Mark.Kermode's.Secrets.Of.Cinema.S03e03.Cult.Movies
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00:00I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.
00:25It's astounding.
00:27Time is fleeting.
00:29Madness takes its toll.
00:33You ready for something new?
00:35But listen closely.
00:37Not for very much longer.
00:40I've got to keep control.
00:45What is going on here?
00:46Strange.
00:48I saw him.
00:49Shocking.
00:50Transgressive.
00:52Transforming.
00:54I want the audience out.
00:55Forboding.
00:56Forbidden.
00:59Extreme.
01:01Bring me the axe.
01:02Excruciating.
01:06Revolutionary.
01:08Ridiculous.
01:09That's it.
01:10Welcome to the weird and wonderful world of cult films.
01:15You'll have to learn to live in a very strange new world.
01:21In Secrets of Cinema, I explore the conventions which underwrite the films we love
01:26and examine the techniques filmmakers use to keep us coming back for more.
01:33Tonight, join me on a journey into the extraordinary realm of cult movies,
01:38a place where we'll encounter some of the strangest, most truly original,
01:42exciting and unexpected moments of cinema.
01:49The first rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club.
02:04The second rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club.
02:10To corrupt a line from one of the best-known cult films of recent times,
02:14David Fincher's Fight Club,
02:16the first rule of cult movies is that there is no such thing as a cult movie,
02:21at least not intentionally.
02:23Yes, Mommy Dearest.
02:25Films don't become cult movies on purpose
02:28and filmmakers don't decide which films fall into that category.
02:32We do.
02:33I wanted you to mean it.
02:35The status of cult movie is bestowed upon a film by its audience
02:39and often has more to do with when, where and how they were seen
02:43than the way they were made.
02:46And see what's on the slab.
02:50So what are the qualities a film needs to become a cult movie?
02:55Let's take what's perhaps one of the defining films in this genre,
02:59the Rocky Horror Picture Show, which combines several trusty elements
03:03like outrageous bad taste and transgressive attitudes.
03:08You!
03:10I'm afraid so, Brad.
03:14This comedy-horror musical based on Richard O'Brien's hit stage show
03:18was a flop when it released in 1975,
03:22only becoming a success when audiences started turning up
03:25to late-night screenings dressed as their favourite characters.
03:29Hey, Janet, how about a drink of that shake?
03:35The Rocky Horror Picture Show has one of the longest theatrical releases
03:38in history, still playing somewhere in the world
03:4145 years after its premiere.
03:49Rocky Horror is steeped in the sci-fi and horror movies of the 50s and 60s,
03:54wherein lie the origins of the cult film genre.
03:57In America, the drive-in culture of the time
04:00and the younger audience whose tastes lay beyond the mainstream
04:04provided a market for all kinds of low-budget oddities,
04:08from the exploitation cheapies of Ed Wood, like Glenn or Glenda,
04:13to the early splatter horrors of Herschel Gordon-Lewis,
04:16such as Blood Feast and 2000 Maniacs,
04:20or the breakthrough socio-political shocks
04:23of George Romero's Night Of The Living Dead.
04:31But it was in the alternative independent cinemas of New York and London
04:35in the 70s and 80s that the cult movie really came of age.
04:39Cults of all kinds, from railway documentaries
04:42to bondage movies, developed.
04:45The late-night Double Bill was born,
04:47and would combine Hollywood and arthouse,
04:50foreign language and exploitation titles.
04:52Here in the UK, you could have your head scrambled
04:55by Alejandro Chodorowski's trippy western El Topo
04:58alongside John Waters' Pink Flamingos,
05:01or Kenneth Anger's mind-blowing Lucifer Rising
05:04and Todd Browning's Freaks,
05:06at cinemas like The Electric, The Paris Pullman and The Scala.
05:11Cult movies form a broad church,
05:14encompassing both expensive follies and micro-budget indies.
05:21Genres and styles can often be mixed and seemingly mismatched.
05:25Catherine Bigelow's Point Break, for example,
05:28combined a homoerotic surfing movie with a heist film.
05:32Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen,
05:34and please don't forget to vote!
05:38While Anna Lily Amipour's brilliant A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night
05:43gave us cinema's first American-Iranian,
05:46black-and-white vampire western.
05:50Cult films can emerge from the mainstream or from the fringes.
05:55Maya Derin was a Ukrainian-born dancer and choreographer
05:59working in the USA in the 1940s and 50s,
06:02who made startling visionary films that looked decades ahead of their time.
06:09In 1943, she made her influential short Meshes Of The Afternoon,
06:14a hypnotic work which conflates surrealist imagery
06:17with film noir style and domestic melodrama to spellbinding effect.
06:24This combination of the macabre and the mundane
06:27can be seen in the work of another artist-turned-filmmaker
06:31inspired by Derin, David Lynch.
06:36Look at how closely Lost Highway,
06:38a film that Lynch describes as a psychogenic fugue,
06:42echoes Meshes Of The Afternoon.
06:46Brad, are you all right?
06:52Lynch's work over nearly five decades,
06:55beginning with his debut feature Eraserhead,
06:57forms a cult collection like no other.
07:00Dreamlike, often nightmarish journeys into the subconscious.
07:08Although the world of cult movies can appear bewilderingly diverse,
07:12many of them do fall into recognisable camps.
07:16For example, we've all heard of films that are supposedly so bad
07:20they're brilliant, even though many of them are just plain bad.
07:23But in the world of cult movie fandom,
07:25it's entirely possible for the audience to embrace a film
07:28and turn it into something very different
07:30from what the filmmakers originally intended.
07:42More vicious, more deadly,
07:45even than these soul-destroying drugs,
07:48is the menace of marijuana.
07:52A prime example is Reefer Madness,
07:55which was made in 1936 as an anti-drugs propaganda picture.
07:59Financed by a church group and originally entitled Tell Your Children,
08:03it fell into the hands of producer Dwayne Esper,
08:06who recut it for the exploitation market,
08:09promising scenes of drug-crazed abandon
08:12under the veneer of moral guidance.
08:15Take this.
08:17This tale of the sweet pill that makes life bitter
08:20became a circuit staple before disappearing from view,
08:23only to be rediscovered in the early 70s
08:26by enthusiastic dope-smoking audiences
08:29who responded to its dire warnings
08:31and even more dire acting with laughter.
08:34The next tragedy may be that of your daughter,
08:38or your son, or yours, or yours.
08:44As a postscript, Dwayne followed up Reefer Madness with Sex Madness,
08:49a cautionary tale on the perils of contracting syphilis,
08:52tag-lined, She Sought Big Thrills and Caught Big Trouble.
09:00Now, I should be clear that here at Secrets of Cinema,
09:03we love all manner of movies,
09:05and we don't need to be told to laugh at an admittedly ridiculous,
09:08but still oddly enjoyable film.
09:12What are you doing here, boy?
09:14That's the one where the alien is a gorilla with a space helmet
09:17who delivers Shakespearean speeches to his bubble machine.
09:20At what point on the draft you must and cannot meet?
09:24Yet I must, but I cannot.
09:28But the unopposed world champion of bad films is Ed Wood,
09:32whose shoddy, low-budget efforts have proved lastingly watchable,
09:36even genuinely fascinating.
09:38In a way that some ordinary failures haven't.
09:45There comes a time in each man's life
09:48when he can't even believe his own eyes.
09:55He would combine stock footage with outtakes
09:58to create bizarre, dreamlike mash-ups
10:01in which the actors mailed the bleak and often unconnected dialogue.
10:06Quite a sight, wasn't it, sir?
10:08A sight I'd rather not be seeing.
10:10In his most famous work, Plan Nine From Outer Space,
10:14Wood uses silent footage of Bela Lugosi
10:17from another project three years earlier.
10:20The result is a disconnected and incoherent narrative,
10:23but the film is oddly compelling.
10:28The strangely personal nature of Wood's films
10:31is part of what makes them so special.
10:34It's part of what makes them so particular
10:36and gives them a mesmerising quality.
10:39Like his curious drama documentary Glen or Glenda,
10:43in which Wood himself stars,
10:45revealing his transvestism and obsession with Angora.
10:49One might say, there, but for the grace of God, go I.
10:55Among those who appreciated Wood's work was director Tim Burton,
10:59whose 1994 biopic, with Johnny Depp playing Ed Wood,
11:03turned into a poor box office only to develop a cult of its own.
11:10It's an idealised nostalgic account of Wood's band of misfits
11:14and their efforts to make great cinema out of nothing,
11:17overcoming lack of talent through sheer persistence.
11:21Goddamn, it's cold!
11:23It'll warm up once you're in it.
11:25Fuck you, you come out here!
11:27The scene featuring an imagined meeting between Wood and Orson Welles
11:31is one of my favourite moments in Burton's work,
11:34depicting Wood as a sincere filmmaker
11:37striving to create genuinely great pictures,
11:40taking inspirational lessons from the master.
11:43Ed.
11:45Yes?
11:46Visions are worth fighting for.
11:49Why spend your life making someone else's dreams?
11:53There are big-budget studio bombs
11:56that qualify as guilty pleasure cult movies too,
11:59but being a box office disaster
12:02doesn't automatically confer cult status.
12:05Some just disappear, taking studios and careers down with them.
12:10There's no cult, for instance,
12:12around the cringe-making Eddie Murphy sci-fi vehicle Pluto Nash,
12:16which lost a fortune in 2002.
12:19Yeah, like that.
12:22Yes, look at that.
12:24But some duds are instantly appreciated
12:27by a smaller, more discerning audience than the filmmakers hoped for.
12:32Perhaps my personal favourite of these is Howard the Duck,
12:36a live-action version of the Marvel comic.
12:41Are you ready for an incredible story?
12:43This mega-budget adaptation was made by George Lucas's company,
12:47who spent a fortune on special duck effects.
12:50Only for the result to be reviled by critics and avoided by audiences.
12:55But to me and a select group of admirers,
12:58there's so much to enjoy here,
13:00not least the fact that this is an allegedly mainstream movie
13:04which cost and lost millions
13:06and which centres on an intergalactic romance
13:09between a human being and a duck.
13:16There's a similar mix of attraction and astonishment
13:19about the Bruce Willis actioner Hudson Hawke.
13:22Directed by Michael Lehman, who made Heathers,
13:25it resembles a strange little indie movie
13:28that just happened to cost as much as the invasion of a small country.
13:34You won't be attending that hat convention in July.
13:37Some others just won't go away and get rediscovered or reclaimed.
13:42Take Paul Verhoeven's 1996 mega-flop Showgirls.
13:50This all-about-Eve-style story of a stripper called Nomi Malone
13:55and her experiences in Vegas was crucified by the critics,
13:59including me, and avoided by the audience.
14:02But the Showgirls cult began when it was released on home video
14:06and people began to gather to watch it
14:08and enjoy the acrobatic sex scenes and awful dialogue.
14:12I used to love doggy chow.
14:15I used to love doggy chow.
14:18I used to love doggy chow too.
14:22It grossed over $100 million on VHS.
14:25This cult activity eventually caused the film
14:28to become a modern Rocky horror,
14:30a phenomenon captured in the 2019 documentary You Don't Know Me.
14:35Get it?
14:36Sexual, rhythmic and a very edgy...
14:40With very sharp movements and stuff like that.
14:43So you're always using a whip, you know?
14:45So it's really sexy.
14:48But while some deeply flawed films enter the cult pantheon
14:52by being reclaimed by the audience,
14:54there are plenty more genuine masterpieces from around the world
14:58that cult fans have simply discovered and championed
15:01outside the mainstream marketplace.
15:15An early cult phenomenon boosted by film-savvy students in the 50s
15:19was the screening in America and the UK of the innovative works
15:23of a group of directors including Akira Kurosawa from Japan,
15:27Antonioni and Fellini in Italy,
15:29Ingmar Bergman in Sweden and the French New Wave.
15:36These were mysterious, enigmatic and incidentally quite often sexy films
15:41that seemed miles away from the movies being churned out in Britain
15:44or the USA, many of them playing innovatively with the cinematic form.
15:58Think of Rashomon with its repeating time and narrative framework,
16:02the same events examined from multiple viewpoints,
16:05but which is the true account?
16:09Or La Ventura, a mystery about a woman who's disappeared
16:12which seems more concerned with landscape and character
16:15than plot development.
16:22Then there's The Seventh Seal,
16:24a medieval drama that's distinctly modern in its scripting and outlook,
16:28a series of iconic scenes rather than conventional storytelling.
16:34Or Godard's groundbreaking Abu D'sus,
16:37which plays fast and loose with editing,
16:40using jump cuts to compress time and narrative.
16:47Many of these have gone on to become cult favourites,
16:50offering audiences alternative visions and interpretations
16:54and, in turn, influencing film-makers working in the English language.
16:58Some were covertly or actually remade by Hollywood,
17:01like Jim McBride's brilliant Breathless,
17:04which is arguably even more of a cult film than its predecessor
17:07because it was widely derided on release
17:10and only later embraced as a perennial favourite
17:13worthy of repeat viewings.
17:17Others provided templates and techniques
17:19that fed through quickly into the mainstream.
17:23Without Fellini's I Vitelloni,
17:25you wouldn't have had all those celebrated gang-of-guys
17:28breakthrough features,
17:30films like Mean Streets or Diner or Reservoir Dogs.
17:36It's often been pointed out how the horror films and thrillers
17:39of De Palma and Dario Argento borrow from Alfred Hitchcock.
17:44But Carrie, Suspiria, and The Man Who Loved Me
17:47are not the same.
17:49They're not the same.
17:51They're not the same.
17:53They're not the same.
17:55They're not the same.
17:57They're not the same.
17:59They're not the same.
18:01They're not the same.
18:04But Carrie, Suspiria, and Dressed To Kill
18:07owe just as much to the work and style of Fellini, Antonioni, and Godard,
18:12like these jump cuts in a stakeout scene from Dressed To Kill.
18:18The other great cinematic wellspring was Eastern Europe,
18:21in particular the new wave films
18:23coming out of what was then known as Czechoslovakia.
18:34MAN SPEAKS IN CZECH
18:47Directors like Milos Forman with The Fireman's Ball
18:50and Jiri Menzel with Closely Observed Trains
18:53made films that were state-funded but visually bold,
18:56often casting non-actors and sprinkled with strange, deadpan humour.
19:04WHISTLE BLOWS
19:12Perhaps the most remarkable movie to emerge from this movement
19:16was Vera Chytilová's extraordinary comedy Daisies.
19:20Telling the story of two young women, Marie I and Marie II,
19:24who decide to be as bad as the land they live in,
19:27Daisies chronicles a series of riotous pranks
19:30which variously overturn social and sexual norms.
19:35Blending dance, still photography, tinting, animation
19:39and surreal visual trickery that would inspire, amongst others,
19:43Monty Python's Terry Gilliam...
19:47Chytilová's film conjures a kaleidoscopic swirl
19:50shot through with a strand of slapstick
19:53that harks back to silent-era comedians.
19:57Daisies outraged the communist authorities
20:00and made it very difficult for Chytilová to get funding for future films.
20:04But despite being pulled from major cinemas in its home country,
20:08Daisies garnered international acclaim
20:11with its anarchic, dreamlike tableau, often involving food.
20:15Its reputation has grown over the years.
20:18Daisies now looks prescient and very modern, a cult classic.
20:27HE GIGGLES
20:38The Severed Heads is the bizarre debut short film of Alejandro Chodorowski,
20:43the still-controversial Chilean-born auteur, mime artist,
20:47philosopher, puppeteer, poet and playwright
20:50whose films are the jewels in the cult crown.
20:57HE CHUCKLES
21:04In 1970, Chodorowski made El Topo,
21:07considered by some to be the original midnight cult movie.
21:11Blending violent action with hallucinogenic visuals,
21:15El Topo is a uniquely strange work,
21:18one part spaghetti western, one part religious allegory.
21:23The follow-up, The Holy Mountain,
21:25part-funded by John Lennon and Yoko Ono
21:28and Beatles manager Alan Klein, was even stranger.
21:32Chodorowski prepared for shooting by spending a week without sleeping
21:36and gave his cast magic mushrooms to enhance their performance.
21:44I wanted to make something sacred...
21:48..free...
21:50..with new perspective, open the mind.
21:55Even Chodorowski's unmade projects have achieved cult status.
21:59In the early 70s, the rights to Frank Herbert's epic science fiction novel
22:03Dune were purchased and Chodorowski was set to direct,
22:07casting artists Salvador Dali, Orson Welles and Mick Jagger in central roles.
22:14But the film never got beyond the development stage,
22:17a planned 14-hour running time being among the problems
22:20keeping it from the screen.
22:22A 2013 documentary, Chodorowski's Dune,
22:25gives us tantalising glimpses of the film the director imagined
22:29but could probably never have actually made,
22:32the perfect cult formula, the stuff of dreams.
22:35It's clear that the widely distributed designs and storyboards for Dune
22:39influenced a generation of films set in space,
22:42most notably Alien,
22:44which similarly turned to the designs of Swiss artist H.R. Giger.
22:50The symbolic and mystical themes that run through Chodorowski's films
22:54clearly connect with a spiritual impulse in audiences,
22:58but some cult films do that in a much darker way.
23:03OPERA MUSIC PLAYS
23:16One of the most extraordinary and mischievous of all living filmmakers
23:20is Kenneth Anger.
23:22Now 93 years old, this proudly gay artist has been disrupting cinema
23:27since the 1970s,
23:29with his underground, homoerotic, occult-inflected short films,
23:33known collectively as the Magic Lantern Cycle.
23:44A student of the British magician Alistair Crowley,
23:47Anger has described his pictures as spells or incantations,
23:51combining elements of erotica, documentary, psychodrama,
23:56and spectacle to enchant and entrance his audience.
24:05As Anger's work demonstrates,
24:07what better subject for a cult movie than cults themselves?
24:13Filmmakers can exploit our paranoia with depictions of conspiracies,
24:18cover-ups and clandestine activity.
24:21They can be sinister secret societies,
24:24Satanists or weird worshippers of other kinds.
24:28We can trace this creepy little sub-genre
24:31back to Benjamin Christensen's Hexen in 1922,
24:34a visually stunning quasi-documentary about witchcraft through the ages.
24:39Hexen is laced with vivid, nightmarish, dramatised sequences.
24:45It was the most expensive Scandinavian silent movie ever made
24:49and was banned in the USA and the UK.
24:52It was heavily cut in a number of other countries
24:55for its slyly satirical depictions of torture, nudity and sexual perversion.
25:02Almost 100 years later, Ari Aster chose Scandinavia
25:06as the setting for his disquieting folk horror Midsommar,
25:10in which American visitors find themselves caught up
25:13in a deadly pagan ceremony in rural Sweden.
25:16No!
25:23Deep in the cult DNA of Midsommar
25:25is the celebrated 1973 British oddity The Wicker Man,
25:29fiendishly concocted by writer Anthony Schaffer.
25:37This tale of a puritanical policeman
25:39who strays into a nature-worshipping society
25:42on a small Scottish island
25:44was savagely shortened by distributors on first release
25:47and has since spawned multiple different versions
25:50for a devoted group of fans.
25:58Other notable cult-of-cult examples
26:01include Dario Argento's 1977 chiller Suspiria...
26:06..and the Jack Starrett weirdy Race With The Devil,
26:09an occult motorcycle chase movie amalgam from 1975
26:13that plays like Easy Rider meets The Devil Rides Out.
26:21Many conventions of the occult movie were established
26:24in a little-seen but hugely influential
26:27black-and-white B-picture from 1943, The Seventh Victim.
26:32What's the matter?
26:34Mr August?
26:40Produced by low-budget horror maestro Val Lewton
26:43and set in Greenwich Village,
26:45it tells the story of a woman searching for her missing sister,
26:48stumbling across a group called the Paladists,
26:51devil worshippers who have forced the missing woman into hiding.
26:57The Seventh Victim was written by DeWitt Bodine,
27:00who penned another great cult movie, Cat People, for Lewton,
27:04and like that film, it builds tension through suggestion to great effect.
27:12Look at this shower scene, filmed 20 years before Psycho.
27:16It clearly influenced the way Hitchcock shot the famous sequence
27:20in his 1960 movie.
27:25You don't know what you're doing or what dreadful things
27:28you might bring about by looking for your sister.
27:31You go back to school.
27:33The Seventh Victim is also a clear precursor
27:36to another satanic thriller set in New York, Rosemary's Baby,
27:40the 1968 adaptation of Ira Levin's chillingly satirical novel.
27:47What time did I go to sleep?
27:49You didn't go to sleep. You passed out.
27:52From now on, you get cocktails or wine, not cocktails and wine.
27:57The dreams I have.
28:00Mia Farrow is Rosemary Woodhouse, a guilt-ridden lapsed Catholic
28:04who moves into an old apartment block with her non-Catholic husband
28:08where they meet some strange and sinister neighbours.
28:11It's lovely, but I can't accept it.
28:13You already have. Put it on.
28:16When she becomes pregnant, she starts to believe
28:19that something is terribly wrong.
28:21Who's this?
28:22Produced by cult cinema legend William Castle, more of whom later,
28:26Rosemary's Baby blends the occult with themes of women's liberation
28:30and religion to powerful effect.
28:33What are you talking about? What about what's fair to me?
28:37And while it may be a mainstream American picture,
28:40it has a distinctly European arthouse sensibility,
28:44honed by Polish director Roman Polanski on earlier works like Repulsion,
28:48a British cellar with a French star.
28:51It's also shot through with jet-black, often morbid humour.
28:55We're your friends, Rosemary.
28:57There's nothing to be afraid of, Rosemary.
28:59Honestly and truly, there isn't.
29:01There's nothing but a mild sedative to calm you down.
29:04That sardonic streak is key to the off-kilter appeal of Rosemary's Baby,
29:09a suburban nightmare that's also an astringent satire.
29:13Could you zip me up, Billy?
29:15The same is true of Society,
29:18Brian Yuzner's outrageous comedy horror from 1989...
29:23Something wrong?
29:25..in which the wealthy bourgeoisie of Los Angeles
29:28turn out to be a whole other species,
29:31whose bizarre shunting ceremonies involve absorbing humans
29:35while melding with each other,
29:37resulting in one of the strangest sequences in cinema
29:40and a possible explanation of what really goes down in Beverly Hills.
29:47While Society may be tongue-in-cheek or mouth-in-leg,
29:51other films play their scares with altogether straighter faces.
29:56SCREAMS
30:01Hello, Amanda.
30:03You don't know me, but I know you.
30:07Every generation discovers that it still has the capacity
30:10to be shocked by cinema.
30:12Recent developments in horror, like the so-called torture porn cycle,
30:16which, for my money, includes Mel Gibson's bizarrely bloody epic
30:20The Passion Of The Christ, as well as the Saw franchise and Hostel,
30:24show us things many non-cultists wish they wouldn't.
30:28While the Human Centipede movies prove that the gross-out factor
30:32is still a selling point...
30:36..the fantasy worlds of sci-fi and horror
30:38are a gruesomely fertile source of cult movie shockers.
30:46You want a cult dedicated to The Slumber Party Massacre,
30:49The Mad Ghoul, Attack Of The Crab Monsters,
30:52Let's Scare Jessica To Death?
30:54Well, they're out there.
30:57SCREAMS
30:59Historically, one of the earliest cult movies must be Nosferatu.
31:06The extraordinary atmospheric silent vampire tale
31:09originally suppressed through a copyright lawsuit,
31:12but surviving to become the most influential horror film of its era.
31:21And even before that was The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari,
31:25fusing melodramatic horror and cutting-edge visual art
31:28to define a cult sub-genre that persists to this day.
31:37But the type most likely to attract a cult
31:40is that which goes for the throat
31:42and transgresses invisible censorship lines.
31:46All that blood on my hands!
31:48SCREAMS
31:501930s films like Dracula and Frankenstein
31:54upset international censors so much
31:56that they temporarily dissuaded Hollywood from making horror movies.
32:00But being banned is almost a guarantee of cult status,
32:04since banning something very seldom means making it go away.
32:10At any time you are conscious of a tingling sensation,
32:13you may obtain immediate relief by screaming.
32:17There were mavericks like Rosemary's Baby producer William Castle,
32:21who made his name with gimmicks such as Percepto,
32:24where cinema seats were wired with small electrical vibrators
32:28to shock audiences during the tingler.
32:30And Herschel Gordon-Lewis,
32:32with his buckets of entrails and sheep's tongues,
32:35they pushed horror to new extremes
32:37to compete with the tamer studio efforts.
32:40Holy smoke, Frank! We've got to get over to the Fremont house.
32:43They're having a dinner party tonight.
32:45And Fuad Ramses is the caterer.
32:51Sally, I hear something. Stop! Stop!
32:55I Survived The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
32:58was the proud boast on badges handed out during early screenings
33:02of Tobe Hooper's 1974 slasher film
33:05inspired by the case of Ed Gein, the so-called Wisconsin ghoul.
33:10Marketed as a kind of cinematic endurance test,
33:13Texas Chainsaw Massacre is in fact relatively restrained
33:16in what it actually shows.
33:18But director Hooper deployed sound, claustrophobic visuals
33:22and a brilliantly suggestive editing style to unsettling effect,
33:26making you think you've seen much more than you have.
33:30Hooper was one of a group of transgressive filmmakers
33:33in the 60s and 70s, including George Romero and Wes Craven,
33:37who added artistry and often political engagement
33:40to the gallons of gore in their films
33:42and found cult status as a result.
33:44We hate cops!
33:49Romero's game-changing, ultra-low-budget zombie flick
33:52Night Of The Living Dead cast black actor Dwayne Jones in the lead
33:56and tapped into the counterculture
33:58at the same time as pushing the boundaries of horror.
34:01All right, Vince, hit him in the head, right between the eyes.
34:10Larry Cohen gained notoriety
34:12for his homicidal mutant baby on the Rampage tale It's Alive,
34:16which took aim at the pharmaceutical industry.
34:26His mind-bending sci-fi horror God Told Me To
34:29is, on the surface, a police procedural,
34:32but then veers into alien impregnation and killer disciples,
34:36the kind of genre-twisting that's so often a feature of cult movies.
34:47God Told Me To was due to be scored
34:50by Hitchcock's long-time musical collaborator Bernard Herrmann,
34:54but when he died shortly after seeing a first cut,
34:57Cohen offered the job to composer Miklos Rozsa,
35:00who supposedly declined by saying,
35:02God told me not to.
35:08The early 80s also saw the infamous video nasties phenomenon in the UK.
35:14Films released for the home video market
35:16that bypassed BBFC rating and censorship,
35:19resulting in a moral panic fuelled by tabloid newspapers
35:23and a campaign led by Mary Whitehouse
35:26and her National Viewers and Listeners Association.
35:29All this led to the director of public prosecutions
35:32drawing up a random list of films,
35:35ranging from sleazy slashers to oddball European art movies,
35:40all deemed too horrible for home viewing.
35:43Several films on the DPP's list of impoundable titles
35:47would become die-hard cult favourites,
35:50like Dario Argento's lurid giallo thrillers,
35:54Sam Raimi's cheap-as-chips horror romp The Evil Dead
35:58and Lucio Fulci's mad Italian gothics.
36:03But ironically, the threat of prosecution
36:06also elevated fairies dreary as Mardi Gras Massacre
36:10or SS Experiment Camp to cult status,
36:13turning movies that horror fans would otherwise have avoided
36:16into must-see titles to be ticked off the list.
36:21One of my personal favourites
36:23that appeared briefly on the nasties roll call
36:26is Polish director Andrzej Zywowski's bizarre psychological horror
36:31creature-feature hybrid Possession,
36:34in which Isabella Gianni gets with a many-tentacled monster
36:37in a West Berlin apartment.
36:45One positive result of the nasties era
36:48was that by crowning Abel Ferrara's Warhol-esque slasher flick
36:51The Driller Killer as the worst of the worst,
36:54the censors and complainers drew attention to an auteur in the making.
37:00Hey, what you got in your hand, mister?
37:03A drill!
37:05Ferrara went on to have a startling cult career,
37:08weaving between art house and exploitation,
37:11and he continues to challenge with new films to this day.
37:21I've got something I want to play for you.
37:26But it was David Cronenberg who made his name
37:29with intelligent horror hits like Scanners,
37:32who got the last word on the panic surrounding the rise of VCRs,
37:36with his 1983 cult classic Videodrome.
37:39Come to me now.
37:41As a character memorably says about the mysterious TV channel
37:45at the heart of the movie,
37:47it has a philosophy, and that is what makes it dangerous.
37:51I feel exactly the same way about Cronenberg's movies,
37:55which use the language of outlandish body horror
37:58to get down to earth matters of life and death.
38:01Yes, they have the power to shock,
38:03but they also get under the skin of their subjects,
38:06inviting us to see the world in a whole new way.
38:19Cronenberg's 1996 film Crash, adapted from J.G. Ballard's novel
38:24by cult who recreate car accidents for sexual gratification,
38:28was the subject of huge controversy.
38:31James Dean died of a broken neck and became immortal.
38:37Francis Coppola refused to personally present
38:40a special jury prize to Cronenberg at Cannes,
38:43and the film remains officially banned by Westminster Council to this day.
38:48Now, that's what I call a congestion charge.
38:54MUSIC PLAYS
39:05Some cult movies are born when subcultures pick up films
39:08that society has consumed and thrown away and make them their own.
39:13Some people say I dress too gay,
39:15but every day I feel so gay,
39:17and when I'm gay, I dress that way.
39:19Something wrong with that?
39:22The cult of camp first began when urban gay audiences
39:26got hold of the musicals of Carmen Miranda
39:29or the melodramas of Joan Crawford,
39:31long after their appeal to mainstream audiences had waned.
39:36I'm not ashamed of how I got what I have.
39:39The important thing is I've got it.
39:41They saw in these faded film stars role models for alternative identities.
39:46Joan Crawford's iconic appeal among gay men
39:49is particularly linked to certain key films in her long career.
39:53I'm waiting tables in a downtown restaurant.
39:55My mother, a matress.
39:57You've never spoken of your people, who you came from,
40:00so perhaps it's natural.
40:02Maybe that's why Father...
40:04In Mildred Pierce, for which she won the Best Actress Oscar in 1946,
40:09Crawford plays an underdog who survives against all the odds
40:13but is rejected by her cruel, ungrateful daughter Vida,
40:17which some commentators have compared to the rejection
40:20that can be linked to coming out.
40:24Get out, Vida.
40:26Crawford's other strong on-screen characteristic
40:29is what might be described as a feminine masculinity,
40:33never better seen than in the extraordinary 1954
40:36Freudian Western Johnny Guitar.
40:38Described by Martin Scorsese as...
40:48..but rendered it extremely modern.
40:50Come and get me, Mr MacIvers.
40:52Crawford plays Vienna, a tough, aggressive saloon keeper
40:56who falls out with the locals, who then try to run her out of town.
41:00Doors are made to knock on.
41:02Directed by Nicholas Ray, the film has a dreamlike, hyper-real quality,
41:07accentuated by its bold colours.
41:09Crawford has padded shoulders, dark eyebrows and red lipstick,
41:14more in the stereotypically male Western genre.
41:19Never seen a woman who was more man.
41:21She thinks like one, acts like one and sometimes makes me feel like I'm not.
41:25The first time we see Crawford as Vienna, she's shot from below,
41:29the framing emphasising her power
41:31as she comes down the stairs of her saloon wearing jeans,
41:34a dark buttoned-up shirt and a string tie.
41:38I'm going to kill you if I don't kill you first.
41:42Perhaps making the audience question her gender,
41:45both male and female simultaneously.
41:49You've got to come over right away.
41:51Please, before she comes back.
41:53Crawford's later career saw her playing alongside Betty Davis
41:57in Robert Aldridge's twisted, gothic melodrama
42:00Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?, further embellishing her status.
42:04And I know what you're trying to do.
42:06I'm not trying to do anything.
42:08Honestly, Jane.
42:10Please, Miss Crawford, it's hardly necessary to make threats you surely don't mean.
42:14Don't fuck with me, fellas!
42:18This ain't my first time at the rodeo.
42:21But it was the biopic Mommy Dearest, made after her death
42:25and starring Faye Dunaway, which confirms her place in the cult pantheon.
42:31Based on a memoir by Crawford's daughter Christina,
42:34it features a bonkers scenery-chewing performance by Dunaway
42:38and some hilariously over-the-top recreations of Jones' extreme personality traits,
42:43including a pathological hatred of wire coat hangers.
42:48No wire hangers!
42:55Ever!
42:57In the 60s and 70s, the artist Andy Warhol developed the camp aesthetic on film
43:03with a cast of drag queens, socialites, hustlers and anyone else who caught his eye.
43:21Warhol's Factory made cinematic vehicles for people who lived their lives
43:25as if they were movie stars, even when they weren't.
43:29Chelsea Girls, the experimental 210-minute-long split-screen portrait of life
43:34in the Chelsea Hotel in New York, features many of the Warhol superstars as they were known.
43:40Edie Sedgwick, Candy Darling, Nico and Viva all starred in Warhol's movies
43:46and became cult icons.
43:51The film is a strange blend of glamour and grit, black and white and colour.
43:56Some, like American critic Roger Ebert, hated it,
43:59accusing it of employing perversion and sensation like chilli sauce
44:04to disguise the aroma of the meal.
44:07The British Board of Film Censors refused the film a certificate.
44:13The split-screen technique of Chelsea Girls would inspire Roman Candles,
44:17a 1966 short by another filmmaker who would take the cult of camp to an outrageous new level.
44:24My original ad copy for Pink Flamingos read,
44:27the filthiest people alive, their loves, their hates
44:30and their unquenchable thirst for notoriety.
44:33John Waters was born and raised in Baltimore.
44:36He quotes The Wizard of Oz as a major influence in his youth,
44:39but he also consumed large numbers of unsuitable movies
44:43screening at the local drive-in by using binoculars.
44:47Waters formed his own version of Warhol's factory with friends and acquaintances,
44:52misfits and eccentrics who made up the Dreamlanders troupe.
44:56They included David Lockery, Edith Massey and Mink Stoll,
45:00but the undisputed leader of the pack was Divine,
45:03the stage name of Waters' muse, Glenn Milstead.
45:06It's already a wreck without your nagging.
45:08I'm ready. All I have to do is flip him to my outfit.
45:11We've done this thing enough times,
45:13we don't have to worry about anything happening.
45:16Divine was a hairdresser-turned-drag artist who, together with Waters,
45:20would set out to make the trashiest motion pictures in cinema history.
45:24What you will see inside of this tent will make you literally sick.
45:28Their movie collaboration dates back to 60s oddities
45:32like Eat Your Make-Up and Mondo Trash-O,
45:35and the 1970 feature Multiple Maniacs,
45:38in which Divine is the owner of a show-business
45:41called The Cavalcade of Perversion.
45:44The film contained a number of farcically outre scenes,
45:48including Divine being violated by a giant lobster.
45:53To sidestep any potential censorship issues,
45:56Waters bypassed the normal distribution channels
45:59and hired non-commercial venues to show his films,
46:03including church premises.
46:06Look at that thing! I'll be right behind you, Ma.
46:08Answer it. I might not be nothing.
46:10It's a fucking mailman!
46:12Divine and Waters followed up Multiple Maniacs with Pink Flamingos,
46:16the film that would make them cult icons around the world.
46:20Mama, that's just egg paranoia.
46:23Divine starred as Babs Johnson, the filthiest woman alive.
46:27In the notorious final scene of the picture,
46:30proving that these film-makers would go further than ever
46:34the star eats dog poo, for real, on camera, and smiles about it.
46:39Match that, Hollywood.
46:41How much is that doggy in the window?
46:47Now, time for a confession.
46:49While Pink Flamingos is now regarded as something of a camp classic,
46:53it's also one of the very few films that I have ever walked out of.
46:57When I first saw it as a teenager on a late-night double bill
47:01at the Phoenix in East Finchley,
47:03it's a reminder that cult movies have frequently been at the forefront
47:06of an issue that's dogged cinema since its earliest days.
47:10Just how far can you go?
47:22It's perhaps no surprise that one of the biggest sources of cult movies
47:27are those pictures that traverse the boundaries of so-called good taste,
47:31provoking public outrage or censorious restriction.
47:36Through the last 100 years,
47:38the films that have dared to show the unshowable
47:41have always attracted furious critics and a fervent following.
47:48Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali's short film Un Chien Andalou
47:53is notable for an infamous shot in which an eyeball is apparently slashed.
47:57You may wish to look away now.
48:05It was, in fact, a dead cow's eye,
48:07but there were accounts at the time of the sequence
48:10causing miscarriages among the audience,
48:12and reported riots at early screenings in France
48:15led to widespread calls for a ban.
48:19We ain't captain! We ain't captain!
48:22Todd Browning's extraordinary 1932 film Freaks
48:25cast actors with disabilities
48:27to perform this tale of high drama, tragedy and revenge.
48:35Freak! Freak! Freak!
48:38The casting proved controversial.
48:40Many scenes from the original version were cut
48:43and Freaks was widely banned in the UK for 30 years.
48:49The 70s produced a clutch of films like A Clockwork Orange,
48:53Soldier Blue and The Exorcist
48:55that challenged the censors and the audience.
48:59If I don't watch myself...
49:02..I shall do something silly.
49:06Why not do it?
49:08The British director Ken Russell had worked with the censors
49:12to push the boundaries of what could be shown
49:15in his 1969 adaptation of D.H. Lawrence's novel Women In Love,
49:20getting approval for a lengthy nude wrestling scene
49:23between Oliver Reed and Alan Bates.
49:27We will save you!
49:30But The Devils, adapted from a book by Aldous Huxley
49:33and a play by John Whiting, was a different matter.
49:38A true-life tale of the unholy marriage of church and state,
49:42The Devils recreated the religious hysteria of nuns in Ludon
49:46who were whipped into a demonic frenzy by authorities
49:49aiming to discredit a troublesome priest, Urban Grandier.
50:00Russell mixed religion, sex and violence in a heady brew
50:04that caused the censors and the film's producer, Warner Brothers,
50:08to be appalled.
50:09Both demanded several cuts from the film,
50:12including a sequence known as The Rape Of Christ,
50:15in which the nuns tear down and defile a statue of Jesus.
50:19To Russell, who called The Devils,
50:21my most, indeed, my only political picture,
50:25this sequence, long believed to be lost,
50:28was crucial to his depiction of brainwashing,
50:31of true religion being desecrated for crave and end.
50:36When I made a documentary about The Devils for Channel 4,
50:39we found and aired those lost sequences,
50:42which Russell's editor subsequently reinstated into the feature
50:46for a gala screening at the National Film Theatre in 2004,
50:50where it received a standing ovation.
50:53Yet to this day, that director's cut remains banned,
50:57not by the censors, but by Warners,
51:00an American studio whose suppression
51:02of a brilliant British filmmaker's finest work
51:05has perversely created an international cult market
51:08for shoddy pirate editions of a film
51:11they apparently wish they'd never made.
51:19Just two years after The Devils came Marco Ferreri's
51:22savage, scatological satire of consumerism, La Grande Bouffe,
51:27a group of jaded middle-aged men
51:29gather with the express intention of eating themselves to death.
51:41They carry out their mission in different ways,
51:44each more satirically repellent than the last.
51:47Victims of their appetites,
51:49but also celebrating conspicuous consumption.
52:00Bézemois, another extreme French movie made 30 years later,
52:04would also leave audiences feeling queasy
52:07with its lurid blend of sex and violence.
52:10Directed by Virginie Despens and Coralie Trinty,
52:13Bézemois featured unsimulated hardcore sex
52:16in a manner that challenged and perhaps changed
52:19the boundaries of mainstream cinema.
52:24What?
52:26How many men were in the ambush?
52:29How'd they work it?
52:31There can, of course, be a distinctly political edge to film censorship.
52:35Take the case of Melvin Van Peeble's 1971 sensation
52:39Sweet Sweetback's Badass Song.
52:42This pioneering, independent African-American movie,
52:45released in the same year as the MGM-backed Shaft,
52:49is credited with kick-starting the blaxploitation genre of the 70s,
52:53a far more radical work than its mainstream studio cousin
52:57and a favourite of the revolutionary Black Panther movement of the time.
53:02In America, Sweet Sweetback was released in 71
53:05with the tagline, Rated X by an All-White Jury,
53:09after the MPAA deemed it effectively unsuitable for mainstream cinemas,
53:14a ruling widely believed to have been influenced
53:17by their fear of the film's incendiary political message.
53:20God, there could be an uprising.
53:22Come on for me!
53:24Come on, Pete!
53:26Still running after 50 years,
53:28Sweet Sweetback's Badass Song continues to pack a punch,
53:32especially in the current climate.
53:35Come on, Pete!
53:44So, are cult movies still being made?
53:47Well, there have, of course, always been those films
53:50which have tried to jump on the cult bandwagon,
53:53like the toxic Avenger movies churned out by Troma in the 80s and 90s,
53:57or, more recently, the Asylum's Sharknado series,
54:01movies that try too hard to be cults and therefore fail the test.
54:07As we noted at the beginning of this show,
54:09it's audiences, not filmmakers, who bestow cult status.
54:14But what about a movie like Blade Runner 2049,
54:18Denis Villeneuve's long-awaited sequel
54:20to Ridley Scott's neo-noir science fiction film?
54:27The original movie was a box office flop,
54:29a costly failure easily overshadowed by Spielberg's E.T.
54:33and Stallone's Rocky III when it appeared in 1982.
54:38You're reading a magazine.
54:39You come across a full-page nude photo of a girl.
54:42Is this testing whether I'm a replicant or a lesbian, Mr Deckard?
54:45Just answer the questions, please.
54:48But like so many cult films,
54:50Blade Runner had suffered much tampering before release.
54:53After poor previews, an explanatory voice-over was added,
54:57along with a happy ending,
54:59using outtakes from Stanley Kubrick's horror movie The Shining, no less.
55:09Gosh, you've really got some nice toys here.
55:13But over the years, Blade Runner would develop a powerful cult following,
55:17fascinated by its future retro design and eerily prophetic technology,
55:22as well as the key question of whether Harrison Ford's character Deckard
55:25is a human or a replicant.
55:30All this resulted in several versions subsequently becoming available,
55:34from a work print to a final cut.
55:38Blade Runner's fan base convinced Hollywood to make a big-budget sequel,
55:42Blade Runner 2049,
55:44but although heavily marketed and critically praised,
55:47it still lost money.
55:51Yet the combination of Roger Deakin's extraordinary dystopian visuals
55:55and the existential questions at the heart of the script
55:58have ensured it a place in the cult canon.
56:02But what about less high-profile films?
56:05Can they still inspire cults in this era of the internet and streaming
56:09when almost everything is available at any time?
56:13The Prince Charles Theatre in London's Leicester Square
56:16is one of the last bastions of repertory-style cinema.
56:19It was here in 2009 that the cult following for Tommy Wiseau's
56:23excruciating 2003 love triangle melodrama The Room started.
56:29I did not hit her. It's not true. It's bullshit. I did not hit her.
56:33I did not.
56:35Oh, hi, Mark. What's up?
56:37Like the Citizen Kane of bad films,
56:39The Room is a tour de force of abysmal acting and lifeless dialogue,
56:44not for the faint-hearted, but an 18-carat cult favourite.
56:49You are lying. I never hit you.
56:51You are tearing me apart, Lisa!
56:54Mr Song, Cassius Green, a worry-free calling. Sorry to bother you.
56:57I'm calling about who is assembling your phone.
57:00Every year it seems that new, strange and wonderfully unexpected films
57:04continue to emerge, like Sorry To Bother You.
57:07Rapper-turned-filmmaker Boots Riley's anarchic, unruly satire
57:11that takes swipes at coercive capitalism
57:14before heading into an impressively unhinged finale.
57:18We are honoured to be in your presence.
57:23Dude, I'm from East Oakland. Talk regular.
57:28Could you know?
57:31No.
57:37But for me, the recent film that feels most genuinely like a cult classic
57:42is Parasite, Korean director Bong Joon-ho's gasp-inducing
57:46family drama, horror, black comedy
57:49that stunningly won the Best Picture Oscar in 2020,
57:53infuriating Donald Trump in the process.
57:57When the director released a special black-and-white version of Parasite
58:01that some hardcore aficionados favour over the colour original,
58:05it seemed to bring this astonishing movie
58:08right back into the heart of cult fandom.
58:13All of which goes to prove that cult movies really are alive and kicking.
58:18SHE SCREAMS
58:48SHE SCREAMS