Monday 3 November 2014

Dissecting Cults… Not That Kind of Cult!

If you’ve been an avid film fan and spend the time to check out details on one movie before watching in theatres, there may have been some that escaped your attention. You even hear of certain movies that reportedly achieved the status of “cult films,” or gained a so-called “cult following.” It can be easy to dismiss such movies as the handiwork of some religious order by the genre title alone, but what really makes a cult film a cult film?


Defining Status
Certain dictionaries label a cult film as a movie that has appeal to a “relatively small audience.” Some may have had a general release, but never did well at the box office and lived on in obscure grainy storage mediums until converted to digital format. A few movie experts rule out highly-popular movies as cult classics.

So Bad it’s Good
Cult films have achieved notoriety for bland production values, bad acting, and even horrible scripts – with some being labelled “so bad it’s good.” One such case is 1967’s Manos: The Hands of Fate. The product of a bet between a screenwriter and a fertiliser salesman who claimed he could make a film on a small budget, the movie was barely known among film suppliers before it was a featured on a Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode in 1993.


Cult films will have something for you and your friends to enjoy. Whether you’ll leave the movie laughing or crying at its quality is up to you. 

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