The debut leading role of Robin Williams, Popeye is a deeply strange and charmingly idiosyncratic underrated gem from the great Robert Altman. Popeye (Williams), who has been sailing the seas in search of his long-lost father, arrives in the port town of Sweethaven. After renting a room from the Oyl family he strikes a bond with their daughter Olive (Shelley Duvall in the part she was born to play), but when the pair stumble on an abandoned baby and decide to adopt it they run afoul of Olive's fiancee (and the town bully) Bluto. With music by Harry Nilsson, a fully realised world and absolute commitment to the bit by everyone involved, Popeye is a wild explosion of creativity that's only gotten better with age.

Altman may not seem the natural choice for the big-budget musical adaptation of a 1920s comic strip about a sailor with a propensity for getting into fights, but as always he managed to make Popeye unmistakably his own. Despite their outlandish designs the sprawling cast of characters and village of Sweethaven feel curiously real, partly due to the extraordinary set construction that nearly bankrupted the picture and still stands on the island of Malta today. The key to this chaotic, freewheeling movie working at all is the deep vein of humanity brought to it by Altman and his leads (we'd argue this is Williams' finest performance), who manage to make an ensemble of oddballs in a cartoon world feel like people you've known for years.