Well, the time has come for me to conclude my yearlong journey into the world of cult films. It almost seems fitting that I would choose to end with John Waters‘ 1972 transgressive black comedy Pink Flamingos, which was one of the earliest films to become a hit on the midnight movie scene, pre-dating The […]
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For my penultimate selection in this year-long look at cult films, I go back to 1936 and an anti-marijuana propaganda film, originally titled Tell Your Children. Reefer Madness became a cult classic in the 1970s, when it rediscovered in a film archive and became a midnight movie hit for college students. As narrated by high
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I’m doing my blindspot post early this month, since I’m going to be quite busy with the Toronto After Dark Film Festival, which begins tonight, and I wanted to ensure that I watch my film selection before the end of the month. To go with the spirit of the Halloween season, I’ve decide to go
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It would have been almost impossible to do a blindspot series about cult films without including Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz’s TROMA Entertainment. Spanning nearly 40 years, the films released by TROMA have essentially written the book on low-budget cult classics. The most popular of these films was 1984’s The Toxic Avenger, which was co-directed
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Yeah, this was an odd one. Harold and Maude focuses on a rich young man named Harold (But Cort), who is obsessed with death. Harold is repeatedly faking suicides, much to the annoyance of his mother, who tries to set him up with various young women. While at one of the many funerals he frequents,
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When I was compiling my list of cult films for this year’s blindspot series, my way of thinking was “the weirder, the better.” That said, I’ve been purposely holding off on some of the more unusual films for the second half of the line-up. As such, it is only appropriate that my next film to
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Marking the halfway point of my yearlong look at cult films, this month I chose Walter Hill’s 1979 gang thriller The Warriors. The film takes place in a dystopian version of New York City, where street gangs outnumber the police five to one. One night, all the gangs of the city are called together in
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All it took was the animated opening credits and techno score sell me on Tom Tykwer’s 1998 German cult hit Lola Rennt (better known to English audiences as Run Lola Run). The film stars Franka Potente, in a career-making performance, as the titular Lola, who receives a desperate call from her boyfriend Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu).
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We are right around the corner from the Hot Docs Film Festival, so I thought that it would only be appropriate that I choose the classic mockumentary This is Spinal Tap as the latest entry of my “Cult of 2013” blindspot series. The film was directed by Rob Reiner and chronicles the tour of a
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Based on the off-Broadway musical of the same name, Hedwig and the Angry Inch tells the story of Hedwig (John Cameron Mitchell), a transsexual rock star from East Berlin. Born as Hansel Schmidt, Hedwig underwent a botched sex change operation, which left her with the titular “angry inch.” She eventually meets and falls in love
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