One of the unquestionable masterpieces of Korean cinema, the emotional roller coaster The Housemaid tells the story of a bizarre ménage à trois that is formed between a music teacher, his wife, and their increasingly assertive housemaid. A Janus Films release.

Widely hailed as one of the greatest Korean films ever made (but banned upon release for its scathing critique of postwar Korea), Yu Hyun-mok’s breakout film was this unrelentingly bleak, noir-tinged melodrama set in the aftermath of the Korean War.

The Coachman is a crowd-pleasing drama told with warmth and sympathy about a family trying to lift its way out of poverty and into the middle class, and a revealing portrait of a society in transition. Winner of the Silver Bear (Special Jury Prize) at the 1961 Berlin Film Festival.

The second Korean feature to be directed by a woman, A Woman Judge is a revelatory directorial debut from Hong Eun-won that deftly weaves together elements of family melodrama, detective procedural, and courtroom drama to tell a compelling story that resonates to this day.

Another masterpiece from Kim Ki-young (The Housemaid), Goryeojang is a dark fairy tale about maintaining one’s humanity amid the inherent corruption of human society, and the disastrous consequences of fear-based politics, told within the microcosm of a famine-inflicted village.

Lee Man-hee’s breakthrough feature, The Marines Who Never Returned, remains one of the greatest Korean War films ever made, skillfully balancing tense battle sequences and heartfelt camaraderie between the soldiers and their newly adopted orphan girl.

With the Diabolique-tinged The Devil’s Stairway, featuring a striking setting and superbly executed black-and-white photography, Lee Man-hee (A Day Off) added to the list of Korea’s most accomplished psychological thrillers.

Featuring exciting battles in the air, and heartbreaking romance on the ground, this precursor to Top Gun is a blockbusting, rousing, and romanticized tribute to South Korea’s jet-fighter pilots.

Mixing humor and social critique in its story of a poor young troublemaker who falls in love with a wealthy ambassador’s daughter, The Barefooted Young is the finest example of Korea’s “youth film” genre.

A young man and woman under anesthesia for oral surgery meet in a shared dream and fall into an increasingly bizarre love triangle with their dentist in Yu Hyun-mok’s lusty and sinister headtrip of a film.

Director Lee Yong-min applies his exaggerated and slightly absurd style to a classic Korean horror story template about a woman who is deceived, betrayed, and killed before coming back as an angry ghost to exact her revenge.

A deep and searching exploration of community with gestures of sapphic desire, The Seashore Village offers a fascinating, radical examination of postwar Korea’s fractured sense of identity and unfolds in sumptuous, on-location black-and-white cinematography.

A charming fish-out-of-water musical comedy and a time capsule that gives a front-row view of the music scene of South Korea of the mid-1960s, long before K-Pop would take over the world.

The Korean Intelligence Agency dispatches its top agent, X-7, to put a stop to a gold-smuggling operation run by North Korean spies in Hong Kong in this highly entertaining and beautifully shot color spy film from Chung Chang-wha (The King Boxer).

This epic co-production between Hong Kong’s Shaw Brothers Studio and Korea’s Shin Films spectacularly reimagines the tale of princess Miao Shan, played in this Korean version by legendary actress Choi Eun-hee.

Korea’s first monster movie is an entertaining take on Godzilla and Gamera “that’s long on rampages and short on sensible behavior,” according to Mystery Science Theater 3K.

Aliens initiate an invasion of Earth by releasing an enormous creature, Wangmagni, in the middle of Seoul and waiting as the monster demolishes everything in its path in this fun and campy low-budget genre romp.

The iconic Robin Hood-like figure of Hong Gil-dong, who became the champion of the poor by stealing from the corrupt Joseon Dynasty officials, comes vividly to life in South Korea’s very first animated feature film.

A delightful companion piece to The Story of Hong Gil-dong, Shin Dong-hun’s second animated feature tells the story of Hopi, a tiger-skin-wearing thief, who turns over a new leaf after being trained in martial arts by Master Sakpung, and ultimately defends the country from an attack by a Jurchen general.

An atmospheric work that remains a high point of the decade, Kim Soo-yong’s film concerns a middle-class office worker in Seoul who returns to his hometown, where a deluge of memories blurring past and present captures the restlessness and disappointment of an entire generation of dreamers.

Shot in widescreen with sharp black-and-white visuals, Kim Soo-yong’s dramatically tense and visually stunning war drama follows a deserter from the North Korean People’s Army and his encounter with a pair of widows living in a southwestern rural village.

Director Chung Chang-wha (The King Boxer) tells a revenge tale set in the Joseon Dynasty period and in the process creates a distinctly Korean-style sword-fighting action film.

Lee Man-hee’s spare, lyrical film concerns the strained relationship of a poor young couple after they are faced with a bleak dilemma. Forgotten in storage for 37 years after censors refused to allow its release, A Day Off was belatedly recognized as one of the decade’s masterpieces.

A tale of doomed romance and Joseon Dynasty palace power games, Eunuch is a lush widescreen technicolor entertainment with elements of sensuous eroticism and bursts of violence that critiques the oppressive social structure of the past, especially when it comes to the role of women.