Cult Cinema

Cult cinema is a formidable phenomenon which duly deserves our attention. Why is it that certain films gain cult followings where moments captured on celluloid stand the test of time and devoted fans pay homage and refer to their favourites long after they were made? This is a good question. Perhaps it has to do with a unique perspective from an auteur with a masterful interpretation of telling a story. It could be that everything falls into place oh so perfectly and it seems as if the stars are aligned at the time of filming. It couldn’t be just luck, could it? Perhaps a combination, i.e. when the weather is involved as the effect of an unexpected storm can work wonders for the cinematography (i.e. Barry Lyndon, 1975) and in Kubrick’s case, an obsessive fastidiousness, which has been well documented. Sometimes, it is a combination of set design and locations, which add to the menace (i.e. The Shining, 1980) or accentuating a theme, i.e. otherworldliness (2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968). Let’s take a look at 10 cult classics, aiming to get to the bottom of why they have remained cult favourites. (They are not in order of preference but are in alphabetical order).

1. Apocalypse Now

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Year: 1979

Genre: War

Coppola’s hallucinatory anti-war film has a visual quality that can be considered unique. Using flares and jungle scenery set on location in the Philippines, the madness and horror of war is brought home to the audience with awe-inspiring stylish bravura, and it doesn’t lose its impact all these years later. The odyssey sees Willard (Martin Sheen) become the assassin to Brando’s Kurtz, the Colonel who lost the plot. Brando, the legendary actor, who hadn’t been seen before looking so out of shape and bald with his poetic ramblings not to mention the behind -the-scenes mayhem where the director had to put his own house up as collateral and had a breakdown of his own, how Sheen had been battling his own demons with alcoholism and suffered a heart attack (in reality) all contribute to the mythical status that the film enjoys.

2. A Bout de Souffle

Director: Jean-Luc Godard

Year: 1960

Genre: Crime/ Drama

Breathless is one of the most influential films of all time. Godard’s homage to American gangster films and tour de force of reinventing cinema is a delight to watch from start to finish. Michel (Jean Paul Belmondo) plays a happy go lucky yet doomed criminal. Godard once said that ‘all you need for a movie is a gun and a girl’ and Michel has such a weapon while Patricia (Jean Seberg) is his girlfriend. Godard introduced the jump cut, championed location filming, ignited the New Wave and gave a cheeky cameo to his old friend Jean Pierre Melville who plays Parvulesco. The experimentalism, fresh, passionate ode to the medium he holds so dear is there for all to see. Godard reinvents modern cinema by showing others how to break convention and think outside the box, how to be creative and how to push the boundaries in this medium as far as possible.

3. Blade Runner

Director: Sir Ridley Scott

Year: 1982

Genre: Science Fiction

Ridley Scott’s stunning sci-fi thriller is set in Tokyo, November 2019, which, amusingly, has now passed. The inspired use of locations and effects with the haunting score by Vangelis help to embody a stylised mood that should stay with you long after you’ve seen the film. Inspired by film noir and the neon lights of this futuristic city, the great director pays homage to Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927) where the astounding architecture has its own role in the film and shapes the vision of the future that is depicted. Scott gives us flying cars as pipe dreams, which have since become a reality, and it’s only a matter of time before we see them ourselves in the skies. Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) gives a terrific performance as a rogue replicant and delivers what has been described as a deeply moving ‘death soliloquy’.Hauer famously improvised these words, getting the best out of his role by being creative.

4. Branded to Kill

Director: Seijun Suzuki

Year: 1967

 Genre: Gangster/ Noir      

Suzuki was a renegade outlaw even when he worked within the Japanese film system. He was seen as a polar opposite to such established Japanese masters as Yasujiro Ozu, Akira Kurosawa and Kenji Mizoguchi. He angered an executive at Nikkatsu so much as this cult classic was actually considered 'incomprehensible’ at the time, and, although hard to believe now, he was forced out of the industry for ten whole years. Suzuki took them to court, and he won a settlement in 1971 for unfair dismissal. As a counter-culture hero where disgruntled students backed his cause, Suzuki was used to being an outsider. With this film, his stunning stylised sequences have attracted attention from fellow filmmakers like Tarantino and Jim Jarmusch. Classed as a Yakuza film, this fusion of different styles was far ahead of its time. With more than a nod to James Bond and film noir, conventions are turned on their head as archetypal characters’ roles are tweaked and manipulated to full effect.

5. Clockwork Orange, A

Director: Stanley Kubrick

Year: 1971

Genre: Crime/ Drama

Kubrick is renowned for his perfectionism and the sheer amount of takes he would subject his actors to. Adapted from an Anthony Burgess novel, which is a critique of how unfair and unjust society can be, this dystopian horror show is a figurative kick in the guts for those who propagate such behaviour in the film. The magnificent use of classical music, brutalist architecture, outlandish costumes, the surreal but highly imaginative sets such as the drug laced ‘Corova milk bar’ or the revisionist rendition of Alex (Malcolm Mcdowell) performing Singing in the Rain with a ‘bit of the old ultra violence’ are etched in our memories forever. The stylised action sequences are somehow unreal, even cartoonised or operatic at times. It is testament to the director that we start by despising the anti-hero, and then when the tables are turned, we feel sorry for him and that is a great accomplishment in itself. Astonishingly, the film was banned for 25 years on account of Kubrick receiving death threats and real cases of copycat violence with some hoodlums dressing up as the droogs and committing brutal acts.          

6. Easy Rider

Director: Dennis Hopper

 Year: 1969

Genre: Drama/ Road Movie

Hopper’s landmark directorial debut was and still is a milestone for American indie filmmakers and beyond. Hopper (Billy the Kid) and Peter Fonda (Captain America) sell their gear at the airport and embark upon a journey of discovery. George Hansen (Jack Nicholson) and his new friends have a tough time dealing with bigoted redneck types after they marvel at Mardi Gras, and we see what we are led to believe is a psychedelic LSD trip. Filming on location to new levels and with an impressively low budget, Hopper and co revolutionised independent cinema and his breakthrough feature changed cinema forever; he made the film largely off his own back and it was hugely successful. Hippy counterculture has featured since on film, but this is surely the most accomplished and evocative of these portrayals on film. Pennebaker’s Monterey Pop (1968), which captures come of Jimmi Hendrix’s greatest work on film, Cammell and Roeg’s Performance (1970) where  East end gangsters and drug addicted beatniks cross paths, Wadleigh & Scorsese’s Woodstock (1970) documenting the legendary rock festival and Gimme Shelter (1970), at a doomed Rolling Stones concert at Altamont where the Hell’s Angels ran rampage, all spring to mind.

 7. The Killers

Director: Don Siegel

Year: 1964

Genre: Neo Noir/ Crime

Don Siegel’s adrenaline-fuelled 2nd adaptation of Hemingway's novel after Siodmak’s 1946 Burt Lancaster vehicle, is a fast-paced, exhilarating, no holds barred crime drama with Charlie Strom (Lee Marvin) and Lee (Clu Galager) as determined hitmen, Ronald Reagan (Jack Browning) as their nemesis and Jonny North (John Cassavetes) as a race car driver who becomes a victim in more than one way. The classic opening score is a reworking of Henry Mancini’s main title tune for Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil (1958). Certain set pieces stay in the memory and the cruelty that is on display force the audience to question the aggressive tendencies being portrayed. Clearly gratuitous violence has been problematic in cinema and may remind audiences of Vince (Marvin) flinging scalding hot coffee at Debby (Graham) in Fritz Lang’s The Big Heat (1953), for example. In this film, controversially, the first hit takes place in a school for the blind and, later, a shocking scene ensues as Sheila Farr (Angie Dickinson) is dangled by her legs out of a window. The justification for showing such brutal acts could be that it’s only a film, which shouldn’t be taken too seriously and Siegel endeavours to create a realistic portrayal of such crimes to show that crime doesn’t pay.

8. Pulp Fiction

Director: Quentin Tarantino

Year: 1994

Genre: Crime/ Drama

Tarantino’s piece de resistance has a non-linear narrative and an all-star cast. It is worth remembering that John Travolta (Vincent Vega) in particular and even Harvey Keitel's (Mr Wolf) careers had a much needed boost by joining this assemble cast. Tarantino’s brilliance is the juicy dialogue, the clever interplay between all the memorable characters and the way the plot is effectively navigated. There are some unsettling scenes which stand out, such as the antidote to overcome the horrific overdose Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman) suffers. Another is Jack Rabbit Slim’s diner, an impressive set that had cost a small fortune but was worth every penny. Waiters are dressed as legends like Buddy Holly or Marilyn Monroe and Vega chaperones his bosses’ wife while the small talk put the audience on ice until the next plot twist, which leads us to Mia’s ill-fated attempt to snort Vincent’s top grade heroin, mistaking it for cocaine. Samuel. L. Jackson (Jules Winnfield) gives a stellar performance as the philosophical and seemingly religious force of nature who has an outer body experience and changes his tune when he is left miraculously unscathed after being shot at.

9. Le Samoura?

Director: Jean Pierre Melville

Year: 1967

Genre: Crime/ Thriller

Jean Pierre Melville’s arthouse masterpiece pays homage to everything from Japanese Bushido to the cat and mouse policier with this supremely stylised vehicle for Alain Delon as Jeff Costello the hitman. Using steely greys and blues to convey mood and mirror Costello's merciless qualities as a cold-blooded killer, Melville influenced countless devotees such as Luc Besson (Subway, 1985), Jim Jarmusch (Ghost Dog, 1999), and Hong Kong action maestro John Woo (Hard Boiled, 1992). Woo was so impacted by the film that he once recounted: ‘’I decided to cut my hair like Delon and started wearing white shirts and black ties’’. Others like Tarantino and Michael Mann are mega fans as well. Back to the film, in keeping with Proppian analysis, the use of Costello’s raincoat is seen as a magical object that has its purpose to show the seemingly invincible nature of the anti-hero as he never bleeds through the coat, even when he is wounded. It is in this film that we are shown the Paris Metro as we’ve never seen it before. The editing especially deserves high praise as the high-speed chases that take us all over the labyrinthine network of escalators, stations and tunnels are scintillatingly set up and fit together like a complex puzzle. It is also worth mentioning that Melville always excelled when it came to demonstrating how crimes are carried out in minute detail.

10. Taxi Driver

Director: Martin Scorsese

Year: 1976

Genre: Psychological Thriller

Scorsese’s deeply disturbing venture gets into the mind of its main protagonist Travis Bickle (Robert de Niro). Following a cabbie whose routine mundane life seems to have more of a purpose when he meets Betsy (Cybill Shepherd) only for his luck to change as he becomes increasingly despondent with the low-life vermin (as he sees it), who he wishes will be washed away with the rain one day. He then shows he’s highly principled though gung ho when he goes on a mission to rescue Iris (Jodie Foster) from a life of prostitution and rid the world of at least one unsavoury character, a pimp who goes by the name of Sport (Harvey Keitel). The film’s denouement has long been a subject of speculation as the dream sequence seems to imply that Bickle lives on despite his sorry state, though it’s up in the air, making its ambiguous conclusion feel as if it’s at the end of an art film.

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Other top cult films include: Badlands, Chinatown, The Conformist, The Deer Hunter, The Exorcist, The Good The Bad and The Ugly, Goodfellas, Natural Born Killers, Once Upon a Time in America, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Peeping Tom, Performance, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Raging Bull and Scarface (1984)

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