Original subtitles

- [Man] Lucky.

I would say when someone says the word

cult film, I think, lucky.

You may experience some fortune

when you make a tent pole picture and it is successful,

but it's expected because the numbers tell you so.

- [Man] I like to think of it like a movie

that everybody else missed.

You're always hoping that it's gonna reach as many people

as possible, but for one reason or another,

a lotta times these movies kinda go under the radar,

but then over time, people just,

like every good movie finds a way.

- [Man] It could be any type of film.

I don't necessarily think of sci-fi, or horror.

It could be comedy, it could be romance,

it could be a musical, it could be any type of film.

But one that has found a following over a period of time.

- [Woman] It's film for people on the fringes of society.

I think it's film for people who don't see themselves in,

you know, the Marvel movies, or who don't see

themselves in, uh,

the Hunger Games or Harry Potter.

- [Man] It could be good, it could be bad.

If you loved it, and a whole other group of people

loved it, they all kinda just joined together

and people just loved that movie.

- [Man] The first thing I think of is like

the Island of Misfit Toys.

- [Man] Anything with that disreputable lack of gloss.

- [Man] People really on fire, real explosions.

- [Man] Most people can say that they like Jaws.

Most people aren't gonna tell you that they like

The Sentinel or Ten to Midnight.

- [Man] Normal people don't wanna see it (laughs).

- Cult movies, highly offensive.

(upbeat dramatic music)

(static)

- Hollywood movies can get very cookie cutter.

And the cult movies, the exploitation movies,

the ones that didn't have the same kind of financial

investment, those are the ones that can really surprise you.

- I think we've had cult films since the beginning,

and we've had lots of weird films since the beginning.

I mean, Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is fucking freaky as hell.

(speaking foreign language)

- There were cult films in the '50s,

in the '40s, in the '30s, I mean.

But the '79s, there was something

in the ether called competition.

There was something in the ether

where the playing field was slightly sloped

to help the big, devil-worshiping

independent media conglomerates.

But we had a chance, we had a chance.

If we had something that was entertaining,

we could get it in to 1,000 movie theaters,

or 2,000 screens, we could do it, easy.

- There were always independent filmmakers,

since the beginning of cinema.

But, this was the first time massive numbers

of filmmakers could make their own movies,

and try to get them distributed, made,

financed, cast, written themselves.

They could do it all at once.

It was the first time filmmakers had the ability

to make movies on their own,

full-length features, without the help of the major

studios, in great numbers.

The studios were breaking down, and

they were dismantled by the government, number one,

which hurt them, but two, the studio bosses

like Jack Warner no longer knew, as Warner had 30,

40, 50 years ago, what peopled really wanted to see.

- The big studio blockbusters like Cleopatra and stuff

had pretty much run their course, and you had

movies like Easy Rider and that coming out.

And so you had studios and film backers backing

these smaller independent films.

- That collided head on with the counterculture,

and specifically a counterculture that in 1968,

'69, into the '70s was kinda turning

and the people that were still in it, I think,

when you're looking at history, were having

a lot of negative things going on in their world.

They were getting into drugs,

and harder drugs, and the political momentum

that they had all staked a lot of their lives on

had failed in a lot of ways.

- Their heads were very much in this sort of space

of paranoia and the sort of like collapse

of what, what the sort of picturesque,

like Norman Rockwell-esque life had been

the decade prior to that.

- And so you saw a lot of these people turn to film

as a way to channel

that frustration and that anger.

- From a filmmaker's standpoint, it becomes

an economic consideration.

We have to go balls to the wall,

because otherwise we can't compete.

So you have these filmmakers from that era

trying to make movies that are gonna stand out

because they can't stand out in other ways.

- Because studios weren't as restricting,

you get really interesting stuff coming out,

like Werewolves on Wheels.

- [Announcer] Werewolves on Wheels,

the most eerie, the most chilling, the most terrifying

motorcycle horror film ever made.

(yelling)

- I think this is dealing with cult films starting

in the '70s, but remember, the people that saw

the films in the '50s and '60s were the ones

that made the films in the '70s.

So it's a lotta those films that were made

at those times that became the cult films later.

- I started making my first films in the early 1970s,

and a couple of them have

been talked about as cult films,

but certainly when I was making them I had no intention

whatever that I was making a cult film.

I was always trying to make a film that would be

successful enough that I could make another film.

- I think a lot of producers didn't really

know what they were making, and the filmmakers

got off and did what they want.

- And just by the sheer law of averages,

as there are more pictures,

there's gonna be more great movies, and a lot more shit.

- [Announcer] Her friends called him Honky.

(laughing)

- [Announcer] Delinquent School Girls.

- [Announcer] Keep running till you find out

what kind of Black Girl you really are.

- [Announcer] Teenage Mother means nine months of trouble.

- If you had something interesting,

the theaters would play it, because the theaters

weren't owned and controlled by two or three giant chains.

- There are these great huge movie theaters

that are around since the Depression, and people came in

and started playing, you know, that's where you'd see

the black exploitation, the biker films.

And films like that, and it's also this place

where you pay an admission, and they never gave a fuck

how long you were there for.

You got to stay there as long as you want.

- He made me do it.

- Bitch, are you for real?

- But the interesting thing is a lot of people

would actually like sleep there.

There's a movie called Shakedown with Peter Weller

and Sam Elliott, and if you watch the opening

of that film, Sam Elliott is living in a Grindhouse theater.

He's watching the Soldier,

and then he wakes up, he goes into the bathroom

and he's got his toothbrush there inside a fuse box.

And I think that's the closest thing you could see

to a Grindhouse in a way.

- I remember 42nd Street when it was still

the 42nd Street of Grindhouse and

bad B movies, mostly 42nd Street I remember

as the worst kind of porn advertising I've ever seen.

- That area had also been known for debauchery

and for lewdness and for looser moralities,

and that's why it was able to flourish there so intensely.

We see stuff like in Taxi Driver when he takes her

on a date down to those theaters to watch a porno,

we see that was the area where people who

didn't wanna go see Cary Grant in another movie

would go to catch their films.

We saw that was where people went

to see something different.

- The main way these early cult films became classics

was midnight screenings.

It was theater owners going, no one's coming to see

a movie at midnight, how can we market

like these strange films?

I think El Topo is kind of designated as the first one

that became a success in midnight screening.

Eraserhead is another one.

Pink Flamingos.

- Night of the Living Dead was,

it played midnight I think throughout the '70s.

Like it was always around.

Even when I was a kid, Night of the Living Dead

was always talked about.

Even after Dawn of the Dead, Night of the Living Dead

just was always there, and people going to see it

every single night it played.

People started like doing drugs and just bringing

their friends to show them, and then they needed

to bring more friends to show them these films.

- The smoke smelled funky in those rooms.

- It's nothing dangerous.

You would like it.

It's very relaxing, you know.

- You could smell a cloud of that stuff,

and there'd always be the sound of a

ting ta ting ta ting ding ding ding,

which would be the rolling beer bottle

down the aisle of the movie theater.

Most cult films were enjoyed in kind of an altered state,

which I think is,

which I think makes a lotta sense.

- Over time, these films wouldn't play in, you know,

in the classic theaters, but,

when they played in these midnight circuits,

it just started attracting this weird crowd

of people and word of mouth.

- I think it's like, it's definitely a legendary era

of film, and like so many of the things are looked upon

as cult classics like came through that.

- I think the reason that the '70s are known

as the birth of cult cinema is that's,

those movies have endured.

Movies from that period that became cult films,

we're still talking about them.

They still have left an indelible mark.

They still have like a huge impact.

And it's part of cult film history.

- Everybody was allowed to make the movie they wanted.

And for better or worse,

that I think helped launch

all of the great movies that we had in the '80s.

- There's only master,

and his name is Satan.

(upbeat dramatic music)

- We're talking ghost town.

- Are you planning on going with someone?

Would you like to go with me?

(upbeat dramatic music)

- Police business, like to have a few words with you.

(upbeat dramatic music)

- [Man] Jump, jump.

- Zombies, exploding heads,

creepy crawlies.

We could have a little problem.

- That's what I love about cult cinema is,

there's so many subgenres, in the same way

that horror has subgenres.

For me, a big deal to me was when I went

to Kim's Underground in New York City for the first time,

which, Rip, used to be on St. Mark's Place,

I think it's a Target now, which figures.

But I used to go there all the time,

and it was the first video store, it was music,

videos for buy and videos for rent,

and it was the first video store where things

were separated into nunsploitation or Italian Giallo,

or Polizia Teche, like all these weird subgenres,

and I'm like what the hell is nunsploitation?

- And what form does this incubus take.

- Cock (laughs).

- [Rob] Slasher films, you know.

Blacksploitation,

Kung Fu films, oh man.

- [Announcer] Honor.

Disgrace.

Vengeance.

- Rape revenge, women who kill, that was my favorite.

I do like women in prison movies,

because you know, they have to turn into

lesbians every time.

- [Announcer] New rules.

And new inmates

are meant to be broken.

- Praising a virgin?

Well, after the shock rubs off,

you'll get the picture.

- There's cult, and then at the very end

there's that little rack that's smut.

And there's a very thin line between smut and cult,

let me tell you.

- Cult films in general, I think that's when

the line started getting blurred because,

you had a cult section and you'd find the same

cult movies on that shelf, Eraserhead

and Repo Man and like all the classics, but then

it just became this shelf where

the video store owner or the employees,

whatever was a weird movie that you couldn't place

on the shelf, they'd just fucking throw

on that cult movie shelf.

So all of a sudden, if a movie was just weird and strange,

even though if it wasn't a cult film,

it would just automatically go that shelf for some reason.

- Video stores changed everything.

Video stores changed everything.

When they became prominent in the '80s,

something you went to as frequently as the grocery store,

video store were everything.

- When you went to the movies it was an event,

but you could go to the video store two, three times

a week, but

I would say, early '80s, mid-'80s for me,

so a lot of the movies that I've seen, I'd say about 70%

of the movies I saw during my childhood came from VHS.

It probably has as much as an impact on how I view movies

now as any other intake that I've used.

- You could see all the art stacked up against each other.

It just becomes this beautiful collage

of blacks and reds

and deep, vivid colors that are offset from each other.

It's just like, oh my God.

And that's how we used to pick out movies.

I would not read the back of the box.

I would just go from the cover art.

- It was like this tangible thing, right.

It could be copied, it could be shared.

It introduced cover art to the masses,

you know what I mean?

I'm sure like people love to talk about the way that

cover art really sucked them in in a video store.

I think everybody's got, everybody who's into this kind

of thing has that one movie that sat on the shelves

kind of just luring them in for years.

Maybe they didn't rent it.

Like I know a lotta people who just had those,

oh, I never watched it, but I would there and

stare at the cover art forever.

- Ghoulies, like I think remembers the little gremlin guy

popping outta the toilet.

- Or like the remake of the Blob.

That always is the cool one, where it has the guy

like reaching out, and he's like

back there and it's just gnarly.

That movie's just, I still love that movie.

- The Driller Killer video cover.

The porno box edition version.

- I really love the box art for The Hunger, actually,

the original one, like the double size box,

where you open it up and it has like the padding around it,

because the VHS, can't hit the ground

or it'll smash into a million pieces.

- Vasectomy the Movie, a Delicate Matter.

Now Vasectomy, the Movie, which is,

what is this?

- I think the cover of Gator Bait

got me to go through puberty.

- Deathstalker was one.

Because I remember renting it and watching it

and just being totally like, what the fuck?

Where are those two gargoyles with the mace

on the front cover, where was that battle?

It was gone.

Same thing with like Warrior of the Lost World.

Has like the sickest fucking VHS cover,

with a guy on a motorcycle shooting missiles.

And then when you rent it,

it was just so low-rent and so disappointing.

I think that was the time of just seeing

this amazing artwork and renting it

and just being like, what is this?

- Anything that even sounded marginally interesting,

you just grab it, you know what I mean?

This has a monster, this has a half-naked girl,

I'll just take this, and it doesn't matter.

Even if I don't watch it, it cost me a dollar.

- So because cult films don't make huge profit

at the box office, VHS tend to be where

they make their money back.

I think that's the obvious benefit for filmmakers,

that and of course getting their films seen more

than they could have been,

I mean I still watch films on VHS.

I still watch a lot of cult films on VHS,

and it's obviously beneficial in that way

to the filmmakers.

I think for film viewers,

it gave them another opportunity to connect with these.

- Having direct-to-video be a thing,

having direct-to-video be a profitable path

for certain types of movies led to

explosions of independent films, horror films,

and even cult films finding a life.

Right? I mean, like, you know,

I could finally see Eraserhead

at a time other than midnight.

We've moved through all these platforms, right?

There's cable, there's VHS, there's laser disc.

- Is all this exciting programming available now?

(computer beeping)

Really?

Super concerts by top entertainers.

Blockbuster films, both current and vintage.

Cooking lessons, documentaries,

how to do at tennis, golf, swimming and crafts.

Cartoons, the arts, NFL football, interactive discs.

All of them and more.

And far less expensive than pre-recorded videotape.

- Laser disc was awesome.

It was killer back in the day, but it was,

I mean it's like collecting vinyl,

the things were massive, the laser discs were huge.

And I had the Pioneer player that had the A-B.

Like you had to flip the laser disc,

because it couldn't hold all the content.

But I had the one that you could actually like,

it would stop for a second, and you would hear a noise

and it would flip the laser to the other side,

I guess, I don't know how it worked, that's what it was.

- I knew a guy who bought,

I think he bought almost $25,000 worth of laser discs,

because remember they were a hundred bucks apiece.

250 discs, that's not that much.

Now, it's nothing.

But then that was like a lotta money.

And then like, whatever, three years later,

he couldn't play any of them.

- Another bright idea, from Magnavox.

- There was another thing that also really helped

with, get people to see cult films at the time,

which was also the advent of cable television.

Because when cable television first started,

USA Network didn't have 80 hours of Burn Notice to play.

They were just like, let's get the Troma catalog

and show Toxic Avenger.

- [Announcer] The first superhero born out of nuclear waste.

- You suddenly had all these avenues for content

in need of content, and cheap content.

And so movies that didn't do well,

that were essentially cult became

almost mainstays in home entertainment.

Nobody would have saw The Thing if it wasn't for HBO.

If HBO didn't get Big Trouble in Little China for cheap,

nobody would have seen it, because it just came and went

in the theaters, nobody remembers it.

Nobody would have remembered it.

- They would show that at 12, two,

like you would see,

The Creature, I mean some off-the-wall knockoff

of an alien movie, and they would show that on Showtime

because they would have filler.

It would basically be filler TV.

They made their money during prime time,

during the afternoons and boxing and everything else,

so, yeah, there's a lotta the off-shoot movies

that probably would have never seen

if it hadn't been for 24-hour cable networks

like Showtime and HBO, and Cinemax and on and on.

- It was Beastmaster, Dragonslayer and Ice Pirates.

They were always on, and because they were always on,

in my mind, those were huge movies.

Those were like Star Wars big, like everyone,

everyone is seeing these movies.

I mean, there was that running joke with HBO,

that it was Hey, Beastmasters On,

because they played it so much.

- [Announcer] Friday, travel back in time to the age

of darkness, to a land of mystical heroes

and murderous villains, where one warrior leads

the creatures of the wild in a battle

against the forces of evil.

The Beastmaster.

- And that's the thing.

Like, today, a movie like Teen Witch is a cult film,

it's because it was on every fucking day,

and there was not many channels, and so you were forced

to watch fucking Teen Witch every day.

And you're watching it because you also know

that horrible rap scene is coming up.

(rap music)

♪ I'm king, and they know it ♪

♪ When I snap my fingers, everybody says show it ♪

♪ I'm hot, and you're not ♪

♪ But if you want to hang with me, I'll give it one shot ♪

♪ Top that ♪

You know, it's like, I didn't wanna watch BMX Bandits

50 fucking times in my life, but I had no choice

because it was always fucking on cable.

- You'd look in the TV Guide or whatever,

and you'd find out when things were playing,

and then you'd watch it, or you'd just randomly put it on,

flip through and look for something crazy.

And then you'd find like the last 10 minutes

of a movie, and you'd watch,

and then it was like the best movie ever.

And then you go back and watch the first 80 minutes,

and it sucked, you know.

- Oh, it was awesome because, after 11 o'clock,

it was a torrent of trash.

Like that's where I saw the Sword and the Sorceress

and the movies with the Barbarian twins in it.

And even, like the knockoff Sergio Leone movies,

Cinemax just, you know, they would just play it

and maybe they'd throw a Friday the 13th movie in there,

but it seemed so weak sauce after you just saw a guy

with a tomahawk run another guy down,

or a bunch of cowboys take another cowboy

and gouge his eyes out in a cave.

- I remember one memory was Heavy Metal, the cartoon.

And I remember as a young kid, and my parents were like,

we're going to see your aunt, and they took off.

And I was like at home with a babysitter who definitely

wasn't paying attention to me or my sister,

so I'd turn HBO on, and sure enough,

oh look, a cartoon's on, I gotta check this out.

And the first thing I see is the Locknar come

and melt this guy, and I'm just like,

what is this thing?

It was like the scariest thing,

but I couldn't stop watching that.

(mysterious music)

(upbeat music)

- Showtime, in particular, used to have a segment

called After Hours, where they would only show

certain movies past 10 o'clock at night.

And they were usually very risque, whether they were sexy,

whether they were gory.

I can't tell you how many movies I saw personally,

watching that channel.

I remember watching Gates of Hell.

They would only show that past midnight,

and it was the most disgusting

thing I'd ever seen, I couldn't believe that I was watching.

Of course, flash forward years later,

people loved the movie, it's Lucio Fulci,

he has a whole arsenal of movies that are cult films,

including Zombie and The Beyond or whatever.

- I think I was like 13 or 14,

growing up in Japan, and Lucio Fulci's Zombie

was actually on TV late at night.

Granted, it was late at night, like two a.m. or something,

but I recorded it, and of course that naked girl sequence

with the shark is there, not edited.

I mean, you know, a 13-year-old boy,

I was like, wow, what is this shit?

You know, I got really excited,

and I think that really turned me

on to, you know, cult cinemas.

- The first time I saw Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers

was because I taped it one night on Cinemax,

just in this roulette.

So like late '80s, early '90s,

there was just this glorious time period

of some fantastic films being played on cable.

And then there was also, on Saturday nights,

there was a show called Up All Night.

(upbeat music)

And they would play like older Scream Queen movies.

That was one of the first times I saw

Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama.

Vampire on Bikini Beach.

- A touching story of buxom young girls and buff young dudes

who take valuable time from their busy summer of surfing,

dental floss bathing suits and pounding each other

to pound some stakes into those creatures of the night.

- Rhonda Shear would just play all these Scream Queen

movies, and then when you'd turned the channel over

to Joe Bob Briggs on the Movie Channel,

he would be playing like all the Andy Sedaris movies.

And Joe Bob Briggs was like my film school.

I learned everything about Andy Sedaris

through Joe Bob Briggs, because he would count down

the body count, naked breasts.

You know, explosions, how many exploding helicopters.

And he like schooled me on Andy Sedaris every night.

To do this day, like Hard Ticket to Hawaii

is like one of the greatest films, you know.

- [Announcer] This ain't no hula.

It's a Hard Ticket to Hawaii, rated R.

- You were exposed to a lot of things

that otherwise you wouldn't have been.

So there was, there's this discovery aspect with that

that can be really intoxicating and exciting.

And it can expand your horizons

in a way that's a little more difficult now

because there's so much choice

that you tend to have this like paralyzation

of what you're gonna watch.

But you know, Saturday night, I would turn on

Joe Bog Briggs on Monster Vision and discover

all these like just like wild insane films

that I never would have sat down and watched otherwise.

- What we've got here is nine dead bodies,

15 zombies, two breasts,

which Ted of course made us edit out for TNT,

so you won't see those.

The second week of Joe Bob's summer school session

for remedial Monster Vision watchers,

we enter the wonderful world of animals

with the Beastmaster trilogy,

all three Beastmaster movies, and this is only

the 279th time they've been seen on TNT.

We got them racked up, all right.

We have 57 dead bodies,

one kidnapping, four motor vehicle chases,

one wheelchair chase, one white slavery ring,

no, wait a minute, yellow slavery ring,

one machine gun massacre, one machete battle,

multiple blue finger flame,

one zombified levitating 2,000-year-old man

with really bad fingernails,

exploding building, exploding temple,

knife to the forehead, one ocean of chained skeletons,

one palace of golden Buddhas, poison gas,

nine Kung Fu scenes, and good ones they are, four stars.

- There have always been two kinds

of late-night movie hosts.

There's the kind that make fun of the film,

and there's the kind that celebrate the film.

I was determined to be the kind that celebrates the film.

So, um,

so we did a lot of research, it was pre-internet

but we tried to find out as much as we could

about who made the film, it was not easy.

Who made the film, where did it come from

and why did they make it, how much it cost,

all that kinda stuff.

- We have it for you, intact, uncut,

unedited, in all its disgusting technicolor glory.

- At the time, I was just trying to bring a lot of this

stuff out of obscurity, that when I first started

reviewing the films, they were just,

they were considered trash,

and you know, beneath contempt,

beneath even the contempt of my own networks,

which would just throw them on my show because

they didn't know what to do with them.

- Right now, we are about to watch one of the greatest

Emmanuelle movies ever made.

Of course that's like saying the best Mexican wine, I know,

but it's also real late on a cold night and you have

nothing better to do than watch the Movie Channel,

so listen up this, no dead bodies,

51 naked breasts and a stripper who does a trick

with a ping-pong ball you will not believe.

- The cult classic, the cult film, the cult hits,

the cult blockbuster, and the reality is, is yeah,

a lot of the movies from especially the '70s and '80s,

the stuff that came out on VHS and in Grindhouse theaters,

and HBO cable at the time,

a lotta people grew up on that, had fond memories of it

and they talked about it with their friends,

they found other people that liked it.

And, before you know it, you have groups of people

that like a lot of these films,

and they are classified as cult films.

- I don't see why being open-minded about film

means stopping when it gets to trash.

And Pauline Kael, that quote, people say it over

and over again, Pauline Kael said to appreciate great art

you have to appreciate great trash.

- That was a byproduct of just commercial necessity.

All these cable channels figured out,

they've gotta have constant new content,

and so they bought cheap content

and they threw it on my shows, and that's how it ended

up being a celebration of cult movies.

- I still can't believe it.

I can't believe we're breaking for commercial

in the middle of the most amazing

kung fu sequence ever filmed.

- [Announcer] Eating pate is just part of the curriculum

at the Princess Academy, and at 11:30 it's Tuesday Horror.

Tonight, it's the looking glass

from hell in Mirror Mirror.

Catch a different horror flick

every Tuesday night in January.

It's all here, on Cinemax, if you like movies.

(upbeat dramatic music)

- Hey, no problem.

(upbeat dramatic music)

- [Announcer] Mr. Brian Bosworth.

(upbeat dramatic music)

- [Announcer] It's Ernest B. Wolf in a brand-new movie.

- [Announcer] Director of Kickboxer.

- [Announcer] For a sexy and outrageous comedy.

(upbeat dramatic music)

- Don't forget to use protection.

(screaming)

(upbeat dramatic music)

- Coming out of the '60s and going into the '70s,

you had issues of race and social status

and sexuality and feminism that were all,

you know, influencing these filmmakers

and influencing these films.

And when you get to the '90s, like,

there was kinda this weird time where

we all kinda were like, oh, I think we got it together.

Like communism fell, and the economy

was coming back from the early '90s recession,

and everything seemed good.

And I think there's a lot to,

there's a lot in common between punk rock and cult film.

There's a lot in common between those two things, where

the angstier the time the better it is.

- The '90s, let me just think back to the '90s, holy crap.

What movies did I do in the '90s?

Oh yeah.

- [Announcer] It was truly love at first sight.

- This is hell now, right?

- No, the tinfoil keeps the heat out.

- The '90s felt like an extension of the '80s

with a little bit of politics thrown in,

for the most part.

It felt to me, the '80s were the era of course

of the blockbuster, the first major decade, full decade,

numerically where big blockbuster pictures

and tent pole pictures were the norm.

'90s came around, it was the same, except they sort

of disguised it and peppered it with a little politics.

- There were some nuggets in the '90's that,

well, Scream Factory, I've seen some of them

come to life already from some of our releases.

If somebody had told me in the '90s that

Tales from the Crypt, Demon Night and Bordello of Blood

and Death Becomes Her would now be cult films,

I never would have believed them,

but they were very well received

when we put them out on Blu-Ray.

Definitely, Showgirls came from that time period,

and that was right smack in the middle of the '90s,

and that's arguably one of the biggest

cult films I think ever made.

- It brought about some new and exciting filmmakers

came to the forefront, guys who had started in the '80s

primarily on music videos when were sort of birthed,

had to come to fruition and gotten large,

like David Fincher and guys like that.

- I remember in high school, you'd hear of this guy

Tarantino, when he came out, and you were like,

oh, well, he's really into this French new wave films.

And you're like, oh what's this?

And you kind of followed the stream up,

trying to track down,

trying to track down the influences, you know.

- I guess kind of lack of complete any type of film style,

just wanting to make movies for love of it.

Godard is the one who

taught me the fun and the freedom and the joy

of breaking rules, you know, setting up a close-up

on the back of somebody's head as opposed to.

And just fucking around with the entire medium.

- Quentin Tarantino is kinda like a gateway drug

into cult cinema for some people.

I feel like that's been a really good thing about him.

- He's make cult film pastiche, sort of,

you know what I mean?

But he also makes films that inspire

their own cult audiences.

I think that they're different because they

are mainstream in a way, because he has broken through

to the mainstream, but I think he still is very much

making cult movies, just with Hollywood budgets.

- To me, the '90s was this incredible period.

The '90s really was the beginnings of independent film.

That was where Tarantino cut his teeth.

I mean, that's where,

that's where Steven Soderbergh became big,

Kevin Smith, I mean, come on.

Like all these filmmakers that because

of the advent of video and direct-to-video,

you could take a risk on a small movie like Clerks, right?

It didn't need to make a mountain of money in the theater,

because you knew, like down the road,

that movie's gonna make its money on video.

That's gonna be a hit on video.

I look on the '90s as a goldmine of great work,

and also the beginnings of so many filmmakers

whose careers reverberate into today.

- '80s were so ingrained in VHS culture,

and the '90s were sorta there as well,

but the '90s had a shift where DVDs sorta took over

around, I wanna say, mid-'90s, late '90s,

DVDs kinda took over.

- [Announcer] This is DVD.

And this.

- Whoaaaa!

- [Announcer] Is what happens

when you watch DVD.

(explosion)

It's a movie on a disc the size of a CD.

The picture is twice as sharp as VHS.

The sound is infinitely clearer.

It looks and sounds like you're at the movies,

but you can experience it at home.

- For the '90s, there was not a lot of films

available on DVD, up through the 2000s,

there were films you couldn't get on DVD,

like the Magnificent Ambersons, by Orson Welles,

not available on DVD til like 2010,

which is ridiculous, when you think about it,

because you always felt like

everything was available on DVD.

I think it ups the game in the level of quality

you could see, which is so important.

For something like Street Trash,

like seeing Street Trash on DVD, I can't imagine,

having seen it for the first time on DVD,

I can't imagine having watched it on VHS.

As much as it adds a quality and a dimension

that makes you feel like you're almost grittier

for watching it, I feel like when you watch it on DVD

the effects get so much more in your face

and so much more realistic that it's just, it's beautiful.

- It's funny how the DVD generation

has those specific titles that you'd find

and just show to everybody.

I mean, Army of Darkness, Evil Dead,

like I was the horror fan of my group of friends

back in New York, but they weren't all into it.

They wouldn't seek those movies.

I was the one that would find them

and show it to everybody.

And again, I think the coolest thing about those movies is,

you know, curating and making it a communal experience.

- All right, you permanent screw heads, listen up.

This is my boom stick.

- You know like early Anchor Bay release and Synapse Films,

those guys, those pioneers

of releasing cult movies to the major market.

Yeah, I think they did the great service to the market,

and really kinda re-introduced lost classics to us.

- By the time DVD was becoming the dominant one,

they were making less and less and less VHS's.

And places that were around that were still carrying

and still renting were not carrying as many,

so the transition was easy.

You just showed up one day, and there wasn't,

there wasn't a VHS of what you were getting, you got a DVD,

and by that time most people had enough time

to transition from DVD players and everything else.

So it was like a smooth, maybe between like

a three-year period where pretty much you just blinked

and you just all of a sudden realized that VHS was gone.

That was it.

- It's just also the first time you got to see movies

in their proper aspect ratio.

Even though you grew up watching all these VHS tapes,

it was all of a sudden, like the first time seeing

Deep Red in that condition, seeing,

it was pretty shocking you could actually see

these movies in the proper way.

- Having lived in movie theaters and watching the same

film over and over again, you remember exactly how

it looks, and,

in movies like Empire Strikes Back and Ghostbusters

and stuff like that, they will crop to

the most important part of the scene,

so that your main actors.

So things like IG 88 and Winston will get

edited out for TV.

And, I wanna see the whole film.

I wanna see everything that was there.

And I think the thing about DVDs that helped is,

you finally got

a more in-depth look at

the filmmaking process.

- The main innovation that DVD gave that kind of helped

breathe new life into cult films is the special feature.

Because, you know, I may have loved a film

like Return of the Living Dead on VHS,

but now at some point, a company picks that up,

they dig back into the archives, they pull up all this

behind-the-scenes stuff, they're interviewing the directors,

suddenly you could learn more about these films

than you ever could from a VHS.

- I like the commentary, I like having,

it's not the whole, the physical thing,

it's like having all the,

the extras, everything that goes with that film.

I don't wanna just see it, from beginning to credits.

After I watch it, then I want to

watch the behind-the-scenes featurette,

then I wanna listen to the commentary,

then I wanna watch the stills, I wanna see the deleted

scenes, I mean, that's the way I experience a movie.

- But then the DVD business

began to

sink.

As the internet took its place.

- Now that I've gotten on the internet,

I'd rather be on my computer

than doing just about anything.

(upbeat music)

- In the late '90s, it was weird.

One of my most vivid memories of downloading a video

and watching my thing just like I'm waiting

two hours to download, someone had made a cam

version of the trailer for Star Wars

Episode One, the Phantom Menace.

That was one of the most downloaded videos,

bootleg videos off the internet.

I think I still have a copy of the cam version

that everybody downloaded, and it was on mirror sites

and you had to kinda pop it up here and there.

That was huge.

(cheering and applause)

- I remember it taking forever.

I remember those BMW fucking commercials,

directed by like John Wu and shit like that.

(tires screeching)

I remember taking like a fucking day to download

one of them just to watch it.

But that was amazing at the time.

You know, it was like, holy shit, I could watch stuff.

- I mean, good internet was the key, right,

because like, great, you had a dial-up modem,

but what the hell were you gonna do with it,

get on an AOL portal and get in a chat room or something?

- At that point in the age of the internet,

it was merely a tool that you could send email

and get some news.

I don't think anybody had any idea that

you could revive old movies online.

- I think when bandwidth changed

and just computers in general changed

and now you could stream video easily,

not have to wait 30, 40 minutes to watch a 30-second clip,

at first it was amazing.

But when the whole Metallica Napster thing happened,

why Hollywood couldn't see,

oh wow, as bandwidth increases and internet speeds increase,

pretty soon you're gonna be able to download

a movie in a second too.

Shit, we're gonna be next.

But everyone just kind of ignored it, it felt like.

And it's an endless argument because there's

many sides to it.

Some people say that's good, like, now people are seeing

your movie who otherwise might have

never even heard of it.

And yeah, okay, that is cool, but it is still a business.

- As a filmmaker, I cannot give my product away for free,

because if I don't get a return on my investment,

I can't get the investor to invest in my next picture.

So, so much of the internet, not everyone,

but many, maybe most, people think that everything

should be free, they should be able to pirate,

they should be able to do whatever they want.

Well, if that's the case, then there's gonna be

no low-budget movies made.

There'll only be large-budget stuff that shows

on the big screen.

- It is a art from, yet it's commerce.

So if we don't make money for our producers

and production companies, we don't get to make another one.

It doesn't really matter,

like a million people could watch my movie illegally,

and I won't get to do another movie.

As a watcher and a fan of the films, I hate it,

and as someone who've involved in the business, I hate it,

because it's, I'm seeing it.

I wish it would go away, but I just don't think it will.

- It kills the industry.

Until they find a way to really protect the movies,

you must pay let's say one cent to watch a movie,

you must pay, it's good.

But if you can see it for free, that kills the movie.

No one is getting paid by that.

- Making media available for free was the greatest thing

that ever happened to the viewer,

and the worst thing that could ever happen to a filmmaker.

(upbeat dramatic music)

(siren blaring)

(upbeat dramatic music)

- That's bull honky.

File sharing is the best thing in the world

for an independent artist or a cult filmmaker.

What's the most important thing in one's life?

What is the most important thing somebody can give to you,

as an artist?

Their time, that's an hour and a half of their time.

You can't pay people to look at most

of the shit that's out there.

- Honestly, every time, we see

we see our anthologies pop up on the Torrent sites,

we're kind of excited.

It's like, yeah, we know we probably wouldn't have gotten

that seven bucks from iTunes, but odds are,

if they're on Bit touring,

they wouldn't have bought it anyways.

We're kinda like, cool, people are seeing our stuff.

And so, yeah, on one hand it sucks because you have

filmmakers not making money, and these things

aren't free, and it's a lotta hard work

and people have to make a living.

- Do I think 10,000 people saw my movie

and get a little happy about that?

I guess I do.

It doesn't mean, but I tell you one thing,

it's pretty damn good the reason why

I won't make another one, though.

- If you

see a film on BitTorrent, and you like that filmmaker's

work and you don't go out and buy more of it,

or support it in some way, and you just continue

to take it, then you're gonna kinda snuff that voice out.

- Would that help with internet piracy

if they actually enforced the law, just a couple times

and made a public spectacle out of it?

Maybe, would it persuade some people?

Probably, yeah, but at the same time, like,

you don't wanna see some 16-year-old get fined

that much money and get put in jail.

I don't wanna see it come to that, but at the same time,

it's been the bane of my existence

and a lot of filmmakers on the indy level.

- That's a tough one, I don't know.

You can't stop people from Torrenting.

And if you go online and try to argue with them,

you're just gonna get the shit kicked out of you,

and you're gonna look like the bad guy.

- I think the worst thing you can do is go after

the people that actually are doing that.

I've heard a lot of people just say like,

if you do this, fuck you, and it's,

honestly, it's one of these things like,

it's certainly a problem, and I do think,

like no one who makes a movie is psyched

when it gets pirated.

However, I think it needs to fall on people,

or corporations like Google and these other things

that actually make that accessible.

Where it's like, if there wasn't a cheap alternative

and suddenly they didn't have that window

where they can just get any movie they want for free,

then it would be a much different story.

- You also have to remember there's also a generation

of people now that are growing up that,

they don't know of any, they don't know any better.

That's how the, that's how things have changed now

with getting your media, whether it's through

your apps on your phone or through your iPad

or through VOD or Redbox or Netflix or YouTube

or whatever, there's so many ways to get media,

and a lot of it, you can get free, too.

So some people don't know the distinction of somebody

that's put something up illegally or legitimately,

and it gets very cloudy.

- Much in the same way that bringing VHS into people's homes

was like a democratizing thing for cult films,

I think that the internet, and in particular Torrenting,

for better or worse, has had that same effect.

If anything, it's massively magnified, right?

The technology that can bring a cult film into your house

at the snap of your fingers is a really great thing.

I think that it was a bigger problem maybe 10 years ago,

because now a lot of streaming services have caught up.

And frankly, I think people are very willing to pay $10

a month to Netflix or Shutter or Amazon

to be able to stream these things.

- Streaming is great.

Downloading was bad.

Downloading, when we only had downloading,

we didn't have streaming, that could have destroyed

the independent film business because

once you downloaded it, then it was

disseminated for no money everywhere.

And there was no way to collect.

- I remember when, like Netflix and Hulu were first

kind of getting big, Netflix like streaming-wise,

they would have a ton of cult movies and stuff,

which they now all got rid of.

But that was kind of a cool way too, because it's just like

all these random movies that you never would have

heard of before, and they're just

there in your face.

You're like okay, I can watch this if I want to.

- Once streaming happened,

I mean it's much easier to stream something for $1.99

than to BitTorrent it, or whatever they're calling it now,

which might take all day.

And so, they got the price to a point where,

for convenience, people will go ahead

and pay for the stream.

- Look at Netflix Originals, right, so now Netflix

is making originals, Hulu's making originals.

They're not putting out physical copies of that,

so what happens when the day comes that they take

it out of rotation, is it just gone forever?

And so, the argument of, well, by having

file sharing, people can still see these things,

I think that the system, I think that the industry

needs to figure that out.

- Now if there's no way that it's commercially available,

I'll watch a movie, I don't BitTorrent it,

but I'll watch a movie that's only available in that form.

If it's available legally, I buy the movie.

Whether it's available on a pay streaming service

like Vudu or iTunes or whatever, I'll buy it.

But if it's not available in any other form,

it's the only way I can watch the movie guilt free.

Otherwise, I don't watch bootlegs.

- If there is no way to see it,

okay, I accept piracy,

because it's stupid not to let people see a movie.

- I mean, there's certainly stuff that

no one is ever going to put out again.

- [Announcer] See the acme of magical achievement.

See Alabama's Ghost, starring Christopher Brooks.

In color, rated PG.

- Where it's just totally lost its appeal like,

or the rights are just such a nightmare

that you're not able to find it.

And so I mean, I think that stuff should be,

you should be able to buy it through some channel.

Like Fright Night Part Two is a really good example of that,

where I think I've seen a ton of bootlegs.

- Well I mean you see it on YouTube even.

There'll be illegal full-length movies

that are up on YouTube, and I'm often surprised,

and when I look at the views of those,

and it says something like 80,000, and it's a film

that either I've put out through Scream Factory

or other companies have put out, independents,

I'm thinking to myself, how come that didn't get shut down?

Why is it still up there?

Because, yeah, it does harm sales

of the actual film.

However, as you said the double-edged sword

is that, it's also a place where if a lot of people

seeing it, talking about it,

they're writing comments in the thread,

which is basically a cult film forum on one film,

it's also adding to the,

reputation of the film over all

over time because more people are seeing it.

- I'm pretty sure someone has uploaded

Vasectomy the Movie to YouTube.

I haven't looked, but I'm fairly certain that

Vasectomy the Movie with Paul Sorvino and Abe Vigoda

is somewhere to be found on the internet.

- It's the Italians.

It's always been the Italians.

It started way back with Plato.

- He was a Greek.

- What's the difference?

He drank wine and he ate macaroni, didn't he?

- Can't argue that point.

- And I do know that like the VHS cult

people who collect this stuff,

they're really trying to preserve it.

So a lot of those videos are actually

being uploaded to YouTube.

- Who knew that movies would find a,

I guess now a sixth or seventh home,

with that sort of stuff, you know?

- Well in some cases, I think that the fandoms

and specifically online fandoms, because I think that's

really what drives all of it, in some cases,

has literally resurrected these films

and brought them back to life in a case where without it

they may have just died off in obscurity.

- There are groups and websites devoted to

almost every movie, but definitely in the cult films.

And I'm a part of them, I've seen them,

people post pictures, stills and clips

and inside stories, and oh, I used to work on this film

and all this stuff, that's great,

because then people can find homes

of the movies that they like, and participate

and share with other people, like,

I loved this movie too.

- Again, that's the beauty of taking our love

to this new level via social media

and being able to talk to people all over the world.

That's the benefit of it.

I think that's just as special as inviting

four or five friends over to watch a cult movie.

The fact that we can talk to people from different parts

of the world and have that connection is amazing.

- You do end up finding out about more stuff,

but the problem is you don't really have

a true voice sort of curating everything.

And what ends up happening is everything sort of like

falls into a slush pile, you know, because it's like

we're constantly just being bombarded with movies

that like, some of them are just flat-out terrible,

you know, where people are like, trying to turn them

into something, like,

I shouldn't do this, but I'll totally call this movie out,

because I think it's not good,

but like Hide and Go Shriek.

I remember seeing that, and I saw the cover and I was like,

this movie looks awesome.

I watched it, and I was

not thrilled with it.

And then I remember seeing other people be like,

oh, my God, Hide and Go Shriek is amazing.

It's like, it isn't, though.

- Here's to eight fabulous friends who got through

high school and are gonna do great things.

(shrieking)

- If you want to watch a cult movie, you can look up

best cult movies of the '80's, and there's 500 lists

you can read and just start ticking them off.

And it takes the joy out of it, for me in some ways.

It takes that excitement

of getting the VHS and going home with it to watch it,

because you don't know what you're about to see,

whereas with the internet, you say,

oh, somebody said this was good,

I'm gonna go find it on YouTube.

- It's not the same experience you could get

going and talking to the guy behind the video counter

and saying like, hey, I love Enzo Castellari's High Crime,

what are some other polizia movies that you can recommend?

Instead, if you go and look at your Netflix or what have you

and see the stuff that's recommended to you,

it's like the type of thing that if one of your friends

recommends, if you told them you like Halloween

and they recommended this other movie to you,

like, you'd probably stop being friends with them.

- If there was a film called Human Centipede

when we were 14, we would have been all over that.

But everybody else would have ignored it.

But with the internet, with social media, with

late-night talk show hosts all tuned in to

the weird stuff that's happening,

things like that

become mainstream.

But Human Centipede, or

I don't know Turbo Kid, stuff like that,

it would never have reached mainstream audiences.

And it would have been,

not to sound arrogant, but it would have been ours.

- It's a bit of a give and take,

because, yeah, it's less special,

you're not walking into a musty interesting building

populated by the kind of people you really hope

you're cool enough to hang out with.

And trying to make connections with people and bond

over movies and stuff like that, yeah, that's missing.

There's an online version of that.

It's just, it's not as familiar to me.

- I think ultimately what the internet has done

is it's just made it easier for you to find

that person that you've shared that experience with.

And I think that's kind of the beautiful thing

about cult films in general, which has always been

beautiful about cult films, which is, again,

that when you talk to somebody that you've seen

the same film that very few other people have seen,

you go, oh my God, I have had that experience, you know.

And what it's done for me is that like,

my personal experience with being a cult movie fan

and my interactions on the internet is it's just kind of

made me realize that that cult's much bigger.

- Now we're in an interesting time where

we have access to almost everything.

Everybody is acquiring and putting out every cult movie

you can think of on Blu-Ray.

So not only are we able to find these things,

but we're able to see them better than when

they probably played in theaters.

- A lotta people today aren't gonna know how it's like.

Like all the Jodorowsky movies weren't available

really in the '90s.

You had to find them in other areas.

I found a video store called A Video Store Named Desire,

and I went in, asked them for Jodorowsky movies,

and he had these dubs of them,

dubs from Japanese laser discs.

And then I dubbed it, and so now I had like

this fifth-generation movie, you know.

And now it's just pretty much mind-boggling

that now these things are on Blu-Ray.

- I won't lie and say that I've,

everything I've seen I've seen through

on the up and up.

But there is also a huge proliferation

of like repertory companies now that are bringing stuff

that was hard to find.

So some people's delivery method, they would prefer

to like have it on a file, and maybe that's the way

you get it on file.

For me, I would prefer, there's a vendor

two things down from where we're at right now,

who I'm gonna spend a lotta money on

on stuff that I could get for free with the click

of a mouse, but they love it,

they went and got it, they made it look better,

and I'm gonna support them.

- And that's what people want it to be right now,

especially in physical media, collector medias,

because this, they wanna have something to hold

and cherish, and they don't have to, they don't want it

to be reliant, to be on a file

or a computer screen or at the mercy of, will Netflix

carry it this month or not.

They want something in their hand,

they want it to look as good as possible.

- And I think we're all getting rewarded in the long run

because we're seeing these movies.

I always like to picture like, wow, I'm seeing

Fulci's Don't Torture a Duckling

the way it looked through the eyes of people

in a theater in the '70s.

It had to look this clean.

- I would like it to be as pristine

and perfect as I tried to make it.

- We have these boutique companies, we have Scream Factory,

Shout Factory, Vinegar Syndrome, all these awesome

companies that are bringing these out,

hopefully they'll get around to a lotta these ones

that really deserve that kinda treatment.

- It's not even about cult movies anymore,

but now we have cult labels.

There is literally specific labels that will

put out a group of movies, and you kind of,

you kinda get a sense of what kinda movies

that label will put out.

So for example,

Arrow, which is a UK company now doing a lot of

stuff here in America, will do stuff like,

The Hills Have Eyes Special Edition,

along with the Hellraiser collection,

which came out not too long ago.

Kino Lorber's great because they'll put out something

like Highway to Hell, like some cult movie,

and then at the same time,

where are they?

They're hidden there, they'll do the FX movies, for example.

Or Rolling Thunder, from Shout Factory,

one of the best cult movies of all time.

Then you have people like Severin.

Severin will do everything form Richard Stanley's

kinda masterpiece, if you will,

to

WTF cinema like Burial Ground,

which you must see to believe.

Blue Underground is another great company.

Headed up by Bill Lustig, the director

of Maniac Cop and Maniac.

And he's put out stuff like these Bronx Warriors

collections, which is ridiculous.

Bless them for doing that.

I love Synapse.

They are a great company, and for some reason,

the collector in us will get these steel books.

So you can own Demons One and Two, Steel Book Edition.

Now Vestron video is getting in on the game,

so there's things like Parents coming out.

- You wanna be like the person to find like the next

Roar or Mutilator or Blood Rage or whatever,

where you can really put that out and then suddenly

it can be this new, sort of cult experience.

The Visitor is a great of example of that,

where that had been under the radar for such a long time

and then Drafthouse put it out, and everyone's like,

holy shit, Sam Peckinpah and John Huston and Franco Nero

are in this like weird

sort of like Omen-Jesus-Exorcist ripoff.

- I'm not like David Lynch.

I don't know if you've ever seen the David Lynch interview.

- It's just the most sickening, horrifying joke,

and this world is so troubled, and

it's such a sadness that you think you've seen

a film on your fucking telephone.

Get real.

- On your fucking phone.

And he's like really upset about it.

I don't feel that way.

I do feel like, people who have never seen

a 35-millimeter print sometimes lose,

sometimes lose an experience that they could have.

- Yeah, I mean, that's the thing is, if you can get

to see some of these films with an audience

at a revival screening, there's something magical about it.

That's how I discover a lotta stuff.

The New Beverly here in Los Angeles, I think it's like

Tuesday nights is their Grindhouse night,

and sometimes they'll show you movies that you cannot get

in any other way, shape or form.

They're not on DVD, or the VHS's are long gone,

but they're showing 35-millimeter or 16-millimeter

prints of it, and there's something special about

seeing cult movies that way.

So there's still ways to even, you know,

not every movie will always be available.

So even though there's this glut of companies putting out

cult movies, there's always gems

and things to be discovered.

- If you have a local theater that shows

Grindhouse movies or exploitation or cult movies

or little-known movies where you have a chance to just go in

and see something blind,

you absolutely should support that and take advantage

of that, because there's nothing

more thrilling than sitting in a darkened theater,

not knowing what you're gonna get

and then all of a sudden you're just blindsided

by some insanity that you had no idea was gonna come at you.

- I like to go to the theater.

Because sitting at home watching movies is great,

I love hanging out with Adrian.

We watch movies and it's great, we just kick it

on the couch and it's comfortable,

but there's something about the theater experience

that when you go, it's not just the big screen,

it's the crowd reactions, it's the people around you.

If it's a scary movie or it's an action movie

or if it's something crazy and people are yelling

and screaming, it just adds to the experience of the film,

in my opinion, and that's something

I don't think will go away.

- It comes back to it being a people industry.

It has to be, you have to get up, go out,

it has to be a cultural event, and you can't download that.

You can binge watch certain things, but even then,

that's not even by design.

The internet is designed to give you access to something.

But unlike a theater or a place like this,

it can't control how that access is presented to you.

- I think maybe you could make room for both things

in your life, you know.

It's not always one thing or another thing.

It doesn't have to be.

I do try to make the

home environment as close to like a theater as you can.

But it's still not the same as seeing with people.

- It is

that communal, sacred,

here's our church kinda feeling.

But, all those movies that I rented on VHS,

I didn't watch it with an audience,

I watched it by myself, you know.

Usually by myself, because the only way I could get

privacy in my house was to watch a movie.

I could say to my parents, I rented a movie,

and they'd be like, all right, don't bother Jack,

he's watching a movie.

So,

I mean who cares if it's

spooling in a VHS player or if it's

streaming online?

- I would say this age that we live in with regard

to the speed at which you can see, view,

experience content, this fast on your smartphone,

has very little effect on long-term cult pictures.

Because those people that want to view things quickly,

will A, not wanna spend the time to do such things,

to look at--

After all, cult films are history, takes effort

to study history, you have to want it.

- So the discovery isn't there, and that's a bummer,

but all that takes really is a little bit

of self-discipline, right, that's on you, the viewer.

The paralyzation of choice isn't the choices' fault.

It's your fault, and it's my fault.

I fall victim to it too.

You just have to be able to sit yourself down

and have the attention span and dedication

to just watch a thing that you're unfamiliar with.

So I think that it's, it's a whole new world

but it's a positive one.

- Yeah, it's, I don't know if we're gonna run out

of cult movies to continually discover,

but the way it's evolved is,

hmm, interesting, is that the word?

Here's why, because now we're at a point where people

are making or going out of their way to make cult films.

And honestly, I can't stand that.

The newer films that,

you know, put in that filter to make it look like

it's a Grindhouse movie, or where they're like,

I went for Ed Wood bad, it's like,

doesn't work for me at all.

- You know, it seems more and more what's happening

is people are kind of going into the past for cult movies.

And I think the future of it is gonna from movies

like what Neal Breen is doing now, where it's like,

stuff like Fateful Findings where it's done in this

very genuine way but ends up just sort of missing

the mark and then having this weird back-end entertainment

value and becoming something completely different.

I felt like a lot of the recent sort of cult stuff

where they take that approach of just trying to make

a cult movie just doesn't hit it.

It's like they're just hitting the wrong beats

or going after the wrong things.

- If you take a movie like Sharknado.

And I can see that if Sharknado was not blasted

on SyFy Channel and it was just this little release movie

that came out in the '80s,

people would talk about it.

But when kind of the light of widestream distribution

kind of burns away all of the specialness that it had.

- There's more, and they're more accessible

and people are also cashing in on it.

They think that you can reproduce a cult film.

They think that you can retro-engineer that formula.

So anybody with a camera and a bottle of ketchup

and a fake ax thinks that they can go out and do

a slasher movie, think that they can do a horror movie.

And therefore, you do get some gems outta that,

but you end up with more junk.

- Whenever they're trying to make a cult movie,

it never works.

It's always from, the Apple being a great example,

it's like they're trying make Grease

or something like that, and then what that

turns into is something very different,

but it's still very entertaining.

And you can tell because you know they had their hearts

in it and wanted to making something cool,

or even if they were just blasting cocaine the whole way

through, it's still a pretty unique experience.

- [Announcer] The Apple is success.

♪ There ain't no crime ♪

♪ There ain't no shame ♪

♪ There ain't no sympathy ♪

♪ There ain't no blame ♪

♪ There ain't no pleasure ♪

♪ There ain't no pain ♪

The Apple brings you everything.

- Didn't matter how silly the movie was,

they were gonna put their all into it.

And that stands out, I think, to people like Ty West,

who now make these great films.

It's because he recognized the craft in these movies

with silly premises.

Whereas again, it's like, people nowadays have

a digital camera and think, well, it doesn't matter,

it's supposed to be bad.

So who cares if it doesn't work 100%, we're going for bad.

- A movie like Samurai Cop,

because it was made by a foreign director

who came to the United States to make

an American action movie.

So through his eyes, you get his take

on an American action movie, and it's just bizarre,

it just doesn't work.

I guess the same thing would go for Birdemic,

and the same thing would go for a movie called Super Fights.

It's just this guy from Hong Kong who came her

to make a movie about American wrestling and this kid

that joins it, but instead you just get this

outrageous batshit film, and if it wasn't through

that lens of a foreigner trying to make

an American action film, you wouldn't have it.

- Can I say that Pieces is a great movie, yes, it is.

It is a great movie.

- [Announcer] Pieces, it's exactly what you think it is.

- Any other director that made that movie,

sometimes it's like the stars align, if anybody else

tried to make that movie, it wouldn't work.

But because that was made in the early '80s

by that director, it's like, it just, it's magic,

it could never be reproduced.

- 10 people can make a cult film, they can go out to say

that they're going to make a cult film, it doesn't mean

that their movies are going to become cult films.

The fans decide that.

The fans ultimately decide that.

I mean, marketing can position a movie into trying

to make a cult with their posters or advertising,

their trailers, the filmmakers can try and scratch it up

and make it look Grindhouse or old school

or black and white or do whatever they want,

but it's ultimately, the final jury is the fans.

So that's how I feel about the new generation.

Step up your game, try to make good movies,

because then in 10 years, your sincerity will show off.

- The fact that anyone can make a movie is wonderful.

Anyone can make a painting, anyone can write a book.

Now, anyone can make a movie.

Everybody wanted to write the Great American Novel

when I was young, right?

Now, everyone kinda wants to make the Great American Movie,

and that's wonderful if they can do that.

(dramatic music)

- Mr. Pilgrim, I'm Ramona's first evil ex-boyfriend.

(dramatic music)

- Come on, ya'll, why you acting suspicious?

(dramatic music)

- You know, a lot of it is just, it's like if you get

kinda good early word of mouth and like the right people

see it and respond to it, and if you make something

that's halfway decent, you can get that kind of following.

Another good example of that is The Love Witch, which,

it's a super-specific thing where it's like,

here's this like '60s-era drama, kind of filtered through

technicolor weirdness, but it's super unique,

and people latched onto it and really dug it.

- Blue Ruin, I watched that and I didn't know

anything about it, and I'm like,

my God, that was so simple.

What was the budget on it?

Oh, that was awesome, and that goes to good storytelling.

- We are blessed by the fact you can make movies for $5,000.

- It's all about to me, just looking forward and what

we can do moving forward, and aside from just having

a conversation, I think like, I think that that's what

makes to me some people like the Soska sisters so great,

because here are two amazing, intelligent women

who not only have an appreciation for those older films,

but are making modern cult cinema in a lotta ways.

You look at a film like American Mary,

and that's a film dealing with sex and violence

from a very uniquely feminine perspective.

So to me, I think the best thing we can do

is encourage more viewpoints like that

to come and work in the medium.

- The Babadook, it follows the television show

Stranger Things, those are all movies that have

a little bit of an ode and a nod to some stuff

that's been done in the past, but they executed it well

and they executed it well enough where enough people

saw them, saw that, and respected it and said, oh, okay.

And those I think would be what I would call

future cult properties.

- You wouldn't have said five years ago

that a Netflix miniseries would influence the culture.

And so,

you can't say that some

horror filmmaker

that starts production tomorrow

won't influence the culture with his vision.

- The movie finds the people.

People don't find the movie.

It's like, when a certain movie comes out

and the word of mouth starts,

oh, yeah, I have to go see that, and someone else says,

yeah, you should go see that.

Well I never heard of it, well go try it.

And I think the movie that makes people say that

can become the cult movie.

- One thing that Rupert Murdoch doesn't have, word of mouth.

If you make something good, people will say,

no matter how much money Rupert Murdoch has

or Sumner Myerson has, they cannot buy word of mouth.

Right, they can't.

They can spend $200 million to promote

Harley Gen or whatever the thing is,

Suicide Squad, but they can't create good word of mouth.

It's impossible, they can't do it.

- As far as like what the permanent future of it is,

it's just impossible to predict.

Back in 2005, no one would have predicted that The Room

would have become what it did,

where it's this like cult monster.

- [Announcer] Experience this quirky new black comedy.

- You have my money, right?

- I treat you like a princess, and you stab me in the back.

You are tearing me apart, Lisa!

- I think those movies typically reveal themselves

over the decades, and the further we get away from them

in time and seeing what sticks and what doesn't.

- So I think it's a wonderful age.

This age that's coming up, probably gonna be terrific.

They'll be, you're just gonna have to,

you, as the lover of movies, are gonna have to go

and find them, and there are plenty of people

who will direct you to them.

- Whether it's a fan film that's come out or some

short video that a kid made, sharing of videos,

sharing of new filmmakers' visions, so easy now,

and you can talk to anybody.

So that aspect alone has completely changed the landscape.

It really has democratized indy filmmaking.

I don't think we've even seen, like,

we haven't even gotten to the limits of what's possible yet.

With handheld devices and social media.

Hollywood should be scared shitless.

(upbeat music)

- But I always have this problem.

I always watch garbage anyway.

And I end up, when I know I should be watching

a Manchester at Sea, I end up watching

Suburban Sasquatch instead.

- Swan, this was scored for a chick, I'm not doing it.

And he goes, yep, that's pretty good.

- I thought movies were dumb because they weren't real.

And how did I know that movies weren't real?

It's because no one went to the bathroom in the movie.

- [Producer] There it is, B.J., one.

Monitor, all right, that's how it's done.

- I thought you had slates.

- [Producer] That is not how it's done.

That is not how it's done at all.

(laughing)

- Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz,

along with her friends on the Yellow Brick Road,

never went to make some yellow.

They never went to go to the bathroom.

- Heart, blood, sweat,

semen, sometimes that's not yours, but hey,

that's filmmaking.

- [Interviewer] Favorite '80s action film.

- Hmmm.

Does it have to be a cult movie?

Predator.

- [Interviewer] Favorite '90s action.

- Predator Two (laughs).

- When do they go to the bathroom was the question

I always asked my parents.

When do they go to the bathroom?

This movie is bullshit.

- Yeah, I'd take that back, I think Twilight is a cult film.

(laughing)

- [Interviewer] That's the part that's in the trailer.

That's the first line of the trailer.

- I stand by that.

- [Interviewer] That's a cult film.

- I hate it, but.

- [Interviewer] Titty movie.

(laughing)

Name your favorite titty movie.

- Stripes.

- This is the normal ice cream man.

There's another dude who does this neighborhood,

and all he has is a sonar.

It's this creepy truck and it just does

this like (imitates sonar).

And then you see kids all coming out of their houses

like zombies, like.

(laughing)

- And this is the record store clerk coming out, too.

Whatever this is, this need to define things.

And this need to categorize things, so you know what

section of the store to go find it.

That's all it is, and it's all left over from that,

from that time when we need to be like,

now would that be in comedy, or would that be in musical?

It's that, it's all that leftover,

and when I say record store clerk, I do mean asshole.

- Ask anybody in charge of the accounting of that thing,

it didn't really make money.

But can you make another one?

Why you wanna make another one?

I thought it didn't really make any money.

Well, well, you know, but you love it.

The fans love it, and they're really fun to make.

Yeah, really fun to make, like.

This is where you cut to a shot of ulcers in my stomach.

- So my father, at the age of five years old,

takes me to see 2001: A Space Odyssey.

And what happens in that film?

They go to the bathroom.

Dr. Flynn goes into that room, right?

And there's the instructions of him going to the bathroom,

and it scared me.

(upbeat music)

♪ In my bad dream, baby ♪

♪ You're giving up on me and you ♪

♪ It's just like magic, baby ♪

♪ Gotta make my dreams come true ♪

(upbeat music)