"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, 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".
Read more about this topic: Cult Film
Famous quotes containing the words bad, cult, films, camp and/or classics:
“A woman does not have to make decisions based on the need to survive. She can cut through issues, call shots as she sees them.... Many bad decisions are made by men in government because it is good for them personally to make bad public decisions.”
—Dianne Feinstein (b. 1933)
“By Modernism I mean the positive rejection of the past and the blind belief in the process of change, in novelty for its own sake, in the idea that progress through time equates with cultural progress; in the cult of individuality, originality and self-expression.”
—Dan Cruickshank (b. 1949)
“Right now I think censorship is necessary; the things they’re doing and saying in films right now just shouldn’t be allowed. There’s no dignity anymore and I think that’s very important.”
—Mae West (1892–1980)
“When the weather is bad as it was yesterday, everybody, almost everybody, feels cross and gloomy. Our thin linen tents—about like a fish seine, the deep mud, the irregular mails, the never to-be-seen paymasters, and “the rest of mankind,” are growled about in “old-soldier” style. But a fine day like today has turned out brightens and cheers us all. We people in camp are merely big children, wayward and changeable.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“For what are the classics but the noblest thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)