Underrated Arnold Schwarzenegger Movies

Back when he was one of the biggest and most well-paid star in Hollywood of the late ’80s and early ’90s, Arnold Schwarzenegger was not exactly the most respected actor of his generation. His movies were popular in theaters and on home video; they were also largely dismissed as violent junk food, with Schwarzenegger himself treated like a joke, little more than a ridiculous accent housed in a cartoonishly swollen body.

30 years later, though, most of his violent junk food has aged like fine wine, and matured into some of the most beloved exemplars of their era. A decade ago, when I wrote a piece here on ScreenCrush insisting that Arnold Schwarzenegger was a serious and undervalued artist, that felt like a bold take. Now it feels like conventional wisdom — as evidenced by the fact that people keep remaking or sequelizing his films; in just the last few years we’ve gotten a new version of Red Sonja and The Running Man, sequels to The Terminator and Predator, a True Lies TV series, and even a direct-to-video sequel to Jingle All the Way starring Larry the Cable Guy. (Admittedly, not all of these films were winners.)

But a lot of Schwarzenegger’s most interesting movies are the ones beyond his canonical classics. Here are ten of my favorite underrated and little seen Schwarzenegger titles from his early beginnings in Hollywood to some of his most recent efforts. Instead of getting to the choppah, go watch these films.