The Old Cult Canon: 16 cult films that paved the way for the new cult canon

I love this movie almost irrationally:

http://www.compressed-data.com/wizards.jpg

Of the ones I've seen, Repo Man takes it.

I was going to say that.

Never seen "Wizards". Aguirre, The Wrath of God, Two-Lane Blacktop, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, Suspiria have all been t' telly in the last month or so

Coincidentally Aguirre, The Wrath of God, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls & Suspiria all have great soundtracks!

As does Repo Man, Performance and Eraserhead and especially The Harder They Come.

And El Topo? And Eraserhead!

Eraserhead is great, but one of those films I only really need to see once.

Sus-Sus-piria. Just wanna say the word.

I voted for "Repo Man", that's the one I'd most want to watch right now. Pretty good list of films, though! It's rare to see one where I like them all to some extent.

I know that Freaks gained its notoriety via the whole pre-VCR Midnight Movie craze that gave most of these flicks their audience (I learned that from a Starz documentary!), but are there any contemporaries of Freaks that are similarly cultish (for lack of a better descriptor)?

I've seen an above average number of these films. (Most film lists I've seen 1, maybe 2 of them, but I've seen almost half of these.)

Had a hard time trying to choose between many options, in the end it came down to Repo Man vs. Beyond The Valley of the Dolls vs. Performance and now I can't remember which one I voted for. Bah!

I guess the nearest contemporary of "Freaks" that's cultish would be the Universal monster movies or the WB Busby Berkeley musicals?

Reefer Madness, don't forget.

Enter the Dragon is a cult film?

"Aguirre" wins by a distance. Not that there aren't other great films in the list.

Can't choose between:

Freaks (1932)
Pink Flamingoes (1972)
Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970)
Suspiria (1977)

aguirre and two-lane are 2 of my favorite movies ever, but if voting for a cult film I'd probably go with eraserhead w/ repo man close on its heels.

what, no carnival of souls?

Hardest poll of all time

cultish contemporaries to FREAKS = THE BLACK CAT (the best Karloff/Lugosi pairing), Vigo's ZERO FOR CONDUCT

has to be SUSPIRIA for me; BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS isn't as good as FASTER PUSSYCAT...KILL!KILL!; would rate KASPAR HAUSER above AGUIRRE, DAWN OF THE DEAD above NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD; and ROCKY HORROR is a lousy film of a mediocre musical

What films are in the "new cult canon"?

Never mind, I already "got it":

http://www.avclub.com/content/topics/The_New_Cult_Canon

even fans of rocky horror don't rep it as a great film, it's kind of beside the point.

xpost

the onion old cult canon: a+
the onion new cult canon: are you even trying

"Rocky Horror" is bollocks for sure, but it's entertaining enough if a/you're drunk b/you haven't seen it in a few years c/you are not in the company of students.

x-post yeah the "new cult canon" movie list is some nonsense from what I saw, tho' there are a few decent movies listed.

re: new cult canon - Sonatine? Really? That isn't even close to Takeshi's best.

some of the "new" ones have a culty feel or following (battle royale, donnie darko, they live) but when you posit the devil's advocate as a cult film, uh.

Not that I endorse it, but it seems to me Harold and Maude ought to be on any list of old cult films.

here, this will be helpful in speeding the mockery of egregious choices

American Movie
Lars von Trier's The Kingdom
Gremlins 2
Sonatine
Sexy Beast
Showgirls
The Devil's Advocate
Manos: The Hands Of Fate vs. Troll 2
Road House
Wild Things
Punch-Drunk Love
The Boondock Saints (with special guest Overnight)
Wet Hot American Summer
Dead Man
Battle Royale
Fast, Cheap & Out Of Control
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
The Rules Of Attraction
I Am Cuba
The Blair Witch Project
Pi
Primer
Clerks
They Live
Babe: Pig In The City
Miami Blues
Irma Vep
Morvern Callar
Donnie Darko

Being a "cult movie" isn't something you can just make so by saying it, is it? the idea is kind of stupid whatever the merits/defects of the films listed.

Babe: Pig In The City?

wow how have I never heard of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takeshis%27

anyone seen it?

can anything be a cult movie nowadays? info superhighway, changed sensibilities, etc. in another era movies like oldboy and fargo would've been weirdo outsider touchstones, but as of today they're ranked 114 and 115 on imdb's top 250 films, outranking the wizard of oz.

"Pig in the City" gets it for supposedly being "dark" I'd guess. I've never seen it.

Ashamed to admit I've never seen 'Pink Flamingos' or 'Aguirre', a situation which must be rectified. The rest are all good, and most are great. My head says 'El Topo' or 'Performance', but my heart says . . 'Suspiria' For the design, for the colours, for Goblin, and for being such a perfect storm of 70's Eurohorror insanity.

I'd say a key thing about cult movies is that they have to be fairly obscure and/or hard to see, but loved by those who have seen them. Nowadays that would restrict it to the very few movies that don't make it beyond festival showings, and don't get out as DVDs and downloads.

I can't even finish The Boondock Saints.

can anything be a cult movie nowadays?

Underground DVD-only taste-flaunting horror shit like the August Underground trilogy might be as close as folks can get to the spirti fo the old "cult" guard (tho I'm the last person to trust on that).

(xpost w/ Soukesian)

There's always the Cremaster movies.

can anything be a cult movie nowadays?

I like to say that Pink Flamingos is the best American movie ever made, but I went for Repo Man just 'cuz I love it to death. Lotta second place contenders: Eraserhead, PF, Aguirre, Wizards, Suspiria, NOtLD, El Topo.

there has to be some unusual barrier to distribution for a movie to be considered cult today. something like battle royale works - to this day it still hasn't had a legal distribution deal in the US, though file-sharing and boots in legit channels like amazon make it pretty easy to obtain. cremaster's a good pick, since barney has apparently scuttled any dvd plans.

I'd say audition, except you can walk into any best buy and get it. I fondly remember trying to see aguirre for nearly 10 years before I eventually found a video store that carried it.

agreed about the distro thing - what constitutes a "cult" item nowadays has changed considerably.

There's loads of cool-sounding Eastern European stuff which has never been released on subbed DVD. Woijec Has for one, Saragossa Manuscript aside.

I had to go with Pink Flamingoes; seeing this in a packed theater in Baltimore with John Waters kind of tops all other cult movie experiences I've ever had.

Yup, that new cult list - have barely seen 1 or 2 movies on it.

'Dead Man' was a really good call - that has classic 70's Midnite Movie influences all over it.

Lots of great stuff, but gotta vote for Romero here.

Voted for El Topo, though I may very well have picked differently if I wasn't on a huge Jodorowsky binge as of late. (I like Holy Mountain better, though.)

Never understood the appeal of Suspiria (though I love the soundtrack).

For me, Suspiria is like an animated Roxy Music album cover, an exercise in a certain kind of 70's style taken to the point of hysteria. The murders are almost a distraction.

But, taken in the context of Argento's other movies, it almost seems like a fluke. Hard to believe his recent follow-up is the work of the same director.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

You know a lot of people knock Wizards for ripping off Bodé's style, but that is one of the main reasons I like it.

Bakshi's always been COMPLETELY all over the place, hasn't he?

almost all of Bakshi's films are basically him riffing on one artist or another - Wizards (Bode), Fritz the Cat (Crumb), Fire & Ice and Lord of the Rings (Frazetta). I don't have a problem with this approach at all, but obviously not all the artists being apropriated felt that way.

His most interesting film is probably his blaxploitation one, Coonskin. Once the 80s set in tho, it was all downhill.

I picked Aguirre, but Night of the Living Dead, Performance, Two Lane Blacktop and The Harder They Come have good cases as well.

I love Suspiria (and to a lesser extent El Topo) but it's hard to compare to other movies, because it does as many things badly as it does well.

Yeah, I am really curious to see Coonskin, but lord knows if it'll ever get a DVD release.

Night of the Living Dead, even though cult movie is a middlebrow concept imo.

I only saw Coonskin once, years ago (on VHS - and it was called something else) and it got a serious WTF? reaction out of me. I mean it opens with some shitty live-action footage of Barry White getting shot and killed, if I remember correctly. And it gets loopier from there - there's an amazing psych-freakout sequence towards the end with a preacher, I think...? Deeply weird.

oh and Scatman Crothers! yeah they are breaking out of prison and getting shot at by police and Scatman launches into some storytelling "listen to these folktales" jive talk routine that frames the animated sequences.

That New Cult Canon list is baffling.

I thought they were OTM with "Babe: Pig in the City."

That's the least baffling choice on there! That movie is great.

For real, and if you want to play "Spot the Goth," you will win a lot of points.

Eraserhead (1977)
Aguirre, The Wrath of God (1972)
El Topo (1970)
Repo Man (1984)

best movie:eraserhead
best cult:el topo

Coonskin is on YouTube:

Heavy Traffic, another weirdo Bakshi film, is up too:

Oops, just meant to post the links but whatevs.

whoa thx

Heavy Traffic is in my netflix queue

Considering "Repo Man" is in the old list, I am wondering why "They Live" is in the new one.

(as opposed to the old one, I mean)

There are some Bakshi interviews on those DVD releases that are HILARIOUS! The guy is a real character, I could sit and listen to him talk and laugh my ass off for hours. Wizards has a funny one where he is bashing Disney repeatedly and then goes on to explain how he was gonna show em how to make a real kids movie.

I had always wanted to see Fritz the Cat and when I finally did I thought it was so kickass, everything from the grittiness to the music. The seedy underbelly of 60s hipness. Kind of gave me the same feeling I get when I listen to "Brown Shoes Don't Make It" by the Mothers.

My parents rented me Wizards when I was 10 or so cos I begged them after gazing at the cover art. I think we got to the part where the sexy fairie is on the bed and they said "Ok, you can watch this when you're older". With all the sexy fairy/violence/nazis and that bizarre anti-semetic scene where the two priests are beating each other, I'm sort of surprised it has a PG rating!

In the face of all this I had to vote for Repo Man, cos I saw it in a theater recently and every second of it was a blast and everyone in the theater shouted out all the lines. What a genius movie!

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Very not surprising results.