Cult Cinema: An Introduction

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This week on The Ringer, we celebrate those movies that from humble or overlooked beginnings rose to prominence through the support of their obsessive fan bases. The movies that were too heady for mainstream audiences; the comedies that were before their time; the small indies that changed the direction of Hollywood. Welcome to Cult Movie Week. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me was not met kindly upon its release, highlighted by its premiere being booed at Cannes in 1992. But while the initial consensus was disappointingly misguided, you can understand the impulse. Twin Peaks had just wrapped up its second and final season on ABC with a major cliffhanger, and David Lynch chose to follow up the series with what’s essentially a prequel of Laura Palmer’s final days. But Lynch has never been one for nostalgia, as evinced by the masterful 18-episode odyssey of Twin Peaks: The Return, and Fire Walk With Me excels on its own terms. No longer just the homecoming queen found dead and wrapped in plastic, Fire Walk With Me unsparingly lets the viewer in on Laura’s loneliness and suffering—along with the bone-deep terror of her realization that the demonic presence assaulting her is actually her father. It’s a film of overwhelming pain, sorrow, and sympathy, held together with a committed lead performance by Sheryl Lee that should’ve been showered with accolades. All told, Lynch put together a damn fine prequel that’s just as great as its predecessor. — Surrey 18. Army of Darkness

A great movie for Christian Bale and people who want to beat Jared Leto to death with an ax; kind of an awkward movie for people who unironically like Huey Lewis and the News. Some films gain cult status by reflecting niche social or artistic groups who don’t often get lionized in pop culture: goths, stoners, theater geeks, and so on. American Psycho is a bracing look at the orthodox and the aspirational, caricaturing a certain class and type of man by reducing him, like a jam, to his barest urges. It’s unsettling not only because of its graphic violence, but because Bale—in the hands of writer-director Mary Harron—is so uncanny. — Baumann 25. They LiveTerry Gilliam’s Brazil—which does not take place in Brazil, and is instead named for the song “Aquarela do Brasil”—is like 1984 on acid. And though Orwell’s most famous work inspired the movie, the comparison doesn’t really do the dystopian comedy justice. It has some of the weirdest visuals ever seen on film. Take, for example, the scene in which Jim Broadbent’s plastic surgeon, Dr. Jaffe, promises to make Katherine Helmond’s Ida Lowry look 20 years younger. The doctor spends several minutes yanking on his patient’s face like he’s a salt water taffy pulling machine—while she’s awake and talking to him.

Making a list of movies that seem underrated or underappreciated is one thing; accounting for the ones that generate religious fervor is another,” Adam Nayman writes in this history of the cult movie. “Cult films come in all varieties—and sometimes with vigorous debate about their status attached—but genuine, possessive devotion is the baseline.”

The saga of the Dude (Jeff Bridges) wasn’t exactly lost on a young teenager, but repeat viewings—and The Big Lebowski demands repeat viewings—reveal a movie that’s shrewder and more endlessly quotable than its most outrageous moments. (No comment on The Jesus Rolls , its unsanctioned spinoff.) The Dude’s laziness is almost defiantly noble when held up against the malevolent industry of the tycoon who shares his legal name; the fraternal bond between he and haunted veteran Walter (John Goodman) is a scrap of decency in a chaotic world. My colleague Adam Nayman has written extensively on Lebowski’s meaning and lasting impact, yet it remains as instantly appealing as it was more than a decade ago on my parents’ couch. Even when the Coen Brothers are doing chill stoner drag, they can still make a movie that’s tight as a drum. — Alison Herman

Raimi’s gnarly first professional film, which takes place in a cabin in the woods, features the Book of the Dead (the original title) , five possessed college kids, and terrifyingly demonic trees. Not only did the horror classic spawn a beloved franchise and make Campbell a B-movie icon, its influence can still be seen in scary movies to this day. Every single horror-comedy of the past 40 years owes The Evil Dead. — Siegel Universal Pictures 21. Showgirls A couple of years ago, I wrote about the enduring wonderfulness of “Weird” Al Yankovic’s Reagan-era media spoof—a film tuned into the same irreverent, quasi-surrealist wavelength as Airplane! and Pee-wee’s Big Adventure that played to mostly empty theaters before being reclaimed as a cult item on VHS. At home, it was possible for viewers to rewind and replay every inane, absurd joke (“What time is it?” [ Hand punches through the drywall displaying a wristwatch.] “7:30? Oh no!”) and to appreciate the level of visual and sonic detail in Yankovic’s movie and music-video parodies. As somebody who saw the video for “Beverly Hillbillies” long before catching “Money for Nothing,” there’s no question which one keeps playing on a loop in my head. — Adam Nayman Orion Pictures 34. Paid in Full According to Helmond, who died at 89 in 2019, Gilliam’s sales pitch for the role was simple: “I have a part for you, and I want you to come over and do it, but you’re not going to look very nice in it.” — Alan Siegel Universal Pictures 30. The Raid: Redemption MacGruber’ was a dumb idea written to the height of its intelligence,” former SNL head writer Seth Meyers told The Ringer in 2020. “That’s why it continued to get better the longer they did it.” Starring a profoundly committed Will Forte—at one point his character has sex with his dead wife’s ghost in a cemetery— MacGruber is far better than it has any obligation to be. And while the Jorma Taccone–directed, 1980s action movie parody with a star-studded cast—Val Kilmer, Ryan Phillippe, Maya Rudolph, Kristen Wiig, Powers Boothe—bombed at the box office, 10 years later it’s still one of the most quotable comedies of the 2000s.I suspect that any movie that has such an iconic scene would reach the status of cult classic, but the rest of the movie is just as worthy. Carpenter’s blend of post-Reagan American anticapitalist anxiety and extreme ’80s camp with a dash of WWE sensibilities—all tied together with his extremely fun direction and score—results in a truly delightful experience, made all the better by Piper’s star performance and iconic one-liners. — Bergmann 24. Bloodsport No one sets out to make a cult film. Not really, anyway. No matter how low their professed ambitions, if someone is going to go through all the trouble of writing, casting, directing, financing and shooting a movie, somewhere in their auteurist heart, they’re wishing to score a leftfield hit – the next ‘little low-budget indie that could.’ Most of the time, cultdom is the best they can settle for. But hey, there are much worse fates for any piece of art. In fact, as time has gone on, and the phrase has become more commonly understood, filmmakers have started to wear ‘cult’ as a badge of honour. And well they should – especially given the company they keep. It’s almost like someone from 2015 made a list of all the most famous comic actors and then put them in a movie that came out more than a decade earlier. From Paul Rudd to Amy Poehler to Bradley Cooper to Elizabeth Banks, David Wain’s Wet Hot American Summer is loaded. How was this not the biggest movie of 2001? Well, part of the reason why is because it struggled to find a distributor and was released in less than 30 cities. Hollywood didn’t like the talking can of peas, I guess, but sometimes Hollywood makes bad choices. That’s how a cult movie is born, though, and Wet Hot American Summer was too good to not become a word-of-mouth, discover-it-on-cable classic—and also the launchpad from which The State’s zany, highly meta comedy style crashed into the mainstream. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go fondle my sweaters. — Gruttadaro 5. Donnie Darko

It took me a decade or so to appreciate Katsuhiro Otomo’s grotesque masterpiece Akira, an existential crisis masquerading as an action movie. It’s postwar Japanese history reimagined as a cyberpunk ecstasy, but it’s more thoughtful and melancholy than its more splashy and violent elements might suggest. In Neo-Tokyo, the gang leader Tetsuo and his best friend, Kaneda, stumble—or, rather, crash—into a paranormal research project undertaken by the Japan Self-Defense Forces, imbuing Tetsuo with psychokinetic powers. Tetsuo’s awakening culminates in his spectacular self-destruction, taking the city down with him. There’s so much shouting and dismemberment in Akira: “Tetsuo!” “Kaneda!” “Tetsuo!” “Kaneda!” But above all, Akira sketches a civilization caught between its previous collapse and imminent decline. — Justin Charity 42. Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas In this list, the cults take a variety of shapes; from a collective unit that worships something unexplainable to a charismatic leader that has enthralled his or her followers. Some follow God, some follow Satan and some follow something else entirely. My colleague Alan Siegel wrote an excellent oral history on Donnie Darko for its 20th anniversary last week that gets into the many things that make the film great, from the music, to the acting, to Kelly’s script, to the painstaking attempts to make the time-travel stuff all work, to how it overcame its pitiful box-office showing to become a cult classic. But even without that history, Donnie Darko is a special movie for people of a certain age—the kind of film that makes you feel smarter than the adults around you, even if you still have to figure things out for yourself. — Sayles 4. This Is Spinal TapCult movies don’t have to be bad movies—that category received a separate Ringer ranking—but The Room sits at the center of any Venn diagram that contains the two. No movie epitomizes “unintentionally terrible” better than Tommy Wiseau’s endlessly quotable and confounding disasterpiece. It’s still unclear what Wiseau’s goals were or whether any element of The Room’s weirdness was intentional—the consensus seems to be “no”—but the movie’s uncanny valley quality is part of its appeal. The Room is best enjoyed with an audience that’s in on the joke, and if the pandemic does away with movie theaters, midnight screenings of the 99-minute … drama? … will be one of the most regrettable losses (even though the environment will be better off without the wasted spoons). The 2003 title, which was memorably promoted with one billboard in Hollywood, is such a rich text that the making of the movie inspired multiple memoirs, a documentary, and an Oscar-nominated film, a distinction few other cult movies can claim. Like its spiritual predecessor Ed Wood, The Disaster Artist is a testament to the hold cult movies have on our minds, even (or especially) when they look like nothing else we’ve watched. — Lindbergh Wiseau Films 13. Evil Dead II