Cult Films In Search of A Cult
Having written about the subject for the past 20 years, I can discern what marks out cult films, and the following, I believe, are all prime candidates
THE LADY IN THE CAR WITH GLASSES AND A GUN
A most intriguing exercise in psychological displacement in the guise of a crime thriller, this twice-filmed novel by France’s Sebastian Japrisot (actually Jean-Baptiste Rossi) is a confounding masterwork.
THE AX
A first-person serial killer novel from one of America’s finest suspense writers.
AFRAID TO DEATH
Joe Egan is a desperate man on the run from a mysterious blonde woman who is in fact the Angel of Death.
BURIED ALIVE (1990)
A slightly above average early 90’s TV movie potboiler from Frank Darabont, future director of high profilers like THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION and THE GREEN MILE
FIGHT CLUB at 15
FIGHT CLUB, released in October of 1999, was and remains one of the most outrageously subversive big studio movies of all time.
CAPE FEAR (1991)
Back in 1991 this Martin Scorsese film seemed an anomaly: an unabashedly commercial thriller, and a remake to boot. The film has many good things, but just as many not-so-good ones
WHITE OF THE EYE
Fractured, innovative and often quite brilliant, WHITE OF THE EYE was directed by the late, underrated Donald Cammell, and remains among his finest work
MAN ON A SWING
A profoundly creepy, arrestingly eccentric but ultimately unsatisfying slice of fact-based horror from the seventies
BUDDY BOY
An uncommonly stylish, nuanced psychological thriller with distinct echoes of the cinema of Roman Polanski