What counts as a cult film?
The term cult film gets thrown around in so many ways. I used to equate it with B movies, but the double-feature format is long gone from movie theaters, so that term is no clearer. It can't just mean that it has a dedicated following because then something so known and highly praised as The Princess Bride becomes a cult classic. We've been through VHS and DVD straight-to-video, and the 2020 pandemic pushed the straight-to-streaming approach further into normality for even the biggest film studios, so distribution doesn't define cult films anymore, especially with so many boutique hi-def labels entering the market. Grindhouse, genre films, schlock, psychotronic, exploitation, none of these terms clarify what people mean when they call something a cult classic. That means I can put just about anything here that wasn't hyper-successful in the mainstream and it arguably has to count. The odd thing is that if I see a list or collection labeled as "cult," I do know pretty much what to expect. But it was when I started to add Aguirre, the Wrath of God to this list that I realized I do want to distinguish cult films from art house.
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