Gave them a second chance and they improved.

Interesting idea for a thread, Bat.

The first two that come to my mind are two horror films, actually.

I recognized many of the virtues of Robert Wise's The Haunting the first time I saw it, but I still found it silly, cloying, and more than anything annoying, especially in Julie Harris's performance. If you'd asked me several years ago what I thought of The Haunting, my response would have been similar to this contrarian review. 

Seeing it last Hallowe'en, though, having grown a little older (but by no means wiser!  ) and having read the book, I found it far better, with excellent atmosphere and visuals. The performances, too, are quite good, even Harris's--though, I must admit, that voiceover still does grate on me more than a little! It's not my favorite ghost-story/haunted house film--I prefer The Uninvited, The Innocents, even the original Woman in Black and Ghostwatch--but it is better than I thought on first viewing. 

On the other movie, actually, the opposite happened. I've written on this elsewhere on this forum, but I sometimes feel (though I know it's not true) I'm the only Hammer fan who actually doesn't like Horror of Dracula. (What? Blasphemy!) The first time I saw it, late at night, I loved it, but, having seen it more than once over the years, I can't say anything but that's it's just a bad movie. Sorry! It deviates wildly from the story, doesn't provide Dracula with much eeriness or even character, doesn't offer Christopher Lee much time to do anything as Dracula, features an hysterical performance from Michael Gough, cares more about shocks than atmosphere, and (most damagingly of all!) is dreadfully dull in the moments between those shocks. (With all that said, though, it does offer the performance of a lifetime from Peter Cushing as well as a first-rate climax.) 

So, I know the second didn't quite meet your criteria, but it does stand as an opposite example, so... I hope it's OK!

Lunch Hour (1961)

Found it very boring the first time I viewed it. Really enjoyed it the second time I viewed it. Planning to watch it a third time.

Neil Jordan's The End of the Affair. I didn't dislike it on first viewing but it didn't leave much of an impression when it was new.

Just saw it again, and it seems like a perfect motion picture.

I've rarely changed my first opinion of a film. That probably says something about me ,though I have no idea what. I just like the films I liked when I was a child, a teenager and a young adult, and I very rarely like any film I disliked on first viewing.


One is Vertigo. I hated it and thought it very overblown . Years of people raving about it caused me to rewatch it, and each time I saw more to appreciate. It will never be a great favorite, but I have come to like Kim Novak's performance very much. I like the way he treats obsession, as though it's almost another character.

Another Hitchcock I like better than I did on first viewing is the Birds. Again the clostrophobic sense of being trapped in the small town, the spare stripped down settings were repellant on first viewing and I didn't appreciate the performances as much as I've learned to on repeated viewing. I still find some of the bit actors clumsy and off putting, and I'm puzzled by the lack of real sizzle between Rod Taylor and Tippi Hedren . There was more energy between her and Suzanne Pleshette, who was really outstanding.

God's Little Acre

I had seen this 1958 adaptation of Erskine Caldwell's controversial 1933 novel (he was actually arrested and tried for obscenity) many years ago when I was a young teenager, and not cared for it. Part of my distaste was undoubtedly due to my being a Southerner annoyed by the sexed-up Li'l Abner stereotypes.

But watching it again after all these years, and in a different frame of mind, it strikes me as almost a minor classic, for all its many flaws. This can be credited to the direction from -- of all people -- Anthony Mann (surely this is the odd-man-out in his filmography) and photography by Ernest Haller. Despite the rural setting, most of the film takes place at night, with key scenes in a deserted cotton mill and on the street outside a honky-tonk beer joint during a trip to the "big city" (Augusta Georgia).

This gives the film a noirish look that is superficially at odds with its Beverly Hillbillies characters, and adds to its unique ambiance. Because instead of noir cool we get raucous black comedy and wildly over-the-top caricatures. In fact, GLA is so flamboyantly larger than life that it comes across as a musical that has had all its songs cut.

(Idea for you theatrical types. Get the musical rights to GLA. It seems to be crying out for an adaptation).

Some of the casting is unsurprising: Jack Lord (in his butch leading man phase) and an already paunchy Aldo Ray as the hunks, Vic Morrow as Lord's loyal puppydog little brother (ironic since Morrow despised Lord -- allegedly they even got into a fistfight on the set).

Tina Louise plays the supposed sexpot that the various males fight over. Since Louise never did anything for me (I was always a Mary Ann man) she not only looks wrong but seems almost schoolmarmish in her repressed manner. Fay Spain is a lot more fun as the nymphomaniacal sister.

Buddy Hackett plays a spoof of the fat redneck sheriff cliché. Rex Ingram is a friendly black sharecropper, Michael Landon has a small role as an albino (!!) and one Lance Fuller plays the rich brother from Augusta. He's the one cast member who makes no impact at all.

The central role, Ty Ty the obsessed farmer, is played by the surprisingly cast Robert Ryan. Ryan is expert as psychos and villains, but he's not the first actor you'd think of for this kind of larger-than-life Falstaff/"fool" role, one that might suit Burt Lancaster or Jimmy Cagney better. However, he's generally quite effective, making up in gravitas what he might lack in theatricality.

The script by the blacklisted Ben Maddow (although credited to perennial front Phillip Yordan, who was allegedly illiterate -- but that's another story) has some exposition and other problems. One example: the film is more than half over when Ty Ty needs money and decides to borrow it from his son in Augusta -- a son we've never heard mentioned before. His existence should have been worked into dialogue earlier.

Maddow's script seems divided into theatrical style scenes, often separated by fades to black. This may have been necessitated by heavy editing (censorship?). Scenes that you expect to see are curiously missing. GLA is essentially two plots fused together: Ty Ty desperately searching for gold on his farm, and Will Thompson (Ray) desperately trying to open the cotton mill that supports the town's workers.

This latter, proletarian storyline seems added-on, a leftover from the novel's original publication in 1933. It ensures GLA a place in that group of films (A Place In The Sun, Lonelyhearts, The Flim Flam Man, Fitzwilly) that are set in contemporary times but really should take place in the 1930s.

Elmer Bernstein's score, full of pastoral horns and strings, is very good, even if it is the most blatant imitation of Aaron Copland I've ever heard. In fact it's so similar Copland fans may want to track it down for comparison purposes. The title song is an interesting gospel pastiche, although the use of an all-too-obviously lily-white chorus blunts its impact.

I don't know where the auteurists rank GLA in the Anthony Mann canon, but it definitely deserves a look.