Cult Classics

Square-jawed everyman Ash (Bruce Campbell) enjoys a romantic getaway with his girlfriend in a cabin in the woods. Their weekend takes a turn for the deranged when they accidently unleash a demonic force.

For the uninitiated, Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead trilogy sounds like a fever dream. 1981’s The Evil Dead is a notoriously gory low-budget creature feature. Evil Dead II is a remake of the first film, reimagined as a dark slapstick comedy. 1992’s Army of Darkness transports Ash to the Middle Ages to battle an army of ghouls with a shotgun and a ‘73 Oldsmobile Delta.

Evil Dead II is the trilogy’s highlight, and the film that dials in the “Three Stooges meets George Romero” tone. The second half is practically a one man show for Bruce Campbell, who’s virtuoso performance is a masterclass in physical comedy. The scene in which Ash wrestles his own demonically possessed hand is worth the price of admission alone.

Aliens turn the Earth’s dead into zombies for reasons that remain unclear. Also, there are Vampires. And a psychic.

Every few months, some critic dusts off a b-movie and declares it the “worst movie ever made.” Long before The Disaster Artist, before Mystery Science Theater 3000, there was Plan 9 From Outer Space.

The brainchild of Ed Wood, a director with more moxie than talent, Plan 9 is truly terrible. It’s also terribly fun. Cardboard tombstones fall over as zombies lurch by. Pie tins stand-in for flying saucers. The Amazing Criswell, a second-rate psychic, narrates the whole affair.

Bela Lugosi gets top billing despite his death three months prior to filming. Wood combined archival recordings of the Dracula star with new footage of a stand-in who covered his face with a vampire cape. It might have worked if the double wasn’t noticeably taller than Lugosi. Again, more moxie that talent.

Gordon (Peter Mullan) and his work crew renovate an abandoned asylum on a tight deadline.  Stress and an ominous atmosphere weigh on the workmen, and Gordon begins to behave erratically. Is it madness or possession?

Session 9 is a haunted house story in the mold of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shinning. While it has all the requisite thrills and chills, there’s an added layer of menace thanks to a brilliant bit of location scouting.

Session 9 was filmed in the Danvers State Mental Hospital, an abandoned asylum in Massachusetts. The Victorian institution inspired H. P. Lovecraft’s Arkham Sanitarium and Batman’s Arkham Asylum. Danvers’ dark history and eerie atmosphere hang over the movie like a ghost and elevates a straightforward psychological thriller into something stranger.

In the fog of the English Civil War, a group of deserters abandon the battlefield in search of an alehouse. The motley crew, including a thief, a fool, and an alchemist’s apprentice, are joined by a mysterious stranger who may be the Devil himself.

A Field in England isn’t a movie in the traditional sense. The story unwinds with the dream logic of a folk ballad. The pseudo-Elizabethan dialogue lands somewhere between Shakespeare and Monty Python. It’s filmed in crisp black-and-white like a time traveling documentary.

Full of mystical visions and earthly perils, watching A Field in England is a bit like thumbing through an antique spell book. Its margins are scrawled with long-legged beasties, and the language can be hard to follow, but you’ll have goosebumps all the same.

Police Sergeant Neil Howie (Edward Woodward) travels to a remote island off the coast of Scotland to investigate the disappearance of a young woman. Sergeant Howie discovers the islanders have embraced Paganism. As the May Day celebration approaches, he fears there is something dark beneath the pastoral bliss.

The Wicker Man is a movie overshadowed by its own legacy. It ushered in a new genre — folk horror — and endured a notoriously cheesy remake. It’s easy to forget that The Wicker Man is a great horror story.

First time viewers might be surprised that the film is essentially a musical. It’s folk-rock soundtrack and cast hippy hedonists remind audiences that The Wicker Man is a product of the uneasy transition from the ‘60s to the ‘70s. But all the camp and dated-moral-panic fades away in the movie’s final moments when Howie encounters the titular pagan idol. Even after decades of imitators and remakes, The Wicker Man remains chilling.

Englishmen Gilderoy (Toby Jones) is hired to record sound for an Italian horror flick. As the production drags on, the mousy audio engineer grows uneasy with the gory film. Soon, Gilderoy’s life begins to blend with cinematic horrors that surround him.

What are we afraid of the dark? Is it because of what we hear — and imagine? Berberian Sound Studio weaves a tale about frightening sounds and the people who make them.

Central to the story is The Equestrian Vortex, a movie-within-the-movie. The audience gets few glimpses of Vortex’s medieval dungeons and dark rituals. Instead, we experience the terror through Gilderoy’s grimaces and squirms. And, of course, we hear the awful story unfold.

As Gilderoy and his assistances record sound effects for a torture chamber, we see the foley artists squish and snap a pile of vegetables to score the sequence. A broken watermelon is enough to leave Gilderoy squeamish, and it’s hard not to agree.

30-year-old paperboy and aspiring director Mark Bouchard struggles to complete his horror movie Coven. Bouchard and his crew of Midwestern misfits persevere in the face of debt, doubt, and their own ineptitude.

This documentary doesn’t have the scares found elsewhere on this list. In fact, it’s hard not to laugh with (and occasionally at) the cast of would-be-filmmakers. But American Movie does ask a question more frightening that any ghost or ghoul: when is it time to give up on a dream?

Mark Bouchard is an amateur auteur who’s always one MasterCard offer away from ruin. He has a charm that waivers between a pep talk and a swindle. His entourage of burnouts and dreamers serve as the cast, crew, and financiers behind Coven, Bouchard’s long-gestating horror movie.

And what’s the verdict on Mark’s masterpiece? From what we see, it might be a cult classic in its own right. But it hardly matters. By the end of American Movie, you’ll believe in Mark Bouchard either way.