Saturday, September 30, 2017

Hodgepodge 336/365 - Cult Movies

Over the last few days, we've watched two "cult film" DVDs: A Boy and His Dog (based on a Harlan Ellison novella), with an unrecognizably young Don Johnson in the lead; and Repo Man, with Emilio Estevez and the recently late, and ever great, Harry Dean Stanton. At least, I consider them cult films—meaning, offbeat, at the very least. I figured there'd be a list somewhere of such. And sure enough! A humongous one, on Wikipedia. There's also a short one—just twenty-five—at Rolling Stone. Although Repo Man makes the latter list, A Boy and His Dog doesn't. But never mind. It is. Whatever those people might think.

Per Wikipedia, a cult film is one "with a cult following, obscure or unpopular with mainstream audiences, and often revolutionary or ironically enjoyed. . . . Cult films are defined as much by audience reaction as they are content." They also tend to be small-studio productions, not mainstream Hollywood.

Movies on the Rolling Stone readers' poll that I, too, love are:

The Princess Bride (#23)
Blade Runner (#18)
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (#17)
Fight Club (#16)
The Blues Brothers (#15)
Repo Man (#12)
Donnie Darko (#10)
Harold and Maude (#6)
A Clockwork Orange (#5)
Pulp Fiction (#4)
This Is Spinal Tap (#3)
The Big Lebowski (#2)
and of course . . . The Rocky Horror Picture Show (#1)

But a few more that I would mention, from the immense Wikipedia list, are:

12 Monkeys
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai across the 8th Dimension
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
anything directed by Werner Herzog (starting with Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes, alphabetically anyway)
Annie Hall
Bagdad Cafe
Bedazzled
anything written by Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich etc.) 
anything directed by Christopher Guest (Best in Show etc.)
the Coen Brothers' movies certainly count (Blood Simple, Fargo, etc.)
Blowup (Michelangelo Antonioni: I will never forget the scene at the tennis court)
David Lynch and Blue Velvet
. . . good grief, I'm still only in the B's
Brazil, directed by Terry Gilliam
John Hughes's movies (Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller's Day Off)
Carrie
Kevin Smith's films (starting with Clerks, which does make the Rolling Stone list [#19], though I've never seen it . . . but maybe I should?)

Okay. That's enough. I did verify that A Boy and His Dog counts at least somewhere as a "cult classic." I might scan the Wikipedia list some more and see if there are any (ha ha) that I've missed, and might want to add to my Netflix queue. Anything's possible.


No comments: