Darling, if you can’t name at least three films that never made money, confused the critics, and were banned in Finland, then I’m afraid you’re not watching cinema…… you’re grazing.
Cult films are not just movies. They are rites of passage. Secret passwords whispered at parties. The difference between someone who quotes Ferris Bueller and someone who saw Bad Taste at a sleepover and never slept again.
They don’t come with stars. They come with scars.
And lashes.
And usually, a man being eaten by something unspeakable.
Let me be blunt:
If your idea of confrontation is Don’t Worry Darling, you haven’t earned your seat at the Joan and Bette table.
Those two would’ve called that a Tuesday and lit a cigarette off the tension.
To know cult films is to know the fringes. And the fringes, my dear, are where cinema takes off its pearls and gets to work.
Mainstream cinema polishes the apple.
Cult cinema bites it…… worms and all.
So come. Sit down.
No refunds. No rewinds.
Just blood, brilliance, and maybe a severed head in a handbag.
POSSESSION (1981)
She screams in a Berlin subway for eleven minutes. Not metaphorically…. literally.
Blood. Milk. Filth. God. The walls breathe. You hold your breath.
Isabelle Adjani gives a performance so physical, so unhinged, the camera seems afraid of her. Sam Neill, meanwhile, just stares unsure if he’s the husband, the victim, or the punchline.
There’s a tentacled thing. There’s sex. Sort of.
It’s a divorce movie made by someone who brought a gun to couples counselling.
No one agrees what Possession is about. But once you see it, you carry it like a secret disease.
Screening: Academy Cinemas, 31st October
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? (1962)
Two sisters. One wheelchair. Zero mercy.
Joan Crawford is regal. Bette Davis is powdered, cracked, and vengeful.
She serves dead birds on silver trays and sings songs nobody asked for except maybe God, as a joke.
This is not just horror.
This is psychological warfare in false eyelashes.
What happened to Baby Jane?
Better question:
What did she do to her?
Streaming: Apple TV & Prime Video Store
THE HOLY MOUNTAIN (1973)
A Christ figure climbs a ziggurat with planetary weirdos.
Toads reenact colonial conquest.
A man turns shit into gold.
Jodorowsky doesn’t direct. He conjures.
You don’t watch The Holy Mountain you submit to it.
You won’t understand it. That’s not a flaw.
That’s the invitation.
Streaming: YouTube (Rent or Buy)
WAKE IN FRIGHT (1971)
Outback Australia. A schoolteacher stops for a drink.
Five days later, he’s sunburnt, broke, spiritually flayed, and surrounded by men who laugh too loudly for too long.
Donald Pleasence slithers through it like a drunk angel with no wings.
This film was lost for decades. That wasn’t an accident.
It knows too much.
Where to watch: Brollie (Free with Ads)
ERASERHEAD (1977)
David Lynch’s debut.
Soup won’t behave. A radiator sings. The baby cries like it knows what comes next.
This isn’t horror.
It’s insomnia, filmed.
You won’t sleep.
You won’t blink.
And you absolutely shouldn’t operate heavy machinery after watching.
Streaming: Apple TV (Rent or Buy)
GUMMO (1997)
A bath full of noodles. A bunny boy with a BB gun.
Dead cats, neon crosses, girls whispering into cracked mirrors.
Harmony Korine doesn’t direct. He detonates.
This is chaos filmed with the care of a love letter and the smell of a broken ashtray.
You don’t enjoy Gummo.
You survive it.
Screening: Academy Cinemas, 06th October
THE DEVIL DARED ME TO (2007)
NZ’s own cult-trashfire masterpiece.
He jumps flaming buses on a BMX. He falls in love with a woman named Tracy.
There are exploding sheep.
If Jackass and Braindead had a bastard child behind a meatworks in Timaru, this would be it.
Not satire.
Prophecy.
If it pops up this is a must watch.
STILL HUNGRY?
Start here with Rialto Channel.
And let cinema ruin you properly.
Rialto Channel’s Cult Cinema Month features:
- Re-Animator
- Hellraiser I, II, III
- Nosferatu The Vampyre
Only on SKY’s Rialto Channel
— Roger Wyllie, View Mag
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