Possibly the most satisfying movie experience of all is to stumble upon a film knowing almost nothing about it, and uncovering a masterpiece. These movies may already be world famous, but if you don’t know it at the time, you might feel like you have found buried treasure. I still remember those occasions when I grabbed at a random video box at LeBlanc’s Variety store in Ayer, or trolled all thirteen channels of TV, and found something unusual. Nowadays, it’s hard for a movie to sneak up on you, and the best way for it to happen is at the movie theater.

Everyone has their own “discovery” movies. Here are four of mine. All of them are considered to be great movies under different parameters, but all were new to me.

Touch of Evil (1958). One Saturday night in the infancy of the Bravo Channel (and my teen years), I caught the beginning of a black-and-white movie with a snappy Henry Mancini score. I watched this opening shot as it went on and on, weaving from character to character and place to place in a sleazy Mexican border town. By the time that astounding first shot ended, I knew I had happened upon something extraordinary. Orson Welles’s sweaty study of corruption has been called many things—the last great noir; the greatest B-movie of all time. It’s a mystifying concoction of disparate acting styles: Charlton Heston is wooden, even playing Mike Vargas, a Mexican narcotics agent. Orson Welles is pure theatrics as repellent town sheriff Quinlan. Janet Leigh plays Mike’s fiancée Susan in the naturalistic mode, while Marlene Dietrich is old school Hollywood glamour as Quinlan’s old flame Tanya. There are also wonderfully whacko performances by Akim Tamiroff, Mercedes McCambridge, and a young Dennis Weaver. There’s an extended abduction sequence in a rundown motel that heavily foreshadows Pyscho, and the visual gymnastics of Welles’s camera never let up. In a story that was a constant of Welles’s filmmaking career, Touch of Evil was taken from him, re-edited and re-scored. The original was restored a few years ago, according to Welles’ own detailed notes. Maybe it was because Touch of Evil was a discovery movie for me, but I thought the earlier version was just as good.

Night of The Hunter (1955). The only film ever directed by actor Charles Laughton, it follows two children who watch their mother (Shelly Winters) get seduced by a creepy preacher named Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum). Powell isn’t after her love, but a small fortune hidden somewhere by the kids’ convict father. Nobody in town seems to recognize Powell’s wickedness, and eventually the kids must escape him and strike out on an almost fairytale-like journey. Like Touch of Evil, Night of the Hunter is shockingly violent for its time, and perhaps most shocking for the suffering it puts its two young protagonists through. The movie was a failure in its day, a disappointment that dissuaded Laughton from ever directing again. It’s a shame. The images he and cinematographer Stanley Cortez dreamt up—a woman dead at the bottom of a lake, the two children floating down a river at night—are absolutely unforgettable. This movie has been hugely influential on other filmmakers, most notably the Coen brothers. And in spite of its initial failure, it grew from a cult hit to a bona fide classic.

Brazil (1985). This film came out on the weekend of my 13th birthday, and for some reason my parents assented to my wishes and took me into Harvard Square to see it. It’s hard to believe now how much I loved it at 13, but Brazil became one of the key movie experiences in my cinematic education. The only truly great film from Terry Gilliam, Brazil was written by Gilliam and Tom Stoppard as a darkly comic attack on beaurocracy and conformity. Of all the film studies of dystopian futures, few have the panache of Gilliam’s world of ducts and adding machines and red tape. Jonathan Pryce is Sam Lowry, a normal man who has dreams of heroism and visions of a beautiful woman he rescues. In short order, Sam sees the woman (Kim Greist) in real life and is sucked into a revolution by Harry Tuttle (Robert DeNiro). Brazil remains one of the great jet-black comedies, giddily morbid and stacked with great performances.

Police Story (1985). By the time my father and I ventured into the Brattle Theater one summer evening in 1992, Jackie Chan was already Hong Kong’s biggest star and a cult figure in the U.S. We had already digested his few American movies like The Big Brawl. But nothing could prepare us for the spectacle of Police Story. It remains quite possibly the most eye-popping action movie of all time. In the era that just preceded computer effects, Chan and his incredible stunt team pull off physical feats that elicit unintentional, awed vocal responses. Police Story wasn’t the first great Jackie Chan movie, but it was the first for us. Chan chose this project to propel himself out of the historically set kung fu movies he had grown weary of. And it was this film that turned him into one of the biggest stars in the rest of the world. On very rare occasions a movie can expand the creative boundaries of filmed entertainment. Like his two heroes, Buster Keaton and Gene Kelly, Chan did just that in the era of Police Story.

Alex Manugian lives in Sherman Oaks, California, and works for the Cartoon Network. He grew up in Groton and has reviewed movies for Harvard residents for many years.