This week William Friedkin's Sorcerer finally receives its first-ever digital release courtesy of a stellar new Blu-ray. To some extent, Friedkin's 1977 remake of the 1953 French thriller The Wages of Fear flopped at the box office because its release coincided with the debut of Star Wars. Yet Sorcerer remains a gem that fell through the cracks. And as such, it occupies a space in cinema history alongside quite a few other films — call them "forgotten," or merely "undeservedly ignored" — that were better than their reputations and/or commercial performances indicated. Fortunately, thanks to a movie culture increasingly dedicated to restoring and revitalizing lesser-known works, they now have a potential second chance to make an impact on viewers who may have passed them by, or never heard of them at all. In honor of Sorcerer, we present fifteen fine films from the past fifty years that are in need of re-discovery.
Bad Company (1972)
One of the decade's strangest revisionist Westerns, Bad Company stars Jeff Bridges as the leader of a gang of thieves who welcome a young outlaw into their ranks. A harsh, subversive portrait of Westward Expansion, it takes its cues from Oliver Twist but, courtesy of director Robert Benton (Kramer vs. Kramer), has a weird atmosphere all its own.
Available on DVD and Amazon Instant
Where the Buffalo Roam (1980)
Before Johnny Depp embodied him in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson was given the big-screen treatment by Where the Buffalo Roam, a bonkers biographical film about the author that stars Bill Murray as Thompson and Peter Boyle as his lawyer/associate/madman-accomplice Carl Lazlo, Esq. An episodic semi-true history lesson about Thompson's exploits, it boasts one of Murray's most underrated early performances.
Available on DVD and Amazon Instant
Wise Blood (1979)
John Huston's adaptation of Flannery O'Connor's novel is a stark, chilling account of a preacher in a small Georgia town that brims with fanatical, dangerous passions and ideas. Starring a phenomenal Brad Dourif, it's an alternately comical, horrifying, and despairing work, and one that, despite a long-overdue 2009 Criterion Collection DVD, remains one of Huston's (The Maltese Falcon, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre) most underappreciated efforts.
Available on DVD and Hulu Plus
Wake in Fright (1971)
Once known as Australia's great "lost" film, Wake in Fright — which received its first stateside run just last year — proves an unnerving horror classic. The story of a teacher forever transformed by his encounter with a group of deranged drunken Outback crazies, Ted Kotcheff's (First Blood) film is a genuine one-of-a-kind shocker.
Available on DVD, Blu-ray, and Netflix Streaming
The King of Marvin Gardens (1972)
A film that seems to have been dismissed amid its star's other '70s triumphs, The King of Marvin Gardens features Jack Nicholson at his finest, as a morose talk-show host who reluctantly accompanies his con-man brother (a fantastical Bruce Dern) to Atlantic City to participate in a real-estate scam. Directed by Bob Rafelson (who collaborated with Nicholson on, among other movies, Five Easy Pieces), it's a scary, surreally entrancing work.
Available on DVD and Amazon Instant
Neighbors (1981)
John Belushi's last film was slammed by critics and performed only adequately at the box office, but Neighbors — in which Belushi and fellow Blues Brother Dan Aykroyd play against type as, respectively, an unhappy suburbanite and his wild new neighbor — has a dark, bizarre sense of humor that's far better than its reputation suggests.
Available on DVD and Amazon Instant
Martin (1976)
George A. Romero made his name with zombies, but one of his best films concerned another type of undead protagonist: vampire. Or, at least, that's what the protagonist of Martin claims to be, though Romero slyly balances reality and lunacy in this clever riff on the bloodsucker genre.
Available on DVD
To Live and Die in L.A. (1985)
While Sorcerer was largely ignored from the moment it hit theaters, William Friedkin's To Live and Die in L.A. was a notable hit for the director — but now, 29 years later, it seems to have largely vanished from the public consciousness. That's a true shame, given the electricity of its portrait of Los Angeles, the intensity of Willem Dafoe as a counterfeiting villain, and the awesomeness of its against-traffic car chase.
Available on DVD and Blu-ray
Prime Cut (1972)
It's hard to believe that a film starring legendary tough guy Lee Marvin, then-rising star Gene Hackman, and a debuting Sissy Spacek — and directed by Michael Ritchie (The Candidate, The Bad News Bears, Fletch) — has somehow fallen into obscurity. And yet that's the fate of 1972's Prime Cut, a choice piece of badass genre filmmaking that's due for a critical renaissance.
Available on DVD
Straight Time (1978)
Straight Time stars Dustin Hoffman as a thief who, upon finishing a prison stint, discovers that avoiding the criminal life is tougher than it seems. It's a familiar tale, and yet one enlivened by Hoffman's stellar turn, as well as a fantastic supporting cast that includes M. Emmet Walsh, Harry Dean Stanton, Gary Busey, and Theresa Russell.
Available on DVD, Amazon Instant, and iTunes
Scarecrow (1973)
A road movie starring Gene Hackman (two years after his Oscar-winning turn in The French Connection) and Al Pacino (one year after The Godfather), Scarecrow finds its two leading men chewing scenery with rambunctious verve as vagabonds traversing the country. Overshadowed by their more celebrated classics, it's a small but assured and affecting film.
Available on DVD and Amazon Instant
A City of Sadness (1989)
Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien is one of cinema's reigning grandmasters, and though most of his films are little-known here in America, few have been given less attention than 1989's A City of Sadness, a heartrending story about one family's horrific persecution during Taiwan's "White Terror," in which thousands of political dissidents were killed for their supposed opposition to the government. It's a muted masterpiece, and one still unavailable domestically on DVD.
Available on Import DVD (All Regions)
Out of the Blue (1980)
Dennis Hopper's directorial follow-up to 1971's The Last Movie (itself a cult classic), Out of the Blue is an evocatively jarring portrait of punk-rock adolescent rebelliousness that's bolstered by a strong lead performance by Linda Manz (Days of Heaven), and which competed for the Cannes Film Festival's prestigious Palm d'Or before fading into inexplicable anonymity.
Available on DVD
Cutter's Way (1981)
A thriller energized by a crazed, eye-patched performance by John Heard (alongside Jeff Bridges), Cutter's Way was, according to director Ivan Passer, killed by a studio that didn't know what it had, or what to do with it. Thirty-four years later, it remains a uniquely weird and wild thriller about a murder investigation that deserves to be resurrected.
Available on DVD, Amazon Instant, and iTunes
Cockfighter (1974)
If the title alone doesn't pique your interest, check out Cockfighter for its amazing lead turn by Warren Oates, who in this Monte Hellman film (apparently the only Roger Corman production to ever lose money) is nothing short of mesmerizing as a, well, you did see the film's title, right?
Available on DVD and Amazon Instant
