How does one define a cult film?
– Barbara Steele How does one define a cult film? There are certain cohesive ingredients. Cult films usually have an element of unease – anarchy, transgressing certain taboos; they are almost always excessive and camp and speak to the counterculture. Certainly, most have an aura of irreverence, and are usually made on low budgets, therefore requiring a certain energized spontaneity, somewhat like graffiti. After all, film is so porous, and to my mind, so oddly occult, that I think that film itself absorbs odd energies like a living skin. Barbara Steele quoted in Cult Memories. In The Perfect Vision, October 1994, vol. 6, issue 23 via http://home.earthlink.net/~gershom/cult.html [Feb 2005] The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (1962) – Riccardo Freda Barbara Steele in The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (1962) – Riccardo Freda image sourced here. [Aug 2005] See entry on Riccardo Freda Curse of the Crimson Altar (1968) – Vernon Sewell Barbara Steele Barbara Steele images sourced here. Incoherent and awful ada
