One of the sad truths of movies is that the good ones don't always get the success they deserve, while the bad ones are frequently rewarded with entirely too much. Consequently, some of the best-loved classics were films that did not do well at all when they were first released. That said, there are approximately eleven thousand different versions of this article on the internet, and they all generally feature the same handful of movies. At this point, I feel like pretty much everyone knows that Fight Club, It’s a Wonderful Life, and Blade Runner were huge box office failures. And odds are you’ve heard that Brazil was a flop, and that critics didn’t really care for The Shining. So, I tried to put together a list of less talked-about box office failures that didn’t necessarily redefine cinema, but are no less considered to be extremely watchable classics. I was at least marginally successful in accomplishing this task. Read on, won’t you?

TRON

TRON is an undeniable classic, if for no other reason than it pushed the art of visual effects into exciting new territory. Believe it or not, most of the effects aren’t digital – the filmmakers utilized back-lit animation blended with live-action footage to create the film’s signature look. Bizarrely, despite its legacy as a groundbreaking achievement in visual effects design, TRON was declared ineligible for a visual effects Oscar because the Academy considered the use of computer-generated effects to be “cheating.” (The Academy is, historically, a terrible organization with antiquated hang-ups.) The story is dated sci-fi gibberish, and the notion that programs are humanoid creatures that just wander around a blacklight world inside your computer when you’re not actively running them is kind of a difficult premise to get immersed in, but everything looks so dang cool that you can forgive the script for being a little weak. Unfortunately, TRON was a victim of Disney's spite – the company bumped up its holiday release date to the middle of the summer in order to compete with Don Bluth’s The Secret of NIMH. Bluth had recently left Disney and started his own animation studio to directly compete with the Mouse, and Disney couldn’t let that betrayal go unchecked. However, a summer release meant that TRON would also be going up against the likes of E.T. and Poltergeist. It resulted in a write-off for Disney, but would ultimately inspire the next generation of effects artists to see the potential of computer animation (including the people behind Pixar).

Starship Troopers

It’s hard to believe that Paul Verhoeven’s much-beloved science fiction satire Starship Troopers didn’t shatter box office records and win every single Academy Award including some new ones invented specifically for the film, but it’s true. When the movie hit theaters in November of 1997, it landed with a thud and only barely managed to break even on its $100+ million budget. Also, most people didn’t get the joke, despite the fact that Neil Patrick Harris spends much of the film marching around in a literal Nazi uniform. In the years since its release, Starship Troopers has become a massive cult hit, and several critics have come around to the film’s gonzo action and tongue-in-cheek treatment of right-wing militarism. (Although you still see some embarrassing editorials pop up blasting its “glorification” of fascism, because there’s a certain percentage of people that will only ever consume anything at face value.) And really, where else can you see Michael Ironside snarl about space bugs while clenching his robotic fist?

Hocus Pocus

You might be shocked to learn that everyone’s favorite Disney movie about the dangers of being a virgin was not a big critical or commercial hit. Hocus Pocus, starring Bette Milder, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Kathy Najimy as a trio of witches accidentally brought back from the dead by stupid children, bombed pretty majorly when it was initially released. But it was a reasonable hit on video and has since become a nostalgic favorite of virtually everyone who grew up in the 90s. Co-written by notable horror director Mick Garris and featuring famed creature performer Doug Jones as a reanimated corpse with his mouth sewn shut, Hocus Pocus contains some truly wild shit for a PG-rated kids movie that might’ve contributed somewhat to its underperformance. Fans have been clamoring for a sequel for years, and it looks like they might finally get their wish as a follow-up is currently in development as a Disney+ exclusive movie.

Children of Men

Alfonso Cuarón’s 2006 dystopian film Children of Men features some of the most impressive action sequences ever captured on film. It was, in many ways, a precursor to the work he would do in 2013’s Gravity, although Children of Men didn’t enjoy anywhere close to the same financial success. It’s essentially a chase movie, in which Clive Owen is racing to escort the first pregnant woman in a generation safely out of the country while being pursued by both the government and a group of revolutionaries. If you can get through that first act car chase without jumping up out of your chair and shouting, you are watching movies incorrectly. Despite tanking at the box office (which can at least partially be blamed on its bizarre Christmas Day release date), Children of Men received a great amount of critical acclaim and became kind of a cult hit on video, and routinely appears highly ranked on lists of the best films of the past century.

The Thing

The Thing is a special effects masterpiece and easily one of the best horror movies ever made. Kurt Russell and a bunch of other impressively scruffy dudes have to drunkenly do battle with a hideous shape-shifting alien, which results in all sorts of craziness up to and including an ax rampage perpetrated by Wilford Brimley. The movie tanked at the box office and was criticized for being too bleak and too grotesque, which you may notice are two pretty common characteristics of horror films. It also didn’t help that The Thing came out a few weeks after E.T., a film with the exact opposite view of alien visitors that also just so happened to become the biggest movie of all time (at the time). Audiences that summer weren’t terribly interested in watching a man’s head split apart to bite another man’s head off, and while those audiences were entitled to their opinion, their opinion was bad and wrong.

Clue

The ensemble comedy Clue, based on the murder mystery board game of the same name, is way better than it had any right to be. The movie is quite literally bursting with some of the best comedic actors of all time, including Christopher Lloyd, Madeline Kahn, Martin Mull, Michael McKean, and freaking Tim Curry. And despite the fact that Clue frequently appears on “best of all time” lists and gets regularly cited as an important influence by people working in comedy, it bombed pretty majorly in theaters and was not particularly well-liked by critics. Clearly, everyone in 1985 hated joy, because Clue rules. The film famously has three different endings with three entirely different solutions to the murders, and audiences that saw Clue in theaters would be shown one of the three. This probably led to some confusion around the water cooler, but to be honest I think this is a tremendous idea that more movies should adopt. For example, the Star Wars franchise should start doing this immediately.

Treasure Planet

Disney’s 2002 feature Treasure Planet is, to date, the most expensive traditionally animated film ever made. Unfortunately, it is also one of the biggest box office bombs of all time. Which is a shame, because it’s a really gorgeous movie! It’s a sci-fi take on Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, recasting the characters from the original novel as aliens and robots in search of a legendary pirate haven in space rumored to be the hiding place of the infamous Captain Flint’s considerable booty. Written and directed by Ron Clements and John Musker, who previously helmed other massive Disney hits like The Little Mermaid and Aladdin, Treasure Planet is a solid adventure movie about space pirates that got absolutely creamed by the second Harry Potter film and the shittiest James Bond sequel in history. However, it was a modest critical success, and it’s maintained a strong cult fanbase thanks to its striking visual style and its status as one of the last major films to be made using 2D animation.

The Quick and the Dead

Sam Raimi’s batshit western about a mysterious woman entering a gunfighting competition to settle a decades-old vendetta is hands-down one of his best films. And while that doesn’t necessarily make it a classic, the movie has a freaking unbelievable cast – Sharon Stone and Gene Hackman, plus an unknown Russell Crowe and a babyfaced Leonardo DiCaprio pre-superstardom, elevate a pretty standard western tale to an extremely watchable treat. And while Raimi has since gone on to become a blockbuster director, he was still playing with his Evil Dead bag of wild-ass low budget horror tricks when he made The Quick and the Dead. The movie is so unabashedly bonkers that it’s impossible not to have a good time. A man gets shot in the face with such force that his dead body does a backflip, and that’s arguably not the craziest thing that happens. It was a huge bomb that didn’t play well with critics at the time, but much like Weezer’s Pinkerton, it has been re-evaluated in the years since its original release to become recognized as a true gem that deserved to be a bigger success.

Event Horizon

Event Horizon is one of the greatest movies ever made that is in no way a great movie. A bloody haunted house yarn set aboard a derelict spaceship, the film opened in August of 1997 to middling reviews and an equally lukewarm box office. The movie had been marketed as more of a sci-fi thriller rather than the gonzo demonic horror film it actually was, which possibly turned audiences off at the time. (Either that or the scene in which Jurassic Park’s Dr. Grant claws his eyeballs out of his skull.) In the years since its release, Event Horizon has become a massive cult hit that is constantly referenced in other horror films and series. Additionally, there’s a mystique that’s built up around the film, fueled by rumors of a longer, more graphic director’s cut. Director Paul W. S. Anderson insists that the deleted footage wasn’t properly cared for, as Paramount didn’t think the movie would have any kind of legacy, and is effectively gone forever. Which is a shame, because who doesn’t want to see an extended version of the infamous blood orgy scene?

The Iron Giant

The box office implosion of The Iron Giant is, quite frankly, the biggest travesty on this list. Brad Bird’s 1999 film about a robot from space befriending a little boy in 1950s Maine is widely regarded as one of the best animated films ever made, and in my opinion is one of the best dang movies of all time, period. It absolutely tanked in theaters, signaling the death knell of Warner Bros.’ disastrous attempt to compete with Disney’s animated features after a string of failures like Thumbelina and Quest for Camelot. (The studio has had way more luck in recent years with films like The LEGO Movie.) But The Iron Giant was a big critical success, owing to its heartfelt and powerful storyline that simultaneously deals with loneliness and isolation, forming meaningful connections, and the way irrational fear turns people into monsters. It’s deep, you guys. And while it may not have gotten the love it deserved while it was in theaters, if you don’t have a copy of The Iron Giant sitting on a shelf somewhere in your house, chances are you’re a robot from space who didn’t learn the true meaning of friendship.

For more box office failures, check out our list of the highest-grossing movies that actually bombed.