爱华网http://www.tcpoetry.com/index.cgi
CULT FILMS
Cult Films have limited but very special appeal. Cult films are usually strange, quirky, offbeat, eccentric, oddball, or surreal, with outrageous, weird, unique and cartoony characters or plots, and garish sets. They are often considered controversial because they step outside standard narrative and technical conventions. Most cult films cut across many film genres (science fiction, horror, melodrama, etc.), although they can be very stylized, and they are often flawed or unusual in some striking way.
Many cult films feature or effectively showcase the performance of newcomers or other unknown talented actors/actresses. These often-obscure and cheesy films are usually made by maverick, highly individualistic film-makers with low-budget resources and little commercial marketing. And cult films are rarely, if ever, sequels, since then they would have attained mainstream appeal and widespread success.
Many cult films fared poorly at the box office when first shown, but then achieved cult-film status, developing an enduring loyalty and following among fans over time, often through word-of-mouth recommendations. Sometimes, they were revolutionary, brilliant films ‘before their time‘ (i.e., Fantasia (1940)) and not bound by the conventions of their day.
They elicit a fiery and intense passion in devoted fans, and may cause cultists to enthusiastically champion and become devoted to these films, leading to audience participation, fan club membership, and repetitive viewings and showings. Cult films have tremendous followings with certain groups, e.g., college campuses, ‘midnight movie‘ crowds, independent film lovers, etc. Cult movie worshippers persuasively argue with all about the merits of their choices, without regard for standard newspaper or movie reviews from critics.
Camp films are cult-type films, but they are often poorly made or ludicrous, yet still enjoyable and appreciated. Cult films follow no rules or pattern - some cult films are popular only among certain limited groups of audiences or friends.
One of the biggest, best-known cult films was not intended to become so popular. It was a low-budget, government ‘documentary‘ propaganda film from the mid-30s created to dramatize the dangers of marijuana use and demon weed - Reefer Madness (1936). However, Tod Browning‘s grotesque Freaks (1932), was deliberately advertised as "the strangest...most startling human story ever screened," and had alternate titles including Forbidden Love, The Monster Show, and Nature‘s Mistakes. It used real-life dwarfs, pinheads, and other human freaks (portraying sideshow circus performers) to present a jolting story of revenge.
Music-Based Cult Films:
Some cult films are music-based, such as director Rob Reiner‘s This is Spinal Tap (1984), a tongue-in-cheek spoof of rock documentaries, following a faux British heavy metal band‘s disastrous US tour; Pink Floyd: The Wall (1982), a bizarre film based on the popular rock album; Ken Russell‘s Tommy (1975), the Who‘s rock opera about a deaf, dumb, and blind kid who sure plays a ‘mean pinball‘; and The Blues Brothers (1980), a farcical musical comedy involving two loser musicians who resurrect their old blues band.
The first of two other quintessential rock musical cult films include the transgender The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) - notable for inspiring the craze of interactive, ‘midnight movie‘ screenings. The iconic film was essentially a trashy tale set in a mysterious castle with kinky extraterrestrial Transylvanian transvestites, two stranded young people (including an underwear-clad Susan Sarandon), and a mad scientist. The second was a rebellious teenage musical comedy Rock ‘N‘ Roll High School (1979) that featured a rock band named The Ramones. Perry Henzell‘s urban-crime drama The Harder They Come (1973) with musical star Jimmy Cliff, featured a reggae soundtrack and a seamy look at poverty and crime in Jamaica.
Well-Regarded Cult Films:
A number of cult films are well-regarded, such as Frank Capra‘s It‘s a Wonderful Life (1946), that became popular many years after its initial release due to repeated television showings. Likewise, the classic weeper An Affair to Remember (1957) has developed a loyal following (it was a remake of Love Affair (1939), was paid homage in Sleepless in Seattle (1993) and remade as Love Affair (1994) with Warren Beatty and Annette Bening).
Others include the science fiction classic Forbidden Planet (1956) that has developed a wide cult following, Kubrick‘s intriguing A Clockwork Orange (1971) - a surrealistic tale of an ultra-violent future and the danger of psychological reconditioning, or Coppola‘s anti-Vietnam war epic of a terrifying journey into hell in Apocalypse Now (1979), or another Kubrick classic, Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb (1964). Frank Darabont‘s subversive, allegorical, and life-affirming prison story about two life-sentenced prisoners, The Shawshank Redemption (1994), based upon a Stephen King story, failed at the box-office during its original release, but established a strong cult following its video release. George Roy Hill, the director of such Oscar-winning hits as The Sting (1973) and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), also helmed the comedy-drama Slap Shot (1977) with Paul Newman - noted as one of the raunchiest, most foul-mouthed, macho sports films ever made.
A visually rich Philip-Marlowe style detective film, director Ridley Scott‘s Blade Runner (1982), set in futuristic, proto-punk Los Angeles in 2019, and about an ex-cop (Harrison Ford) who hunts down renegade human replicants, has developed a wide cultish following. An early 70s big-cult favorite was director Hal Ashby‘s dark, eccentric and macabre Harold and Maude (1971) about a strange taboo romance between a 20 year-old boy (Bud Cort) and a fun-loving, joie-de-vivre 79 year-old woman (Ruth Gordon) to the tune of a Cat Stevens soundtrack - with ingenious scenes of the spoiled rich boy‘s mock suicide attempts staged to upset his mother. A year earlier, Bud Cort had starred in Robert Altman‘s quirky and satirical fairy tale Brewster McCloud (1970) as a bespectacled boy living in the Houston Astrodome where he was building a machine to escape and fly away. The Sound of Music (1965) when re-released in the late 20th century was presented as a sing-along version (with subtitles) along the lines of the participatory Rocky Horror, with fans dressing up as nuns, lonely goatherds and Nazis.
Conversely, some of the most praised films have pornographic origins, such as the ground-breaking Behind the Green Door (1972) due to its star Marilyn Chambers appearing in her first adult role (she was a former All-American Girl and Ivory Snow detergent model).
Directors with Cult Status: Ed Wood
Oft-maligned Ed Wood has generally been regarded as the worst Hollywood film-maker of all time - and therefore has a number of classic cult films in his filmography. His directorial debut film was titled Glen or Glenda? (1953) (aka I Changed My Sex, I Led Two Lives, The Transvestite, or He or She) - about cross-dressing, with Wood starring as a transvestite struggling with his addiction to angora, and Bela Lugosi as the narrator. The comically-awful Bride of the Monster (1955) displayed the following teaser on its posters: "The Screen‘s Master of the Weird in his Newest and Most Daring Shocker!" It featured Dracula‘s Hungarian-accented and aging Bela Lugosi in his first (and last) substantial role in a Wood production, as Dr. Eric Vornoff -- an expatriate Russian mad scientist in search of a way to use atomic radiation to mutate humans into superhumans. His crazed, monstrous man-beast assistant Lobo was played by Swedish wrestler Tor Johnson. This was Lugosi‘s last speaking film role.
[In tribute to the maverick director, he was the subject of Tim Burton‘s biopic Ed Wood (1994), inspired in part on the exhaustive biographical book Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood Jr. by Rudolph Grey. The film starred Johnny Depp as the quirky, transvestite film director of iconic cult films. Martin Landau won an Oscar for playing horror legend Bela Lugosi in the film. Burton‘s film told the story of the making of three of Wood‘s most well-known films featuring Lugosi: Glen or Glenda?, Bride of the Monster and Plan 9 from Outer Space. Ted Newsom‘s campy documentary Ed Wood: Look Back in Angora (1994) used Wood‘s own films as an autobiographical look at his life.]
Eccentric Wood‘s real masterpiece about invading aliens in California who animated the dead was Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959) - often considered the absolute worst or dumbest film ever made. Its legendary special effects included Cadillac hubcaps as flying space saucers. It also featured a post-death appearance of Bela Lugosi (advertised as "Almost Starring Bela Lugosi") in the role of "The Ghoul Man." [A documentary on the film, titled Flying Saucers Over Hollywood: The Plan 9 Companion (1992), was 111 minutes in length, over a half hour longer than the original film!]
In the decade of the 60s (until his death in late 1978 at age 54) when he lost investment backing for his projects, Wood turned to writing sexy pulp novels, and to filming short porno ‘loops‘ for coin-operated booths in sex shops. The softcore porno film Orgy of the Dead (1965), with Wood screenwriting and adapting his own novel, was another stunning example of awful film-making - although not directed by Wood. Wood‘s final film (with the pseudonym Don Miller in the credits) was the low-budget, porn (or ‘smut‘) film Necromania (1971), subtitled A Tale of Weird Love, that was shot in less than a week, and made in two versions (soft-core and hard-core). It told the story of Danny and Shirley, a young couple who visited a mysterious necromancer named Madame Heles (in her sex clinic and funeral parlor) for help with Danny‘s impotence. The hands-on lessons they were taught involved a coven of witches, simulated sex with painted skulls, topless chanting and spells, and an extended sex scene in a coffin.
Directors with Cult Status: David Lynch
Director David Lynch‘s cutting-edge, unique work has often been regarded as cultish, absurdish and campish. His nightmarish, avant-gardish first film Eraserhead (1977) contained many baffling, existentialist images of urban family life in a post-apocalyptic setting - in particular, the sights of a shock-haired man and a mutant baby. Then, his next film was the atypical real-life story Elephant Man (1980), with John Hurt as the grotesquely-disfigured title character John Merrick in Victorian London. Although nominated for eight Academy awards, it came away empty-handed. Lynch‘s bold landmark murder mystery about a severed human ear and tale of sexual perversion and kidnap, Blue Velvet (1986) - was a disturbing look at the hidden, bizarre world behind a college student‘s picture-postcard, all-American home town, with Dennis Hopper as a deranged, sadistic, gas-sucking lunatic.
Lynch‘s sex-crazed lovers-on-the-run film Wild at Heart (1990) was also filled with dark, odd, and confusing characters, including Nicolas Cage as Sailor and Laura Dern as Lulu, and numerous twisted Wizard of Oz references. It won the Palme D‘or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1990. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) was a prequel to the popular TV series of the same name, about the last week in the life of high-school beauty queen Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee). After a long absence, Lynch directed the confusing, unsettling thriller Lost Highway (1997) - a 21st century noir, followed by the traditional drama The Straight Story (1999) about a 73 year-old Iowa man (Richard Farnsworth) who embarked on a riding lawn-mower odyssey to see his estranged, dying older brother. Lynch was back to form with the enigmatic, multi-layered, surreal mystery Mulholland Dr. (2001) with Naomi Watts and Laura Elena Harring as blonde and brunette Hollywood starlet wannabes - the film brought Lynch a Best Director nomination.
Directors with Cult Status: John Waters
Another director/writer John Waters (dubbed "The Prince of Puke") has also produced a unique crop of intentionally bizarre, crude, kitsch and bad taste-laden cult films with eccentric oddball characters. His first feature film was the black comedy trash film Mondo Trasho (1969), followed by the gross-out Pink Flamingos (1972) - about a grotesque, transvestite trailer park matron named Babs Johnson (played by Divine) who literally eats real dog feces in a competition to become the ‘World‘s Filthiest Person Alive‘. Other films included the garish film Polyester (1981) - a spoof on suburbanite, middle class soap operas and the first film shot in Odor-ama, and Hairspray (1988) - a campy satire of the early 60s featuring beehive bouffant hair and 60s music and dancing.
Directors with Cult Status: Sam Raimi
Of the more recent, new breed of low-budget horror films, creating both laughs and screams in scenes of raw energy, splatter-master writer-director Sam Raimi‘s films stand out with his cult favorite star Bruce Campbell (as the hapless, chain-saw wielding Ash Williams). The Evil Dead trilogy is an exceptional example of tongue-in-cheek, slapstick, cultish horror, including:
Raimi‘s feature debut film, the original chilling and gory Evil Dead (1983), about a group of five college-aged kids who venture for a night to a woodsy mountain cabin, and find that they unwittingly unleash the spirits of the dead, turning four of the five into ghoulish zombies with super-human strength
its superior, manic and gory sequel Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn (1987)
and a third incarnation transported to the Dark Ages, Army of Darkness (1993)
Raimi‘s films feature cartoon-like action, comedy, horror, otherwordly spirits, bloody gross-outs of gore, and non-stop energized craziness. For example, in one sequence in Evil Dead 2, main hero/actor Bruce Campbell engages in a violent battle with his own hand.
Directors with Cult Status: The Coen Brothers
Brothers Joel (director) and Ethan (producer) Coen have produced some quirky, stylish, bizarre, off-beat films with tremendous followings. Their films include:
Blood Simple (1985) with delicious plot twists in a sleazy, ingenious tale of murder and double cross
Raising Arizona (1987), a baby-kidnapping caper that includes a wild chase finale
a complex, stylish gangster film and intriguing black comedy, Miller‘s Crossing (1990), in which Danny Boy plays on a gramophone when crime boss Leo (Albert Finney) Tommy-gunned would-be assassins
the dark comedy of a 30s Hollywood - the story of a New York playwright lured to Hollywood to write a wrestling picture but experiencing writer‘s block in Barton Fink (1991)
the visually astonishing The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)
and one of their latest films that has brought mainstream recognition, Fargo (1996)
also, the absurdist comedy crime film The Big Lebowski (1998) featuring Jeff Bridges as Dude - a ‘laid-back,‘ unemployed, and blundering stoner in a noirish, Raymond Chandler-esque Los Angeles
Directors with Cult Status: Roger Corman
Independent film-maker Roger Corman, known for his low-budget, cheesy exploitation films that populated drive-ins, made films that ranged from Westerns and gangster films to science-fiction, teen-age hot rod and rock ‘n‘ roll movies. He churned out numerous cult status hits, including the original version of the classic black comedy Little Shop of Horrors (1960) with little-known actor Jack Nicholson, Bucket of Blood (1959) about a busboy who keeps lifelike statues of deceased people and animals, the many Edgar Allan Poe horror film adaptations starring Vincent Price, the first ‘biker‘ film The Wild Angels (1966) (with Peter Fonda and Nancy Sinatra), one of the earliest ‘psychedelic‘ films of the late 60s The Trip (1967) (scripted by Jack Nicholson), and Frankenstein Unbound (1990) in his latter years. In 1970, he founded New World Pictures (1970-1983), his own production and distribution company, specializing in low-budget, exploitation films.
In addition to Jack Nicholson and Peter Fonda, producer/director Corman - dubbed "the Orson Welles of Z-Pictures" by LA Times‘ critic Kenneth Turan, recognized the talented abilities and jump-started the careers of the following in the 60s and 70s:
Francis Ford Coppola -- The Terror (1963), uncredited director; also Dementia 13 (1963), director and writer
Peter Bogdanovich -- The Wild Angels (1966), uncredited writer, cinematographer and actor, and assistant to director; also Targets (1968), director, writer, and actor
Bruce Dern -- The Wild Angels (1966), actor; also The Trip (1967)
Robert De Niro -- Bloody Mama (1970), actor
Stephanie Rothman -- The Student Nurses (1970), director and writer
Martin Scorsese -- Boxcar Bertha (1972), director and uncredited actor
Jonathan Demme -- Caged Heat (1974), director and writer
Sylvester Stallone -- Death Race 2000 (1975), actor
Joe Dante -- Hollywood Boulevard (1976), director and uncredited actor; also Piranha (1978), also scripted by John Sayles
Ron Howard -- Eat My Dust! (1976), actor; also Grand Theft Auto (1977), director, actor and writer
Battle Beyond the Stars (1980) -- scripted by John Sayles, art design by James Cameron
