Cult Films / After Dark
Cult Films generally have limited but very special appeal. They are usually strange, quirky, offbeat, eccentric, oddball, or surreal. They may have outrageous, weird, cartoony characters or plots, and garish sets. They are often considered controversial because they step outside standard narrative and technical conventions. Cult films cut across many film genres (science fiction, horror, melodrama, etc.), and though they can be very stylized, they are often flawed or unusual in some striking way. To make a little sense of this unique genre, scroll the motherlode below, or take a side road by clicking a blue sub-heading to yer left...
Visiting "Television Shows" and the "Cult Television" sub-feature may be worth checking out, also the "Animation" feature and the "Cult Animation" or "JapAnime" sub-feature will help with the bigger picture..
Right: Henry (Jack Nance) is "Eraserhead".
Peeping Tom (1960)
7.7/10
Director: Michael Powell
Starring: Carl Boehm, Moira Shearer, Anna Massey, Brenda Bruce
Director Michael Powell's disturbing and fascinating cinema experiment in fear was denounced when first released but has gone on to become a cult clas... Read more
Peeping Tom (Blu-ray) (1960)
7.7/10
Director: Michael Powell
Starring: Carl Boehm, Moira Shearer, Anna Massey, Brenda Bruce
Director Michael Powell's disturbing and fascinating cinema experiment in fear was denounced when first released but has gone on to become a cult clas... Read more
Black Sunday ( aka The Mask of Satan ) (1960)
7.3/10
Director: Mario Bava
Starring: Barbara Steele, John Richardson, Ivo Garrani
One of the most stylishly filmed black and white horrors of all time, this was Italian horror maestro Mario Bava's official cinematic debut. Loosley... Read more
The Amazing Transparent Man (1960)
3.8/10
Director: Edgar G Ulmer
Starring: Douglas Kennedy, Marguerite Chapman, James Griffith
This sci-fi schlocko concerns a crazed scientist who, hoping to create the perfect henchman, renders a crook invisible. Unfotunately, the unseen under... Read more
Night of the Ghouls (1960)
3.6/10
Director: Edward D Wood Jr
Starring: Duke Moore, Tor Johnson, Criswell, Paul Marco
Here is Ed Wood's last horror movie and sort of sequel to 'Plan 9 From Outer Space'. Dr. Acula is raising the dead near Willow Lake, meanwhile strange... Read more
Hercules Unchained (1960)
4.4/10
Director: Pietro Francisci
Starring: Steve Reeves, Sylva Koscina, Sylvia Lopez
Steve Reeves returns as the mighty Hercules in this saga of muscles, maidens and monsters. Robbed of his memory, Herc is a prisoner of the lovely Quee... Read more
The Little Shop of Horrors (1960)
6.3/10
Director: Roger Corman
Starring: Jonathan Haze, Jack Nicholson, Dick Miller
Jack Nicholson is the masochist who thrives on dental pain in this very funny cult classic from Roger Corman. The preposterous plot revolves around a... Read more
Psycho (1960)
8.5/10
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Starring: Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Martin Balsam, Vera Miles, John Gavin
Hitchcock's most famous movie, the shocker that still keeps people away from showers. Janet Leigh is a woman on the run who befriends mother's boy mot... Read more
Some Like It Hot ( Blu-ray ) (1959)
8.3/10
Director: Billy Wilder
Starring: George Raft, Jack Lemmon, Marilyn Monroe, Pat O'Brien, Tony Curtis, Joe E Brown
Perhaps the funniest American film of the 1950's, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon play two second rate musicians on the run from the Chicago mob, who take... Read more
Battle Beyond The Sun ( Nebo Zovyot ) (1959) / Star Pilot ( 2+5: Missione Hydra ) (1966) (1959)
7.6/10
Director: Francis Ford Coppola, Pietro Francisci, Mikhail Karzhukov, Aleksandr Kozyr
An americanised version of Nebo Zovyot was the product of Roger Corman's acquiring the rights to the Russian film and exploiting it for all the specia... Read more