What Makes a Cult Movie?

With ‘American Ultra’ shaping up to be another cult classic for another small percentage of another generation, I thought this would be a good opportunity to look at some various cult classics from the past and ask what makes a cult film?
Well to be honest, one of the worst things a film that wants to be a cult film can do is announce itself as a cult movie. It has to let a following gather naturally and such a thing can happen to any film from ‘Dredd’ to Kevin Smith’s ‘Clerks’. Is there a better way to define this or to pinpoint why a certain film can attract a following? In my opinion there are four sorts of cult movies, sleeper hits, polarisers, so bad it’s good and completely unique.
A sleeper hit can define most of the cult status, particularly lesser known cult films. ‘Dredd’ ‘Clerks’ are just two examples of good films that only a few people saw, or Roger Ebert’s cult favourite (he named it the best film of the year it came out) ‘Dark City’. Then you have some of the work from John Carpenter (watch out for his name later on) such as one of my personal favourites ‘Assault on Precinct 13’ and ‘Escape from New York’. The main point of this category is that these are still good films, but if you follow them you’re one of very few that do and that just makes it better in some way, you’ve discovered it yourself and for reasons that can’t quite be explained, there’s a special something about a film that you love but no one else sees. Would ‘Donnie Darko’ be as loved by a minority if a majority were constantly praising it and discussing it, no.
Then of course there are polarising films, ones that create fractured opinions among critics and a few not only like the film as opposed to the group that doesn’t, but worship it as amazing. ‘Blade Runner’ is a classic example of this. I know a lot of people that dislike that film, but I also know people that do not only like it, but praise it as one of the greatest films ever made. Then you have ones such as ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ or David Fincher’s ‘Fight Club’ whose cult status reached such an extent that magazines were pulling their negative reviews of it from their editions only to replace it with a revised version.
So on to so bad it’s good. The quintessential one has to be ‘The Room’. Without a doubt that is simply one of the worst things ever put to film, the acting is horrific, the dialogue is terrible and the story is irrelevant including one scene where one character announces she has breast cancer and then is never mentioned or referenced again, or that scene in which the three main characters and one extra called Peter get dressed in tuxedos, persuade Peter to do something, branding him a chicken when he refuse, then go out and play football for a while and then go back inside, none of this plays any integral part of the plot, there’s no explanation for dressing up in tuxedos, what they were about to do is never clarified and the character of Peter is never mentioned or seen before or after this bizarre event. It is awful. Yet it has a 36% rating on RT, regular midnight screenings and I would go as far to say it is essential viewing. Why?
The reason is that it is hilarious. You simply can’t believe that someone willingly and knowingly made a film like that, filled with so many mistakes, errors and inherent flaws then look back and think they had made a pleasant melodrama. It’s little wonder that today its writer, producer, director and star Tommy Wiseau claims that it was intended as a comedy and predicted a cult status. Could this be true? No. Cult films of this nature tend to have a cynicism about them that shine through as they highlight certain issues in a darkly humorous way. Another example is ‘Troll 2’, everyone involved believed they were doing serious work in a horror film, same with ‘Showgirls’ and many others, no one knew that they would create unintentional comedies. Another great example of a film being so bad its good is anything from Ed Wood, often regarded as the worst filmmaker of all time, his movies achieved such a cult status of terribleness that they even made a movie about Ed Wood and his terrible movies.
Then there’s the unique category. These films attract a cult status simply because there is nothing else like it before or since. This could be the most common one as it is littered with exceptional and distinctive examples that all shine through in different ways. There are the earlier films of Peter Jackson like ‘Bad Taste’ and John Carpenter such as ‘Big Trouble in Little China’ or ‘Dark Star’, they all share a unique vision and though it may not be polished or complete there’s a definite sense of fun from everyone involved. You have the unique vision of Terry Gilliam’s ‘Brazil’ and ’12 Mokeys’ and sticking to the former Python, Monty Python’s work in general attracts a following mainly because there is simply nothing like it, no one else has ever tried to do the zaniness of ‘Holy Grail’ of the commentary of ‘Life of Brian’. The Coen brothers make so many cult classics but of course their enduring cult masterpiece ‘The Big Lebowski’ retains its popularity because we can never quite decide what it is, is it comedy, noir, symbolic? And where, oh where tell me, can you find a comedy musical about transvestites other than ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’, perhaps the ultimate and quintessential cult film.
There are some cult films that I don’t like, as I said at the start one of the worst things a cult film can do is deliberately advertise itself as one such as the Asylum films. Their biggest success comes with ‘Sharknado’ and various mockbusters that are basically stealing ideas from everyone else and farming the zeitgeist for whatever’s popular at the moment. Tell me if these titles sound familiar and guess which movie they’re ripping off, ‘The Da Vinci Treasure’, ‘Pirates of the Treasure Island’, ‘Alien vs Hunter’, ‘The Day the Earth Stopped’, ‘Transmorphers’, ‘Atlantic Rim’, ‘Age of Tomorrow’, ‘Android Cop’, ‘Snakes on a Train’ and perhaps the worst of all, forget Indiana Jones because the new age of adventure comes from ‘Alan Quaiterman and the Temple of Skulls’ yeah…. These films may have the low budget and there is some kitsch value to it but for me there’s this overriding sense of soullessness to it, without passion and only aiming to capitalise on what’s popular to make money.  
Of course there’s a good chance that you won’t enjoy every film on this list and that is completely fine. That is the whole point of a cult movie, that not everyone loves it and there’s a small group of people that do, if you associate yourself with one of these movies listed, or a completely different one then great. If you don't then rest assured there’s one for you, you’ll find your cult movie sometime that you will defend tooth and nail against all of its critics. So what’s your favourite cult movie, leave a comment below to let me know, thanks and bye.