Cult Movies: The Classics, the Sleepers, the Weird, and the Wonderful

Danny Peary's Cult Movies (as well as its two following volumes) is one of the books that helped my expand my teenage love of film beyond horror movies. while I was already aware of some of the films in this volume as a child beforehand - Rock and Roll High School, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Harold and Maude, Duck Soup - others I wouldn't have normally been exposed to were introduced to me for the first time, and piqued my curiosity about them and other films withing those genres. Films like El Topo and Shock Corridor weren't bound to show up on HBO or Showtime in the 90s. If it weren't for Cult Movies, it would have probably been another decade or so before I was even aware of films like The Long Goodbye and Two-Lane show more Blacktop.

Peary's selection of what he classifies as 'cult movies' covers a wide range of films, from cultural mainstays like Casablanca and The Wizard of Oz, to art house favorites like La Cage aux Folles and Andy Warhol's Bad, to more obscure films outside of the mainstream like Petulia and Where's Poppa. This is probably one of the few film guides you will read that devotes equal time and attention to both Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey and John Waters' Pink Flamingos. Whether the films are known for their excellence (Citizen Kane) or their lack thereof (Beyond the Valley of the Dolls), Peary examines not just the films themselves, but the making of them, and the attention they've garnered, good or bad.

Spoiler Alert: Peary's essays on the films in this book are preceded by detailed synopses that basically reveal the entire film, including plot-twists and endings, and the majority of his essays are written under the presumption that the reader has already seen the film. Cult Movies is a great book for exposing you to new cinematic treasures, but tread lightly if you aren't a fan of knowing the story before you see it. show less

Very few of the movies listed in this book were really to my taste and certainly not ones I would watch over and over. However, I did note how many of them I had actually seen in my life. Nice to have memory refreshed by precis.

The REAL Cult movie book!!