Cult Movies, Landmark Cult Classics

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Actors:Jim Broadbent, Ray Cooper (II), Robert De Niro, John Flanagan, ...
Brazil
by Universal Studios (DVD) (Release Date: 1998-03-31)

If Franz Kafka had been an animator and film director--oh, and a member of Monty Python's Flying Circus--this is the sort of outrageously dystopian satire one could easily imagine him making. However, Brazil was made by Terry Gilliam, who is all of the above except, of course, Franz Kafka. Be that as it may, Gilliam sure captures the paranoid-subversive spirit of Kafka's The Trial (along with his own Python animation) in this bureaucratic nightmare-comedy about a meek governmental clerk named Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) whose life is destroyed by a simple bug. Not a software bug, a real bug (no doubt related to Kafka's famous Metamorphosis insect) that gets smooshed in a printer and causes a typographical error unjustly branding poor Sam as a miscreant. The movie presents such an unrelentingly imaginative and savage vision of 20th-century bureaucracy that it almost became a victim of small-minded studio management itself--until Gilliam surreptitiously screened his cut for the ...

Actors:Sid Abrams, Josh Becker, Sarah Berry, Denise Bixler, ...
Evil Dead II (Special Edition)
by Starz / Anchor Bay (DVD) (Release Date: 2000-08-29)

Actors:Elizabeth Berkley, Kyle MacLachlan, Gina Gershon, Glenn Plummer, ...
Showgirls
by MGM (Video & DVD) (DVD) (Release Date: 2000-04-25)

Actors:Mickey Rourke, Kim Basinger, Margaret Whitton, David Margulies, ...
9 1/2 Weeks (Uncut, Uncensored Version)
by MGM (Warner) (DVD) (Release Date: 1998-07-01)

Frequently given short shrift as a blue movie (which it is) and as mindless (which it isn't), director Adrian Lyne's follow-up to Flashdance (insert own joke here) is a thoughtful, smutty film about a bad sexual relationship. It follows the two-month affair between Elizabeth, an art-gallery dealer, and John, a Wall Street exec. The relationship spirals downward into raunchier sex (filmed, by the way, quite nicely) but principally is about two adults doing adult things but not acting anything like real adults. Attempts at actual human connection, about the longing to be "good," are present here and make this an above-average erotic film. Rourke is just honing his scumbag, bad-boy persona; but it doesn't overwhelm. Lots and lots of Kim Basinger. --Keith Simanton

Actors:Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Victor Buono, Wesley Addy, ...
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
by Warner Home Video (DVD) (Release Date: 1997-10-01)

It's brash! It's grotesque! It's a blistering display of psychological terrorism! One of the blackest comedies ever made, this 1962 thriller rejuvenated the careers of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford and played heavily on their own Hollywood legends, incorporating film clips from their earlier stardom to add depth and realism to a severely twisted tale of sibling rivalry. Davis plays the former child star turned wrinkled hag Jane Hudson, whose sister Blanche (Crawford) eclipsed her star in Hollywood, and has been paying for it ever since. Now confined to a wheelchair, Blanche is held prisoner in the musty mansion she shares with Jane, who terrorizes Blanche with maniacal control (and dead rats for dinner), and embarks on an absurd campaign to revive her career, curly-haired wig and all. A deranged showcase for its stars, the film also introduced Oscar nominee Victor Buono as the sycophantic pianist hired to accompany Jane's bizarre vaudeville revival. Hilarious, frightening, and ...

Actors:Jonathan Pryce, Robert De Niro, Katherine Helmond, Ian Holm, ...
Brazil - Criterion Collection
by Criterion (DVD) (Release Date: 1999-07-13)

If Franz Kafka had been an animator and film director--oh, and a member of Monty Python's Flying Circus--this is the sort of outrageously dystopian satire one could easily imagine him making. However, Brazil was made by Terry Gilliam, who is all of the above except, of course, Franz Kafka. Be that as it may, Gilliam sure captures the paranoid-subversive spirit of Kafka's The Trial (along with his own Python animation) in this bureaucratic nightmare-comedy about a meek governmental clerk named Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) whose life is destroyed by a simple bug. Not a software bug, a real bug (no doubt related to Kafka's famous Metamorphosis insect) that gets smooshed in a printer and causes a typographical error unjustly identifying an innocent citizen, one Mr. Buttle, as suspected terrorist Harry Tuttle (Robert De Niro). When Sam becomes enmeshed in unraveling this bureaucratic glitch, he himself winds up labeled as a miscreant. The movie presents such an unrelentingly ...

Actors:Malcolm McDowell, Patrick Magee, Michael Bates, Warren Clarke, ...
A Clockwork Orange
by Warner Bros. Pictures (DVD) (Release Date: 1999-06-29)

Actors:Betsy Baker, Bruce Campbell, Barbara Carey, Richard DeManincor, ...
Evil Dead (Special Edition)
by New Line Cinema (DVD) (Release Date: 1999-03-30)

In the fall of 1979, Sam Raimi and his merry band headed into the woods of rural Tennessee to make a movie. They emerged with a roller coaster of a film packed with shocks, gore, and wild humor, a film that remains a benchmark for the genre. Ash (cult favorite Bruce Campbell) and four friends arrive at a backwoods cabin for a vacation, where they find a tape recorder containing incantations from an ancient book of the dead. When they play the tape, evil forces are unleashed, and one by one the friends are possessed. Wouldn't you know it, the only way to kill a "deadite" is by total bodily dismemberment, and soon the blood starts to fly. Raimi injects tremendous energy into this simple plot, using the claustrophobic set, disorienting camera angles, and even the graininess of the film stock itself to create an atmosphere of dread, punctuated by a relentless series of jump-out-of-your-seat shocks. The Evil Dead lacks the more highly developed sense of the absurd that distinguish ...

Actors:Bill 'Chilly Billy' Cardille, Charles Craig (II), Frank Doak, Marilyn Eastman, ...
Night of the Living Dead
by Madacy Records (DVD) (Release Date: 1998-06-16)

Actors:Sandy Baron, Perry Benson, Xander Berkeley, Debby Bishop, ...
Sid & Nancy - Criterion Collection
by Criterion (DVD) (Release Date: 1998-10-28)

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