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“Adventure is out there.” “If we were meant to stay in place, we’d have been born with roots instead of feet.” “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Blah blah blah. Most of us can barely afford groceries, and half the world is on fire anyway. Still, if you’re seeking adventure and are generally restricted to your own living room, an adventure movie is always the way to go.
You could watch a reliable favorite: The African Queen, Lawrence of Arabia, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and the like. All great adventure movies that are ten out of ten. But what about those adventure movies that have been lost to the sands of time? Not the hidden gems that have been unearthed, such as cult favorites like Big Trouble in Little China, but the ones that haven’t been favored with such rediscovery. These are six forgotten but incredible adventure movies that are ten out of ten; you can thank us later for finding them out.
‘Dark of the Sun’ (1968)
Dark of the Sun is easily the meanest and most violent of the films featured on this list. It’s also got visceral action and memorable performances to back up its nastiness and problematic content. Directed by Academy Award winner Jack Cardiff, the film is based on a novel by Wilbur Smith and set during the Congo Crisis. Although considered abhorrently violent when it was released, it’s far less shocking by today’s standards but no less effective. The bigger issues with the film are its portrayal of the Simba rebel villains as completely inhuman savages, while countering it with an argument against imperialism and its own devastating effects. It’s a subject that’s inherently violent, but the film runs a line closer to exploitation.
Rod Taylor and Jim Brown play mercenaries hired to save the residents of a mining town, along with $50 million worth of diamonds. Along with Congolese soldiers, an ex-Nazi captain and an alcoholic doctor, they take a train through dangerous territory, fending off attacks from both sides of the conflict. The most controversial sequence occurs in the third act as the Simbas torture, assault, and murder an entire group of civilians. Much more is implied than actually shown, but it’s still more brutal than similar war adventure films of the era like The Dirty Dozen or Where Eagles Dare. Taylor and Brown make for compelling heroes, and Peter Carsten is suitably despicable as the Nazi villain, who wields a chainsaw in one memorable fight scene. For the darker side of adventure, Dark of the Sun is a suitably thrilling guilty pleasure.
‘Robin and Marian’ (1976)
Image via Columbia Pictures
From vile and nasty to melancholy and bittersweet, Robin and Marian is one of the many films based on the legend of Robin Hood, but stands out due to its twilight approach to its legendary characters. Directed by Richard Lester, the film picks up the tale of its titular characters years after their greatest adventures have ended. It features an absolutely stacked cast that includes Sean Connery, Audrey Hepburn, Robert Shaw, Richard Harris, Nicol Williamson, and Denholm Elliot. It’s far from the swashbuckling escapism of Errol Flynn, and presages grittier efforts like the recent The Death of Robin Hood, but there’s an emotional depth that makes it resonate. Robin and Marian is a prime example of how to properly refresh a familiar tale with maturity.
Connery brings a weariness to his aging and balding Robin, who has become disillusioned after serving for decades under the tyrannical King Richard. When he reunites with Hepburn’s Marian, who now lives as a nun in an abbey, it isn’t an immediate romantic rekindling but begins a slow burn of intimacy. They also quickly run afoul of the Sheriff of Nottingham (Shaw) with a subdued antagonism and undercurrent of respect. The rest of the cast is likewise impressive, bringing battle-worn texture to their characters. The action likewise has less flourish and more grit to it than that of Lester’s Musketeers, but it’s not a bloody mess, laced with plenty of wit to avoid being humorless.
‘The Flight of Dragons’ (1982)
The ’80s were a prolific time for fantasy adventure movies, with both blockbusters and cult classics alike released with regular frequency. Many animated films got in on the adventure as well, from filmmakers like Don Bluth and Jules Bass and Arthur Rankin Jr. The latter two filmmakers were responsible for some of the most indelible animated sources of fantastic nightmare fuel for an entire generation of kids, but their most charming film by far is the forgotten fantasy The Flight of Dragons. Inspired by the book of the same name by Peter Dickinson, the film aired on television in the United States but hasn’t garnered the same cult following as the aforementioned Rankin/Bass productions or their equally beloved Christmas specials.
The film presents a fantasy world where magic is being subsumed by science, which motivates an evil Red Wizard to wage a war on humankind using black magic. To combat the wizard, a party of heroes is formed, which includes a modern-day fantasy nerd named Peter (John Ritter), who is magically transported back through time and into the body of a dragon. Most of the fun of The Flight of Dragons is watching Peter learn how to be a magical flying beast and how it mixes elements of logic with magic. There’s an ineffable quality to the Rankin/Bass classics that makes them comforting and unsettling in equal measure. They have a handmade charm that, when coupled with frightening character designs, makes them like a weighted blanket that’s comfortably constricting. The Flight of Dragons is both their finest hour and their most hidden treasure. It’s an animated adventure worth taking.
‘Darkman’ (1990)
For a brief period in the ’90s, pulp action heroes were all the rage. Spurred by the combined blockbuster successes of the Indiana Jones franchise and Tim Burton‘s anachronistic Batman, studios pushed their chips in on two-fisted tales of adventure and crime fighting. These films included Dick Tracy, The Phantom, The Rocketeer and The Shadow. All of them have a cult following to some degree today, but none were the massive hits the studios had hoped for, and the pulp revival was dead. The best of the ’90s pulp heroes was an original creation, though: Darkman, directed by horror auteur Sam Raimi, who had wanted to make an earnest adaptation of The Shadow but was denied.
Darkman pulls influence from both classic pulp heroes and Universal Monsters. Dr. Peyton Westlake (Liam Neeson) is a scientist who is burned and disfigured by gangsters, left a broken, bandaged man hell-bent on vengeance, creating his own skin masks that melt after 99 minutes. Darkman is the exact midpoint of the two franchises that dominate Raimi’s career. It’s the wild horror of The Evil Dead meets the colorful superheroics of Spider-Man. Raimi has always been the best at translating the implied motions of comic book visuals into live action, and his work on this forgotten dark adventure movie was his dry run before taking on the webslinger. It’s a wild ride that manages to satisfy horror hounds and adventure enthusiasts alike.
‘Zathura’ (2005)
Raimi’s success with Spider-Man precipitated the rise of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which began with Jon Favreau‘s Iron Man. Before Favreau brought Tony Stark to cinemas, he directed the kids’ space adventure Zathura. The book by Chris Van Allsburg was written as a sort of stand-alone follow-up to Jumanji. Unlike the successful film adaptation of that book, which starred Robin Williams, Zathura hasn’t had an enduring cultural legacy, a major oversight, considering the film is Favreau’s most accomplished, more so than either of his Iron Man films or his Christmas classic Elf.
Much like Jumanji, the film revolves around a magical board game. Instead of bringing the jungle into the house of the film’s sibling protagonists, the board game sends their house spiraling into outer space. The trio, who are played ably by Jonah Bobo, Josh Hutcherson, and Kristen Stewart, have to contend with meteor showers, a defective robot, and some dangerous aliens called Zorgons. Favreau insisted on using many practical elements augmented with CGI, including miniature models and creatures built by Stan Winston Studios, which gave the film a bit of a throwback vibe in comparison to its contemporaries. Zathura itself is now a throwback at over twenty years old, but it hasn’t been celebrated in any of those years as much as it should be.
‘The Adventures of Tintin’ (2011)
Indiana Jones has been invoked in this list more than once, and for good reason. The Steven Spielberg–George Lucas franchise brought the adventure spirit of the classic serials into the modern era and set the bar so high that no film has ever surpassed it. While Jones himself has suffered some diminishing returns in the 21st century, Spielberg also crafted another adventure film that should have been the heir to the character. The Adventures of Tintin is based on the classic character created by Belgian artist Hergé. The director acquired the rights to the comics in the ’80s after Hergé had passed away, and while it took decades for the animated film to be produced, it successfully captures the spirit of its source material.
To capture the distinct visuals of the comics, Spielberg relied on motion capture animation, which his colleague Robert Zemeckis had helped pioneer. The Adventures of Tintin remains the best fully animated film to utilize the technology, finding a unique middle ground between Hergé’s artwork and a photorealistic digital world. The movie is a madcap dash around the world as the young journalist Tintin (Jaime Bell) joins forces with the alcoholic Captain Haddock (Andy Serkis) to solve the mystery of the Unicorn, a navy warship sunk by pirates. Spielberg has a ball with the animated medium, crafting incredible set pieces with relentless momentum and a swooping camera that captures it in long unbroken shots. The film was supposed to spawn a sequel, with producer Peter Jackson set to helm it. Apparently, it will be
