Best movies like The Subterraneans

A Nazi spy passes himself off as an optometrist in San Francisco's waterfront district. Someone robs him of his code book, and he must get it back.

A reflective look at the arrival and impact of AIDS in San Francisco and how individuals rose to the occasion during the first years of the crisis.

A homeless musician finds meaning in his life when he starts a friendship with dozens of parrots.

A private detective takes on a case that involves him with three eccentric criminals, a beautiful liar, and their quest for a priceless statuette.

A giant octopus, whose feeding habits have been affected by radiation from H-Bomb tests, rises from the Mindanao Deep to terrorize the California Coast.

Garvey is a San Francisco pawnshop operator. His unemployed and criminal friends Dillard, Turtle and Weslake, team up with Boardwalk, a local pimp, to burgle Garvey's shop while the owner is out of town. During the elaborate planning process, Dillard falls for a Hispanic woman, the sister of a friend. Boardwalk is assigned to case a local apartment, where he meets and falls for the maid. Amidst all these romantic hijinks, Weslake puts together a burglary plan, which is executed by the makeshift gang.

An ordinary man, while vigorously asserting the impossibility of miracles, suddenly discovers that he can perform them.

Two San Francisco detectives want to bring down a local hijacking boss. But they'll have to get to him before a hitman does.

The untold story of Charles Manson's obsession to become a rock star, his rise in the LA music scene, the celebrities who championed his music, his tragic friendship with The Beach Boys' Dennis Wilson and his descent into violence and chaos once his dreams fell apart.

A young girl recounts growing up in San Francisco in the '70s and '80s with her bisexual dad, activist and author Steve Abbott.

Chinatown, San Francisco, 1928. Former private detective Dashiell Hammett, a compulsive drinker with tuberculosis who writes pulp fiction for a living, receives an unexpected visit from an old friend asking for help.

A cop framed for a murder he did not commit hunts the San Francisco waterfront for the Mob racketeers who are responsible.

It's San Francisco in 1957, and an American masterpiece is put on trial. Howl, the film, recounts this dark moment using three interwoven threads: the tumultuous life events that led a young Allen Ginsberg to find his true voice as an artist, society's reaction (the obscenity trial), and mind-expanding animation that echoes the startling originality of the poem itself. All three coalesce in a genre-bending hybrid that brilliantly captures a pivotal moment-the birth of a counterculture.

A spinster dressmaker falls for a ne'er-do-well.

While courting a young woman by mail, a rich farmer sends a photograph of his foreman instead of his own, which leads to complications when she accepts his marriage proposal.

Tweek City is a week in the life of Bill, a potentially closeted, half-Latino, small-time speed dealer in San Francisco's Mission District. Bill is stuck on an endless walk from one empty experience to the next. Only Bill's friend Jerm has the ability to connect and ground him in reality. When Jerm makes an ill-advised stage dive, Bill plunges into a downward spiral that takes him on a nocturnal journey through the streets of San Francisco and ultimately down to Los Angeles where he crashes his high school sweetheart's wedding. From his sleep-deprived, hallucinogenic state, Bill fails miserably in a desperate attempt to reconnect with his first and only love. With nowhere else to go, Bill jacks a car and ends up at the deserted drive-in theater of his childhood where he is forced to confront the ghosts that he had tried to leave behind.

Jenny is carrying the child of a young man who dies in the San Francisco earthquake (1906). After giving birth, she decides to place her child in the custody of a wealthy married couple. Years later, thanks to the protection of a corrupt politician, she becomes the main "madame" of San Francisco, in addition to participating in various illegal activities.

The Untold Tales of Armistead Maupin celebrates one of the world’s most beloved storytellers, following his evolution from a conservative son of the Old South into a gay rights pioneer whose novels inspired millions to reclaim their lives.

In this verité-style drama, Anthony, a newcomer to San Francisco, attempts to come to terms with his abusive ex-lover when he strikes up an unlikely friendship with a street hustler.

It’s been two years since his wife’s sudden death, and once-promising young filmmaker Alex Harty has allowed both his life and career to come to a standstill. But after he assaults a Hollywood studio executive, Alex returns to his hometown of San Francisco to reconnect with old friends for a bittersweet odyssey. Even if Alex can manage to run away from his life, will the memory of his late wife drag him back into it?

San Francisco heiress Page Forrester is brutally murdered in her remote beach house. Her husband Jack is devastated by the crime but soon finds himself accused of her murder. He hires lawyer Teddy Barnes to defend him, despite the fact she hasn't handled a criminal case for many years. There's a certain chemistry between them and Teddy soon finds herself defending the man she loves.

Jenny, a deaf runaway who has just arrived in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district to find her long-lost brother, a mysterious bearded sculptor known around town as The Seeker. She falls in with a psychedelic band, Mumblin' Jim, whose members include Stoney, Ben, and Elwood. They hide her from the fuzz in their crash pad, a Victorian house crowded with love beads and necking couples. Mumblin' Jim's truth-seeking friend Dave considers the band's pursuit of success "playing games," but he agrees to help Jennie anyway.

The film is a study of Anton Szandor LaVey, leader of a cult of devil worshipers in San Francisco. He and his Church of Satan are shown performing a black mass, in which a nude woman serves as an altar and a boa constrictor wraps itself around a naked witch. Newsreel footage is included in which LaVey's neighbors are interviewed about the lion which he kept in his house until complaints resulted in the animal's removal to a zoo. The ideology of the Church of Satan is discussed--guilt rejection, sexual freedom, and self-indulgence.

A Death Row inmate uses his prison law studies to fight for his life. Based on a true story.

Barbary Coast, San Francisco. The gangster moll Belle gets deeply entangled with gangsters led by her boyfriend Vance. The professional writer John Banning understands why Belle got involved with these criminals. Banning tries to help her get out of that seedy life. However, It is not easy. A lot of action and violence ensues before Belle eventually succeeds.

Michael Brennen, a San Francisco private eye gets dragged into a drug-smuggling operation while searching for the girlfriend of a deal client, leading Brennen to a politically prominent family.

Wayne Adams is murdered in a Barbary Coast saloon and gambling hall in San Francisco in 1880, and his sister, Julie, enlists the aid of the district attorney, Michael Lodge, in gathering evidence in which to convict the owner of the gambling house of the crime. In order to do so, Julie poses as a dance-hall-girl, and soon finds herself in a dangerous situation.

The snooty Fernanda decides to leave Spain to visit her uncle in San Francisco in order to escape the attentions of the dandy, amorous Don Diego, but he follows her. She is rescued from a wild taxi ride by a passerby who owns a huge plumbing company. Believing him to be a common plumber, she snubs him, but he pursues her and a romantic rivalry is born.

Now known internationally as the world's first "gay hometown," San Francisco's Castro District was a quiet, working-class neighborhood of European immigrants only a few decades ago. In this documentary, the story of the Castro's transformation is told by those who lived it, young and old, straight and gay. It's a tale of social upheaval, exuberant street culture, political assassination, and the inspiring coming-of-age of an entire community an ongoing saga even today.

Big Sur is a film adaptation of the Jack Kerouac autobiographical novel of the same name.

In the early ’40s, a San Francisco prostitute is run out of town just as World War II has begun to intensify. She settles down in Hawaii, hoping to start a new life.

Vic "Bomber" Bealer is a handsome, manipulative boxer who aspires to something greater than the small-town life he knows in Texas. But, even when opportunities present themselves, Bealer is too restless and indecisive to take advantage. Despite being on the cusp of making the Olympic boxing team, his life is in total disarray as he juggles relationships with an old flame, a girl who's way too young for him, and a foul-mouthed trainer.

In a rundown apartment complex in San Francisco's Tenderloin, a septuagenarian seer is waiting for his final message. For decades the eccentric recluse has chronicled the phrases of the Wheel of Fortune and deciphered their hidden meaning - the details of a mission to save his neighbors from their troubles.

Severely traumatized and disillusioned soldier Alan Jaffeo returns to his hometown in San Francisco following a two year tour of duty in Vietnam. Filled with rage and appalled by the general decadence all around him, Alan violently lashes out at prostitutes, family members, and anyone else unfortunate enough to cross his angry and deadly path.

An unlikely connection sparks between two creatures: a fiercely independent stray kitten and a pit bull. Together, they experience friendship for the first time.