Eccentric Cinema

A cult movie is generally one which is widely loved, hated or otherwise elevated to fame not by success in the movie houses or the expensive advertising provided by the studios but by the audiences, who may seize and nurture a commercial flop as their very own. Some cult movies have died at the box office within days, while others have done well at the start but then begun to fade into obscurity as the years pass. Either way, they are often movies whose time has come and which wouldn't survive without the support of the fans who keep talking and writing about them, and viewing them over and over, encouraging TV stations to show them, and in these days, leaking pirated copies around the web. I'm not sure my personal definition of a genre movie is as clear, so I was delighted to find that Wikipedia agrees, commenting that genre "is always a vague term with no fixed boundaries". I'll settle for a fuzzy definition along the lines that the movie has to be clearly identifiable as fitting into a group of similar works, with similar narratives; horror, or thriller, or romance, say, and let it go at that. The genres that attract most attention from followers of cult cinema tend to be somewhat less mainstream and may include an assortment of 'exploitation' categories, of which 'sexploitation, 'blacksploitation' and even 'nunsploitation' are perhaps best known, but the idea is the same. As the title of this site suggests, too, many of the movies in these areas are also eccentric in one or more ways, not conforming entirely to the broad categories in which they would otherwise fit, or sometimes even demanding new categories of their own. In which case, they may become the progenitors of entirely new genres, serving as a point of comparison for everything that follows. Ultimately there is and probably always will be the argument that genres don't even exist unless and until the movie critics invent them, so we are spared having to grope for clearer definitions and losing sleep over whether the movie we viewed last night was sexploitation or blacksploitation or nunsploitation or all three. In any case, most people couldn't really care less as long as Jennifer Aniston was in it, so we don't have to dwell on the problem any further. This site does dwell, though, and in considerable depth. I didn't check to see how many movies are listed here, but I'd guess around 5-600. All seemed to have lengthy and authoritative reviews coupled with selections of defining images, many of which, I should tell you now, are mature in content since cult films themselves are frequently adult in nature, at least in part. The site does make clear when an indexed movie page includes NSFW images, so you've no excuses for the boss catching you looking, and although it's not a so-called 'family site' I'd be surprised if anyone over 13 was particularly shocked by anything here. There's a mass of information here, not just about the movies themselves and the genres they inhabit, but the quality of individual DVD releases too. And that's important if a movie is frequently released on different media or is revisited and digitally remastered; you don't want to waste money on a poor print, only to find out that there's a new digital re-issue that you didn't know about. If you're a cult movie buff you probably know about this site already, but if not, you might be tempted to take a look into a world almost entirely devoid of bland, romantic Hollywood star-vehicles. Probably no Jen Aniston here, then, alas, but you might still appreciate the wonders of The Mole People or They Saved Hitler's Brain, not to mention Plan 9 From Outer Space, one of the most famed and most dreadfully filmed, acted and directed cult movies ever. Recommended to while away more time than you intended and a solid introduction to a number of movie gems you may not have in your DVD collection - yet.