8 Underrated Films From Famous Directors You Probably Missed

6. The King Of Comedy - Martin Scorsese

From Means Streets to The Wolf Of Wall Street, Martin Scorsese is an unrelenting powerhouse of American cinema who, after forty years at the top is still making biting, difficult movies. Although it's not like he's been riding high for all of that. In the 80s, after Raging Bull, he suffered a dip in notoriety (like many of the New Hollywood lot), with many of his movies snubbed by critics and slipping past audiences.

To this day, many of his films from that decade don't get quite the same widespread recognition as what came before or after. By far the most overlooked is The King Of Comedy, a dark look at the allure of fame through the eyes of Rupert Pupkin, an aspiring comedian-cum-late night host who kidnaps Jerry Lewis to blackmail his way to his fifteen minutes. Dark, comic and with an incredibly unsettling final shot, it's one of Scorsese's absolute best, yet remains sorely underseen.

What's so crazy about the film is that, like similar media satire Network from a decade previously, it only feels more truthful now. In the 80s, the idea of a man sacrificing everything for a shot at fame was a fanciful subject, today it's an everyday occurence. Perhaps that's why it passed so many people by; it was only decades later we could appreciate the truth of it.