Six early Herzogs

Klaus Kinski and Cecilia Rivera in a scene from Werner Herzog's 1972 film "Aguirre: The Wrath of God." (Film forum/photofest)

Back in the mid-1970s, if you'd tapped one of the directors of the New German Cinema to still be around in 30 years, odds are you wouldn't have bet on Werner Herzog. Rainer Werner Fassbinder was cranking out four movies a year and Wim Wenders was gathering strength, but the former worked himself to an early death in 1982, and the latter peaked with 1987's "Wings of Desire." Herzog, the darkly existential Energizer Bunny of the movement, hasn't just kept going: With "Grizzly Man" (2005) and "Rescue Dawn" (2007), he has come perilously close to being a household name. Not bad for a guy whose second feature starred an all-dwarf cast.

As Herzog's new Antarctica documentary, the odd and oddly engaging "Encounters at the End of the World," arrives in theaters this week, it seems fitting to alert Werner-come-lately fans to the director's early work. Following are six disturbing '70s classics that absolutely no one else could have made. All are available on DVD if you know where to look.

"EVEN DWARFS STARTED SMALL" (1970)

This genuinely bent head-trip about a rebellion of little people on a remote island looks backward to "Freaks" and forward to David Lynch, mulching movie history and the '60s counterculture into a dyspeptic statement about the smallness of mankind. Don't expect much plot; do expect images you'll never be able to shake.

"AGUIRRE: THE WRATH OF GOD" (1972)

For his fifth feature-length movie, Herzog turned around and delivered a masterpiece: a period epic about conquistadores losing their way in an unforgiving and inexplicable New World. It marked the director's first collaboration with his anarchic muse, actor Klaus Kinski, whose psycho intensity burns a hole in the screen.

"THE MYSTERY OF KASPAR HAUSER" (1974)

Taking the true story of an 18th-century wild child who appeared one day in the streets of Nuremberg, Herzog homes in on his enduring theme of a hostile, enigmatic universe lurking behind the tissue of civilization. Star Bruno S. was a similar riddle who made one more film with Herzog (1977's "Stroszek") before dropping from sight.

"THE GREAT ECSTASY OF THE SCULPTOR STEINER" (1974) /

"LA SOUFRIERE" (1977)

From the start, Herzog mixed narrative features with documentaries - and the documentaries were often the stranger works. These two nonfiction shorts remain essential: "Steiner" focuses on the zen of a German ski-jump champion, while "La Soufriere" takes the director to the rim of a volcano that stubbornly refuses to blow.

"HEART OF GLASS" (1976)

Herzog's casts often moved as if they were hypnotized; in this one, they actually were. Probably the director's most difficult and dreamlike early film, it follows the citizens of a small Bavarian village after they lose the glass-blowing recipe that has sustained them for centuries. Electronic music pioneers Popol Vuh chip in another mind-altering score.