10 Best Picture Oscar Nominees You Might Not Have Heard Of

6. Kiss Of The Spider Woman

Year: 1985 Fellow Nominees: The Color Purple, Out of Africa, Prizzi's Honor, Witness Another weak year, 1985 saw the pretty average Out of Africa claim Oscar's top prize, an award that probably should've went to Peter Weir's Witness (though John Huston's Prizzi's Honor is good fun). 1985 was also the year that saw Kiss of the Spider Woman nominated, a solid, obscure little film that won star William Hurt a Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of a transsexual inmate in a tough South American prison. Directed by Argentinian, Hector Babenco, a filmmaker only really otherwise known for helming the Jack Nicholson/Meryl Streep picture, Ironweed, Kiss of the Spider Woman was nominated for four Academy Awards, including nods for Babenco as director, and Leonard Schrader (Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters), who wrote the film. Best remembered for the polarising Hurt performance at the centre of the film, Kiss of the Spider Woman, well received on release, has all but vanished from the collective memory of post-1980 cinema.