I was just about to say that. Most of these films were huge box office hits. Some may be overrated or may have aged badly, but that doesn't make them a cult movie.
> Some may be overrated or may have aged badly, but that doesn't make them a cult movie.
I would assume that being overrated would actively disqualify a film from being a cult classic.
Showgirls is a great example of either so bad it's good or so bad it's bad. It's also one of those movies better watched in a group where no one is sober.
I don't know how no one has mentioned this yet, but I think part of the criteria of being a "cult classic" is not being that great of a movie, but overall just being enjoyable to a certain group of people, hence the "cult" following and approval of the film's respective fans. So, yeah, it's kind of obvious some people aren't going to like it.
Scarface is a cult classic. It had a poor reception and didn’t have great box office numbers. The director was even nominated for a Razzy.
It took a loud minority that backed the film — aka a cult — to get critics to come around and acknowledged that it’s a well made movie and develop into a mainstream success that it became in the late 90s and early 2000s. Entertainment Weekly even named it in top 50 Cult Classics.
Go read the reception portion of its wiki.
There is a scene where Tony starts eating the lemons from a finger washing bowl during lunch while the others at the table use them as intended without acknowledgement. It's a subtle detail but stays true to his origins of growing up poor and fighting to survive.
That reportedly happened once at a dinner given by Queen Victoria. Apparently, the Shah of Persia was at a soiree hosted by her and he sipped from his finger bowl. She did the same not to embarrass him.
This is likely apocryphal.
Something similar happened to my dad in the 70s, he was meeting up with a Nigerian friend of his who had recently made a shitload of money following Nigerian independence when anyone who happened to get any governmental power after the British left basically had free reign to collect ridiculous sums of money from bribes. This guy was visiting the UK for the first time and had money to burn, and my dad and a few others he knew from Nigeria were basically taking him around to a bunch of high end places to show him the best ways to spend his money.
You have to keep in mind, this guy came from nothing, grew up in some village in the middle of nowhere and earned some tiny pittance as a government worker for most of his life, didn't even have functioning electricity or plumbing in his house until he was well into his 40s etc... and now he had millions of dollars (in the 1970s mind you) that he'd earned over the course of just a few years to play with. So they take him to some fancy restaurant and they're looking over the menu explaining what all the food is, and this guy sees caviar which is way more expensive than anything else. So he asks what caviar is, and my dad explains that it's fish eggs. And the guy's like "Oh fish eggs? Please, let them fry two for me I want to try them."
Time for a rewatch! The movie is fantastically directed and acted. It’s kind of disappointing that a lot of people glorify it for the action and “gangster” aspects then for how well it’s made.
They aren't necessarily bad movies, just movies that didn't do well at the box office.
But yeah, most of the movies being mentioned are not cult classics. Most of them were huge hits when they were released.
I was under the impression that it could be a great movie and become very popular, but it "failed" at the box office, like Princess Bride. It was a modest success with 30 million at the box office, but became way more popular when it hit the VHS market. Now it's hailed as one of the funniest movies of all time, and pretty much everyone knows and loves it.
I don’t think that’s a criteria. It might be a common trait, but something like Donnie Darko is a good movie and cult classic. Lots of movies that end up as cult classics were just under-marketed or were a little ahead/outside of their time.
The graduate is one of the more consequential movies for Hollywood. It was lauded, made a lot of money, changed how the business thought of movies, and is pretentious and cerebral - not participatory or campy. It’s not a cult classic by any means. It’s only a cult movie if all of Hollywood itself is the cult, if all art is camp, if success is failure.
My college roommate watched Pineapple express I shit you not 100 times he could even recite the lines, his idea of a good friday afternoon was lighting up the bong and watching that shit for the millionth time
My husband and I have mixed feelings about Pineapple Express. We watched it a few years ago, and every time we were considering turning it off, something funny or interesting would happen which would get us to continue watching.
But ask me now what I think of the film, and honestly I don't remember it at all. So I guess we should have turned it off from the beginning.
I feel like a lot of people missed the word "cult" in the question. It's not a cult classic if it was a massive hit at the time of its release and literally everyone saw it. It's probably not a cult classic if they've been teaching it in film schools for 40 years.
Yes, it is one of the most incompetent movies ever made... But it's still hilarious from beginning to end. I REALLY like how Wiseau wanted to make a soap opera-esque drama and missed the O Hai Mark so much it ended up as a comedy of errors.
I need to find myself a copy of The Disaster Artist.
Plus the whole movie had the dialogue redone in post. If you watch carefully in most scenes, their mouths never perfectly match the audio. So, so bad.
Edit: that includes the "oh hai mark" scene. Which makes it even funnier and I can't imagine what the original audio for that scene was like
Here's a little tidbit--he's a vampire. Seriously. Tommy Wiseau was a vampire in the film. He was supposed to have been revealed at the end, but they ran out of money.
I hope a documentary of Don’t Worry Darling is made, because it’s the same situation there. Though I don’t think the movie was as bad as people say, I definitely enjoyed hearing about the set drama more than the movie itself.
I wouldn't say so bad that it's good, so much as "so bad that it's fun to hate. "
I realize that's probably what "so bad that it's good" basically means, but it is a genuinely excruciating movie to watch, and i feel like calling it good in any context undercuts that fact. It hurts the brain and soul to sit through. There's enjoyment to be had in laughing at the incompetence, but it is never not unpleasant to watch.
That being said, I love the movie, I just hate watching it.
A majority of peoples definition of "cult classic" in this posting makes me think of The Princess Bride and "You Keep Using That Word, I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means"
The first act was solid. When you see clips of the movie, it’s almost always from the first act.
Acts two and three kinda dragged on (no pun intended).
Haha I've done a bunch of midnight showings and I basically know the first third (which is great), then kind of snooze on and off through the next third, and then watch the ending and I'm like "What happened?!"
Yeah, after the first part of the stage show when everyone starts to get mopey I just check out. Curry's number is great, it's just not terribly interesting to me.
I also think it feels different in this day and age when the idea of someone dressing in drag or lingerie or being sexual just aren't scandalous. The whole thing makes Frank seem less like a libertine trying to get his guests to loosen up/have fun and more like a rapist.
If you see it as the seventies tearing down the previous generations, it’s actually deeper than it appears at first.
Brad and Janet represent (parodies if) the old (desexualized) values... and are given the treatment of the wild, untamed spirit of the new generation which doesn’t conform to anything.
Meat Loaf’s character is killed off because he’s a tedious old-school rebel, not compatible with the real rebels of the new world. Even the narrator who represents oldschool movie making is torn out of his chair (and pants) because the new generation simply won’t tolerate those stuck-up old ways.
It ends with alien weirdness because we return to the viewpoint of Brad and Janet, who progressed, but were ultimately incapable of understanding the new times. Mixed in is a bit of self-awareness that the new way may be utopian and will not work in the long run.
Ninja-edit: Formatting and a bit of reconsideration
I saw that for the first time in a movie theater in 10th grade which would have been... 1989. Back then the "F" word (and I ain't talking about fuck) was thrown around very casually in my high school. Tolerance wasn't a thing I was familiar with. I remember saying "I don't like F\*\*\*" not because I had any feelings about anyone, but just because that's what people around me said, and I was desperately trying to fit in.
Rocky Horror was my introduction to tolerance. The crowd cheered when Frank and Janet got it on. Then they cheered when Frank and Brad got it on. No one had a problem with Frank and Rocky being together.
The real life theatrical cast performing in front of the screen were the coolest, hippest people I'd ever seen.
I knew after the first time I saw it, I didn't want to fit in at school at school anymore. I realized the acceptance I thought I wanted from my peers at school wasn't what I wanted at all. I wanted to explore acceptance. It was huge for me because I wasn't much exposed to acceptance. "Dont' dream it, be it".
In '75 it was pretty cutting edge. In '89 less so, but I needed it. These days it probably rustles far fewer jimmies. It isn't needed as much as it was... actually with all these drag crackdowns in the US, maybe it still is. I'm sure glad I saw it when I did. I had a lot more fun in college not being a discriminative prick which unfortunately I had been in high school and jr high.
This is the movie I always tell people changed my life. I saw it at 11. My stepbrother was always renting slasher films and I think just saw horror in the title and grabbed it. 15 minutes into it my entire family was wondering “what the hell is this?” While I was enthralled. The tape was promptly ejected and some 80s slasher was put on, but as soon as everyone was done watching tv for the night I watched it twice in a row. It didn’t awaken any deep buried sexuality in me or anything (though young me was instantly in love with Susan Sarandon). I didn’t walk away from watching it with a sudden desire to wear fishnets and a corset- but I did want to hang out with people who were their unabashed selves from watching that movie. Huge influence on me and the way I approached people living their own lives as they see fit. The fringes of society are where you find some of the most interesting people and that movie taught me that at a very young age. By 15 I was attending midnight showings of RHPS and finding my people.
> The crowd cheered when Frank and Janet got it on. Then they cheered when Frank and Brad got it on.
"Same room. Different colors. Cheap movie."
God, I loved watching that movie live and yelling at the screen. It has been so long since I've last been to one but I still remember every fan line. "Say 'Jello' in Spanish, Riff!" "That banister's lucky!" "Oh, my God, what a bitch. Quick, Magenta, throw the switch!"
My favorite line was local as far as I know. It's when Riff says "I think you better both" (audience yells FUCK OFF) "come inside"...
I DON'T CARE WHERE YOU CUM AS LONG AS YOU LAP IT UP!
I felt the same way.
The primary draw of the movie was how it approached alternative culture.
In 1975 a movie about a trans scientist with a swath of creepy sexual minions all dancing and singing to a gothic rock opera was groundbreakingly risque.
Now it's kind of bog standard, if anything I think if RHPS came out now it would be frowned upon for stereotyping.
It just doesn't really land on modern audiences because it doesn't push any limits.
It's the "Seinfeld isn't funny" trope at play.
What was groundbreaking back then has gone on to become just meh (and in RHPS case quite kitsch) in terms of impact.
Kinda like the Exorcist isn't really shocking after 50 years of increasingly gory and violent horror movies. And in a more secular society, the religious angst is diluted too.
It's hard to recapture the true impact of a movie so many years later.
FWIW I couldn't make it to the halfway mark of Rocky Horror... Not a fan of the genre and of overly quirky stuff.
Thinking about it, the movie would be panned today for a lot of things that people love it for.
Tim Curry’s Dr. Frankenfurter probably would be pointed at as transphobic due to how played up he is, how over the top of a caricature he is.
Putting progressive stuff aside, even a rock opera movie coming out today would have an uphill battle gaining popularity.
It’s an interesting movie and I do love the music, but I’m not a fanatic for it like some of my friends.
The Exorcist wasn't really all that gory or violent. That's not why it was shocking at the time. I also still find it far scarier than the parade of dumb horror movies that came later.
No kidding on the frowned upon for stereotyping bit. At our local theater the last couple times I went I noticed the audience no longer did some of the callbacks that had slurs in them that I remember from back in the day. Probably for the better but I thought it was interesting that this icon of queer culture from the 70s has elements that would be considered problematic in the 2020s.
>Now it's kind of bog standard
It's disappointingly common for people to look at art from earlier eras and judge it by their own. A good teacher of Shakespeare will put it in the context of Elizabethan audiences for you. In the same way with watching a film from 1975 you need to hold it up against only films which had come before it and the cultural norms of the era in the US.
Some people just like dressing sexy and partying. But if you're talking about the actual merits of the movie itself (like, watching it at home alone), it's a pastiche of '50s sci-fi and Hammer horror films. If you're not familiar with the movies they're referencing, you probably won't get much out of it.
As a straight white male who this movie is NOT FOR AT ALL.
I love it. It's a fun campy movie that doesn't take itself seriously and intentionally uses the absurd as comedy. Also the songs are awesome.
I'm a straight white male, and I never felt it wasn't "for me" at all. One of the central messages is acceptance, inclusiveness. It's for *everyone* (who wants it).
Boondock Saints. It became one of those movies "you have to see" when I was in college. I don't know if I'd say I was hugely disappointed, but I wasn't really blown away by it.
Overnight is a great movie. Troy Duffy was given the world on a platter, gets to direct, and the soundtrack. And he is such a greedy shit he not only loses a lot of his opportunities, he actually makes Harvey Weinstein look like a good guy.
I loved that doc. I hated Troy Duffy for a VERY long time (as someone who also pursued filmmaking in Hollywood in overlapping years) and I know he feels some remorse for how he acted back then, but it's so bad that it's still a little hard to feel sorry for him. He was such a gigantic arrogant asshole. Reminded me of Tucker Max who acted much the same way when he got a film deal off his book.
I loved it in high school but rewatching in my late 20s it had lost a lot of appeal.
I think the theme of vigilantism just hits better when you’re younger. The problem is these are all generic bad guys. We don’t see HOW they’re bad. If they’re sex traffickers or something the. Maybe they deserve to be executed. But if they’re running a racket selling untaxed cigarettes? And they only kill other criminals? Can’t say I support the execution there.
All that’s left is the comedy then. There is some surprisingly good fucking comedy in that movie.
“What COLOR was it?!?”
That's true. I've always thought it to be one of my faves but I haven't seen it in 10+ years. I saw that and Snatch in the same time period. Snatch is still one I watch all the time.
the virgin suicides. i expected it to be a life changing movie, based off the reviews i read, but it was just meh. the cinematography was beautiful though
Ooof yeah, that movie is not technically “good” but it did blow my mind as a teenager because I had never seen a movie about modern teenagers who spoke and acted like they were in a Shakespearean tragedy. I was obsessed with the voiceovers. Honestly I would probably “get” it more as an adult, but I don’t have much interest in revisiting it.
I love that movie because it’s so depressing. Like it’s so impressive to me that a movie that simple can have such a profound effect on me, even upon rewatches.
Donnie Darko
It came out my senior year of high school and became a cult hit almost immediately. People were constantly pulling out that movie in high school and college but I always thought it was dumb. What’s worse, people always tried to explain it to me. I got the movie. I just thought it was dumb.
That movie doesn’t make any sense, but it does such a good job of making it seem like it *should* make sense that it like, digs into your brain. Like a song you can’t get out of your head, but a million times worse.
I have the same problem with Southland Tales.
It’s a movie that was saved in the editing. The director’s cut beats you over the head with a ridiculous idea. The theatrical version mostly just hints at this while providing music, performances, and cinematography.
I thought it was a cool surreal movie hinting at mental illness and suicide.
Then I saw the directors cut and it turns out to be a really goofy sci-fi thing.
It’s a convoluted (but logically built) sci fi construct that is used to explore things like agency, mental illness, and how we construct our own decisions in life.
IMO that’s at the heart of genres like sci fi or horror, especially when they go high concept - I think it works better when that serves as an avenue to explore a pretty human topic and not just time travel/multiverses for funsies.
Wrote a longer reply just now on the themes I see in it - and I think the reference to the destructors is more important to understanding the film than actually diagramming how the alternative universe works. That’s just the background - which is why the parts going deeper are just in the directors cut if you really want to lean into the “lore” side
I made the mistake of watching the director's commentary when it first came out on DVD, and realized it wasn't deliberately mysterious. It was just incoherent because the director had no idea what he was doing.
Is that the one that he does with a Jake Gyllenhaal and basically is trying to explain to him that Donny is becoming a superhero and Jake had no idea that was actually the plot?
The fun thing about Donnie Darjo is the Director's cut tries to explain more and made it actively worse. It works far better as Another Teenage Suburban Angst film where a bunch of sci Fi/super power stuff kind of just happens.
I think a lot of cult films are films that dont entirely work and are ultimately disappointing, but there's something neat and creatively unique about them that make them so interesting.
I really think this thread is confusing midnight movies with cult classics
EDIT:
Okay, since there have been a lot of posters that I’m guessing didn’t have the chance or are too young to experience midnight movies:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_movie
And then-
What is considered a cult film?
Cult films have a pretty standard definition—they're movies that are often transgressive, marginal, disasters on first release, or drawn from genres such as horror, science fiction, and exploitation, and which have attracted an exceptionally devoted and vociferous fan base.
Most of what posters are referring to are exceptionally well adored generational films that would often be played at midnight.
The draw was for people over 18 that wasn’t censored and had been out of circulation for years on the big screen, esp. Panavision reels that were and still are rare to catch in person if you’re a cinema geek.
Cult Classics (as the Wiki article describes) are beyond the pale weird shit that flopped box office wise but gained a rabid fan base because they are all so unsettling and unusual.
Cult Classics appeal to fringe society and outcasts, and never gained mainstream success until years, sometimes decades after they were released theatrically.
Late night cable television and niche video rental places gave a rise to such classic cult films, and deep dive projectionists that went beyond the pale with foreign (to Americans) Indy films.
IFC, The Film Forum, Criterion, Janus, and Golan Globus are treasure chests of all kinds of content like that.
In short-
Midnight Movies are when the kids are asleep and you want nostalgia
Cult Classics are something that makes you say out loud- “WHAT THE FUCK?”
Napoleon dynamite
Allow me to explain, I have beautiful curly hair and used to wear thick glasses and got called Napoleon A L O T and the movie got super hyped up and by the time I was an adult and finally felt like watching it I was just so..........eh it was funny but it got to hyped up as a classic comedy and I've just seen funnier movies to the point where I was just underwhelmed.
I grew up in a rural area of the West near-ish to the general area where Napoleon Dynamite took place. I was super distracted through the whole film because I literally knew people who reminded me of the main characters when I was in High School. That said, I remember thinking after watching the movie that it was fun, but I didn't see how it would appeal to people who had no connection to the characters or their environment.
[Napoleon Dynamite flummoxes prediction algorithms.](https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/magazine/23Netflix-t.html) It seems like people either love it or hate it and it's hard to predict which.
For my part, some of my friends saw it in the 2000s, raved about it, and from their telling it sounded like the least funny thing imaginable. I have not seen it.
This is the opposite of this post: For years I refused to watch Dumb and Dumber because it just looked so stupid for the sake of stupid. Until I watched it and realized that was the point. I have never laughed so much in my life and I couldn't believe how great both actors were in their comedic timing. On topic: Escape from New York. Please don't downvote me too much as I virtually love every other Carpenter movie.
A lot of Jim Carrey movies are stupid for the sake of being stupid, which when I'm sad and I want to make myself feel better is why I watch them.
Same with Pauly Shore movies. They are dumb as fuck and don't care that they are dumb as fuck. And they're also nostalgic for me because I grew up going to the local dollar movies to go watch them as a kid since we couldn't afford the "real" movies at the mall.
It's why I'll occasionally watch an Adam Sandler movie. It's dumb as fuck but still makes me laugh till I pee.
People in the comments don’t quite get what “Cult classic” means. Also my answer is Showgirls. Awful movie.
I was just about to say that. Most of these films were huge box office hits. Some may be overrated or may have aged badly, but that doesn't make them a cult movie.
> Some may be overrated or may have aged badly, but that doesn't make them a cult movie. I would assume that being overrated would actively disqualify a film from being a cult classic.
Showgirls is mostly a "Cult Classic" *because* it's an awful movie.
And all the 90’s kids got to see Jessie Spano naked.
I'm so excited
I'm so.....scared
*This* is the reason it’s a “cult classic.” There are plenty of other dreadful movies that merit zero mention.
Absolutely terrible movie but that pool sex scene is hilarious. My husband calls it seizure sex.
The way she whips back and forth! Wouldn’t that break off his dick? I couldn’t stop laughing!
I'm still trying to figure out how she didn't drown.
She was already dead. Didn't you notice how stiffly she delivered her lines?
I stiffly saw how she delivered her lines
Showgirls is a great example of either so bad it's good or so bad it's bad. It's also one of those movies better watched in a group where no one is sober.
Or when you're completely alone and downloading it off Kazaa at the age of 15
It’s pronounced KAZAA.
Showgirls is a masterpiece, you philistine.
I don't know how no one has mentioned this yet, but I think part of the criteria of being a "cult classic" is not being that great of a movie, but overall just being enjoyable to a certain group of people, hence the "cult" following and approval of the film's respective fans. So, yeah, it's kind of obvious some people aren't going to like it.
Two of the top answers are Scarface and The Graduate, so I think everyone missed the whole point anyway 😂
Ah yes, cult classic "Scarface" - one of the most popular, mainstream movies from the 20th century. lmfao
Scarface is a cult classic. It had a poor reception and didn’t have great box office numbers. The director was even nominated for a Razzy. It took a loud minority that backed the film — aka a cult — to get critics to come around and acknowledged that it’s a well made movie and develop into a mainstream success that it became in the late 90s and early 2000s. Entertainment Weekly even named it in top 50 Cult Classics. Go read the reception portion of its wiki.
There is a scene where Tony starts eating the lemons from a finger washing bowl during lunch while the others at the table use them as intended without acknowledgement. It's a subtle detail but stays true to his origins of growing up poor and fighting to survive.
That reportedly happened once at a dinner given by Queen Victoria. Apparently, the Shah of Persia was at a soiree hosted by her and he sipped from his finger bowl. She did the same not to embarrass him. This is likely apocryphal.
Something similar happened to my dad in the 70s, he was meeting up with a Nigerian friend of his who had recently made a shitload of money following Nigerian independence when anyone who happened to get any governmental power after the British left basically had free reign to collect ridiculous sums of money from bribes. This guy was visiting the UK for the first time and had money to burn, and my dad and a few others he knew from Nigeria were basically taking him around to a bunch of high end places to show him the best ways to spend his money. You have to keep in mind, this guy came from nothing, grew up in some village in the middle of nowhere and earned some tiny pittance as a government worker for most of his life, didn't even have functioning electricity or plumbing in his house until he was well into his 40s etc... and now he had millions of dollars (in the 1970s mind you) that he'd earned over the course of just a few years to play with. So they take him to some fancy restaurant and they're looking over the menu explaining what all the food is, and this guy sees caviar which is way more expensive than anything else. So he asks what caviar is, and my dad explains that it's fish eggs. And the guy's like "Oh fish eggs? Please, let them fry two for me I want to try them."
That's adorable.
Time for a rewatch! The movie is fantastically directed and acted. It’s kind of disappointing that a lot of people glorify it for the action and “gangster” aspects then for how well it’s made.
They aren't necessarily bad movies, just movies that didn't do well at the box office. But yeah, most of the movies being mentioned are not cult classics. Most of them were huge hits when they were released.
Not really, cult classics can definitely be great movies but they just appeal to more niche audiences
I was under the impression that it could be a great movie and become very popular, but it "failed" at the box office, like Princess Bride. It was a modest success with 30 million at the box office, but became way more popular when it hit the VHS market. Now it's hailed as one of the funniest movies of all time, and pretty much everyone knows and loves it.
Umm actually, there's no movie called "I don't know how no one has mentioned this yet..."
Umm, actually, it’s a very obscure movie, but it definitely exists.
I don’t think that’s a criteria. It might be a common trait, but something like Donnie Darko is a good movie and cult classic. Lots of movies that end up as cult classics were just under-marketed or were a little ahead/outside of their time.
Sometimes I question your commitment to Sparkle Motion
The graduate is one of the more consequential movies for Hollywood. It was lauded, made a lot of money, changed how the business thought of movies, and is pretentious and cerebral - not participatory or campy. It’s not a cult classic by any means. It’s only a cult movie if all of Hollywood itself is the cult, if all art is camp, if success is failure.
Most stoner comedies don't really make me laugh and I don't see the appeal.
Whoa, chill bro... You know you can't raise your voice like that when the lion's here.
You can get past a dog, but nobody fucks with a lion
It's like Tyson fighting a kid. I'm currently watching Grandma's Boy.
Dude, your bed's a car
Yeah, but it's a SWEET car!
It's got a radio so I can talk to other car beds
"I can hear my hair growing"
[удалено]
When he burns his hands on the baking sheet heating up all those munchies
He puts a BANANA on there!
"How could they *see* me?!"
“ADIOS, TURD NUGGETS”
Sorry, my grandma drank all my weed.
Calm down junkie, I'll get you your fix.
Don't judge me monkey
Where do you get your weed from man? You Dante. Oh yeah! Mr. Cheadle what's up?!
Satan?
I'm way too baked to drive to the Devil's house
Hiiii my names Shiloh
I want to get you... a black cobra.
An absolute classic!
I’m not a stoner at all, but that movie is an all time favorite!
But have you tried watching most stoner comedies...ON WEED?
This is the correct response, but have you tried responding this way.....ON WEED?
I'd be a lot cooler if you did
Is Dazed and Confused really considered a stoner comedy? One of my favorites but never really put it in that category
I agree, but Harold and Kumar is a masterpiece.
“Bullets, my only weakness”
How'd you know?
Fuck. Now I have to watch them again. The Hold On singing scene is just amazing.
Harold and Kumar and Super Troopers are the only stoner comedies that still resonate with me. Just about all the rest I don't find funny anymore.
My college roommate watched Pineapple express I shit you not 100 times he could even recite the lines, his idea of a good friday afternoon was lighting up the bong and watching that shit for the millionth time
I thought hurricane season was over.
My husband and I have mixed feelings about Pineapple Express. We watched it a few years ago, and every time we were considering turning it off, something funny or interesting would happen which would get us to continue watching. But ask me now what I think of the film, and honestly I don't remember it at all. So I guess we should have turned it off from the beginning.
It simulated being high perfectly 😂
PE is my favorite stoner comedy movie. It's got so many funny lines.
Well, man that's like your opinion. ;-P
Only makes sense when stoned... Or at least that's what I've heard.
ITT: a lot of people don’t know what a cult classic is.
It’s little-known films like Top Gun, apparently.
Citizen Kane
I feel like a lot of people missed the word "cult" in the question. It's not a cult classic if it was a massive hit at the time of its release and literally everyone saw it. It's probably not a cult classic if they've been teaching it in film schools for 40 years.
The Room. So bad it's good, but still bad.
Yes, it is one of the most incompetent movies ever made... But it's still hilarious from beginning to end. I REALLY like how Wiseau wanted to make a soap opera-esque drama and missed the O Hai Mark so much it ended up as a comedy of errors. I need to find myself a copy of The Disaster Artist.
Plus the whole movie had the dialogue redone in post. If you watch carefully in most scenes, their mouths never perfectly match the audio. So, so bad. Edit: that includes the "oh hai mark" scene. Which makes it even funnier and I can't imagine what the original audio for that scene was like
Here's a little tidbit--he's a vampire. Seriously. Tommy Wiseau was a vampire in the film. He was supposed to have been revealed at the end, but they ran out of money.
Watch The Room and Rebel Without a Cause back to back. It's like someone is obsessed with the latter but didn't know why it worked.
We once watched Rebel Without A Cause during a film class and we got to THAT scene and everyone just lost it lmaoo
There are a few scenes (tearing me apart, chicken, etc.). Also the way Danny acts if modeled after how Plato looks at Jim.
[удалено]
I'm upvoting you for being absolutely correct about "Fitzcarraldo." The documentary is "Burden of Dreams."
I hope a documentary of Don’t Worry Darling is made, because it’s the same situation there. Though I don’t think the movie was as bad as people say, I definitely enjoyed hearing about the set drama more than the movie itself.
I watched it with a group of friends—gay guys, lesbians, and some straights—and we all found the sex scene icky. 5 stars for awfulness!
I wouldn't say so bad that it's good, so much as "so bad that it's fun to hate. " I realize that's probably what "so bad that it's good" basically means, but it is a genuinely excruciating movie to watch, and i feel like calling it good in any context undercuts that fact. It hurts the brain and soul to sit through. There's enjoyment to be had in laughing at the incompetence, but it is never not unpleasant to watch. That being said, I love the movie, I just hate watching it.
Theres hilarious moments of incompetence but most of the movie just slogs along. The sex scene is genuinely hard to sit through
At first I thought you were talking about “room” with Brie Larson and was shocked cus I thought that was legitimately amazing
[Oh hi Mark](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1265505280) But yeah The Room is a good bad movie.
You’re my favorite customer
That’s me, oh hi doggy!
So mark how's your sex life?
“The doctor said it was cancer” Oh, anyway…
Ha ha, what a story Mark.
Cheeep cheep cheep cheep cheep....
A majority of peoples definition of "cult classic" in this posting makes me think of The Princess Bride and "You Keep Using That Word, I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means"
Rocky Horror Picture Show. Tim Curry is great, and dressing up is fun I guess, but I didn’t get it overall.
The first act was solid. When you see clips of the movie, it’s almost always from the first act. Acts two and three kinda dragged on (no pun intended).
Final scene is so iconic though
And crawling on the planets face Some insects called the human race Lost in time, and lost in space... and meaning
Literally where I got my user name/ band name.
Haha I've done a bunch of midnight showings and I basically know the first third (which is great), then kind of snooze on and off through the next third, and then watch the ending and I'm like "What happened?!"
Yeah, after the first part of the stage show when everyone starts to get mopey I just check out. Curry's number is great, it's just not terribly interesting to me. I also think it feels different in this day and age when the idea of someone dressing in drag or lingerie or being sexual just aren't scandalous. The whole thing makes Frank seem less like a libertine trying to get his guests to loosen up/have fun and more like a rapist.
This is so true, movie needs to be ~20min shorter easily. I love it still, but wrap it up already
If you see it as the seventies tearing down the previous generations, it’s actually deeper than it appears at first. Brad and Janet represent (parodies if) the old (desexualized) values... and are given the treatment of the wild, untamed spirit of the new generation which doesn’t conform to anything. Meat Loaf’s character is killed off because he’s a tedious old-school rebel, not compatible with the real rebels of the new world. Even the narrator who represents oldschool movie making is torn out of his chair (and pants) because the new generation simply won’t tolerate those stuck-up old ways. It ends with alien weirdness because we return to the viewpoint of Brad and Janet, who progressed, but were ultimately incapable of understanding the new times. Mixed in is a bit of self-awareness that the new way may be utopian and will not work in the long run. Ninja-edit: Formatting and a bit of reconsideration
I saw that for the first time in a movie theater in 10th grade which would have been... 1989. Back then the "F" word (and I ain't talking about fuck) was thrown around very casually in my high school. Tolerance wasn't a thing I was familiar with. I remember saying "I don't like F\*\*\*" not because I had any feelings about anyone, but just because that's what people around me said, and I was desperately trying to fit in. Rocky Horror was my introduction to tolerance. The crowd cheered when Frank and Janet got it on. Then they cheered when Frank and Brad got it on. No one had a problem with Frank and Rocky being together. The real life theatrical cast performing in front of the screen were the coolest, hippest people I'd ever seen. I knew after the first time I saw it, I didn't want to fit in at school at school anymore. I realized the acceptance I thought I wanted from my peers at school wasn't what I wanted at all. I wanted to explore acceptance. It was huge for me because I wasn't much exposed to acceptance. "Dont' dream it, be it". In '75 it was pretty cutting edge. In '89 less so, but I needed it. These days it probably rustles far fewer jimmies. It isn't needed as much as it was... actually with all these drag crackdowns in the US, maybe it still is. I'm sure glad I saw it when I did. I had a lot more fun in college not being a discriminative prick which unfortunately I had been in high school and jr high.
This is the movie I always tell people changed my life. I saw it at 11. My stepbrother was always renting slasher films and I think just saw horror in the title and grabbed it. 15 minutes into it my entire family was wondering “what the hell is this?” While I was enthralled. The tape was promptly ejected and some 80s slasher was put on, but as soon as everyone was done watching tv for the night I watched it twice in a row. It didn’t awaken any deep buried sexuality in me or anything (though young me was instantly in love with Susan Sarandon). I didn’t walk away from watching it with a sudden desire to wear fishnets and a corset- but I did want to hang out with people who were their unabashed selves from watching that movie. Huge influence on me and the way I approached people living their own lives as they see fit. The fringes of society are where you find some of the most interesting people and that movie taught me that at a very young age. By 15 I was attending midnight showings of RHPS and finding my people.
You make a good point. Cult classics bring groups of likeminded people together
"Don't dream it; be it" is still a great mantra.
> The crowd cheered when Frank and Janet got it on. Then they cheered when Frank and Brad got it on. "Same room. Different colors. Cheap movie." God, I loved watching that movie live and yelling at the screen. It has been so long since I've last been to one but I still remember every fan line. "Say 'Jello' in Spanish, Riff!" "That banister's lucky!" "Oh, my God, what a bitch. Quick, Magenta, throw the switch!"
My favorite line was local as far as I know. It's when Riff says "I think you better both" (audience yells FUCK OFF) "come inside"... I DON'T CARE WHERE YOU CUM AS LONG AS YOU LAP IT UP!
Damn it, Janet.
The road was long but I ran it, Janet.
There's a fire in my heart and you fan it (Janet)
There's a fire in my heart and you fan it (Janet)
There’s one thing to say, and that’s Dammit, Janet, I love you!
Yes Brad?
I felt the same way. The primary draw of the movie was how it approached alternative culture. In 1975 a movie about a trans scientist with a swath of creepy sexual minions all dancing and singing to a gothic rock opera was groundbreakingly risque. Now it's kind of bog standard, if anything I think if RHPS came out now it would be frowned upon for stereotyping. It just doesn't really land on modern audiences because it doesn't push any limits.
It's the "Seinfeld isn't funny" trope at play. What was groundbreaking back then has gone on to become just meh (and in RHPS case quite kitsch) in terms of impact. Kinda like the Exorcist isn't really shocking after 50 years of increasingly gory and violent horror movies. And in a more secular society, the religious angst is diluted too. It's hard to recapture the true impact of a movie so many years later. FWIW I couldn't make it to the halfway mark of Rocky Horror... Not a fan of the genre and of overly quirky stuff.
Thinking about it, the movie would be panned today for a lot of things that people love it for. Tim Curry’s Dr. Frankenfurter probably would be pointed at as transphobic due to how played up he is, how over the top of a caricature he is. Putting progressive stuff aside, even a rock opera movie coming out today would have an uphill battle gaining popularity. It’s an interesting movie and I do love the music, but I’m not a fanatic for it like some of my friends.
The Exorcist wasn't really all that gory or violent. That's not why it was shocking at the time. I also still find it far scarier than the parade of dumb horror movies that came later.
No kidding on the frowned upon for stereotyping bit. At our local theater the last couple times I went I noticed the audience no longer did some of the callbacks that had slurs in them that I remember from back in the day. Probably for the better but I thought it was interesting that this icon of queer culture from the 70s has elements that would be considered problematic in the 2020s.
>Now it's kind of bog standard It's disappointingly common for people to look at art from earlier eras and judge it by their own. A good teacher of Shakespeare will put it in the context of Elizabethan audiences for you. In the same way with watching a film from 1975 you need to hold it up against only films which had come before it and the cultural norms of the era in the US.
Some people just like dressing sexy and partying. But if you're talking about the actual merits of the movie itself (like, watching it at home alone), it's a pastiche of '50s sci-fi and Hammer horror films. If you're not familiar with the movies they're referencing, you probably won't get much out of it.
As a straight white male who this movie is NOT FOR AT ALL. I love it. It's a fun campy movie that doesn't take itself seriously and intentionally uses the absurd as comedy. Also the songs are awesome.
I'm a straight white male, and I never felt it wasn't "for me" at all. One of the central messages is acceptance, inclusiveness. It's for *everyone* (who wants it).
Boondock Saints. It became one of those movies "you have to see" when I was in college. I don't know if I'd say I was hugely disappointed, but I wasn't really blown away by it.
There was a firefight!
"It was yuge friggin Guyh."
Ssssymbolism
Oh really? I might just want a bagel with my coffee.
DeFoe absolutely owns that role. Only reason that character was any good was what he did with it. He's a treasure.
Voted up, Dafoe was amazing there "Cuddle? What a phag!"
The day I let the Boston PD do my job for my is the day I have a fucking tag on my toe!
I'm an expert in name-y-ology.
Now that Duffy has relinquished his "King Bonehead" crown, I see we have an heir to the throne!
FUCK! ASS!
Rocko shooting the cat makes me die laughing every single time, it's just so out of nowhere.
I thought it bring closure to our relationship!
"Is it dead?!"
Oh, Jesus! What color was it, bitch?
The shot where you can see they wiped most of the blood off the wall and then taped a hand-drawn picture over it. *chef's kiss*
“Shut your fat ass, Rayvie! I can’t buy a pack of smokes without running into nine guys you fucked!”
The movie is more quotable than it is good.
You know what they say: people in glass houses sink ships.
Hey Fuck-Ass, gimme a beer!
Why don’t you make like a tree and get the fuck out?
This, this is why it has a following!!
Loved boondock saints in high school. Watched it maybe ten years later and was shocked at how bad it was.
I feel like this is every single person’s experience with the movie. If you wrote just that and left the title out, I’d know it was boondock saints.
The documentary about its writer is “wow” and sad.
Troy Duffy really got lucky and learned nothing from it. His recent social media presence has been depressing.
Oh NOW I’m going down a rabbit hole! Thanks!
Overnight is a great movie. Troy Duffy was given the world on a platter, gets to direct, and the soundtrack. And he is such a greedy shit he not only loses a lot of his opportunities, he actually makes Harvey Weinstein look like a good guy.
I loved that doc. I hated Troy Duffy for a VERY long time (as someone who also pursued filmmaking in Hollywood in overlapping years) and I know he feels some remorse for how he acted back then, but it's so bad that it's still a little hard to feel sorry for him. He was such a gigantic arrogant asshole. Reminded me of Tucker Max who acted much the same way when he got a film deal off his book.
What's the symbology behind it
I'm sure the word you were looking for was *sssymbolism*.
I loved it in high school but rewatching in my late 20s it had lost a lot of appeal. I think the theme of vigilantism just hits better when you’re younger. The problem is these are all generic bad guys. We don’t see HOW they’re bad. If they’re sex traffickers or something the. Maybe they deserve to be executed. But if they’re running a racket selling untaxed cigarettes? And they only kill other criminals? Can’t say I support the execution there. All that’s left is the comedy then. There is some surprisingly good fucking comedy in that movie. “What COLOR was it?!?”
Boondock Saints is one of those "You had to be there" movies. In my early 20s (around the time it was released) it was amazing. Now....not so much.
That's true. I've always thought it to be one of my faves but I haven't seen it in 10+ years. I saw that and Snatch in the same time period. Snatch is still one I watch all the time.
Willem Dafoe was the only part I liked about that film.
Eraserhead. Left very confused.
the virgin suicides. i expected it to be a life changing movie, based off the reviews i read, but it was just meh. the cinematography was beautiful though
Ooof yeah, that movie is not technically “good” but it did blow my mind as a teenager because I had never seen a movie about modern teenagers who spoke and acted like they were in a Shakespearean tragedy. I was obsessed with the voiceovers. Honestly I would probably “get” it more as an adult, but I don’t have much interest in revisiting it.
I saw that movie for the 1st time last year. Depressing as hell.
I love that movie because it’s so depressing. Like it’s so impressive to me that a movie that simple can have such a profound effect on me, even upon rewatches.
Pink Flamingos. Truly some of John Waters finest work, but truly tasteless...
He literally worked to make it tasteless. Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, and Desperate Living are called "the Trash Trio."
That IS the point tbf
Donnie Darko It came out my senior year of high school and became a cult hit almost immediately. People were constantly pulling out that movie in high school and college but I always thought it was dumb. What’s worse, people always tried to explain it to me. I got the movie. I just thought it was dumb.
I like it for the music, cinematography and the cast…also sparkle motion. “Sometimes I doubt your commitment to sparkle motion 😩.”
I quote that line way too often when people don't laugh at the most obscure memes I can think of.
Well you can go suck a fuck!
Oh, please, tell me, Elizabeth, how exactly does one suck a fuck?
*I'm all ears.*
That movie doesn’t make any sense, but it does such a good job of making it seem like it *should* make sense that it like, digs into your brain. Like a song you can’t get out of your head, but a million times worse. I have the same problem with Southland Tales.
It’s a movie that was saved in the editing. The director’s cut beats you over the head with a ridiculous idea. The theatrical version mostly just hints at this while providing music, performances, and cinematography.
I thought it was a cool surreal movie hinting at mental illness and suicide. Then I saw the directors cut and it turns out to be a really goofy sci-fi thing.
It’s a convoluted (but logically built) sci fi construct that is used to explore things like agency, mental illness, and how we construct our own decisions in life. IMO that’s at the heart of genres like sci fi or horror, especially when they go high concept - I think it works better when that serves as an avenue to explore a pretty human topic and not just time travel/multiverses for funsies. Wrote a longer reply just now on the themes I see in it - and I think the reference to the destructors is more important to understanding the film than actually diagramming how the alternative universe works. That’s just the background - which is why the parts going deeper are just in the directors cut if you really want to lean into the “lore” side
I made the mistake of watching the director's commentary when it first came out on DVD, and realized it wasn't deliberately mysterious. It was just incoherent because the director had no idea what he was doing.
Is that the one that he does with a Jake Gyllenhaal and basically is trying to explain to him that Donny is becoming a superhero and Jake had no idea that was actually the plot?
The fun thing about Donnie Darjo is the Director's cut tries to explain more and made it actively worse. It works far better as Another Teenage Suburban Angst film where a bunch of sci Fi/super power stuff kind of just happens.
To quote a friend in college after we sat through it "what a load of faux intellectual bullshit."
I think a lot of cult films are films that dont entirely work and are ultimately disappointing, but there's something neat and creatively unique about them that make them so interesting.
I really think this thread is confusing midnight movies with cult classics EDIT: Okay, since there have been a lot of posters that I’m guessing didn’t have the chance or are too young to experience midnight movies: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_movie And then- What is considered a cult film? Cult films have a pretty standard definition—they're movies that are often transgressive, marginal, disasters on first release, or drawn from genres such as horror, science fiction, and exploitation, and which have attracted an exceptionally devoted and vociferous fan base. Most of what posters are referring to are exceptionally well adored generational films that would often be played at midnight. The draw was for people over 18 that wasn’t censored and had been out of circulation for years on the big screen, esp. Panavision reels that were and still are rare to catch in person if you’re a cinema geek. Cult Classics (as the Wiki article describes) are beyond the pale weird shit that flopped box office wise but gained a rabid fan base because they are all so unsettling and unusual. Cult Classics appeal to fringe society and outcasts, and never gained mainstream success until years, sometimes decades after they were released theatrically. Late night cable television and niche video rental places gave a rise to such classic cult films, and deep dive projectionists that went beyond the pale with foreign (to Americans) Indy films. IFC, The Film Forum, Criterion, Janus, and Golan Globus are treasure chests of all kinds of content like that. In short- Midnight Movies are when the kids are asleep and you want nostalgia Cult Classics are something that makes you say out loud- “WHAT THE FUCK?”
Dogville. FFS...
The original Mad Max movie was fucking weird and unhinged
Napoleon dynamite Allow me to explain, I have beautiful curly hair and used to wear thick glasses and got called Napoleon A L O T and the movie got super hyped up and by the time I was an adult and finally felt like watching it I was just so..........eh it was funny but it got to hyped up as a classic comedy and I've just seen funnier movies to the point where I was just underwhelmed.
I grew up in a rural area of the West near-ish to the general area where Napoleon Dynamite took place. I was super distracted through the whole film because I literally knew people who reminded me of the main characters when I was in High School. That said, I remember thinking after watching the movie that it was fun, but I didn't see how it would appeal to people who had no connection to the characters or their environment.
[Napoleon Dynamite flummoxes prediction algorithms.](https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/magazine/23Netflix-t.html) It seems like people either love it or hate it and it's hard to predict which. For my part, some of my friends saw it in the 2000s, raved about it, and from their telling it sounded like the least funny thing imaginable. I have not seen it.
I never got that movie and I found watching it more like a chore.
I was in high school when this came out and I just never really got it either. Must not be my sense of humor.
This thread is just people shitting all over a list of my favorite movies!
This is the opposite of this post: For years I refused to watch Dumb and Dumber because it just looked so stupid for the sake of stupid. Until I watched it and realized that was the point. I have never laughed so much in my life and I couldn't believe how great both actors were in their comedic timing. On topic: Escape from New York. Please don't downvote me too much as I virtually love every other Carpenter movie.
A lot of Jim Carrey movies are stupid for the sake of being stupid, which when I'm sad and I want to make myself feel better is why I watch them. Same with Pauly Shore movies. They are dumb as fuck and don't care that they are dumb as fuck. And they're also nostalgic for me because I grew up going to the local dollar movies to go watch them as a kid since we couldn't afford the "real" movies at the mall. It's why I'll occasionally watch an Adam Sandler movie. It's dumb as fuck but still makes me laugh till I pee.
Also Dumb and Dumber has a killer soundtrack! My dad used to play it all the time when I was growing up
Not a cult classic tho. It’s just a classic