There are many reasons to be nostalgic for video stores, often tied to the same qualities that made them frustrating. Stores could be cluttered, their selection could be unpredictable, and getting a new release sometimes felt like it required camping out overnight. But those same elements all had a certain charm. Who knew what surprises awaited on the back shelves of a mom-and-pop video store, or what might have accidentally found its way into the neighborhood Blockbuster? Not being able to find the movie you thought you wanted sometimes meant having to find an even better, off-the-beaten-path second choice.
In the streaming era, no one has to seek out second choices due to high demand. Not only are the hottest new releases always available, streaming services like Netflix and VOD sources like Vudu seem designed to steer viewers toward what everyone else is watching. But there’s another side of the streaming world: little-traveled byways where you can practically see the dust gathering on VHS boxes. These services’ hunger for content has created catalogs filled seemingly at random with overlooked titles, oddities, and obscurities just waiting for the adventurous to find them, including films that had been almost impossible to get hold of in the years before streaming.
The best specialized services have done a remarkable job curating their offerings for particular audiences, often surrounding their titles with context that enriches the viewing experience. But while browsing Shudder or the Criterion Channel can feel a bit like visiting a lovingly curated museum, a plunge into the depths of Amazon’s Prime Video, Pluto.TV and other more mass market spots is more like stumbling into a thrift store. Treasures await those willing to sift through these seemingly randomly assembled selections — and usually with no additional fee (in the case of Prime, Paramount Plus or other subscription services) or no fee at all, for those willing to sit through the occasional ad on Pluto.TV and its ilk. The streaming era feels confounding. But it can also feel exciting. Below are twenty choice selections plucked from the seeming chaos.
Wheels on Meals (1984)
Jackie Chan rose to fame in the golden age of Hong Kong filmmaking, but it’s generally been a lot easier to find his later, iffier movies than classics like Wheels on Meals, in which Chan co-stars alongside his friends and Peking Opera School classmates Sammo Hung (who directs) and Yuen Biao. The three play cousins who work at a food truck in Barcelona — and that’s set-up enough for one amazing comedic action set piece after another. A lot of Hong Kong films have fallen through the cracks over the years. (Just try searching for one of John Woo’s classics.) But this one can be found alongside a handful of other Chan movies on some services. (Find it on: Prime, Paramount Plus)
Winter Kills (1979)
Adapted from a novel by The Manchurian Candidate author Richard Condon, Winter Kills turns the story of a Kennedy-like president’s assassination into a pitch dark, star-packed black comedy. The film — starring Jeff Bridges with a supporting cast that includes everyone from Anthony Perkins to Toshiro Mifune — barely saw release in 1979, but as the strangest of all the paranoid ’70s thrillers, it’s inevitably picked up a cult following over the years, which grew when it was re-released on DVD in the early aughts. It’s gone in and out of circulation over the years, but it’s currently just a click away. (Find it on: Prime)
Seconds (1966)
The Manchurian Candidate itself remained largely unseen after its first run only to become recognized as a classic years after its release. It took a little longer for Frankenheimer’s bizarre and disturbing Seconds to achieve the same status. John Randolph stars as an aging man who, unsatisfied with what his life has become, pays to be “reborn” through plastic surgery. He emerges from the process as a handsome young man played by Rock Hudson but soon discovers his new life is its own kind of nightmare. It often plays like an experimental, feature-length installment of The Twilight Zone with Frankenheimer and veteran cinematographer James Wong Howe trying out every strange idea that ever occurred to them. A flop on release, its reputation rebounded when it was re-released in the 1990s. (Find it on: Paramount Plus)
Sonatine (1993)
Takeshi Kitano had been a popular comic and host on Japanese TV before becoming the star and director of artfully brutal action films like Violent Cop. One of his best films, Sonatine tells the story of a yakuza enforcer who tries to leave a life of crime behind and, for a while, seems to succeed, carving out a new life in a seaside town. It doesn’t last, but much of the film’s power comes from the stark contrast it presents between peacefulness and violence. Picked up by Miramax, it’s now one of a handful of arthouse classics that can be found alongside much more familiar fare on Paramount Plus. (Find it on: Paramount Plus)
The TV Set (2006)
Despite appearing in an era when just about anything producer Judd Apatow touched became a hit, writer/director Jake Kasdan’s The TV Set struggled at the box office. Starring David Duchovny, it’s a funny and unfailingly mean depiction of what it takes to work in television—and the near-impossibility of realizing an artistic vision without compromise. It may have slipped through-the-cracks, but feels almost made to be rediscovered in the low-stakes streaming era. (Find it on: Prime, Peacock, Tubi, Popcornflix, Pluto)
Sign O’ the Times (1988)
A concert film built around Prince’s double-album 1987 masterpiece, Sign O’ the Times earned strong reviews when it hit theaters but fans largely stayed away. Maybe they were mad Prince never brought that semi-legendary tour to the US? Whatever the reason, Sign O’ the Times became almost impossible to see for years until, suddenly it wasn’t, showing up on virtually every streaming service around. That’s good news for anyone who wants to see a master in his prime. (Find it on: Peacock, Vudu (free selection), Tubi, Pluto)
Gerry (2002)
Gus Van Sant and Matt Damon had tremendous success when they teamed up for Good Will Hunting. That gave them a little room to experiment with their next collaboration, in which Damon and Casey Affleck play hikers, both apparently named “Gerry,” who find themselves lost in the desert. Inspired by the long shots of Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr and Van Sant’s fascination with the video game Tomb Raider, Gerry follows the pair as they crack jokes, then grow increasingly desperate as they realize how lost they’ve become. To put it kindly, substantially fewer moviegoers saw it in theaters than saw Good Will Hunting (or Van Sant’s Psycho remake, for that matter), but its hypnotic power plays just as well at home. (Find it on: Peacock, Vudu (free selection), Tubi, Crackle, Popcornflix, Pluto, Shout Factory)
Cockfighter (1974)
Monte Hellman’s Two-Lane Blacktop was supposed to be one of the film events of 1971. That didn’t happen and, in retrospect, it’s hard to imagine how it could have. Even with James Taylor and Dennis Wilson in starring roles, it’s a demanding film that’s more “Hemi-powered existential journey” than “madcap cross-country race.” Hellman’s Roger Corman-produced follow-up, adapted from a Charles Willeford novel, looks like an exploitation film but mostly focuses on the restless life of its eponymous, voluntarily mute cockfighter played by the great Warren Oates. Finding it used to mean shelling out big bucks on eBay but now it’s a click away on Prime. (A word of warning: it’s not fun to watch the cockfighting scenes, even if the Humane Society supervised some of the shooting at the request of then–Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter.) (Find it on: Prime.)
Vampire’s Kiss (1989)
Made immediately after the romantic Moonstruck, Vampire’s Kiss casts Nicolas Cage as a yuppie book editor who gets bitten by a vampire. Or maybe he doesn’t. Either way, he thinks he’s a vampire and slowly starts to lose his mind. Cage now refers to this movie as a laboratory in which he tried out new acting tricks — strange voices, facial expressions inspired by the silent era, and, most infamously, bug eating — that he could revive in later roles. Bug-eating aside, traces of his work here turn up in everything from Face/Off to Leaving Las Vegas. The film itself works as a strong, if frequently uncomfortable, depiction of toxic masculinity before it even had a name. (Find it on: Pluto)
Miracle Mile (1988)
Released in 1988, as glasnost started to redefine the Cold War, writer/director Steve de Jarnatt’s Miracle Mile stages an LA love story against the backdrop of a looming nuclear strike, recreating the dread that so many experienced just a few years earlier. Anthony Edwards and Mare Winningham play the would-be couple, separated by bad luck and trying to reunite before the bombs fall. The screenplay kicked around Hollywood for years before getting made, then met with commercial indifference, but admirers have rightly caught up with it over the years. (Find it on: Tubi, Pluto)
The Crazies (1973)
George Romero made several films between his zombie masterpieces Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, including this politically minded chiller about a plague spreading across America, exposing divisions that kill as easily as the disease. It’s a less-seen Romero effort that’s rough around the edges but all the more powerful for it — and sadly timely as well. (Find it on: Prime, Vudu (free selection), Tubi)
Under the Silver Lake (2018)
Another unusual LA story that most viewers missed in theaters (in part because distributor A24 didn’t know how to market it), David Robert Mitchell’s Under the Silver Lake imagines an LA knitted together by conspiracy theories, dog killers, and secrets hiding in plain sight. Andrew Garfield stars as a disaffected slacker, and his commitment to keeping the hero defiantly unlikable and a plot that often plays like a puzzle without solution will doubtlessly be a turn off for some viewers. Their loss; it’s a must-see for anyone willing to get on its odd wavelength. (Find it on: Prime)
A Fistful of Dynamite (1971)
Everyone knows that Sergio Leone’s Man With No Name trilogy (A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly) and Once Upon a Time in the West are essential viewing. But don’t sleep on Leone’s less-seen fifth Western, A Fistful of Dynamite (also known as Duck, You Sucker). Starring James Coburn and Rod Steiger and set against the backdrop of the Mexican Revolution, it finds Leone using the Western to comment on the turbulent times around him. (The original cut, which is also the one available for streaming, even opens with a quote from Mao.) It’s more chaotic and even morally murkier than Leone’s earlier films. (Find it on: Pluto)
Keoma (1976)
Leone’s films created a boom in what became known as spaghetti Westerns, due to their largely Italian origins. They number in the hundreds and can be found scattered across many streaming services, making it hard to know where to start. As good as it is, you shouldn’t start with Keoma, directed by Enzo G. Castellari (director of the original, and properly spelled, Inglorious Bastards). One of the last proper spaghetti Westerns, it plays like an elegy for the genre, filled with mournful passages and nods to earlier films as the title character (Franco Nero), a half-white/half-Native American, takes a stand against his own family, who’ve thrown in with a sadistic villain. Like many spaghetti Westerns, it found a much larger audience in Europe than the United States, but has resurfaced several times over the years, first on home video and again on streaming services. (Find it on: Vudu free selection, Tubi)
Detour (1945)
Even with the deep catalogs offered by Criterion and HBO Max, the streaming era hasn’t been that kind to movies made before the Nixon administration. One particularly heartbreaking development: When Peacock debuted last year, it featured a remarkable selection of classic films from the Universal library, even for those who opted not to upgrade to a paid membership. But by 2021 they all disappeared, leaving behind a lot of schlock like Apocalypse Pompeii and 2-Headed Shark Attack. There are still some gems out there that don’t require a full rental fee for those who look hard enough, however, like Edgar G. Ulmer’s classic film noir/road movie about a man doomed by bad luck and bad choices on a cross-country road trip. Though long in the public domain and circulating in beat-up prints, the crisp 2018 restoration is now pretty easy to find. (Find it on: Prime)
Thomasine & Bushrod (1974)
Super Fly director Gordon Parks Jr. only completed a few films before his untimely death in a plane crash while working on a project in Kenya. They included this lesser-known tale of lovers on the run in the final days of the Old West starring Max Julien (The Mack) and Vonetta McGee (The Eiger Sanction). The two play a good-hearted couple who turn to crime both to better themselves but also to improve the lives of the poor and marginalized around them. (Find it on: Prime, Pluto, Tubi)
The Wailing (2016)
The remarkable emergence of South Korean talent has involved directors working in every genre imaginable, including a rich strain of horror films. This intense, unpredictable tale centers on mysterious happenings in a remote village that the locals blame on a new resident from Japan. It’s more complicated than that, however, and director Na Hong-jin uses the scenario to explore superstition, religion, and the persistence of old beliefs in modern times, as the film builds to a tense, scary climax. (Find it on: Prime,Tubi, Crackle, Pluto)
Macon County Line (1974)
Sometimes a film can be a sizable hit and still fall into semi-obscurity. Macon County Line was 1974’s most profitable film, making millions on a low-budget via the story of some ’50s kids (real-life brothers Alan and Jesse Vint) on the run from the law for a crime they did not commit. A strong anti-authoritarian streak runs throughout the movie, which packed drive-ins and inspired a sequel but faded from prominence over the years. Some poky elements aside, it remains both a compelling story of revenge and injustice and a cinematic time capsule of a ’70s moment when audiences seemingly couldn’t get enough of two-fisted tales set in the American South. (Find it on: Prime, Tubi, Pluto)
Death Bed: The Bed That Eats (1977)
A different sort of ’70s artifact, this movie served as the subject of a funny Patton Oswalt routine, but the film itself is just as funny, if not by design. It’s not just a horror movie about a killer bed. It’s a horror movie about a killer bed that depends on unsuspecting passersby happening upon it and deciding to try it out. The weirdness doesn’t end there, but it kind of has to be seen to be believed. (Find it on: Prime, Tubi)
California Split (1974)
Robert Altman made California Split as part of an epic ’70s run of one great film after another, seldom revisiting the same genre twice. In the dark comedy California Split, George Segal and Elliot Gould play men whose love of gambling takes over their lives and who respond in strikingly different ways. The film didn’t find an audience in theaters and only appeared in butchered form on home video due to music rights issues, to the despair of Altman fans. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, it popped up online, a miracle of the streaming age — and a reminder of what can be found with a little bit of online wandering. (Find it on: Prime)