Cult Classics of Horror, Why we Love Them

When I didn’t proactively research cult classics, I just called them B movies or bizarre movies.

Later on, I learned the politics of film on the mainstream, what is called a triple-a, multi-million-dollar budget, or simply mainstream movies as juxtaposed to independent cinema and low-budget production houses.

B movies were a subject I pondered about all the time. That was because of my vocation as a horror screenplay writer.

If one reads and studies the most popular books that teach the art of scriptwriting, one is bound to become very structured and conventional at the mental level when it comes to movies and their business.

It happened to me. I ended up fighting an inner battle between the need for a high standard due to the spec script market being mostly mainstream triple-a demand, and a lifelong deep love for all kinds of cheaply made, old movies.

I knew that it was affecting me negatively. You can’t feed a gas engine with diesel fuel and expect it to work as it musts.

I conceded with this conflict and decided to watch a triple-a movie every night and leaving the b-grade ones for my weekend binges.

Up to now, I have talked to you about the cool and positive things about horror cult classic movies. Still, there’s something we mustn’t forget. They are a lot of movies.

Think about it, The Psychotronic Encylopedia of Film was published in 1989 and it reviews 3000 films. Even if they aren’t all horror, just imagine the time it would take to go over all the horror ones from a source like that.

I’d wager, not overdoing it and making it become an issue, it would take like two decades to go over 3000 old, odd movies as geeked out by this book.

Yet, after all, that’s only one reference book from three decades ago. It may be exhaustive for the time frame in which it was written. A lot of water has flown under the bridge, more than three decades after.

If we don’t count the nineteen-nineties follow-up, The Psychotronic Video Guide to Film, what about the movies from then up to now?

Doing a very rough calculation, let’s say the encyclopedia covers movies from 1930 up to 1989. Roughly six decades and 3000 movies.

Three decades have passed since then. To the 3000 covered in that book, you have to add at the very least 1500 cult classics of which I don’t know what percentage might be horror, made from 1989 up to now.

Let’s not even touch the subjects, for now, of the relatively recent and contemporary cottage industry productions, and horror movies from studios and production houses nobody knows and featuring actors who are nobodies as of yet.

There are tons of those kinds of horror movies. There must be tons of cult classics waiting to be discovered.

I think it would be unfortunate if cult gems that didn’t have the means to advertise, that are good except in the marketing department, or that were shunned by critics and the media, pass us by and we don’t notice them.