If it comes from cinema’s low-budget underbelly and is publicized with little more than a lurid poster and a sensational title, it’s a B-MOVIE.
If it’s controversial, often hated, or just plain not noticed or forgotten, and yet loved by a core of defenders who feel that they’re a minority who grasp the film’s vision (or who maybe see charm in its failures), it’s a CULT MOVIE.
If the nudity is gratuitous, the violence is unnecessary or the subject matter makes most good peoples’ assholes clench, it’s WRETCHED SLEAZE and God bless it.
That kind of sums up what this is about. In choosing films, I color outside the lines sometimes. I take liberties. I screw around. I’m not a scientist classifying insects. I’m just a guy who likes to blab about movies. Some people might read these reviews and think that I’m a nut with no focus. Some might consider me 100% full of shit for mixing screwball comedies and Bergman, Fellini, Truffaut and Scorsese in with the slashers and radioactive monsters.
And maybe those people are right. Too many B-movies, cult films and wretched sleaze have scrambled my brain. I’ve got a head that’s been stepped on by Godzilla and smacked around by David Hess. Things get a little fuzzy sometimes for me and that’s just the way it goes.
So here are the rough rules:
EVERY horror movie counts. It’s the most argued over and controversial genre of them all. Any time a new horror movie bothers people for any reason, that’s good news, as far as I’m concerned. That’s the way it’s always been. That’s the way it should be.
EVERY sex comedy, especially if it’s a teen sex comedy, is also lovably disreputable. They get a pass, as well.
Other movies welcome here:
- Old serials
- Any straight-to-video action flick
- Nearly all film noir (another cult genre)
- Notable independent films
- Anything by Monogram Pictures
- Anything by American-International Pictures
- All French New Wave
- All German Expressionism
- All early talkie American pre-Code envelope pushers
- All motorcycle movies
- All street gang flicks that aren’t hit musicals
- All interesting box office bombs
- All blaxploitation
- All atomic monster movies
- All low-budget rip-offs of big-budget hits
- Anything rated NC-17
- Anything with the word “Erotic” in the title
- All old school arthouse hits
- The obscure early work from directors of note
- Anything ever shown on USA Up All Night
- All documentaries of interest to weirdos
- Any movie that stars someone named Bela, Dolph, Wings, Udo, Tura, Tor, Arch, Gunnar, Linnea, Divine, Mamie or Chesty.
That about covers it.
Some people say that the term “cult movie” no longer means anything today, now that almost nothing in this internet age is forbidden. You don’t have to trouble yourself much to see damn near anything you want anymore (one of the hallmarks of a cult film, after all, is that people loved them so much that they would go out of their way and lay down money to see them again and again). I’m not sure that I disagree.
But I still like the term. I think it’s fun.
It’s like a place called Joe’s Diner that opened forty years ago and is still open, even though Joe died fifteen years ago. We still call it Joe’s Diner, regardless. That’s its name.
In the same spirit, I submit that “cult movies” remains the best term to describe those oddball, ridiculous, misunderstood and truly cool films worth noting, worth savoring and maybe even worth hating in a world so full of easily accessible media that no one knows what to watch next.
I do my best to keep the old neon sign lit up and the doors open.
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