by IGN Staff

We gave your our list of the Top 25 Sci-Fi Movies of All Time, but we'd also like to give some love to a few obscure classics that you might not have heard of, but are definitely worth your time. These wildly different cautionary tales come from the past, present and future – from parallel worlds, alternate dimensions, outer space and your own back yard. What they have in common is that they all have something to say about ourselves and our society at the time they were made.

Got a favorite obscure sci-fi movie that didn't make the list? Share it in the comments and we might include it in a follow-up reader-choice feature.


The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension!

If that title didn't already hook you, how about a hero who's an accomplished scientist, neurosurgeon and rock musician? Yeah, Buckaroo Banzai (Peter Weller) is way cooler then you. But he doesn't do it alone. He's got his trusty Hong Kong Cavaliers – Rawhide (Clancy Brown), New Jersey (Jeff Goldblum), Reno Nevada (Pepe Serna), Perfect Tommy (Lewis Smith) and Pinky Carruthers (Billy Vera) – by his side. And he'll need them if he's going to save the world from the Red Lectroids of Planet 10.

Why this totally rad little cult film from 1984 hasn't received more mainstream recognition we have no idea. It's got everything. Humor, action, nasty aliens, cool heroes and clever ideas. It's tough to capture the quirky, kooky quality of the film in writing. It's something you just have to see to appreciate. Inspired by comic books and old Hollywood serials, the film was meant to feel like a part of a larger movie universe, and that's gradually becoming true. The characters now live on in books and comics, with the most recent one-shot adventure from Buckaroo Banzai creator Earl Mac Rauch coming out just last year.


Alien Nation

More than 20 years before District 9, 1988's Alien Nation gave us a look at a "real-world scenario" involving alien visitors trying to assimilate into our culture. Swap a South African shanty town for a urban city, and make the human character (James Caan) a cop who gets a new partner, the Newcomer by the name of San Francisco, and you have one of the better sci-fi movies to come out of the 80s.

Themes of racism and identity underline the movie's story, which focuses on Caan's Sykes and San Francisco trying to stop a Newcomer from expanding his drug empire at the cost of both Human and Newcomer lives. Those themes are the stuff of good, and sometimes great, sci-fi, making this underrated gem worth a viewing. If nothing more than to see Mandy Patinkin sporting a Newcomer skull cap and some Deep Space Nine Trill make-up, drinking spoiled milk like it's water and bumping heads with Caan.


Alphaville

Let's get snobby for a moment here, shall we? Jean-Luc Godard's 1965 film Alphaville is new-wave sci-fi for hard-core cinephiles. But that doesn't mean the rest of us can't enjoy it too. The film sets out to do what science fiction does best, using allegory to indirectly address issues about our world, in this case the dehumanizing nature of technology and the dangers of a totalitarian state.

Godard plays off of the image of his star Eddie Constantine, an American actor who, at the time of the film's release, would have been known to European movie audiences for his role as trenchcoat-wearing secret agent Lemmy Caution in a series of French B movies. This time, Caution is dropped into a dystopic society run by a sentient computer known as Alpha 60. Caution's mission is to take down the computer, which has outlawed all emotion and free thought. His greatest weapon against this cold, unfeeling piece of technology? Poetry, of course. And if that sounds intriguing, then you might want to expose yourself to some culture and give this one a try.


A Boy and His Dog

Based on a short story by genre legend Harlan Ellison, A Boy and His Dog is the kind of movie that could've really knocked the unsuspecting parent for a wallop back when it was released in 1974. "Oh, A Boy and His Dog? This will be such a nice family film for little Bobby and Sally." Cut to Don Johnson eating his girlfriend – and feeding her to his dog.

The film feels like a precursor in many ways to the Mad Max series, and hence the entire post-apocalyptic genre as we know it. Johnson plays Vic, the young survivor of a nuclear war who travels the wasteland with his dog Blood (the mutt from The Brady Bunch, natch). The dog talks – or at least he talks to Vic. Or maybe Vic is just crazy. Either way, it seems that the canine is the brains of the operation as the pair scavenges for food and, especially, girls for the human. And that, of course, leads to all kinds of the trouble for the two, not the least of which is Vic's winding up in a freaky underground world run by Jason Robards in clown makeup.

This is borderline cult stuff, but so off and of its time that it's irresistible. Ellison, that renowned crank, continued the story in the (reportedly depressing) graphic novel Vic and Blood. Anyone out there who can send us a copy?


The City of Lost Children

Hollywood doesn't have a monopoly on great sci-fi movies. This imaginative and visually stunning international co-production from French directors Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet (who had previously collaborated on the equally impressive Delicatessen) is the kind of movie that stays with you, long after you've experienced it (and watching this film is definitely an experience).

Set in a surreal dystopia of sewers and tunnels, this 1995 film revolves around a mad scientist whose inability to dream is causing him to age prematurely. Seeking a cure, he kidnaps children and steals their dreams for his own. When the younger brother of a circus strongman (played by Ron Perlman, the only recognizable American in the film) goes missing, he sets off in search of the boy with the help of a young orphaned thief (Judith Vittet). The world is populated by a bizarre cast of characters, including a cyclops, a dwarf, conjoined twins, a handful of clones and a disembodied brain in an elaborate tank. But the real star here is the production design, mixing elements of steampunk and early 20th century constructivist design. This is a challenging film, but one well worth the effort.


Equilibrium

Writer-director Kurt Wimmer's low budget movie has some story elements that seem Matrix inspired but it is by no means a rip-off of the Wachowskis' movie. Equilibrium is set in a Fascist future where all forms of feeling are illegal, where emotion is a capital offense. Christian Bale plays a police officer of sorts who eventually ends up overthrowing the system he has spent a life defending.

In between the cool gunplay and bullet time-y action scenes, some decent character depth and emotion surrounds Bale's pre-Batman trip to Action Hero land. And Wimmer knows his way around action and the character work needed to ground it. To say anything more would spoil the fun of giving this movie a first look. That's your cue to move it to the top of your Netflix queue.


Gattaca

This underrated sci-fi thriller from 1997 takes the idea of genetic engineering and pushes it to the extreme, depicting a society where people are judged by the quality of their genes, and class status is determined by an individual's DNA profile (the title is actually a reference to the four building blocks of human DNA, abbreviated as G, A, T and C). It's a terrifying and poignant look at the end of a road we're already traveling down, and our national obsession with perfection has only grown more intense since Gattaca came out.

Ethan Hawke stars as Vincent, a flawed genetic specimen (he has a congenital heart disorder) who dreams of becoming an astronaut. He resorts to buying the identity of a genetically ideal athlete (played by Jude Law) who's been paralyzed, but when an executive from the space program is found murdered in his office, he has to work even harder to cover up all evidence of his existence. Uma Thurman also stars as Vincent's beautiful co-worker, who suffers discrimination for being not perfect enough. And when even Uma Thurman is not good enough for your society, there's got to be something wrong there.
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