What makes a cult movie?
The quintessential cult film is one that nobody much cared about at first. No box-office success, no awards, or praise. But then, after being forgotten somewhere in a dusty basement, fading away into oblivion… It is revived somehow, rising from its grave!
They are often far from having high production qualities, or much intellectual depth. What they abound with however is SOUL & LIFE.
Here is a selection of trademark cult films, in chronological order…
FREAKS (1932)
What is our fascination with freak shows? Midgets, “pinheads”, Siamese twins, hermaphrodites and bearded ladies… We the “normals” are both mesmerized and disturbed by seeing the deformed ones. Just like the horror film experience of an audience, we are compelled to watch when we feel like covering our eyes at the same time.
Director Tod Browning takes this ambivalent feeling to create one of the most discomfitting spectacles of cinema. All “freaks” in the film are people with the same deformities their characters have. Hence the film’s sense of reality, without feeling like a circus show. This is probably why the film was immediately banned, most of its footage edited out and eventually lost. So, the film we know today is far from Browning’s original vision which was butchered by producers and censors, even though the film was made in Pre-Code Hollywood, a more liberated period in American Cinema.
The film was totally forgotten until the 60s & 70s when it was first shown again in Cannes, and then rediscovered as a counterculture artifact by a new generation. Eventually it has become an inspiration for artists such as surrealist filmmaker David Lynch and groundbreaking photographer Diane Arbus. The film was hated by the audience in early 1930s, however it is still a disturbing watch for today’s audience. Freaks tackles taboos and runs against the norms of society, exploring what makes us humans and who are the real “freaks” among us.
DETOUR (1945)
Made on a shoestring and shot in a week, this pulpy B-movie film-noir has grown into a cult classic mostly because of its great femme fatale, Ann Savage. Like her surname, the actress creates one of the wildest, ferocious female characters in Noir!
The hapless hero here takes a road trip to Hollywood to meet his girlfriend, then he meets this b*tch-of-a-hitchhiker-from-hell. Well, this is actually after he is involved in a man’s death. He is in real deep shit, although he is so innocent. Or isn’t he?
One of the most original aspects of Detour is not just that it employed many tropes of film noir earlier than many classics. But it is also quite beyond its time having an unreliable, dubious narrator to puzzle the audience not much used to such a modernist technique in storytelling by early 40s. The first-person narration of Detour is so tricky and manipulated that what unfolds become quite suspicious as the story progresses. Moral ambivalence has always been at the heart of Noir genre, so this narration puzzle is not just a gimmick, but adds to the paranoia and doubtful atmosphere we are invited to experience.
A masterpiece of fatalism with a dark heart beating in the dirt roads of American landscape of failed hopes and naive dreams. The conniving anti-hero meets the monstrous femme fatale and they take a journey to hell on the highway together!
Note: As a strange meta-movie oddity, Tom Neal Jr, the son of Detour‘s lead, starred in his father’s role in a scene-by-scene remake, adding to the cult legacy of the original. The 80s remake is a postmodern rework, with Neal Jr. starring at the exact same age when his father starred in the first film and he looks just like his father! The original star Tom Neal went to prison for “involuntary manslaughter” when his wife was shot and killed, just like in the movie where he finds himself an involuntary murderer of a woman! Life imitates Art, then Art makes a Detour on Life again.
DEMENTIA (1955)
Dementia was reviewed here
Dementia is a never-ending nightmare for both the protagonist and the audience. The film demonstrates how thriller and jazz can be perfect ingredients for creating a confused, surreal dream-horror experience. So much so that no words are necessary, as they would have diminished the tension. Each character speaks and reflects their true intentions through perfectly executed performances, enhanced by strong visual presentations.
SHOCK CORRIDOR (1963)
Maverick filmmaker Smauel Fuller‘s film meshes paranoia, psychotic tendencies and American anxieties in Shock Corridor. Johnny Barrett (Peter Breck) gets himself committed to a mental asylum to investigate a murder. He will eventually discover that acting crazy can take its toll on you!
Constance Towers costars as Johnny’s stripper girlfriend. The plot eerily predicts the famous Rosenhan experiments a decade later where a group of fake patients got themselves committed to various mental institutions. The film tackles 60s issues like liberal rights and racism, while keeping the entertainment value intact. Far from being a perfect movie, but highly original and beyond its time, securing a place in Criterion Collection.
NAKED KISS (1964)
Samuel Fuller was firing on all cylinders in mid-60s, even though he was having trouble getting films made with television making the Hollywood studio system collapse. Fuller, instead of moving to TV productions, re-invented himself as an independent filmmaker working with small budgets, giving him the freedom to do his own thing without studio pressures. Here’s the second wonder he created after Shock Corridor.
A delicious mix of film noir and juicy melodrama, with Constance Towers as both the femme fatale and the wronged woman in a tale of American small town hypocrisy. She is a prostitute who starts a new life as a nurse, but she is about to find that the good American citizens can be quite depraved. It’s the daring subject matter and tackling of taboos in style that secured this one a place in the Cult Movie Canon.
FASTER, PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL! (1965)
What a title! One of the many cult classics by the King of Sexploitation, Russ Meyer, Faster, Pussycat... offers his trademark obsessions as: fierce women kicking ass, huge breasts, kinetic editing, crazy humor and violence.
Plot takes a back seat to mayhem and anarchy here, but here goes: 3 go-go girls looking for thrills encounter a young couple in the desert. After discarding the boyfriend, they scheme on stealing the fortune of a crippled old man living with his sons. The rest is a tale of cat-and-mouse game of seduction and who-is-going-to-f*ck-who-or-get-f*cked-over. The strippers are played by Tura Satana, Haji and Lori Williams. Sex, Violence & Rock’n’Roll galore!
BRANDED TO KILL (1967)
Branded to Kill was reviewed here
Like most cult movies, Branded to Kill (Koroshi No Rakuin) was initially a commercial and critical failure. The movie was such a flop in Japan that the legendary Nikkatsu film studio fired the director Seijun Suzuki for making films that “make no sense and no money”! The director counteattacked by suing the company, creating a publicity campaign, but he found himself blacklisted in Japanese film industry, not being able to make another film for a decade. It’s no wonder the movie didn’t make any sense or money – it is bizarre, psychedelic, absurd and quite ahead of its time!
MOJU aka BLIND BEAST (1969)
Blind Beast (Môjû) was reviewed here
This cult classic was made in a period in Japanese cinema when film studios were in need of more extreme material to attract an audience that cinema had lost to Television in the Sixties. Nikkatsu studio was going to start its sleazy softcore Roman Porno series of films only a couple of years later, in 1971. Blind Beast was not only a precursor to the 70s sexploitation wave of films, as sleazy and pulpy as any of them, but also a unique production, a visual, sensual experience and a fetishistic exploration of art, lust, obsession, adoration and masochism.
PERFORMANCE (1970)
This psychedelic trip of a movie was actually shot in the height of Sex, Drugs & Rock’n’Roll era in 1968, but not released until 1970. Warner Bros guys were reluctant to release it due to the heavy sexuality, drugs and violence in it, but also because they were not happy that their hot-shit star Mick Jagger wasn’t seen almost until halfway into the film. The Rolling Stones were supposed to do the soundtrack, but that didn’t happen. The shooting of this film intensified the problems within the group. But all the scandals and rumours during the making of it only added to the film’s cult status.
For instance, Anita Pallenberg, who plays Jagger’s girlfriend, was actually the legendary guitarist Keith Richards’ girlfriend, who got quite anxious that his bandmate Jagger was having actual sex with her in the set. Another band member, Ian Stewart, who was present on set, even confirmed this rumour later! Warner Bros producers were in for a nasty surprise when they saw the finished film by co-creators Donald Cammell & Nicolas Roeg, because they were naively expecting a fun Rolling Stones flick in the vein of The Beatles movie A Hard Day’s Night. What they got instead was a dark and experimental film about identity crisis. Finally when the studio greenlighted a release after re-edits and changes, it wasn’t much of a success. However, it went on to acquire a cult following over the years, especially in the UK. Now it is hailed as one of the best British films and one of the greatest Rock films of all time.
THE HONEYMOON KILLERS (1970)
Did you know that the greatest living American filmmaker was actually fired from a film he was shooting? Well, here’s that movie – the great Martin Scorsese, in the beginning of his career, was first appointed as the director of this low-budget murder flick. The reason he was sacked was that he was shooting too slow. (Some scenes Scorsese shot ended up in the final cut.) Time is money in film business, especially if you’re on a shoestring budget like this one – the entire budget wasn’t more than a quarter million.
The “killing lovers” are based on actual people – the infamous American couple in 1940s dubbed “Lonely Hearts Killers”. The film uses real names and same locations, adding to the realism. Con-man-meets-the-desperate-obese-nurse, and some melodrama later, they go on an American killing spree together. They’re not nice people. They’re scum – sleazy, heartless scum. There is nothing romantic about this movie, it depicts violent events and human garbage. No glamorization of violence here. It is cold and bleak. And honest. You’ll feel your sense of decency and humanity going down the drain!
To be continued…