Top 100 Cult films of all time (1 Viewer)

[Christ Reynolds]

another cult film in the making - donnie darko

CJ

 

[JohnAP]

Have you guys seen the Entertainment Weekly issue from about two weeks ago. The feature cover story is the top 50 cult films. It's got a lot of the films you guys mentioned. Check it out.

 

[MatthewLouwrens]

Have you guys seen the Entertainment Weekly issue from about two weeks ago. The feature cover story is the top 100 cult films. It's got a lot of the films you guys mentioned. Check it out.

I believe it was the top 50. The full list is:
1. This Is Spinal Tap
2. The Rocky Horror Picture Show
3. Freaks
4. Harold & Maude
5. Pink Flamingos
6. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
7. Repo Man
8. Scarface
9. Blade Runner
10. The Shawshank Redemption
11. Five Deadly Venoms
12. Plan 9 From Outer Space
13. Brazil
14. Eraserhead
15. Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!
16. The Warriors
17. Dazed and Confused
18. Hard-Boiled
19. Evil Dead II
20. The Mack
21. Pee-Wee's Big Adventure
22. Un Chien Andalou
23. Akira
24. The Toxic Avenger
25. Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory
26. Stranger Than Paradise
27. Dawn of The Dead
28. The Wiz
29. Clerks
30. The Harder They Come
31. Slap Shot
32. Re-Animator
33. Grey Gardens
34. The Big Lebowski
35. Withnail and I
36. Showgirls
37. A Bucket of Blood
38. They Live
39. The Best of Everything
40. Barbarella
41. Heathers
42. Rushmore
43. The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension
44. Love Streams
45. Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story
46. Aguirre, The Wrath of God
47. Walking and Talking
48. The Decline of Western Civilization II:The Metal Years
49. Friday
50. Faces of Death Vol. 1
I am unsure just how Shawshank counts as a cult film. It may have bombed at the cinema, but was such a success on video (I think it was the number one rental on video that year?) that it is really a mainstream film, not a cult film.
I would love to see Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story out of curiousity. The whole 'film a film with Barbie dolls' idea amuses me. Too bad I'll never be able to see it.
Where are the David Lynch films. Surely there should be at least ONE David Lynch film.
Cult movies in general seem to be a strange collection - they're either really great films that are too good for the general public to get, or really awful films worthy only of MST3K mocking, or both.

 

[Steve K.H.]

Rocky Horror (obviously)
Ummm... anyone ever heard of "Star Trek" films?

 

[Walter Kittel]

Some of these may be questionable, but I'll add to the ever expanding list the following titles...
Billy Jack
Born Losers, The
Cronos (1993)
Danger Diabolik
Miracle Mile
Phase IV (1974)
Quiet Earth, The
Terror Train
Tremors
Zardoz
- Walter.

 

[Steve Elias]

I clicked on this thread just to make sure The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension was included. I'm glad to see that Entertainment Weekly saw fit to give it a place on their list. Most of my other favorite cult films have already received numerous mentions.

-Steve

 

[Adam_D]

Matt there is one Lynch film on that list: 14. Eraserhead
a few that noone has mentioned:
ghost in the shell
puppet master
memento

 

[Andy Sheets]

I am unsure just how Shawshank counts as a cult film. It may have bombed at the cinema, but was such a success on video (I think it was the number one rental on video that year?) that it is really a mainstream film, not a cult film.

I think Spinal Tap is also way too mainstream and widely accepted to count as a cult film.
While I like They Live, there's something screwy about that being the only John Carpenter film on the EW list

 

[Jeff Gross]

Roman Polanski's THE TENANT. It's really way out there (and very scary), and Paramount is considering a DVD release for it next year

The Tenant will be release on July 1, 2003

 

[Chris]

I was surprised they did a three page spread on the "cult of Office Space" (a great movie, IMHO) and it did not make the list Kinda shows how there list was composed.
I also was puzzled by some no-mentions (how much more of a cult is their then MST3k: The Movie, and so on? Or Little Shop of Horrors?) Some of the films in the list, I couldn't figure out to save my life (how can Academy Award Nominated for Best Picture be in the list???)

 

[Dan Rudolph]

It's difficult to make a top 100 list of cult films as a cult film is a movie with a small following. Do you list the movies that the mainstream hates the most that manage to have any fans at all? The movies with the smallest followings? The movies with the largest followings that aren't quite large enough to be mainstream?

And the complete omission of Monty Python and the Holy Grail from that list baffles me. I would think it would be in the top 5.

 

[Seth Paxton]

I agree that Holy Grail and Office Space are dead-on matches for this category and should have been on their list near the top, but for the most part their list was pretty darn good.

I don't think a cult film has to have a small following. I think it has to have a much more intense and larger following than its initial release ever suggested, and with an initial release that slipped under the mainstream culture radar.

Shawshank gets the nod not because it was so small, but because of the dramatic increase of love for the film that popped up sometime after its video release. I agree that its initial release makes it a close call though since it wasn't THAT small.

Another way to look at it might be moderate to small films that would now make A LOT more money at the box office than they initially did, despite being on video even.

I especially like the suggestions of Donnie Darko, Memento, and Tremors, though Memento did get mild Oscar talk which sort of rules it out unless you go with the Shawshank angle.

Another thing to me is that a cult film must have a strong rewatchable factor, for its cult following that is.

 

[JohnAP]

Yeah Shawshank Redemption seemed an odd fit, but I guess it fit their criteria. Of course everyone of us will have a different list of movies they left out, but overall I think they did a good job of putting some great films in the spotlight for an issue. I was surprised to see some really obscure stuff like Un Chien Andalo on there. I also thought the Office Space thing was strange. Was that supposed to be number 51?

 

[Chris James]

I'm suprised only one person (Barry S) mentioned The Crow!

 

[Jason Adams]

And how about Mommie Dearest? Maybe its more campy.

 

[Aryn Leroux]

night of the comet!

 

[Sean Campbell]

The original 1954 cut of Godzilla. It's almost impossible to find outside Japan ( I've only seen it because it got a rare screening on British tv back in 1999 ) and most people probably don't even realise that it exists.

The 'Quatermass' movies are certainly deserving of the cult moniker too.

Then there's 'Ghostwatch' - a BBC tv movie broadcast in 1992. It dealt with a tv crew spending the night in a haunted suburban house. It was designed to look like a live broadcast and many people assumed it was real ( including my 14 year old self ). It became so notorious that it was banned for a decade before finally getting a DVD release in 2002.

Another BBC movie deserving of cult status is the nuclear war drama 'Threads'

 

[MatthewLouwrens]

Matt there is one Lynch film on that list: 14. Eraserhead

Oops. My bad.

Do I feel stupid now.

 

[Chris]

(BTW, there has been a BBC movie version of HitchHikers Guide to the Galaxy, and quite a few people have it, so let's not say it doesn't exist

 

[Rob P S]

Bad Boys(1983)
Lone Star
A Midnight Clear
Night of the Creeps
One False Move
A Simple Plan
Smoke