IT’S STARTING TO SEEM like just about anything can be called a cult film these days. The Breakfast Club? Ghostbusters? Saw? Sound of Freaking Music? Are you kidding me? Those movies were all monster hits when they came out, and never stopped being loved by legions of fans around the world. They are and probably always will be as mainstream as it gets.
A true cult film is different. It could be a movie that flopped (or was at least criminally underappreciated) at the time of its release, and then grew in reputation and popularity thanks to a cult of devoted fans. Or a movie that initially got its due, but fell out of the public eye and had to be given new life and appreciation by its rabid fans at midnight movies or in endless message board posts.
But in the post-Blu Ray era, can any movie truly fall out of the public eye? Not too often, which is why there are fewer real cult films than there used to be. That and the fact that hipper audiences in the 1990s and 21st century turned just about any film that would have once been a surefire cult flick into a mainstream hit-Pulp Fiction, The Blair Witch Project, Shaun of the Dead and Paranormal Activity, for example.
But just when it looked like the cult film was dead, along came another wave of midnight movies and overzealous fans to rescue some of the best, worst and simply weirdest films of the last decade.
Here’s a list of the Top 10 films in this new cult canon, followed by a countdown of the Top 10 “classic” cult films of all time. Don’t see your favorite cult movies? See choices that suck? Send us your own list of Top 10 cult films from any era and we’ll publish the best online. Reach us at [email protected] or post on our Facebook page: Metrofb.com. Entries will be entered in a contest to win dinner and a movie for two.
TOP 10 NEW CULT FILMS
1. The Big Lebowski
2. Donnie Darko
3. Anchorman
4. Fight Club
5. Audition
6. The Room
7. Mulholland Drive
8. Wet Hot American Summer
9. Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle
10. Black Dynamite
TOP 10 CLASSIC CULT FILMS
1. Blade Runner
2. The Rocky Horror Picture Show
3. This Is Spinal Tap
4: Night of the Living Dead
5. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
6. Repo Man
7. Pink Flamingos
8. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
9. Taxi Driver
10. Eraserhead
TOP 10 RUNNERS UP
1. Plan Nine From Outer Space
2. Freaks
3. Metropolis
4. The Road Warrior
5. Monty Python’s Life of Brian
6. Blood Feast
7. The King of Comedy
8. Once Upon a Time in the West
9. Reservoir Dogs
10. Anvil! The Story of Anvil
TOP 10 CULT FILMS WHOSE TIME HAS PASSED
1. Napoleon Dynamite
2. Liquid Sky
3. Easy Rider
4. Citizen Kane
5. Carnival of Souls
6. A Christmas Story
7. The Man Who Fell to Earth
8. Psycho
9. Crash
10. Showgirls
TOP 10 OBSCURE CULT FILMS WORTH DISCOVERING
1. Detour
2. Deathdream
3. Peeping Tom
4. Point Blank
5. Withnail and I
6. Inside
7. The Warriors
8. Performance
9. Targets
10. Faster, Pussycat! Kill, Kill!
