Any best of list is personal and subjective so there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the fact that Nerve.Com’s list of the ‘Fifty Greatest Cult Movies of all time’ is so heavily slanted towards American films. The list does, however, ignore the world of cinema and misses the opportunity to celebrate cult directors like Alejandro Jodorowsky, Andrei Tarkovsky, Werner Herzog and Akiro Kurosawa. The lack of British entries is also unfortunate.
In order to prove that movies don’t begin and end in Hollywood or on the U.S. Indie circuit I have made a rival list of Fifty Greatest British Cult Movies.
As with the Nerve list, I have limited each director to one film. With regard to what is, or is not, a ‘cult’ , this is another relative question but generally implies some manner of what a Rough Guide to Cult Fiction calls a “lengthy and irrational devotion”. My rule of thumb guide is that the movie must have either generated such obsessive adoration and/or has otherwise achieved some measure of healthy notoriety.
The list also contains films that have won mainstream acclaim as well as others which have been unjustly ignored by the public at large and so have a small but devoted audience.
Here is my selection from 50 -41:
50. CARRY ON CLEO – Gerald Thomas (1964)
Bawdy, unsubtle and stuffed to the brim with cheap innuendos, the Carry On series are, for better or worse, a British institution. This is the tenth of 29 made between 1958 and 1978 with one ill-advised attempt at a revival (Carry On Columbus) in 1992 Cleo was marketed as the funniest film since 54bc. For me the choice of which Carry On to pick was between this and Carry On Screaming. What swung it was the memorable one-liner delivered by Kenneth Williams as Julius Caesar; all together now : “Infamy! Infamy! They’ve all got it in for me!”
49. FOUR LIONS Chris Morris (2010)
Cultdom and controversy often go hand in hand. Making a black comedy about Muslim terrorists operating from a London-based cell risks more than a few bad reviews. Comedian, Chris Morris is never one to be shy away from ruffling a few feathers and, while his debut film is not laugh out loud funny it merits inclusion here for its courage and obvious integrity.
48. MURDER, SHE SAID George Pollock (1961)
Forget the insipid TV series (Murder, She Wrote) this features an amateur sleuth of far greater substance. It brings to the screen the perfect personification of Miss Marple in the form of the peerless Margaret Rutherford. This is probably the best in a series based on Agatha Christie’s improbable heroine with a strong supporting cast . Utterly charming. Continue reading →
Charlie Brooker worked with Chris Morris on the single series of the fairly disappointing sit-com Nathan Barley and clearly got some pointers from Morris on how to push irreverent black comedy to the limits of public acceptability.
