The Best Cult Classic Horror Movies

Hello and welcome to the cult.

I assure you, we’re the best cult around. Better than Scientology. And wayyyy better than that rag tag group of misfits held together by rubbery maniac Monkey D. Luffy. Here’s your white purity robe! Don’t worry, it will get red later. Now please take off your shoes, and hand over your cellphones to Brother Hammer. He will be smashing them, with a hammer. No photos inside cult grounds!

Today is your lucky day! We’re having a horror movie night at the Temple of the All-Seeing Eye. We’re having a showing of the best cult classic horror films ever made. If they’re good enough for somebody’s cult, they’re good enough for ours!

Jennifer’s Body

Karyn Kusama’s Jennifer’s Body was initially panned by critics, but was soon claimed by the queer community for its ability to cause the sweetest kind of panic of all: gay panic! Megan Fox stars as a high school girl who becomes the victim of a demonic ritual performed by a skeezy indie band in exchange for fame and fortune. She becomes possessed by a demon, and begins devouring her classmates. Her best friend gets really homoerotically jealous.

Ganja & Hess

Bill Gunn’s Ganja and Hess is about a wealthy anthropologist whose world literally turns upside after he becomes a vampire. They sleep upside down, right? Like bats? Whatever. It was all because his assistant stabbed him with an ancient African dagger before committing suicide. Heavy. The assistant’s widow comes to visit the vampropologist, and the two begin a sexy, twisted vampire love story.

Dead Alive

Before Peter Jackson made cinema history with Lord of the Rings, he first mastered B-movie horror to sickening effect. Dead Alive (aka Braindead) is one of the grossest, goriest, nastiest films ever made. I almost threw up while watching it. It’s about a momma’s boy whose life is changed after his overbearing mother is bitten by a Sumatran rat monkey. No, this is not a real animal. She becomes infected with a zombie virus, and spreads it around to everyone. Just like a cult!

The Rocky Horror Picture Show

Queer people claim another win! While Jim Sharman’s The Rocky Horror Picture Show has a special place in every former theatre kid’s heart, fans of the film say that Rocky Horror served as a gay awakening. And how could it not? After the strait-laced young couple, Brad and Janet find themselves stranded in the wilderness with car troubles, they take refuge in the home of Dr. Frank-N-Furter, a sweet transvestite from transexual Transylvania. The good doctor introduces the couple to his gothic and gay associates, and the group proceeds to engage in the culty-est behavior of all: spontaneous song and dance.

Night of The Living Dead

George A. Romero’s The Night of The Living Dead singlehandedly catapulted the zombie into the collective pop culture mind. The film is about a group of survivors who seek shelter in a farmhouse after the dead begin to mysteriously rise from their graves. While the film starts out as an eerie horror flick, it begins to unfold into a greater parable about racism in America.

Event Horizon

Paul W.S. Anderson’s Event Horizon teaches us a very important lesson: never go into a black hole. At least not before the Supreme Being sends a safe spaceship down to take you! That’s what we’re here waiting on! In 2047, the spaceship Event Horizon mysteriously disappears after exploring the solar system, only to reappear derelict seven years later. A crew of scientists are sent to investigate, and they soon realize that that spaceship went to another dimension, and brought back something evil.

Suspiria

Dario Argento’s Susperia is about one of the most insidious cults of all: art school! Set in Germany, a young American dancer named Suzy attends a prestigious ballet school. After her fellow dancers begin to disappear, she soon realizes that the school is hiding something: an ancient cult of witches! Suzy better figure out how to drop out of school quick, before she’s given a loan that she can only pay back with her blood.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Philip Kaufman’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a remake of the 1956 film of the same name. Set in San Fransisco in the 1970s, a health inspector discovers that several of his acquaintances are behaving… strangely. They are cold and distant, leading him to believe that they are not his friends at all, but rather alien beings that have replaced his friends with emotionless clones! We at the Cult of the Supreme Being know that this is already happening in real life, that’s why we’re leaving the planet!

What Ever Happened To Baby Jane?

Robert Aldrich’s What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? Stars Bette Davis and Joan Crawford as a pair of sisters who were chewed up and spat out by the entertainment industry. One was a former child star who faded into obscurity and lost her mind, the other was a successful actor until she was paralyzed in a freak accident. Living in a decaying Hollywood mansion, the two sisters torment one another while their money slowly runs out. The only thing more shocking than the film’s ending is the copious amounts of off-screen tea concerning the actual rivalry between Davis and Crawford. Things got ugly fast.

Eraserhead

David Lynch’s Eraserhead is a gross-out body horror that tells the story of a man named Henry, who is forced to look after his ex-wife’s deformed baby. “But all babies are cute!” some say. No, not all. This baby looks like what would happen if you crossed a goat and a potato. What’s worse is the fact that it cries all the time. Henry is driven to the brink of madness dealing with the nasty little creature, and the film is a stark reminder that babies are only cute due to evolutionary advantage. If they were all as ugly as this, the human race would die out. And happily.

(featured image; Warner Bros.)