The focus here is cult movies, a concept that can only be defined by example.

In the 1980s I was delighted by Danny Peary's "Cult Movies" books, describing movies from the highest art to the lowest trash that have a vibrant quality where it seems anything might happen.

You can get a sense of that certain something browsing through these lists of the 200 movies described in Peary's three Cult Movies volumes.

You'll notice that on average he selected movies of incredibly high quality. There are exceptions, of course... these lists are twenty years old now so there's a surplus of 1970s movies that were notably different but haven't stood the test of time. Also, Peary felt obliged to acknowledge movies with extant cult followings, a group that included  undistinguished low-camp movies like REEFER MADNESS and BEDTIME FOR BONZO that happened to be popular at the time.

The individual titles are almost incidental to the concept. The specifics of my lists would be different from Peary's lists but both would feature crazy juxtapositions, defiance of labels and a recognition that making a narrative out of strips of film is a big medium, as broad as painting or music. I like Beethoven and Coltrane. I like Raphael and Picasso. Why wouldn't I like Jean Cocteau and Russ Meyer?

That idea is more widespread today than when I started this site. It's not even particularly weird or controversial anymore. Everyone is post-modern and unstuck in cultural time.

But as society has gotten hipper it's gotten more conformist. Is that contradictory? I don't know...

Cult movies usually do less than boffo box-office but they're deeply loved by a few people. The cult movie concept first arose in the context of repertory theaters and midnight movies (late night showings of movies that, for whatever reason, really spoke to stoned people.) It seems that neither movie fanatics nor stoned people preferred the most popular movies. The wanted crazy, distinctive movies that shook up the settled order. And most importantly, they wanted movies that can be watched over and over; movies so densely packed with artistic or entertainment content (or just so puzzling) that you see something new every time you watch them.

Since I cannot define the cult movie I'll do the modern thing by presenting a list of bullet points that give the visual impression of intellectual rigor. Compared to normal movies, cult movies are comparatively rich in these qualities:

• Unpredictability Conventions are discarded. Things tend not to be as they seem.

• Intensity /Exaggeration A feeling that the emotional or imaginative volume is cranked up. Over-the-top. Excessive. Un-compromising.

• Stylization  Distinctive and/or off-beat visual and production style. Stylization of content toward the surreal or expressionistic.

• Surrealism Most broadly, tossing aside naturalism when artistically inconvenient. More narrowly, embracing the symbolism, dream logic and dream imagery of classical surrealism. Cult movie buffs are more inclined to accept what's in the frame on its own terms, treating each movie as is its own little created world with its own rules rather than applying a global set of rules.

• Sex Appeal Sex is always popular and cult movie fans usually have a wholesomely voyeuristic edge. Otherwise they wouldn't watch so many movies! Adjusted for era and genre most cult movies have elevated levels of erotic content or overtones.

• Rebellion Cult films often mock, attack, skewer and debase conventional aesthetics and mores and favor the outrageous or experimental.

• Laughs Both intentional and the other kind. Even the saddest and scariest cult movies usually have hilarious elements. Movies that function simultaneously as comedy and tragedy are of particular cult interest. (Can anyone doubt that PSYCHO is a comedy? Norman Bate's dinner with Marion Crane is intentionally side-slitting.)

• Genre Value More cult films come from genre ghettos than anywhere else... horror movies, noir, musicals, westerns, adult movies, science fiction, and exploitation. Genre ghettos provided great freedom because nobody expected much from genre pictures. A director could do whatever he wanted as long as he finished the picture on time.

Here's an example. Almost everyone likes GONE WITH THE WIND because it's one heck of a picture. It almost swept the Oscars and, adjusted for inflation, remains the top-grossing film of all time. It was the signal triumph of one of the truly great Hollywood producers, David O. Selznick.

Seven years later Selznick's tried to equal GONE WITH THE WIND with the western epic DUEL IN THE SUN, a runaway production so smutty and histrionic that long before it was released everyone in Hollywood was already calling it "Lust in the Dust." The finished film is operatic and surreal. A lot of people saw it but considering it's cost and hype it was a disappointment. I doubt it's in the top 500 grossing movies.

I like DUEL IN THE SUN more than GONE WITH THE WIND, but that's a minority view. DUEL IN THE SUN is a cult movie. (Millions of people do love GONE WITH THE WIND with cultic intensity but popular cults tend to be called religions.)

I love what Martin Scorsese calls the "operatic" approach to film; an over-wrought or even hysterical level of energy and emotion. Consequently I prefer the nuttier geniuses. I'll take Orson Welles and Nicholas Ray and Sam Fuller over George Stevens, John Ford and David Lean. That's not a knock on Stevens, Ford and Lean. They are directorial geniuses. I admire them. I like them. They're just not my kind of crazy.

Most folks think of great film as being something like A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS; weighty, handsomely crafted and chock full of message. It's easy to say why A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS is a good movie. It's not easy to say why the 1950s science fiction movie ROBOT MONSTER is a good movie. In fact, it's usually described as perhaps the worst movie ever made! But I consider it a genuine, if incompetent, masterpiece suffused with the pure spirit of art. 

The director must have thought ROBOT MONSTER was art, because he attempted suicide when it got such bad reviews. What the hell did he expect? It's a movie made for about $500 called ROBOT MONSTER, for Christ's sake... But he was fired with a sincere and transcendent creative drive that most modern film school graduates won't experience on their best day.

Cult film people are so tolerant of unconventionality that they often spot a great movie decades before the mainstream. Sam Fuller's NAKED KISS is so cosmically screwed up it would strike most folks as a particularly awful B-Movie tear-jerker, but I'm certain it's one of the great American films. Amazingly, a lot of people are starting to agree. THE WILD BUNCH was fucking despised when it came out but a few forward thinking folks hailed it as a masterpiece. Today the American Film Institute agrees! It is #80 on the American Film Institute's Top 100 American Movies list, right ahead of Chaplin's MODERN TIMES. In the 1960s MARNIE was considered one of Alfred Hitchcock's worst movies. I would be shocked to see a Hitchcock top ten list today that omitted MARNIE.

Part 2: Daring Movies

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