El Topo - I watched this film in some film class in college and it was the most fucked up thing I’ve ever seen. Not a good date movie (although I’ve made dates watch it) and not a good family movie by any stretch of the imagination but…maybe a good doobie or six-pack movie. I’ve only watched it straight up myself but it leaves you feeling kind of high 
The 1990 television production of Treasure Island with Charlton Heston, Christian Bale, Oliver Reed and Christopher Lee. It’s the best pirate movie ever made, better even than Pirates of the Caribbean and Captain Blood. Heston is absolutely amazing as Long John Silver, bringing a tremendous amount of emotional depth to a character who is a loveable rogue AND a homicidal monster. Reed and Lee chew up the scenery magnificently as Billy Bones and Blind Pew. And the teenaged Bale plays Jim Hawkins with an air of intelligence and gravity that foreshadows his adult career. The action is tightly paced and thrilling. The music, by the Chieftains, is first-rate. There’s not a misstep in the entire production from start to finish.
Insignificance. Not a great film, but a great concept with some (one for sure) great scenes. Four never named but clearly identifiable characters meet and interact in a hotel room in the 1950’s. The four are the professor (Albert Einstein), the actress (Marilyn Monroe), the ballplayer (Joe DiMaggio), and the senator (Joseph McCarthy). My favorite scene is when Marilyn Monroe explains the theory of special relativity to a delighted Einstein using toy trains and balloons.
I think that most people who post here would find it delightful.
If you like HP Lovecraft, you might like The Call of Cthulhu. It’s a fan film, but it’s way better than most other HPL adaptations.
If you’ve ever read any of F Paul Wilson’s work, you might try Others which is a collection of three (very) short films. It’s one of very few DVDs I own that’s literally home made (i.e. burned on a DVD-R).
two:
From Noon til 3 don’t know if its available or format- Charles Bronson is a robber in old west, meets up with Jill Ireland, a widow who has a secluded house, romantic and unexpected results.
Next : Bunny Lake is Missing, IME one of the most chilling thrillers evah. I also recommend the book (which is different than the movie, so reading/watching doesn’t screw up either).
Night on Earth, directed by Jim Jarmusch. Five stories of five different cab drivers across the world on a single night. It’s fascinating, and scenes from it stay with me even though I haven’t seen it for going on a decade now.
Undercover Blues. I don’t know how obscure it is, but nobody I know of ever heard of it until I showed it to them. It’s not a deep film by any means; it’s a fairly light-hearted family-rated buddy spy comedy with Dennis Quaid and Kathleen Turner as the leads. It manages to be consistently funny and smart, with clever writing and dialogue that all the actors deliver well.
Funny Games for its uncompromising and shocking view of sociopathic sadism that any of us, but for the grace of God, could fall victim to.
Jackelope – Netflix doesn’t currently have Last Night – I’ll keep my eye out, though.
Vision – saw Once in the theater last summer – the soundtrack has been in my play list consistently ever since. Yes, excellent film, and worth seeing.
Note: Stopped reading because I can keep track of no more than two specific things I want to respond to; will resume reading now.
Excellent recommendations, all – I’m adding a lot of films to my Netflix queue!
American Movie is one of my very favorite movies, but I don’t run into too many people who know it.
CalMeacham – I already had Creator in my queue, based on a previous Dope mention – I’ll move it up a bit. Having just added about 25 movies (mostly from this thread, but also a couple of Netflix “BTW” recommendations as I was adding those, plus a few other things I randomly remembered), I am now going to have to significantly reorder my queue. Yay!
Thanks all – I look forward to adding plenty more!
Seconded.
It’s the Ben Kingsley movie that no one I ever talk to seems to have seen. He’s an operative for the Turks in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire, trying to keep up appearances in the face of some very suspicious goings on once a mysterious British treasure hunter shows up.
I’ll make my usual recommendation to such threads as this: The Year My Voice Broke, a great little Australian coming-of-age film. If you like it, there’s a sequel, Flirting (which has a young Nicole Kidman in the cast).
Richard Dreyfuss, a B-rate actor, is forced to pretend to be the dictator of a South American country by the 2nd in command, Raul Julia.
Very funny as well as philosophical.
If you like war movies (and speaking of Australian films), have you seen Breaker Morant? Set in the Boer War.
And Rescue Dawn is a recent Vietnam film (starring Christian Bale and Steve Zahn) that passed without a lot of notice but which is an incredible film.
My Life as a Dog. Swedish film that gets children about as well as I’ve seen on the big screen. Also makes me like Sweden
Switchblade Sisters, a 1975 Jack Hill movie we rented on a recommendation by Quentin Tarantino, which has become one of our favourite movies ever. Totally silly 70’s exploitation-type film, with a twist: it’s more or less Othello, only with girl gangs. None of my friends has heard of it, all of them love it when I make them watch it. Great soundtrack, too.
Revengers Tragedy, movie adaptation of a play written by Thomas Middleton in 1607 (actually, I think there’s some controversy as to who actually wrote it, but this is what IMDB says), using the language of the play in a weird sort of post-apocalyptic setting, with Christopher Eccleston, Derek Jacobi and Eddie Izzard. Amazing movie I never would have heard of if not for my Eccleston obsession.
YMMV, of course, as to whether these are considered movies not a lot of people have seen, but in my circles absolutely no one’s heard of them until I bring them up.
Glad you liked the film.
I’ve been doing a series of comments (now a blog) on movies that have been overlooked. It’s currently at http://greatbutforgotten.blogspot.com, with older comments at SFF Net
I could mention many of these, but I’ll throw out Deathwatch, since no one is likely to have seen it, and Meduim Cool