Back in the day I wrote about the most obscure movies I’d seen and a couple of years later I wrote about my favorite obscure movies. This is continuing that latter one.
The number of votes is from IMDb as of 28th of April, 2024.
West Indies (Med Hondo, 1979) – 198 Votes
Okay, so, let’s start with this. This is actually criminally underseen. Well, that’s hyperbolic, but this is the kind of movie I would like to show people, because this is just great. I guess movies made on Mauritius aren’t that interesting, although they should be.
It’s about the history of slavery in the West Indies and it’s modern day repercussions by a director from Mauritania. And it’s a musical. I love how the various characters are depicted and how the corruption and indifference towards the black population are seen as natural by some of them. It moves fast through history and not chronologically, but it explains everything in a very understandable way.
It’s just a great movie.
Soleil Ô (Med Hondo, 1970) – 835 votes
Previous director’s film debut. This is a quite confident movie and a nice addition to the previous one.
It’s about a man, who immigrates to Paris to find work, but faces racism.
Final Flesh (Ike Sanders, 2009) – 365 votes
This one… I would recommend for very different reasons. This is not a good movie, but that doesn’t mean I can’t recommend this, because this is an interesting movie. I just need to give a warning first. This is an anthology of sorts. The filmmakers learned that there are small studios that specialize in made-to-order adult entertainment. So, they ordered some of these around the same theme and just made them into a movie. It’s not really adult entertainment though there is some nudity and the quality of the different segments varies wildly with the last one actually been pretty good.
Doggiewoggiez! Poochiewoochiez! (Nic Maier & Dimitri Simakis, 2012) – 197 votes
Similar to the previous one, I can’t really recommend this for the quality, although this one is better in that regard, but I can recommend this for being interesting. This is a remake of Jodorowsky’s Holy Mountain made entirely of dog videos. No further information needed. Either your sold or not. You can find it on YouTube.
Anchoress (Chris Newby, 1993) – 453 votes
Anchoresses were women who were walled in next to churches as some kind of holy virgins. Christine is one of them, except that as she spends time there, her desires start to awaken.
This is listed as a drama on IMDb, but it was also a part of a great collection of folk horror movies called All the Haunts Be Ours.
Koiya koi nasuna koi or The Mad Fox (Tomu Uchida, 1962) – 453 votes
I believe this is based on a Japanese legend. I thought this was actually a pretty well-known movie, but apparently I was wrong. It’s about a man who marries a fox in the guise of a woman, but in the end can’t handle the rules.
L’homme qui ment or The Man Who Lies (Alain Robbe-Grillet, 1968) – 962 votes
Again, I thought this would have been a better known film. Alain Robbe-Grillet is kind of a cult figure in European cinema after all. Maybe a little too cult, I guess. Even the better known films he directed don’t have many more votes.
This is a movie about a man who claims to be a member of the resistance in a small town under German occupation in France. He has trouble keeping his story together.
Lake Michigan Monster (Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, 2018) – 775 votes
Just a fun little comedy adventure about a lake captain who wants to find the titular monster. It does get kind of weird.
Marerittet or Nightmare (Kjersti Helen Rasmussen, 2022) – 807 votes
I guess this could still find an audience, although I doubt others are going to find this as good as I did.
It is about nightmares and is based on various legends about their nature and origins. At the same time, it’s about a complicated family dynamic, when there’s a problem with one of the family membes, which no-one really understands.
Chained for Life (Aaron Schimberg, 2018) – 900 votes
An actress is supposed to play a romantic role opposite a man, but finds it hard due to his disfigurement.
This is quite ambitious. I mean, you could easily mess this up by not handling the topic properly, but it works and is actually kind of funny at times.