Hidden Treasures

Secret Honor (1984)
Robert Altman's film of Philip Baker Hall's one-man show is an outrageous affront to the American Presidency. Taking the Nixon we discovered in the Watergate tapes and exponentially increasing the fear and loathing, Hall creates a drunken dark-night-of-the-spleen monologue that's hilarious and terrifying. It's the far side of every politician's grin.

The Sender (1982)
The public had tired of telekinesis by the time this stylish, often subtle, and very underrated horror film came out. Zeljko Ivanek gives a sensitive performance as a suicidal young man brought to a psychiatric hospital, where he transfers his bad thoughts to the institute's population. The theme of repressed rage and fear lends a dramatic believability to his powers.

Shack Out On 101 (1955)
A one-set camp classic that gives you Lee Marvin as a Communist short-order cook named Slob, Keenan Wynn doing calisthenics on a diner counter, Whit Bissell recovering from a nervous breakdown, and Terry Moore acting with her pointy '50s bra as the hash-slinging heroine who finds a Red in every bed. Good bad movies don't get better than this.

The Shanghai Gesture (1941)
Sardonic stylist Josef von Sternberg, flat on his back from an infection, directed this nougat of Hollywood kitsch from a cot, and the film feels like the director had more blood rushing to his brain than usual. Ona Munson is all 10-inch fingernails as Mother Gin Sling, proprietress of Shanghai's most depraved casino, and Gene Tierney is memorably petulant as Poppy, the debutante gone crazy on sex and drugs and sin. Then there's Victor Mature in a fez as ''Doctor Omar.'' It's von Sternberg's loosest film, and his loopiest — a passionate, demented, richly entertaining piece of nonsense.

Smile (1975)
Michael Ritchie's behind-the-scenes satire set at a ''Young American Miss'' competition was a flop in '75, too cynical for those who like beauty pageants, too humane for those who don't. But it's a wonderfully wry, insightful movie, with a cast worth a look by itself: Bruce Dern, Barbara Feldon, Michael Kidd, and especially a young Annette O'Toole.

Songwriter (1984)
Like a rambling Johnny Cash story-song, this slice of life is stronger on good-natured feel than actual plot. You won't mind, though. Willie Nelson essentially plays himself as the musician outlawed from the Nashville establishment and his own home, and Kris Kristofferson is the ex-partner he hooks up with again. Alan Rudolph directs with a relaxed touch.

The Stepfather (1987)
Character actor Terry O'Quinn is impressively screwy as a bland charmer with Father Knows Best on the brain and a dead family in every town. Directed by Sleeping With the Enemy's Joseph Ruben, this white-knuckle special never mistakes itself for anything but a taut, creepy-funny B screamer. That's to its credit.

Straight Time (1978)
In Dustin Hoffman's most unappreciated performance, he plays a compulsive, small-time crook who is released from prison and can't get the hang of living in the straight world. Hoffman captures the desperate logic that drives such antisocial hoods as Gary Gilmore — men who keep breaking the law because they just don't see it as real.

Streamers (1983)
Robert Altman helps detonate the verbal grenades in David Rabe's smotheringly claustrophobic play set in a Virginia Army barracks, where several young men nervously await transfer to Vietnam. Matthew Modine leads an exemplary cast in this distressing drama of how violence and inhumanity thrive in any setting. Moral: War, like charity, begins at home.

Streetwise (1985)
This portrait of homeless Seattle street kids is the rare documentary with the dramatic power of great fiction: It's like a cinema verité version of The Lower Depths. The movie puts us agonizingly close to the numb resilience and stunted dreams of adolescents who sell their bodies and eat out of Dumpsters to survive. These faces will haunt you for years — especially Tiny, the 14-year-old prostitute whose eerie, downturned smile already conveys the experience of the damned.

The Tenant (1976)
Roman Polanski directs and stars in this funny, sometimes terrifying thriller about a Polish expatriate who moves into a Paris apartment and begins to have delusions about his sinister neighbors. The third chapter in his apartment-house trilogy (after Repulsion and Rosemary's Baby), this is the most personal. Polanski's performance is a masterpiece of masochism: He burrows deep into the private, festering dread that drives people to suicide.

They Live by Night (1949)
The first film made by Nicholas Ray, this is a stunner. Later remade by Robert Altman as Thieves Like Us, Night stars Farley Granger and Cathy O'Donnell as young hicks in love and on the lam. Ray's original gets the nod for doomed romance, though, and the forgotten O'Donnell is incredibly affecting.

Ticket to Heaven (1981)
Ever wonder what it would be like to become a Moonie? Check out this riveting psychodrama about an ordinary guy (Nick Mancuso) made vulnerable by the loss of his girlfriend, who is seduced into the communal, accepting circle of the Heavenly Children. Made in Canada, it's perhaps the only movie that truly evokes the frightening psychology of modern cults.

Track 29 (1988)
Critics didn't know how to take this surreal puzzler directed by Nicolas Roeg, but that's because they're used to thinking of movies as the director's creation. This film starts to make sense only if you know the work of its writer, Dennis Potter. Like The Singing Detective, it's a reality-versus-pop culture black comedy, about a housewife (Theresa Russell) who imagines that the baby she gave up years ago has returned as randy, spooky Gary Oldman.

Twice Upon a Time (1983)
A PG-rated cartoon fable about a despot out to give the world permanent bad dreams that's filled with nightmare images and adult wordplay? No wonder family audiences said ''pass'' to this fantasy from executive producer George Lucas. It's too abstract for grade-schoolers, but teens and grown-ups who like fairy tales with a Pythonesque, warp-speed edge should enjoy it happily ever after.

Under Fire (1983)
The most human political thriller in years, this look at three journalists (Nick Nolte, Gene Hackman, and Joanna Cassidy) in Nicaragua manages to score all its points and still be engrossingly suspenseful. Even the romantic subplot doesn't seem stupid. The Year of Living Dangerously came out the same year and is better known, but Fire has fewer frills and a becoming directness.

Used Cars (1980)
Good-taste guardians have always hated this raunchy, high-spirited comedy, and that's all to the good. Kurt Russell is lovably venal as a car salesman with a down payment on political office, and the consistently rude script is consistently hilarious. Director Bob Zemeckis went on to the glossier Back to the Future trio and Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but this film is their equal in both laugh count and sheer spunk.

Vampire's Kiss (1989)
A cult has already formed for this outrageous black farce about a Manhattan trendoid (Nicolas Cage) who slips into insanity and thinks he's a vampire. The gag is that no one notices until it's way too late. It's another caustic slapstick money-loser from the pen of Joseph Minion, with a demento Cage performance that has to be seen to be disbelieved.

While the City Sleeps (1956)
Three ambitious newspaper employees (Dana Andrews, Thomas Mitchell, George Sanders) vie to crack the case of the ''Lipstick Killer,'' a leather-clad mother hater who is stalking their metropolis. Fritz Lang's dirty little urban drama is a sleazy roundelay where everyone sleeps around for advancement and the compulsion for personal power within the press is revealed as the embryo of totalitarianism.

Who'll Stop the Rain (1978)
The dumb title certainly contributed to its initial failure. But Karel Reisz's adaptation of Robert Stone's Dog Soldiers, about the corruptive effects of the Vietnam war, is taut, tense, bitter, and unremittingly cynical — you just gotta love it. Nick Nolte, Tuesday Weld, and Michael Moriarty make up one of the cinema's oddest ménages à trois as they try to move two kilos of heroin Stateside and are chased by drug dealers.

Withnail & I (1987)
A tour de force by British actor Richard E. Grant, who plays a boozing, unemployed actor named Withnail — an impossibly narcissistic leech who never stops talking (or drinking). The movie, about how this irredeemable lout falls apart during a muddy weekend in the country, captures the toxic excess of the late '60s with a clear-eyed purity and humor that put Oliver Stone's The Doors to shame.

Zardoz (1974)
One of the craziest movies ever made, John Boorman's campily imaginative, ravishing sci-fi fantasy is set in the year 2293 in a place called the Vortex, where women are Amazons and men are nervous (and impotent). Along comes the very potent Sean Connery, ready to penetrate the Vortex in general and Charlotte Rampling in particular. Only the helplessly humorless wouldn't be enchanted.

A Zed & Two Noughts (1985)
Five years before Peter Greenaway cooked up The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, he made this provocative inquisition into love, death, physical decay, Vermeer, zoos, and the alphabet. With a plot that resonates but never resolves, and camera work that gorgeously uncovers the horrors of nature, Zed is chilly, beguiling gamesmanship-perfect for people who love really hard crossword puzzles.

Written by: Ty Burr, Owen Gleiberman, Steve Daly, and Lawrence O'Toole.

Where to Go Digging for Video Treasures

If some of these video treasures are so rare, how are you supposed to find them? Try asking your local video store to special-order a title. Most retailers will cooperate — provided that you promise to purchase the tape upon arrival.

If you'd rather rent a movie than purchase one (some titles can cost up to $100), turn to a mail-order club. Several rent videos through the mail at rates comparable to those of the chains, plus the price of round-trip postage. The Home Film Festival carries 1,500 titles, many for as little as $3.50 plus postage for three nights, with a membership cost of $10. The Video Library offers more than 11,000 titles at a rate of $5 plus postage for three nights. Membership is free.

To purchase a tape by mail, try Movies Unlimited, a mail-order dealer of everything from vintage movies to instructional videos.

Written by: Taehee Kim