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An underrated film is a good one that has gone unnoticed. But strangely, lists of underrated films always seem to be filled with the same old movies that we did notice. With thousands of horror films having been made over the last decades, surely there are more gems out there, aren't there? Some we haven't heard of a million times?

Of course there are! Here are some of the hidden horror treasures I've mined for you that were, for whatever reason, overlooked by the box office. Other films may have been more popular, but these are just as good, and you won't find them on the repetitive lists. These are truly underrated.

Alice, Sweet Alice (originally released as Communion, 1976)

Creepy kids make for some of the best scares in horror, from Patty McCormack's 1954 portrayal of a psychopath in pigtails in The Bad Seed to the later trend of demonic darlings in The Exorcist and The Omen. Despite a spate of poor imitations in the '70s, Alice, Sweet Alice belongs with the better horror films featuring pint-sized leads. Named by Fangoria magazine as one of the "best films you've never seen", the thriller continues to disturb modern viewers who are surprised to learn that its thrills still hold up.

The film begins with two sisters, the younger of whom is about to have her first communion. Twelve-year-old Alice (Paula Sheppard) is jealous of the attention that little sis Karen (nine-year-old Brooke Shields in her first screen role) is receiving. On the day of Karen's communion, she is murdered in the church, strangled by a candle. Karen immediately falls under suspicion, and here the movie becomes a twisted murder movie that could compete with modern slasher flicks for chills. Alice takes to wearing a yellow rain slicker and a transparent plastic mask, items that give me nightmares to this day. The body count increases with the murder of a perverted slob of a landlord who tries to take advantage of Karen.

For a low budget movie of its day, Alice, Sweet Alice looks amazingly good. The scenes are well-executed, and despite having the killer revealed partway through the movie (just as in Hitchcock's Vertigo), the tension just never lets up. The murder scenes are gruesome rather than cheesy, and the ending...well, let's just say that Hitchcock would be proud. Super editing and a notable soundtrack add up to one tense nailbiter that is still watchable today.

Night of the Creeps (1986)

This movie went by without a ripple of interest when it was originally released, but it now has a

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