5. Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933)
When the Paris Hilton House of Wax came out a couple of years ago, lots of folks snickered. How bad must the movie be, they wondered, if the producers felt compelled to cast the bimbo du jour to sell tickets? A few people were actually offended, because the Vincent Price House of Wax from 1953 is a classic. Why remake this great movie when the original is such a wonderful film, and still so well-known? Everyone in the bar kept saying, “Oh, the original is soooo much better.”
Well, they were right, the original is better, but Vincent Price wasn’t in it. The original came out twenty years earlier.  It was directed by Michael (Casablanca) Curtiz and starred Lionel Atwill (one of the coolest actors of the era), Glenda Farrell (the original tough cookie), and Fay Wray (‘nuff said). Despite the presence of Price, the cast of the later film is grossly inferior; about the most that can be said for them is that it’s fun to recognize Carolyn (Morticia Addams) Jones as an early victim, and you might possibly be able to pick out an impossibly young Charles Bronson in a small part.
Also, the Atwill version avoids the casual sexism so prevalent in the Price version. It says a lot about what a cultural and political wasteland the U.S. was in the Fifties that the strong, independent female characters of the first film become weak-kneed screamers twenty years later. It’s interesting intellectually that the two films could have such different vibes, with nearly identical screenplays; it shows the power that directors have regardless of the script. The censors of the fifties are shown up as sheltered prudes as well by the fact that Atwill’s assistant, a junkie, is transformed into an alcoholic in the remake. God forbid you mention drugs, even if the character using them is a disgusting, pathetic rat. I suppose the censors' logic was that kids in the Thirties were smart enough to handle that sort of thing, but kids had gotten a lot stupider by the Fifties.
It is true that the Price version has great nostalgic value. That is, in fact, the only value it has. I like to watch it now and then as a “blast from the past,” but when I want to watch a great movie, I watch The Mystery of the Wax Museum instead. Unfortunately, in spite of its superiority, it has been replaced in the public imagination by Price's remake.  This film is already out of print on DVD, and now that there's yet another remake to distract people from this little gem, it's likely to be forgotten entirely.  That's really a shame.  (8/10)

4. Tank Girl (1995)
Okay, first things first: the dust-shower scene with Portishead’s “Roads” playing in the background is incredibly lovely. It’s stark and sad and hypnotic, and if you can’t appreciate it then the love of beauty does not abide in you. I can’t believe the band didn’t put out a video based on it.
Otherwise, this is a silly, silly movie. The script is outlandish. The effects leave much to be desired. The Rippers are…well, they’re kinda goofy, really. It can’t be easy to make half-man/half-kangaroos look realistic, much less scary, but the Rippers look like trick-or-treaters in this movie. And Lori Petty is almost as deliriously over-the-top in the title role as Malcolm McDowell is as the villain (I love ‘em both, though, AND Naomi Watts is tomboy-cool in her first American movie). So when this movie hit theaters a decade ago everyone hated it. I knew a lot of people who considered it the worst movie ever made. They tried to take it seriously, and as a serious movie it fails utterly.
But, see, the thing is this: it was based on a comic book. More than that, it was based on a really silly, over-the-top comic book. The comic was dumb fun, and so the movie was meant to be dumb fun, and it succeeds completely. Lately comic books have started getting taken seriously by Hollywood, and I’m not complaining about Spider-Man or X2, but these epic films aren’t really what comic books are about. You can’t shoot a film about superheroes and pretend you’re making Gone with the Wind.
Unlike the big recent comic blockbusters, this film is wonderfully unpretentious. It is exactly what it was meant to be. When you adapt a work from another medium to the big screen, the most important thing to be is true to the spirit of the original source material, and this movie manages that. Only The Crow is superior as a comic book adaptation, in my opinion; and where The Crow is morbid and dark, Tank Girl is cheerfully vicious and much more fun. (7/10)

3. Scrooge (1970)
This is THE adaptation of the story, though there have been many. Not because Albert Finney is brilliant in the title role, although he is. Not because of the fine supporting cast, including Alec Guinness and a bunch of English stage players who inhabit their roles perfectly. It’s because of my all-time favorite musical score. I’m gonna date myself here by admitting that I had the soundtrack for this film on 8-track, and listened to it almost daily for years growing up. The songs are all just so wonderful, clever and funny and poignant by turns. This is not only the best version of A Christmas Carol, it’s the best adaptation of any of Dickens’ work, and also the finest Christmas movie ever made (says the man who hates both Christmas movies and musicals). This should be compulsory viewing each December. (8/10)

2. True Grit (1969)
It might seem strange to include a film that garnered a Best Actor Oscar for its leading man on a list of underappreciated movies, but this one is a special case. John Wayne won the only Academy Award of his extraordinary career for this movie, and the conventional wisdom is that he didn’t really deserve it; it was more of a lifetime achievement award. Unfortunately, this widely-held belief leads people to devalue the film itself.
Well, I don’t know what was in the minds of the members of the Academy when they gave Wayne the Oscar, but I do know he deserved it. True Grit is his finest film, and Rooster Cogburn is the character he’ll always be identified with. This is the archetypal role of an archetypal American. Also it’s a fine script and an engaging story, and the support from Robert Duvall as Ned Pepper, Jeff Corey as Tom Cheney, and Kim Darby as Maddy Ross is all you could want (yes, I know Darby is annoying in the part, but she’s supposed to be…Maddy is an annoying character). Also, short but excellent appearances by Strother Martin (who, if we ever do a “Top 5 underrated actors” list, he’ll be on mine) as the corrupt and crotchety Col. Stonehill and John Fiedler as Lawyer J. Noble Daggett are priceless. The exchanges between Darby and Martin over some shady horse-trading shine with Maddy’s spoiled-brat intransigence and crackle with Stonehill’s dry wit and frustration; they are among the funniest and best-written in Western history. Many consider Glen Campbell miscast as the bumbling Texas Ranger LeBoeuf, but I say if you want to cast a bumbler, you can’t do much better than someone who doesn’t know how to act. (9/10)

1. The Unbelievable Truth (1989)
This one is less underrated than just plain unknown. It was the first film for both Hal Hartley and Adrienne Shelly. Hartley went on to become one of the best independent filmmakers in America (Henry Fool, No Such Thing, Trust) and Shelly to become the indie-film queen of the 90’s as an actress and later as writer and director (Waitress, I’ll Take You There, Sudden Manhattan). As with all of Hartley’s work it is quirky, funny, talky, and thoughtful; as always, Shelly is charming and perfect. The story is small and in places bizarre, but the characters are beautifully drawn: Josh, a mechanic who is more like a Shaolin monk, is released from prison and returns to his hometown.  No one there can seem to remember exactly what he did to get sent to prison in the first place, but it just MUST have been pretty bad.  Audry, a cynical girl wrestling with the meaninglessness of life, falls for him.  And, yeah, it's just that simple.  It's funny, but smart-funny, not Farrelly Brothers funny.
As an aside, Shelly and her character (Audry) together constitute a perfect copy of my ex-fiancée, and so it’s possible that I have more of an emotional investment in watching this movie than most. But even disregarding that, this is a small, rough, sparkling diamond of a movie. It’s out of print on DVD, but you can still get it at Netflix!!! (10/10)