Editorials
No, Cult Cinema Isn’t Dead
My first feature film, Death Drop Gorgeous, was often described as its own disturbed piece of queer cult cinema due to its over-the-top camp, practical special effects, and radical nature. As a film inspired by John Waters, we wore this descriptor as a badge of honor. Over the years, it has gained a small fanbase and occasionally pops up on lists of overlooked queer horror flicks around Pride month and Halloween.
The Streaming Era and the Myth of Monoculture
My co-director of our drag queen slasher sent me a status update, ostensibly to rile up the group chat. A former programmer of a major LGBTQ+ film festival (I swear, this detail is simply a coincidence and not an extension of my last article) declared that in our modern era, “cult classic” status is “untenable,” and that monoculture no longer exists. Thus, cult classics can no longer counter-culture the mono. The abundance of streaming services, he said, allows for specific curation to one’s tastes and the content they seek. He also asserted that media today that is designed to be a cult classic, feels soulless and vapid.
Shots fired!
Can Cult Cinema Exist Without Monoculture?
We had a lengthy discussion as collaborators about these points. Is there no monoculture to rally against? Are there no codes and standards to break and deviate from? Are there no transgressions left to undertake? Do streaming services fully encompass everyone’s tastes? Maybe I am biased. Maybe my debut feature is soulless and vapid!
I’ve been considering the landscape. True, there are so many options at our streaming fingertips, how could we experience a monoculture? But to think a cult classic only exists as counter-culture, or solely as a rally against the norm, is to have a narrow understanding of what cult cinema is and how it gains its status. The cult classic is not dead. It still rises from its grave and walks amongst the living.
What Defines a Cult Classic? And Who Cares About Cult Cinema?
The term “cult classic” generally refers to media – often movies, but sometimes television shows or books – that upon its debut, was unsuccessful or undervalued, but over time developed a devout fanbase that enjoys it, either ironically or sincerely. The media is often niche and low budget, and sometimes progressive for the cultural moment in which it was released.
Some well-known cult films include The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994), Showgirls (1995), Re-Animator (1985), Jennifer’s Body (2009), and my personal favorite, Heathers (1989). Quoting dialogue, midnight showings, and fans developing ritualistic traditions around the movie are often other ways films receive cult status (think The Rocky Horror Picture Show).
Cult Cinema as Queer Refuge and Rebellion
Celebration of cult classics has long been a way for cinephiles and casual viewers alike to push against the rigid standards of what film critics deem “cinema.” These films can be immoral, depraved, or simply entertaining in ways that counter mainstream conventions. Cult classics have often been significant for underrepresented communities seeking comfort or reflection. Endless amounts of explicitly queer cinema were lambasted by critics of their time. The Doom Generation (1995) by Gregg Araki and John Waters’ Pink Flamingos (1972) were both famously given zero stars by Roger Ebert. Now both can be viewed on the Criterion Channel, and both directors are considered pioneers of gay cinema.
Cult films are often low-budget, providing a sense of belonging for viewers, and are sometimes seen as guilty pleasures. Cult cinema was, and continues to be, particularly important for queer folks in finding community.
But can there be a new Waters or Araki in this current landscape?
What becomes clear when looking at these examples is that cult status rarely forms in a vacuum. It emerges from a combination of cultural neglect, community need, and the slow bloom of recognition. Even in their time, cult films thrived because they filled a void, often one left by mainstream films’ lack of imagination or refusal to engage marginalized perspectives. If anything, today’s fractured media landscape creates even more of those voids, and therefore more opportunities for unexpected or outsider works to grab hold of their own fiercely loyal audiences.
The Death of Monoculture and the Rise of Streaming
We do not all experience culture the same way. With the freedom of personalization and algorithmic curation, not just in film but in music and television, there are fewer shared mass cultural moments we all gather around to discuss. The ones that do occur (think Barbenheimer) may always pale in comparison to the cultural dominance of moments that occurred before the social media boom. We might never again experience the mass hysteria of, say, Michael Jackson’s Thriller.
For example, our most successful musician today is listened to primarily by her fanbase. We can skip her songs and avoid her albums even if they are suggested on our streaming platforms, no matter how many weeks she’s been at number one.
Was Monoculture Ever Real?
But did we ever experience culture the same? Some argue that the idea of monoculture is a myth. Steve Hayden writes:
“Our monoculture was an illusion created by a flawed, closed-circuit system; even though we ought to know better, we’re still buying into that illusion, because we sometimes feel overwhelmed by our choices and lack of consensus. We think back to the things we used to love, and how it seemed that the whole world, or at least people we knew personally, loved the same thing. Maybe it wasn’t better then, but it seemed simpler, and for now that’s good enough.”
The mainstream still exists. Cultural moments still occur that we cannot escape and cannot always understand the appreciation for. There are fads and trends we may not recognize now but will romanticize later, just as we do with trends from as recently as 2010. But I’d argue there never was monoculture in the same way America was never “great.” There was never a time we all watched the same things and sang Madonna songs around the campfire; there were simply fewer accessible avenues to explore other options.
Indie Film Distribution in the Age of Streaming
Additionally, music streaming is not the same as film streaming. As my filmmaking collective moves through self-distributing our second film, we have found it is increasingly difficult for indie, small-budget, and DIY filmmakers to get on major platforms. We are required to have an aggregator or a distribution company. I cannot simply throw Saint Drogo onto Netflix or even Shudder. Amazon Prime has recently made it impossible to self-distribute unless you were grandfathered in. Accessibility is still limited, particularly for those with grassroots and shoestring budgets, even with the abundance of services.
I don’t know that anyone ever deliberately intends on making a cult classic. Pink Flamingos was released in the middle of the Gay Liberation movement, starring Divine, an openly gay drag queen who famously says, “Condone first-degree murder! Advocate cannibalism! Eat shit! Filth are my politics, filth is my life!”
All comedy is political. Of course, Waters was intentional with the depravity he filmed; it was a conscious response to the political climate of the time. So if responding to the current state of the world makes a cult classic, I think we can agree there is still plenty to protest.
There Is No Single Formula for Cult Cinema
Looking back at other cult classics, both recent and older, not all had the same intentional vehicle of crass humor and anarchy. Some didn’t know they would reach this status – a very “so bad, it’s good” result (i.e., Showgirls). And while cult classics naturally exist outside the mainstream, some very much intended to be in that stream first!
All of this is to say: there is no monolith for cult cinema. Some have deliberate, rebellious intentions. Some think they are creating high-concept art when in reality they’re making camp. But it takes time to recognize what will reach cult status. It’s not overnight, even if a film seems like it has the perfect recipe. Furthermore, there are still plenty of conventions to push back against; there are plenty of queer cinema conventions upheld by dogmatic LGBTQ+ film festivals.
Midnight Movies vs. Digital Fandom
What has changed is the way we consume media. The way we view a cult classic might not be solely relegated to midnight showings. Although, at my current place of employment, any time The Rocky Horror Picture Show screens, it’s consistently sold out. Nowadays, we may find that engagement with cult cinema and its fanbase digitally, on social media, rather than in indie cinemas. But if these sold-out screenings are any indication, people are not ready to give up the theater experience of being in a room with die-hard fans they find a kinship with.
In fact, digital fandom has begun creating its own equivalents to the midnight-movie ritual. Think of meme cycles that resurrect forgotten films, TikTok edits that reframe a scene as iconic, or Discord servers built entirely around niche subgenres. These forms of engagement might not involve rice bags and fishnets in a theater, but they mirror the same spirit of communal celebration, shared language, and collective inside jokes that defined cult communities of past decades. Furthermore, accessibility to a film does not diminish its cult status. You may be able to stream Tim Curry as Dr. Frank-N-Furter from the comfort of your couch, but that doesn’t make it any less cult.
The Case for Bottoms
I think a recent film that will gain cult status in time is Bottoms. In fact, it was introduced to the audience at a screening I attended as “the new Heathers.” Its elements of absurdity, queer representation, and subversion are perfect examples of the spirit of cult cinema. And you will not tell me that Bottoms was soulless and vapid.
For queer communities, cult cinema has never been just entertainment; it has operated as a kind of cultural memory, a place to archive our identities, desires, rebellions, and inside jokes long before RuPaul made them her catchphrases repeated ad nauseam. These films became coded meeting grounds where queer viewers could see exaggerated, defiant, or transgressive versions of themselves reflected back, if not realistically, then at least recognizably. Even when the world outside refused to legitimize queer existence, cult films documented our sensibilities, our humor, our rage, and our resilience. In this way, cult cinema has served as both refuge and record, preserving parts of queer life that might otherwise have been erased or dismissed.
Cult Cinema Is Forever
While inspired by John Waters, with Death Drop Gorgeous, we didn’t intentionally seek the status of cult classic. We just had no money and wanted to make a horror movie with drag queens. As long as there continue to be DIY, low-budget, queer filmmakers shooting their movies without permits, the conventions of cinema will continue to be subverted.
As long as queer people need refuge through media, cult cinema will live on.
Last year for 420, the great Sharai Bohannon hit you with the Top 5 Stoner Horror Movies on streaming. To celebrate 420 this year, we’re expanding our scope with horror movies to watch when you’re super stoned. There is a difference, you see. Movies don’t have to be about stoners in order to appeal to the righteously baked. Let’s jump right into it, before that edible kicks in.
5. Hausu (1977)
The only reason Hausu is ranked so low is that you may not speak Japanese. If you don’t, subtitles will likely be a struggle to keep up with. However, you don’t really need subtitles to keep up with Hausu. Obayashi Nobuhiko’s surrealist classic isn’t about plot. A witch is sucking the youth out of schoolgirls by killing them one by one. It’s not hard to parse. What Hausu is really about is giving you the brain-scrambles in every possible way.
Scenes as simple as schoolgirls getting on a bus are presented in a kaleidoscopic, colorful barrage of imagery. So imagine how it looks once the story actually gets balls-to-the-wall nuts. We’re talking characters being eaten by pianos and turning into piles of bananas. It’s wild, and it’s impossible to predict what’s around the next corner. However, the movie’s nonstop sense of fun is a safety net that should prevent you from getting too overwhelmed.
Hausu (1977) is currently streaming for free on Plex.
4. Amityville 1992: It’s About Time (1992)
Honestly, being stoned could only improve this latter installment in the Amityville Horror franchise. You might not be alert enough to notice just how low budget this haunted house sequel is. This will allow you to focus on just how bananas its goopy, special effects-heavy time travel story gets. Between the inscrutable character motivations and creative visuals, it’s dreamlike in the best possible way.
Amityville 1992: It’s About Time (1992) is currently streaming for free on Plex.
3. Slumber Party Massacre II (1987)
There’s nothing better than a post-Elm Street sequel to a straightforward pre-Elm Street slasher. Wes Craven’s 1984 classic was a shot of adrenaline straight to the heart of the slasher genre. However, its supernatural premise meant that copycat filmmakers had to shift their priorities as the slasher boom continued. It doesn’t matter a lick that the original Slumber Party Massacre had no supernatural elements. Its sequel’s a straight-up musical about a dream killer bearing an electric guitar with a giant drill bit on it. You just gotta roll with it. This movie also features some gloriously gross, cheesy nightmare sequences that stand among the best of the Elm Street ripoffs. Nothing could possibly dilate your stoned pupils more than the “evil chicken” or “exploding pimple” sequences. It’s also just 77 minutes long. Even if you’ve overestimated how much awakeness you had left in you, you can get through it.
Slumber Party Massacre II (1987) is currently streaming for free on Plex.
2. Suspiria (1977)
Dario Argento’s Suspiria is probably the most intense movie on this list in terms of its horror elements. So be warned. However, its purity as a visual experience is unmatched in the horror genre. Many filmmakers have tried and failed to recapture its color-drenched nightmare logic. Everything in the movie, from the plot to the aesthetic, feels simultaneously bizarre and perfectly ordered. Of course that woman has fallen into a room full of barbed wire. Of course that scene of a corpse crashing through a stained-glass ceiling is beautiful enough to make you weep. Honestly, maybe being stoned will get you onto whatever plane is required to fully pick up what it’s putting down.
Suspiria (1977) is currently streaming for free on Kanopy and Plex (which is a friend to all stoners, apparently).
1. Killer Party (1986)
Killer Party is also a post-Nightmare on Elm Street slasher. However, the liberties it takes with the genre are even more unhinged. It’s simultaneously a sorority slasher, a college comedy, and… well, I shouldn’t spoil that last subgenre. It’s a lot of different movies at once, all of which are perfectly designed to appeal to the stoned palate. Plus, its opening sequence within an opening sequence within an opening sequence should unlock your galaxy brain headspace right away.
Honorable Mention: Idle Hands (1999)
This title was already on Sharai’s list, otherwise it would have been at the top of mine. Not only is it a movie about stoners, but it’s a damn delightful horror-comedy thrill ride. 1990s horror icon Devon Sawa stars as a lazy young man whose hand is possessed by a homicidal demon. Things only get kookier from there.
Someone calls you on the phone. Already, this is a nightmare, but we’re not at the scary part yet. Let’s pretend you answer it. They ask, “What’s your favorite scary movie?” Your pulse races, sweat builds on your brow, and your voice begins to quiver. If you’re anything like me, this just became your favorite conversation ever. I love horror. The rush of a jump scare. The artistry of a well-executed kill. The familiarity of a formula and the thrill of upended expectations. Horror is malleable; there are at least as many fears as there are people on Earth, and my favorite subset is the Slasher.
What Defines Slasher Horror and Why It Resonates
What do I mean by Slasher? Not to be confused with slash fiction, which has its own merits, the dictionary definition reads thusly: a horror movie, especially one in which victims (typically women or teenagers) are slashed with knives and razors.
Simple. Clean. Anything but easy. For every The Strangers, there’s a The Strangers – Chapter Three. But the takeaway, at least my focus here, is that the killers in these movies are human, attack with everyday means, and therefore can be defeated by everyday means. And I find them extremely inspiring.
Supernatural Horror vs Slasher Horror: Where Hope Disappears
Hereditary is an astoundingly original and disturbing horror film with an ending that betrays everything that came before it. I absolutely loved jumping at every mouth click, the eerie presence of being watched by white-clad cultists, and a mother’s descent into madness brought on by generational trauma. I was all in! Then came the demon king Paimon. Any human connection we had, and the unrelenting tragedy the Graham family has had to endure, seems to have been for naught.
It is my contention that the film loses all of its dramatic umph the moment Toni Collette starts climbing walls and sawing off her head. You can’t beat a demon! You never had a chance. I love supernatural horror (my favorite series of any genre is The Evil Dead), but it does not leave you any room for victory, for the audience to think that “YES WE’VE WON” before having the rug pulled out from under once again (see Drag Me To Hell for the exception, not the rule). I like Midsommar more for that very reason; Florence Pugh’s Dani makes a choice. The horror comes because of human action, not an overpowering of it.
Why Human Villains Make Horror More Relatable and Beatable
People scare me. Aliens, ghosts, ghouls, imps, devils, and the like also scare me. But when a film’s villain is decidedly human, the horror hits harder because it can happen to us. Slashers deal with “the real” (again: knives, razors); they can be defeated. No film franchise better exemplifies this than Scream. In the first Scream, we see Sydney and the rest of the Scooby Gang kick/punch/evade Ghostface as he gets knocked down, falls, stumbles, and bumbles his way through the film while also scaring the ever-living crap out of some teens. These trips and slips add a layer of relatability to our evil purser.
I may not be able to see myself terrorizing an entire high school, but I sure know it hurts to fall down the stairs. Ghostface is the ur-example of defeatability. Yes, he gets up again, but part of the genius is that there typically are two (or more) people sharing a mask, so whoever just took a stomach kick or a tumble on the lawn probably has some rest time between games, as it were. This faceless evil is seemingly everywhere, popping out from any doorway and around every corner, but we can defeat it with a well-placed shove or a bullet to the head.
How the Scream Franchise Shows Horror Villains Can Be Defeated
Scream 2 followed much of the same suit (and taught us to never underestimate Laurie Metcalf). Give or take your suspension of disbelief about how good voice changers have gotten, the same could be said for Scream 3 and the return to form of Scream 4.
Where the franchise begins to lose its luster is in 5CREAM (pronounced as intended five cream). A fairly fun reboot until the appearance of one Billy Ghost Gruff. The moment we bring in ghosts (or visions brought on by blood memory, however they explained Billy Loomis showing up) into a slasher, out goes the fun and the understanding that this is something to be defeated.
Scream 6 has some great bits, but Ghostface doesn’t need a gun to scare us, and the less said about Scream 7, the better.
Horror Sequels and the Problem With Unkillable Villains
We want someone to survive. Not always (see any Final Destination), but if a horror film has done its job well, we should care about the characters and what has happened to them. That is, until we see them go through the same circumstances again and again and again, and this time with roman numerals.
Let’s take a look at Laurie Strode. In the original Halloween, she survives vicious attacks by Michael Myers, who is just a guy. A scary guy for sure. A guy with “no reason, no conscience, no understanding in even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, of good or evil, right or wrong”. But a guy nonetheless. We see his face!
People forget that Michael’s mask comes off, and there in all terrifying glory is… a dude who looks like he gave himself the nickname T-Bone. “But what about when he is shot and falls out of a second-story window, he gets up again,” you scream at your computer, “doesn’t that prove he’s more than a man?!” That’s exactly my point. At the end of Halloween (1976), we can presume Michael will go die in the brush like an injured animal, with his disappearance serving as a stark reminder that evil is inside and around all of us. Roll credits. Cue that funky synth score and play us off, John Carpenter to never visit Haddenfield again… what’s that? Halloween was a huge success? Massive return on investment? Nevermind! Money, as they say, is the root of all evil, and that has never been more apparent than in the horror movie business.
How Horror Franchises Remove the Possibility of Victory
This is why Michael Myers came back for 6 sequels, 2 reboots, and 3 requels, not counting the solitary spinoff. Horror makes money, a lot of it. One of the best ways a new filmmaker can break in is to make a successful horror film (heck, I am trying it myself). But with the franchising comes expectations. We need bigger kills; a cast of fresh-faced future stars; our original protagonist needs to hand over the reins, but also be on call for every iteration. And the villain CAN NOT DIE.
If our face of the franchise is taken off the board, how else are we going to milk him for all he’s worth? This is how we go from Michael Myers: the escaped institutionalized murderer, to Michael Myers: the embodiment of evil, who can also infect others with it literally, not inspirationally (hashtag opposite of justice for Corey Cunningham). Or in simpler terms, they took The Slumber Party Massacre killer, who used a stolen power drill to kill with impunity, and made him the personification of rockabilly killer with a drill on an electric guitar who kills with a song in his heart and hips that don’t lie and can’t die in Slumber Party Massacre II.
Yes, objectively cool. But The Driller Killer is not someone you can outrun.
HORROR IS A MIRROR (THIS IS WRITTEN IN LIPSTICK AS SOON AS YOU GET OUT OF THE SHOWER)
Horror has the great opportunity to reflect. It is the most immediate of film genres. What is scary today can be made into a movie tomorrow. What was scary 3 decades ago is often still scary today. When we see someone in a mask with a knife in their hand, it’s perfectly understandable to run. Scream. Panic. But if in your escape, you throw a pot of hot coffee on them and they are scalded, you have a chance. You can win. And the first step in winning is believing you can.
Why Modern Horror Needs Survivable Stories Again
Horror should not always be about impossible situations. We want heroes we can root for because we see ourselves in them. We want to yell at the screen, “Don’t go in there!” because we want them to survive. Or know that we wouldn’t be that dumb to split up the group.
As horror has moved on from its slasher heyday and into “the monster is actually our trauma,” this unexpected consequence has taken a toll. Life feels incredibly hard right now because we are not seeing villains we can defeat.
The Hope at the Heart of Slasher Horror
To quote a GREAT slasher (yes, Predator is a slasher and Arnold Schwarzenegger is a fabulous final girl), “If it bleeds, we can kill it”. If it bleeds, we can win. There is no great conspiracy; villains are dumber than they appear, and we’re stronger than we think.
So answer the phone, you’ll be alright.
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