"So Bad They're Good" Cult Films and Camp Classics
See also: Mystery Science Theater 3000Many films enjoy cult status because they may be seen as ridiculously awful, for example Plan 9 from Outer Space (1958) or The Room (2003). The critic Michael Medved characterized examples of the "so bad it's good" class of low-budget cult film through books such as The Golden Turkey Awards. These films include such financially fruitless and critically scorned films, such as Showgirls, The Lonely Lady, Mommie Dearest, Cool as Ice, Boxing Helena, Manos: The Hands of Fate, North, The Wicker Man, Fatal Deviation, Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2, and Troll 2, which have become inadvertent comedies to film buffs. Movies have even achieved cult status by successfully imitating the awfulnesses of so-bad-it's-good movies (The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra and Amazon Women on the Moon being just two examples).
In other cases, little-known or forgotten films from the past are revived as cult films, largely because they may be considered goofy and senseless by modern standards, with laughable special effects and corny plotlines. These include Hobgoblins, Maximum Overdrive, Howard the Duck, Breakin', The Beastmaster, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, The Creeping Terror, Robot Monster, The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, The Man Who Saves the World and the works of Edward D. Wood, Jr. The Beastmaster is an example of the strange vectors which can lead to cult filmdom, as its reputation stems as much from ubiquitous cable-TV overplay as anything in the film itself.
These films should not be confused with comedic cult movies like The Toxic Avenger, Bad Taste, Army of Darkness, Murder By Death, Spaceballs, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and the films of John Waters, which purposely utilize elements from films "so bad they're good" for comedic effect. This may be seen as related to the artistic style known as "camp".
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“A good heart will help you to a bonny face, my lad ... and a bad one will turn the bonniest into something worse than ugly.”
—Emily Brontë (1818–1848)
“The cult of art gives pride; one never has too much of it.”
—Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880)
“Does art reflect life? In movies, yes. Because more than any other art form, films have been a mirror held up to society’s porous face.”
—Marjorie Rosen (b. 1942)
“The Indians invited us to lodge with them, but my companion inclined to go to the log camp on the carry. This camp was close and dirty, and had an ill smell, and I preferred to accept the Indians’ offer, if we did not make a camp for ourselves; for, though they were dirty, too, they were more in the open air, and were much more agreeable, and even refined company, than the lumberers.... So we went to the Indians’ camp or wigwam.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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—Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)