INTRODUCTION

What makes a cult film, or characterises its filmmaker as a cult figure? Has the perception of what makes a cult film altered over the course of the medium’s history? And is there a link between the early magical worlds of Georges Méliès, the taboo-breaking dramas of Tod Browning and the more recent, ultra-violent work of S. Craig Zahler (Dragged Across Concrete, 2018) or Panos Cosmatos (Mandy, 2018), directors whose films have crossed over from niche into the mainstream?

That none of the above names are among the 50 featured in this book is some indication of the breadth of filmmakers for whom the label ‘cult’ has been applied to their work. But these directors are good examples of where to start when understanding what a cult film is and the components that define it.

A cult film can be seen as something that lacks the appeal of more mainstream fare, bringing to audiences an extra factor that can range from the challenging to the kitsch. A film can acquire cult status immediately or after the passing of time and a gradual enhancing of its reputation. It may take more than a generation to fully acknowledge a film’s cult appeal, with a shift in cultural tastes conferring on it a sense of importance or popularity that it never had when it was first screened. It can be regarded as ahead of its time, misunderstood by original audiences, or, in the case of a film whose quality is dubious, enjoyed for all the reasons that an audience disliked it in the first place. Edward D. Wood Jr. is arguably the best example of the kind of filmmaker whose movies, most famously Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959), are so bad they are good. His legacy lies in the hands of filmmakers such as Tommy Wiseau, whose The Room (2003) is widely acknowledged as one of the worst films ever made. But Wiseau is now a cult figure, who not only travels the world to attend screenings of his film, but also was the subject of a Golden Globe-winning ‘making of’ feature, The Disaster Artist (2017).

Browning is no less a cult filmmaker than Wood or Wiseau, but his status was achieved through the shock of the unusual. Freaks (1932), a film about a troupe of sideshow performers, was notorious upon first release – and was banned in many countries – but its reputation and number of admirers have only grown with time. Browning ranks alongside Benjamin Christensen as one of the key cult filmmakers in cinema’s first 50 years. (Christensen was chosen over Browning for inclusion in this collection solely for the utter strangeness of his 1922 hybrid documentary Häxan.) But is either more of a cult filmmaker than James Whale? Another director who was working when sound became an integral part of cinema and was primarily associated with horror, Whale differs only in that Frankenstein (1931) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935) were more commercially appealing productions that achieved significant box-office success. However, as a personality, he has become more of a cult figure.

The line between commercially popular and cult films is also blurred in film noir, the thriller subgenre that developed throughout the 1940s and 1950s. Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity (1944) and Howard Hawks’ The Big Sleep (1946) are stylised and morally ambivalent films, but it is Edgar G. Ulmer’s Detour (1945) and Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly (1955) that have gained cult status. In the case of Ulmer, his is a low-budget sliver of a feature (its drama is played out in a crisp 68 minutes) that was initially overlooked and so became a ‘discovered’ pleasure. Aldrich’s near-hallucinatory movie is the more obvious cult contender: a drama that pushes at the boundaries of the genre and ends with a nuclear apocalypse.

The popularity of cult films increased significantly from the late 1960s. In the United States, the failure of the studio system to reflect changes in audience tastes resulted in a search beyond the mainstream for films that entertained or challenged. A similar sentiment existed in other countries, where social mores were in a state of flux and traditional films evinced a moral, political or cultural perspective that spoke only to more conservative tastes. Film movements exploded these ideas, offering a vibrant alternative to the status quo and frequently challenging film form.

One side effect of this revolution was the midnight movie: a film whose appeal lay beyond the mainstream and whose popularity was first tested on audiences happy to watch films late into the night. The Elgin Theater in New York became the spiritual home of the midnight movie, a mecca for this new kind of film. And at the vanguard of this wave was Alejandro Jodorowsky’s trippy western of sorts, El Topo (1970), in which the director plays a vengeful gunslinger, venting his wrath on ideologies that form the bastion of the world’s civilisations. It was less a film to enjoy than an experience in which to immerse oneself, with the consumption of illicit substances a likely boon in furthering the enjoyment of time spent in Jodorowsky’s strange universe. That film was joined by John Waters’ early work, The Harder They Come (1972), Jim Sharman’s The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) and David Lynch’s beautiful and strange fever dream Eraserhead (1977). At the same time, in Italy, horror filmmakers were pushing the boundaries of art and taste, first with Giallo – a subgenre of horror – and then beyond, reaching new heights of grotesque and unpleasantness with Ruggero Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust (1980) and Lucio Fulci’s The New York Ripper (1982). Their US counterparts included George A. Romero with his Dead series (1968–), Wes Craven with The Last House on the Left (1972) and John Carpenter, who has remained one of the quintessential US cult filmmakers over the past 50 years.

More recently, the notion of cult filmmakers and cult films has become a slippery proposition. Whereas a director or film was once defined as cult by their peripheral appeal to mainstream tastes, the presence of infinite channels to view such work, social media’s engagement with the Other and the commercialisation of the very idea of cult appeal make it difficult to distinguish between pretenders and the genuine article. Moreover, who is the arbiter of such distinctions? Cult Filmmakers, shining a light on just a handful of names, only highlights how problematic a canon of cult filmmakers can be.

Rather than offering an authoritative guide through a rich history of cult filmmaking, this book aims to be another voice in the conversation about cult cinema. The individuals featured represent a small number of filmmakers whose work might have found increasing popularity, but nevertheless remain distinct in their place within film history. And their status need not preclude widespread success. Like Zahler and Cosmatos, Quentin Tarantino has channelled the vision and spirit of many other cult filmmakers to imbue his own work with a similar spirit. Some might regard him as more of a parodist – the archetypal postmodern filmmaker in his assembling of a bricolage of tropes and genre elements – and not a genuine cult filmmaker. But Reservoir Dogs (1992) began its life as a cult film that happened to chime with the times – or mass audiences’ tastes – and cemented the director’s position as mainstream US cinema’s ‘cult’ favourite. Other directors, such as David Cronenberg and Kathryn Bigelow, might have started out as cult directors, but the status now conferred on them is as iconoclasts at the heart of the mainstream film industry.

Bigelow remains a unique presence for her interest in the way violence interacts with cinema, an aspect often blithely accepted as existing solely in the domain of male filmmakers. But the image of the cult filmmaker has for too long been regarded within all too narrow boundaries. Widening the field makes for a far more interesting perspective, as proven in the work of the pioneering writer Pete Tombs, whose enthusiasm for all kinds of weird and wonderful cinema from around the world is infectious. Like Tarantino, Anna Biller revels in playing with genre, but her films also engage with the male gaze, offering up an alternative take on gender roles. Věra Chytilová employed a similar position with her extraordinary Czech New Wave breakthrough Daisies (1966). Furthermore, US society took on a very different identity in the films of Oscar Micheaux, who did more than most – and before Melvin Van Peebles and Gordon Parks – to present the experience of African Americans.

The scope of what constitutes a cult filmmaker needs to be increased further, far beyond the platform to which this collection of portraits remains limited. However, it is hoped that the profiles here contribute to widening the discussion of cult cinema past and present. It is difficult to see where the future of cult cinema lies and how it will evolve. As audiences have more access to older films and once-forgotten filmmakers are viewed in a different light, the canon of cult movies will likely shift. This may, in turn, influence the style of future cult titles. And there will always be taboos to challenge or breach and movies whose quality is no impediment to their enjoyment, along with those singular cinematic experiences whose very strangeness guarantees them a place among the great, good, bad and awful of the cult movie universe.