My favorite time seeing this was at Chicon V, where it was a Successful Cult Movie, with the whole audience whistling along to the theme song, and responding to “Where are we going?” with “Planet 10!” and “When?” with “REAL SOON!”
The Last Action Hero was a great movie, and we saw and loved it in the theater. No idea why it never found it’s audience.
I love Dark City, and until this I didn’t know it was a flop. It was critically acclaimed and Roger Ebert’s favorite film that year. I’ve watched pretty much everything by director Alex Proyas since. His stuff is interesting to watch, but I don’t think he’s had a hit since The Crow (which may be my least favorite film by him).
What came to mind for me was The 13th Floor, which everyone claims got stepped on by The Matrix that year. And I’ve always thought 2002’s Count of Monte Cristo should have done better.
Find the remake of the tv series (LA) Dragnet and watch that. I loved him in that, and it was an underrated gem which got cancelled after a season and a bit. DVDs never appeared. It might be available on hulu, and not on the torrents (my only option as a non US citizen).
Well, you can call it successful if you want, but it never generated the sequel it promised.
Of course, Rocky Horror Picture Show, definitely a Successful Cult Film by any measure, generated a sequel in Shock Treatment, and look at how well that turned out.
My other Failed Cult Films, by the way, were
**Forbidden Zone
Lisztomania**
I’m a big fan od The 13th Floor, based on Danial Galouye’s Simulacron-3 (AKA Counterfeir World. It’s been claimed to be the first Virtual Reality novel (earlier supposed VR stories had simulated physical environments. Inouye’s was in an electronic computer). It had been adapted for German TV in 1973 by Rainier Werner Fassbinder (better known for Berlin Alexanderplatz).
I also liked the same year’s eXistenZ by David Lynch, but not as much as Matrix or 13th Floor. I have to admnit, one thing I liked about Matrix, unlike these other two examples and the later Inception was that it didn’t get hung up on the whole “are we now in reality or in the simulation” mess.
I thought Dark City was great and saw it a few times in the theatre when it came out. It was released around the same time everyone was going gaga for The Matrix and I thought Dark City was clearly the superior film dragging everyone I knew to go see it to come to the same conclusion. I was alone in my prognosis.
Wait… WHAT? :eek:
The Forbidden Zone is one of my favourite films! I saw in a theatre in the early-'80s, I have a VHS tape somewhere that I taped off of Showtime, I have a bootleg VHS tape, I have the original DVD, and the colourised DVD.
To be fair, Dr. Donald Reed (as he called himself) said at the screening I attended at the Los Angeles Science Fiction and Fantasy Film Society that ‘You’re either going to love it, or hate it.’ As a fan of Oingo Boingo, liking vintage songs, and seeing echoes of Robert Wiene’s 1920 classic The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari in the set design, plus being a fan of absurdist humour (sadly, I never got to see the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo), The Forbidden Zone was right up my alley. Still is.
Did anybody say “Bill and Ted’s Excxellent Adventure” yet?
As far as I can tell, that one grossed more than quadruple its budget and is at 75%+ on Rotten Tomatoes, which I figure would disqualify it from this thread.
I remember seeing Buckaroo Banzai in the theater when it first came out (yay, me!) and not really knowing quite what to make of it. I came to appreciate it, but it wasn’t love at first sight. I can absolutely see how someone would come to the opposite conclusion.
When I describe it to people, I say it’s like seeing the 12th movie in a series when you haven’t seen the first 11. I think that’s deliberate for the most part. It just dumps you into this world with a brain surgeon/physicist/rock star and expects you to keep up. I’ve always enjoyed that sort of deadpan approach; to take something extraordinary and have people treat it like it’s no big deal. Works for me, but as I said, not everybody’s cuppa.
I find the whole phenomenon of cult movies to be fascinating. I’ve always thought that the elements that make a cult movie are so mercurial that you’d have to be a fool to try and make one on purpose, but then I see something like Rocky Horror Picture Show (which I’ve only seen once) and think they couldn’t have been trying to make anything else.
I’ve seen FZ numerous times. I can appreciate the love of 1930s cinema (Three Stooges routines, Fleischer animation) and the general wackiness.
But when I showed it at the aforementioned BFF, Pepper Mill begged me to stop it during the opening credits. She was voted down by everyone else, who opted to keep it going, but even they voted it down after five more minutes.
To me, it seems that they have no idea what they were trying to make, and experimented with whatever was at hand. it’s definitely not for everyone. an acquired taste.
But myself, I can’t get past the outrageously racist jokes. And I don’t find the “We’re doing it ironically, so it’s not really racist” excuse. I’d be embarrassed showing this to black friends.
Probably a good thing I didn’t try showing Eraserhead at that Bad Film Festival.
I just watched the 2nd Independence Day movie. This movie has been slammed, was a big failure at the box office and I think it was OK. I was not bad, and has me looking forward to the third movie where they take the fight to the aliens.
Some people were over several years ago, and I put on The Lost Skeleton Of Cadavra. One guy commented, ‘This film is f___ed up!’ Kids today! No appreciation for the Classics, so they don’t ‘get’ the parodies! (TLSoC is brilliant!)
oops
I was going to mention Kindergarten Cop, but apparently that one grossed $200 million on a $15 mil budget. And no one can explain why.
Because it cost nothing to make, Arnold still drew viewers at that point, and it wasn’t completely terrible? (“It’s not a tuuumah!”)
But yeah, I too came to this thread to mention Last Action Hero, which I really enjoyed.
I think people went into Last Action Hero expecting a “play it straight” action film, and that definitely is NOT what they got.
Idiocracy is pretty bleedin’ dumb. It could have been a lot better. But then, I was expecting a comedy and not a documentary.
I agree. I can even name the films parodied in the movie and in its poster.
The sequel, The Lost Skeleton Returns Again, was also great. They’ve supposedly been working on a third, The Lost Skeleton Walks Among Us, but it’s been years since the announcement
I haven’t watched it yet, but I have it. I have, and have watched, Dark And Stormy Night. Funny, but not as good as The Lost Skeleton Of Cadavra. I need to find some time (when Mrs. L.A. is feeling charitable, or otherwise occupied) to have a double-feature of The Lost Skeleton Of Cadavra and The Lost Skeleton Returns Again. And I still have so many kaiju to re-watch…
I’ve only seen bits & pieces of Battlefield Earth but the ending is great. Travolta’s character is trying to loot as much of Earth’s gold as he can and ends up locked inside Fort Knox.