Forgotten Movies to Watch on a Rainy Sunday

With a couple of exceptions, these movies aren't cinematic masterpieces.  However, they each have something to offer--an evocative atmosphere, perhaps, or a unique story line.  A few of them are cult classics.  Several of them are charmingly bad.  A few will play with your mind.  All of them are wonderful for one reason or another.  Unfortunately, all have been forgotten by mainstream audiences.

Maybe I'll Come Home in the Spring (1971)

Starring Sally Field, Eleanor Parker & David Carradine

Sally Field plays a rebellious teen who runs away from her conventional, upper middle-class family. Once she returns home, she struggles to find her place within the conventions that were once so familiar.  Her judgment is put to the test when her hippie boyfriend, played by Carradine, shows up to reclaim her.

Why you should see it:   Its surprising realism.  Hollywood would have you think that youth culture in the 60's was all about freedom, lovemaking and mind-expansion. Not so. Disenchanted runaways rarely found Utopia.   Many of them ate out of garbage cans, contracted STD's and had no means of maintaining their own hygiene. Without the protection of societal authority, they were often the victims of theft, rape, and physical abuse. This film doesn't try to pretty it up.

Sister, Sister (1987)

Starring Jennifer Jason Leigh & Eric Stoltz

A Southern Gothic film set in the bayous of Louisiana.  Jennifer Jason Leigh is an emotionally fragile young woman who lives with her older, more stable sister in the family's antebellum mansion.

Why you should see it:  Atmosphere.  The dialogue is weak and the plot, predictable.  However, there is actually some solid cinematography here.  Imagine ghostly lanterns swaying in a dark, misty bayou.  Imagine an earthy Cajun fisherman, played by Benjamin Mouton, gliding his flat-bottomed boat through the murky waters calling softly for Lucy.  The atmosphere is so evocative you can almost feel the dampness of the bayou on the back of your neck.

That Night (1992)

Starring Juliette Lewis, C. Thomas Howell & Eliza Dushku

Girls learn how to be women by watching the behavior of the women around them.  Such is the story of ten year-old Alice, a smart, sensitive girl coming of age in Long Island in 1961.  Across the street from Alice lives Sheryl, her girl crush, played with confidence by Juliette Lewis.  Young Alice spies on Sheryl from her window, observing her behavior, her habits, digesting her supreme self-ownership.  When circumstances bring the two of them together, a bittersweet friendship develops.

Why you should see it:  The nostalgia.  No matter when you grew up, you will remember what it was like to be Alice; awkward, undeveloped, and rehearsing for adulthood.  Most of us can also remember what it was like to be Sheryl; that brief period of time in which our sexuality was new to us; when love and lust were the same thing, when we looked at the road ahead of us and saw only good things lying in wait.

The Beguiled (1971)

Starring Clint Eastwood and Geraldine Page

One of Clint Eastwood's lesser-known films, The Beguiled tells the story of a wounded Yankee soldier who finds sanctuary in a private school full of Southern belles.  The story is not a romance; it is a psychological suspense film, and like most psychological thrillers, the atmosphere is dark and spine-chilling.  The ever-changing balance of power between Eastwood and each of the ladies will leave you wondering who is doing the beguiling and who, in fact, has been beguiled.

Why you should see it:  You will see a part of yourself in each of these women.  There is the shy but trusting good girl.  There is the sexually aggressive temptress.  There is the Alpha headmistress, played by Geraldine Page, whose suppressed longings make her seem like easy prey.  This is mostly her story, but it is ours too.  It is the story of every woman who has been seriously underestimated by a player.

The Bad Seed (1956)

Starring Patty McCormack, Nancy Kelly & Eileen Heckart

Let's face it.  Evil children are fascinating, especially when their evil is believable.  The strength of this film (based on the 1954 novel by William March) is its credibility.  Little Rhoda isn't possessed by the devil.  She isn't a zombie.  She hasn't been genetically altered or bitten by a vampire.  It's more frightening than that.  She is a full-fledged sociopath who may have inherited the "bad seed" from her grandmother.  That's where the chill factor lies--right there in the premise that evil is embedded in nature, and can't be eradicated by any amount of nurture.

Why you should see it:  It is probably the best Evil Child film ever made.  The acting, even among the secondary characters, is flawless.  The suspense, which stays pretty high throughout the film, becomes almost unbearable against the backdrop of Rhoda's childish piano-playing.  If you have children, you will feel grateful for their comparatively benign shortcomings.  If you don't have children, you just might end up feeling you dodged a bullet.

Valley of the Dolls (1967)



Starring Patti Duke, Barbara Parkins, Sharon Tate

Salacious, delicious, and 1960's-style camp.  In one movie, you get a good girl gone bad, an elegant ice queen, an achingly sweet sex kitten (played tragically by the equally tragic Sharon Tate).  You've got husband-stealing, drug addictions, a gay man trapped in a straight marriage, a suicide, a degenerative disease, and a wig being ripped off an aging diva's head and flushed down the toilet.  Not enough for you?   There are glamorous photo shoots, sequined show girls, and more wardrobe changes than a Real Housewife of Anywhere could keep up with.  Still not enough?  Alright, you've got behind-the-scenes controversies galore.  For instance, Judy Garland was cast in the film but was fired because of her own pill-fueled behavior.  Raquel Welch was offered a role in the film but turned it down because she felt the movie was too trashy.  (Digest that for a moment.  It was too trashy for the actress who played a bikini-clad cavegirl in One Million Years BC and a cat-fighting roller derby girl in Kansas City Bomber).  Lastly, author Jacqueline Susanne felt the film version of her novel was so bad that she walked out of its premier.  This is a woman whose own writing style was so bad that her publisher had to rewrite the novel from top to bottom "just to get it to mediocre."  The reality checks just keep on coming.

Why you should see it: You can't call yourself a connoisseur of B movies until you've watched Valley of the Dolls.  In keeping with the spirit of the movie, you should watch it on an evening when you're laying half-naked on your couch, eating something that's bad for your arteries, drinking something that leads to bad decisions, and laying in the arms of someone who is bad for your reputation.

Hysterical Blindness (2002)

Starring Uma Thurman, Juliette Lewis, Gena Rowlands & Ben Gazarra

This gritty and often-uncomfortable HBO movie earned Uma Thurman a Golden Globe award. She plays Debbie, a Jersey girl desperately looking for love. Toward that end, she makes herself sexually available to any man who throws a tidbit of attention her way.  Her neediness and her desperation make her unappealing as a real girlfriend, so she is continually used for sex only.  Naturally, this leaves her devoid of self-worth. Thurman is so convincing in this role that you find yourself wanting to reach through the screen, grab her out of the bar, and have a heart-to-heart girl talk with her.

Why you should see it: The story is a painful but necessary eye-opener for young women who believe that having sex with a guy is a good way to get him to love you.

Don't Look Now (1973)

Starring Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland

This is one of those forgotten films that actually is a cinematatic masterpiece.

After losing their young daughter to a tragic accident, a married couple takes a working vacation in Venice.  There, the spirit of their child tries to warn them through a medium that they are in grave danger.   

Why you should see it:  At the very least, the scenery of Venice, but there is so much more.  The story is dark, slow-moving, and unsettling.  Many have described it as one of the scariest movies ever made, primarily because it does not depend on conventional scare tactics.  There are no rapid-fire action scenes or terrorizing ghosts.  There is only the unnerving aloneness of this tragic couple and the inevitable sense of doom that follows them to Venice.  The film is so well crafted that you can feel that doom like a cold draft emanating from your tv screen.

The Omega Man (1971)

Starring Charlton Heston and Anthony Zerbe

This was one of the best apocalypse movies.  Charlton Heston plays a military physician who survives a biological warfare event.  While the other survivors have been turned into albino zombies, he has been spared by having inoculated himself with an experimental vaccine.  Survival, however, is a dubious blessing; the moment the sun goes down, Heston must fight leagues of zombies who are out to claim his soul.  While he fights the good fight, we get to see zombies falling from balconies, firebombs, and motorcycle stunts.  There is also an entertaining sexual chemistry between Heston and Lisa, his beautiful, jive-talking, leather-jacketed girlfriend. (Hers was a pretty standard character of the era's Blackploitation films).

Why you should see it:  Its credibility.  While the premise sounds outlandish, it is written skillfully enough to leave no doubt that this is exactly how the world would feel for a survivor of an apocalypse.  (Screenwriter Joyce Corrington held a doctorate in Chemistry and wanted the plot to be credible).  Watch this one on a night when you have someone warm and pigmented to hold onto.

Freaks (1932)

Starring a cast of real-life carnival performers

Here's the uncomfortable truth.  During a regrettable period in Western society, those who were born with severe birth defects were either euthanized, hidden away in sanatoriums, or were sold by their families to the circus.  Freaks is their story.  It begins when two "normal" carnival performers--the Strong Man and the beautiful trapeze artist--attempt to impart harm on one of the midgets.  They soon learn that their strength and beauty are no match for the protectiveness that these self-described "freaks" feel for one another.

Why you should see it:  On principle.  The film was banned in the UK for 30 years.  While the ban was benevolent in its intentions, it was terribly misguided, as it deprived these actors of earnings they needed and deserved.

Certainly there were circus freaks who were abused, however most were not.  Most were smart, business-savvy professionals who guided their own careers.  Those who were cognitively impaired were often cared for till death by fellow carnies.  None asked for our pity or protection.  They didn't need it.  They took care of themselves and they took care of their own, as illustrated in this film.  To shun Freaks based on political correctness is to undermine the nobility of these performers.

Trilogy of Terror (1975)

Starring Karen Black

This odd little made-for-TV film is actually a trio of stories in which Karen Black portrays four different characters (two of them twins).  The first two stories are weak.  Watch those while you're doing housework or paying bills.  You'll want to sit down for the third, though.  This is the story for which the movie is best known.  It involves Amelia, a single woman who lives a humdrum life until the day she receives a gift in the form of a Zuni fetish doll.  The doll takes life, changing Amelia forever.

Why you should see it:  The oddity of it all.  You won't be able to stop watching, and at least once, you will ask yourself, "Am I really seeing this?"  It's laughable and horrific and quirky. 

Interesting note: Karen Black, a smart and legitimate actress, felt this was the movie that permanently typecast her in B-grade horror films.  Once you see it, you will understand how one little screeching, knife-wielding Zuni doll was able to alter the course of her career.