6 Forgotten Fantasy Movies That Are 10/10 Masterpieces

Some of the strangest fantasy films ever made spent years passed around on old VHS tapes, discovered on late-night TV, or recommended by that one movie-obsessed friend. They were packed with peculiar creatures, elaborate handmade sets, and frightening fairy tales. Yet, most of these pictures were simply too unusual to ever become mainstream favorites, which is a genuine shame considering how extraordinary they were.

They deserve another shot. In fact, the six forgotten gems on this list come from filmmakers who dared to make fantasy deeply weird, even when it meant upsetting audiences or ditching familiar storytelling rules. Every single one of them is a 10/10.

6

‘Alice’ (1988)

The White Rabbit has to cut his way out of a glass display case. He’s stuffed, his pocket watch is tucked into his chest, and sawdust spills from the seams whenever he checks it. That should tell you what sort of Wonderland Jan Švankmajer has prepared. Alice follows a young girl, Alice (Kristýna Kohoutová), from a cluttered room of old toys through a desk drawer into a place where household objects develop some deeply unpleasant habits. Even shrinking involves becoming a stiff little doll.

What makes this adaptation so disturbing is how everything sounds. Scissors scrape, drawers creak, teeth chatter, and bones clatter against wooden floors. Those extreme close-ups of Alice’s mouth narrating the action are unsettling. There’s hardly a comfortable surface anywhere, and the stop-motion creatures seem ready to fall apart while attacking her. Ultimately, the film transforms Lewis Carroll’s familiar story into something a child might actually dream of after being left alone with a roomful of frightening antiques.

5

‘Son of the White Mare’ (1981)

Trying to describe Son of the White Mare is practically hopeless. The film follows Treeshaker (György Cserhalmi), a superhuman warrior born from a magical white mare, who develops his extraordinary strength before descending toward the Underworld to confront dragons and rescue imprisoned princesses. His companions include the mighty Stonecrumbler (György Cserhalmi) and Irontemperer (György Cserhalmi). Yes, György Cserhalmi actually handles all three voices. Their adventures follow the wonderfully excessive logic of ancient folk mythology.

Now, imagine all of that unfolding in animation where practically nothing holds its shape for long. The movie lets bodies expand into glowing patterns, dragons dissolve into geometric machinery, and entire landscapes change color during a single movement. There are parts where the viewer has to stop concentrating on the plot simply to appreciate what’s happening onscreen. The reds, greens, blues, and golds are astonishing, especially when the characters seem to merge with the backgrounds. Anyone who thinks animation reached its visual limits decades later should see this Hungarian masterpiece. Its ambition still feels completely outrageous.

4

‘Paperhouse’ (1988)

In Paperhouse, Anna Madden (Charlotte Burke) draws a house in her schoolbook, falls asleep, and finds herself standing outside it. Naturally, she starts making improvements. A staircase helps her reach Marc (Elliott Spiers), the lonely boy she has drawn inside. A few extra details make the place more comfortable. For a while, the film almost resembles a rather peculiar children’s adventure, although that empty landscape and permanently bruised sky suggest something is terribly wrong.

Then Anna draws her absent father and angrily scribbles across his face. When she returns to her dream, he’s waiting outside the house, blind and carrying a hammer. That’s when panic sets in. It’s absolutely horrible, particularly because Anna is already seriously ill and Marc’s condition is deteriorating. The film understands how frightening a child’s imagination becomes when anger and fear start influencing what appears on the page. Watching Anna desperately attempt to correct her drawings is far more nerve-racking than it sounds.

Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes
What Fantasy World Do You Belong To?
Middle-earth · Grand Line · The Continent · Camp Half-Blood

Pick your magic, your crew, where you want to wake up and who you would rather be fighting, and we will tell you which world you actually belong in. Four are open to you: an ancient kingdom living through its last good age, an endless sea full of pirates, a continent that pays people to kill monsters, and a summer camp where the Greek gods are extremely real and mostly a nuisance.

Middle-earth(Rings of Power)

Grand Line(One Piece)

The Continent(The Witcher)

Camp Half-Blood(Percy Jackson)

FIND YOUR WORLD →

01

What kind of power do you want?
Every one of these worlds runs on a completely different sort of magic.

ASomething ancient and half forgotten that came down through my family.
BSomething completely ridiculous that works in a fight and gets a laugh.
CNo magic at all, just training, potions and a very sharp sword.
DSomething I inherited from a parent I have barely met.

NEXT QUESTION →

02

Who is travelling with you?
Nobody gets through any of these stories entirely on their own.

AA fellowship drawn from every corner of the world who barely trust each other.
BA crew I picked up one at a time, all of whom would die for me.
CTwo or three people I would never describe out loud as friends.
DTwo mates from school who are exactly as out of their depth as I am.

NEXT QUESTION →

03

Where do you want to wake up tomorrow?
The best fantasy is usually just somewhere you would genuinely like to live.

AA high city of white stone with the sea somewhere far below.
BA ship under sail, with an island ahead that nobody has mapped.
CA rented room over a tavern, in a town I am leaving in the morning.
DA cabin at a summer camp with everybody else already awake outside.

NEXT QUESTION →

04

How are you making a living out there?
Even in fantasy somebody has to pay for the horse.

AI am not, because somebody far older than me decided this was my duty.
BTreasure, and I am not always careful about whose it used to be.
CI take contracts, since people will pay well for what they will not touch.
DI am fifteen and this is all technically a school trip.

NEXT QUESTION →

05

There is something in the woods. What do you do about it?
All four of these worlds keep something unpleasant out there in the dark.

ASend word to somebody who has seen this before, then hold the line.
BWalk straight in, because it is interesting and possibly edible.
CAsk what it has been eating and what the village is willing to pay.
DWork out which myth it escaped from, then improvise very badly.

NEXT QUESTION →

06

Who is the villain of your story?
The enemy tells you far more about a world than the hero ever does.

AAn ancient evil that has been patient for several thousand years.
BA government that has spent a long time calling itself the good guys.
CA man who turns out to be far worse than anything I hunt for money.
DA god, or possibly my own family, and quite likely both at once.

NEXT QUESTION →

07

What do you actually believe in out there?
Every world hands its heroes one rule and asks them to hold onto it.

ASome things are worth defending even when the odds are hopeless.
BNobody gets to tell me where I can go or what I am allowed to want.
CPick the lesser evil, and never pretend afterwards that it was not evil.
DMy friends come before anything a prophecy has to say about it.

NEXT QUESTION →

08

A thousand years from now, how are you remembered?
Eight questions in, this is the one that decides your world.

AIn a song, in a language hardly anybody still speaks.
BAs the one who got there first and proved the whole thing was possible.
CBarely, and mostly wrongly, in ballads I would absolutely hate.
DOn a plaque at a camp, read by kids about to do the same thing.

REVEAL MY WORLD →

The Map Is Drawn
Your World Is…

Four worlds and four completely different ideas of what a good life
looks like. This is where you belong, what it would ask of you, and what you would get back in
return.

The Rings of Power · Prime Video · Since 2022

Middle-earth

You belong somewhere old enough that the mountains have names and
somebody can still tell you who gave them. Middle-earth is for people who think the right
thing is worth doing even when it will not be finished in their lifetime.

• This is the only world on the list where doing good is understood as a very long defeat,
  fought anyway, by people who will never see how it ends.
• You are drawn to grandeur, to white cities and deep forges and the sense that almost
  everything you touch is older than your entire family line.
• The Rings of Power is set in the last good age before it all goes wrong, which gives
  every quiet scene in it a slightly unbearable weight.
• You would take the hard road, and you would take it on foot.

One Piece · Manga since 1997 · Netflix 2023

The Grand Line

You want the sea, a crew, and absolutely nobody telling you where
you are allowed to go. The Grand Line is the world for people whose main ambition in life is
finding out what is over there.

• One Piece has run for decades on one very simple engine, which is a group of people who
  each want something impossible and have decided to go and get it together.
• You collect people. Your ideal crew is a set of misfits who were each written off
  somewhere else before you turned up and offered them a better idea.
• The world is enormous and deliberately ridiculous, and the emotional gut punches land
  harder because of that rather than in spite of it.
• You would set sail knowing the map runs out, which is more or less the entire point of
  it.

The Witcher · Netflix · Since 2019

The Continent

You would rather be feared and useful than liked and useless. The
Continent is a world where the monsters are the straightforward part of the job and the
people are where it all gets complicated.

• Witchers get paid to do what nobody else will and resented for existing at all, which is
  a trade most people would refuse and you would probably accept.
• You have no real illusions about which side is the good one, largely because on the
  Continent that question tends to have a disappointing answer.
• The best of these stories are not about the fighting. They are about somebody with a
  rigid code being repeatedly cornered into caring about people.
• You would take the coin, finish the job properly, and be out of town before the story
  got told wrong.

Percy Jackson · Disney+ · Since 2023

Camp Half-Blood

You want the myths to be real and loose in the actual world, and
you want to find out at about thirteen that you were never anywhere near as ordinary as
everybody kept telling you.

• Percy Jackson takes the oldest stories we have and drops them into car parks and diners,
  which makes the gods considerably funnier and a great deal worse.
• You would be the kid every school gave up on, who turns out to have been built for
  something nobody thought to test for.
• The series is genuinely about friendship rather than destiny, and it says so out loud
  every time a prophecy tries to get in the way.
• Camp Half-Blood is the real fantasy here: a place where the thing that made you
  difficult everywhere else is the thing that makes you belong.

↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ

3

‘The Juniper Tree’ (1990)

There’s something deeply uncomfortable about watching a family quietly accept a stranger’s presence when one member knows something is wrong. In The Juniper Tree, sisters Margit (Björk) and Katla (Bryndis Petra Bragadóttir) seek refuge after their mother is executed for witchcraft. Katla uses magic to win the affection of a widowed farmer, Jóhann (Valdimar Örn Flygenring), but his son Jónas (Geirlaug Sunna Þormar) refuses to accept her. Margit finds herself caught between her sister’s determination and the boy’s mounting hostility.

What makes it so haunting is how low-key it all feels. The spells are quiet, the rituals involve ordinary-looking objects, and the long pauses between conversations become increasingly uncomfortable. The film puts all its weight on Margit’s silent reactions as she slowly figures out what her sister is capable of. It is brutal. The story treats witchcraft with an unusual severity, and the sadness beneath its fairy-tale cruelty lingers long after the credits roll.

2

‘The Secret of Kells’ (2009)

A young monk risking his life for some ink ingredients sounds like an unlikely basis for a great fantasy adventure. Yet, The Secret of Kells makes Brendan’s (Evan McGuire) determination to finish an illuminated manuscript feel every bit as exciting as a knight’s quest. His uncle, Abbot Cellach (Brendan Gleeson), wants him safely behind the monastery’s walls as Viking raiders approach. Brendan, meanwhile, becomes fascinated by the unfinished book brought by master illuminator Aidan (Mick Lally) and ventures into the forbidden forest.

And what a forest it is. Every scene is loaded with Celtic knots, geometric patterns, curling branches, and bright colors that look like a living manuscript. Even the frightening encounter with Crom Cruach unfolds through extraordinary visual design. The wonderful thing is how naturally the animation connects Brendan’s artistic curiosity with his growing courage. Art becomes worth fighting for.

1

‘The Adventures of Baron Munchausen’ (1988)

It’s absurdly easy to spend two hours just watching Baron Munchausen (John Neville) invent increasingly ridiculous explanations for his adventures. That’s how irresistible The Adventures of Baron Munchausen is. The story starts with him interrupting a theatrical performance about his exploits while Ottoman cannons are bombarding the surrounding city. The authorities are understandably unimpressed by his claims. The Baron, however, is entirely serious about having once performed every impossible deed being presented onstage.

Then comes the magnificent nonsense. He escapes in a balloon assembled from women’s underwear, travels to the Moon with Sally Salt (Sarah Polley), encounters a king (Robin Williams) whose head has its own opinions, visits Vulcan (Oliver Reed) beneath the Earth, and eventually finds himself inside an enormous sea creature. Every destination brings another extravagantly constructed set, strange contraption, or gloriously impractical escape. What makes the film especially lovable is the Baron himself. He grows visibly younger whenever adventure restores his confidence, then seems to age again when disappointment catches up. Terry Gilliam clearly adores this foolish old storyteller, and it’s hard to resist sharing that affection. The production’s enormous handmade sets and gleeful refusal to behave sensibly make it a fantasy spectacle worth defending with considerable enthusiasm.