stop at a busy service station and the woman is abducted. After three years and no sign of his lost love, the man begins receiving letters from the abductor.

 

This is a quietly chilling movie about the banality of evil, and it has one of the freakiest and most unsettling endings I can remember. As often happens, it achieved some success and notoriety and so Hollywood decided to remake it. However, the remake (with Sandra Bullock! Jeff Bridges! and Keifer Sutherland!) is terrible—at best it feels like a pale imitation of the original, and the ending is completely changed, since the studio obviously didn’t have the balls to follow through with the original ending. What’s interesting about the failure is that it’s by the same director. Proof indeed that the creative process can get waylaid no matter who’s involved.

 

I wouldn’t call this a straight-up horror movie. It’s really not very violent at all. It’s more of a quiet thriller… and all the more unsettling because of this.

 

 

 

[Dementeleus]

12. The Return (2003)

written by: Vladimir Moiseenko, Aleksandr Novototskiy-Vlasov 

directed by: Andrey Zvyagintsev

starring: Vladimir Garin, Ivan Dobronravov, Konstantin Lavronenko

 

Synopsis:

In the Russian wilderness, two brothers face a range of new, conflicting emotions when their father — a man they know only through a single photograph — resurfaces.

 

Paging @James (and maybe @Jack Nevada... Jack, have you seen this?)

 

To the extent that he’s known at all (aside from Russian cinephiles like @Jake Gittes), Andrey Zvyagintsev is known for his 2014 movie LEVIATHAN, which was a blunt attack against the new Russia of Putin. But Zvyagintsev first exploded onto the international cinema scene with THE RETURN, an absolutely stunning and devastating family drama about two sons and their mysterious (and possibly brutal) father, who suddenly reappears in their life after being absent for essentially all of it. Their desire to like him, for him to like them, their instinct to follow with him, the beginnings of teenage defiance and questioning of authority, and the transition from children to men, all play out against the backdrop of a fishing trip the three of them take, a fishing trip that starts to feel like it might be something else, as the father drives them deeper and deeper into the wilderness.

 

I can’t recommend this movie enough.

 

 

 

[Jack Nevada]

No, I haven't seen that one. I haven't seen shit, I'm such a pleb tbh.

[James]

4 minutes ago, Telemachos said:

12. The Return (2003)

written by: Vladimir Moiseenko, Aleksandr Novototskiy-Vlasov 

directed by: Andrey Zvyagintsev

starring: Vladimir Garin, Ivan Dobronravov, Konstantin Lavronenko

 

Synopsis:

In the Russian wilderness, two brothers face a range of new, conflicting emotions when their father — a man they know only through a single photograph — resurfaces.

 

Paging @James (and maybe @Jack Nevada... Jack, have you seen this?)

 

To the extent that he’s known at all (aside from Russian cinephiles like @Jake Gittes), Andrey Zvyagintsev is known for his 2014 movie LEVIATHAN, which was a blunt attack against the new Russia of Putin. But Zvyagintsev first exploded onto the international cinema scene with THE RETURN, an absolutely stunning and devastating family drama about two sons and their mysterious (and possibly brutal) father, who suddenly reappears in their life after being absent for essentially all of it. Their desire to like him, for him to like them, their instinct to follow with him, the beginnings of teenage defiance and questioning of authority, and the transition from children to men, all play out against the backdrop of a fishing trip the three of them take, a fishing trip that starts to feel like it might be something else, as the father drives them deeper and deeper into the wilderness.

 

I can’t recommend this movie enough.

 

 

 

Ok, I am watching this. Sounds right up my alley. Thanks Tele

[Jake Gittes]

Yeah, that's Zvyagintsev's one good movie. 

[Fancyarcher]

The Thief of Bagdad (1940) is such a good adventure film.

[Dementeleus]

1 hour ago, Jake Gittes said:

Yeah, that's Zvyagintsev's one good movie. 

 

Booo!  

[TalismanRing]

24 minutes ago, Daniel Dylan Davis said:

The Thief of Bagdad (1940) is such a good adventure film.

 

It's wonderful and the Fairbanks version is very good as well.

 

I watched The Vanishing once ages ago and once is enough.  Chilling and absolutely devastating.  The remake is indeed an abomination.

 

 

Edited June 21, 2016 by TalismanRing

[James]

Just finished watching The Return. I loved it. It was so bleak and gritty and had this sense of pure hopelessness about it... really my kind of movie. And while watching it I was thinking I'd like to see this type of atmosphere in a big budget Hollywood film. An origin story of sorts. Maybe even a CBM. Zack Snyder could learn a thing or two about making dark movies. You have to wonder how fucked up would be a person with great powers that had this kind of upbringing. The idea itself is crazy appealing to me. Anyway, thanks, Tele.

[Dementeleus]

 You're... welcome?

[Dementeleus]

11. The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970)

written by: John Crawford, Edmund Penney

directed by: Sam Peckinpah

starring: Jason Robards, Stella Stevens, David Warner, Strother Martin, Slim Pickens

 

Synopsis:

A hobo accidentally stumbles onto a water spring, and creates a profitable way station in the middle of the desert.

 

Sam Peckinpah is known for bleak movies, men struggling against the beasts of their darker natures, the brutality of violence, and men choosing to die rather than adapt and change. THE BALLAD OF CABLE HOGUE is set within a very typical Peckinpah setting — the American West of the late 1890s/early 1900s, and it deals with another typical Peckinpah theme — men faced with a changing era. 

But BALLAD is a complete change-of-pace for him in every other regard. It’s genial, upbeat, very comedic through much of its running time, and with a sunny, optimistic view of change. 

 

Jason Robards is Cable Hogue, a man stranded in the desert when he discovers salvation — a watering hole. Being a man who always looks on the bright side of life, he sets out to turn the situation to his advantage. Along the way, he falls in love with a prostitute and befriends an itinerant preacher who’s also wandering the west.

 

Audiences were confused by the movie, since it directly followed his most famous film (and arguably his masterpiece), THE WILD BUNCH. And the production, as typical on a Peckinpah movie, was troubled. Peckinpah was a horrific substance abuser, and he began drinking heavily while shooting, especially when it rained and they had to stop production (which happened often). The film crew ran up a tab of $70,000 at a local bar. The production ended up going 19 days over schedule and $3 million over budget, and Peckilnpah’s general performance and attitude basically screwed him over at Warner Brothers — while they were developing DELIVERANCE and JEREMIAH JOHNSON, both properties he would’ve been given a chance to direct if CABLE HOGUE had been a smooth shoot. Instead, Peckinpah had to return to bleaker territory with STRAW DOGS.

 

 

[The Stingray]

I know, I know. I need to see Lady Snowblood asap.

The Vanishing has such an awesome ending.
 

[The Stingray]

Letter Never Sent, The Wind and the Lion and The Thief of Bagdad sound cool. Gonna try and check 'em out.
 

[RandomCat]

Looking at this list of films, I find that through all the deep contemplative fare on offer, I pounce on the exploitive and comedic.

 

Says a lot about me as a movie goer.

[ttr]

11. The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970)

written by: John Crawford, Edmund Penney

directed by: Sam Peckinpah

starring: Jason Robards, Stella Stevens, David Warner, Strother Martin, Slim Pickens

 

Synopsis:

A hobo accidentally stumbles onto a water spring, and creates a profitable way station in the middle of the desert.

 

Sam Peckinpah is known for bleak movies, men struggling against the beasts of their darker natures, the brutality of violence, and men choosing to die rather than adapt and change. THE BALLAD OF CABLE HOGUE is set within a very typical Peckinpah setting — the American West of the late 1890s/early 1900s, and it deals with another typical Peckinpah theme — men faced with a changing era. 

But BALLAD is a complete change-of-pace for him in every other regard. It’s genial, upbeat, very comedic through much of its running time, and with a sunny, optimistic view of change. 

 

Jason Robards is Cable Hogue, a man stranded in the desert when he discovers salvation — a watering hole. Being a man who always looks on the bright side of life, he sets out to turn the situation to his advantage. Along the way, he falls in love with a prostitute and befriends an itinerant preacher who’s also wandering the west.

 

Audiences were confused by the movie, since it directly followed his most famous film (and arguably his masterpiece), THE WILD BUNCH. And the production, as typical on a Peckinpah movie, was troubled. Peckinpah was a horrific substance abuser, and he began drinking heavily while shooting, especially when it rained and they had to stop production (which happened often). The film crew ran up a tab of $70,000 at a local bar. The production ended up going 19 days over schedule and $3 million over budget, and Peckilnpah’s general performance and attitude basically screwed him over at Warner Brothers — while they were developing DELIVERANCE and JEREMIAH JOHNSON, both properties he would’ve been given a chance to direct if CABLE HOGUE had been a smooth shoot. Instead, Peckinpah had to return to bleaker territory with STRAW DOGS.

 

 

Finally Peckinpah, and a film I've never even heard of. Uh-oh...