This film was a touchstone of the late 1960s, when it was seen as an antiwar allegory for a world in which madness seemed to reign. Of course, that would probably be true whenever this movie was shown, wouldn't it? Directed by Philippe de Broca and set during World War I, King of Hearts stars Alan Bates as a Scottish soldier separated from his unit in France. He wanders into a small French ...

Manufacturer: MGM (Video & DVD)
Starring: Jacques Balutin, Alan Bates, Jackie Blanchot, Robert Blome, Pierre Brasseur

Black comedies don't come much blacker than this cult favorite from 1972, and they don't come much funnier, either. It seemed that director Hal Ashby was the perfect choice to mine a mother lode of eccentricity from the original script by Colin Higgins, about the unlikely romance between a death-obsessed 19-year-old named Harold (Bud Cort) and a life-loving 79-year-old widow named Maude (Ruth ...

Manufacturer: Paramount
Starring: Harvey Brumfield, Eric Christmas, Bud Cort, Cyril Cusack, Gordon Devol

"I've never seen a woman who was more like a man," a character observes of Vienna (Joan Crawford), who has just opened a saloon that hasn't exactly endeared itself to the local townspeople. Emma (Mercedes McCambridge), the local sexually repressed, lynch-happy harpy, is particularly displeased. Vienna is wooed both by the Dancin' Kid (Scott Brady) and by Johnny Guitar (Sterling Hayden), a ...

Manufacturer: Republic Pictures
Starring: Joan Crawford, Sterling Hayden, Mercedes McCambridge, Scott Brady, Ward Bond
Directed By: Nicholas Ray

Lured by their dreams of fame and fortune, three ambitious young women enter the world of show business and discover how easy it is to sink into a celebrity nightmare of ego, alcohol and 'pills' - the beloved "dolls." A prim New Englander (Barbara Parkins) unexpectedly skyrockets from her job as secretary in a talent agency to a glamorous TV model. A determined singer (Patty Duke) finds that ...

Manufacturer: 20th Century Fox
Starring: Barbara Parkins, Patty Duke, Paul Burke, Sharon Tate, Tony Scotti
Directed By: Mark Robson

This is the movie that made John Waters famous, and quite possibly the film that made bad taste cool. Yes, Virginia, a large transvestite actually eats dog feces as a kind of dizzying denouement to this frequently illogical and intentionally disgusting movie, but by the time that happens, you're already numb ... and you've possibly laughed to the point of losing bladder control. The plot ...

Manufacturer: Saliva Films
Starring: Nancy Crystal, Divine, Pat Lefaiver, David Lochary, Edith Massey
Directed By: John Waters

If Franz Kafka had been an animator and film director--oh, and a member of Monty Python's Flying Circus--this is the sort of outrageously dystopian satire one could easily imagine him making. However, Brazil was made by Terry Gilliam, who is all of the above except, of course, Franz Kafka. Be that as it may, Gilliam sure captures the paranoid-subversive spirit of Kafka's The Trial ...

Manufacturer: Universal Studios
Starring: Jim Broadbent, Ray Cooper (II), Robert De Niro, John Flanagan, Kim Greist

When Goldie Hawn recommended Elizabeth Berkley for a small role in First Wives Club, she publicly stated that Berkley deserved the opportunity to redeem herself after starring in the ridiculous Showgirls. That says it all: this sleazy, stupid movie, which mixes soft pornography with the clichés of backstage dramas, is the kind of project an aspiring actress would have to put well ...

Manufacturer: MGM/United Artists
Starring: Gina Gershon

Writer-director Sam Raimi's extremely stylized, blood-soaked follow-up to his creepy Evil Dead isn't really a sequel; rather, it's a remake on a better budget. It also isn't really a horror film (though there are plenty of decapitations, zombies, supernatural demons, and gore) as much as it is a hilarious, sophisticated slapstick send-up of the terror genre. Raimi takes every horror ...

Manufacturer: Starz / Anchor Bay
Starring: Sid Abrams, Josh Becker, Sarah Berry, Denise Bixler, Bruce Campbell

After the cultish success of Repo Man, maverick director Alex Cox made the film that remains his masterpiece--a loud, brash, abrasive, painful, funny, and utterly brilliant screen biography of British punk rocker Sid Vicious and his American girlfriend Nancy Spungen. As played to perfection by Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb, Sid and Nancy are made for each other, serving their mutual strengths ...

Manufacturer: MGM (Video & DVD)
Starring: Sandy Baron, Perry Benson, Xander Berkeley, Debby Bishop, Rusty Blitz

A cultish horror favorite, 1962's What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? will make you think twice before hungrily unveiling a covered plate of food. Bette Davis stars as Jane Hudson, a onetime child actress and singer. As an elderly woman, she wishes to revive her vaudevillian career, but she has become a grotesque caricature of her former self. Over the years as her star faded, the star of her ...

Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
Starring: Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Victor Buono, Wesley Addy, Julie Allred
Directed By: Robert Aldrich