Return of the (new) cult flicks
Summer is almost here, and many of us will find ourselves with a lot of extra time. Perhaps once you've seen every blockbuster, you could try these movies with a bit of an edge.
Story by Ashlee Roll
Regardless of your summer plans, you will no doubt find the time to vegetate on the couch with a good movie.
ith finals just around the corner and summer approaching, many students are looking forward to some much-needed down time.
However, might I suggest a bad movie. Well, not really a bad movie, just different.
Even with the onslaught of summer blockbusters almost upon us, the best movie deals still lay under sections entitled "cult," or simply "really weird movies."
Most people assume that because a movie is labeled a "cult classic," it is either a foreign art house film or Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Carl Atkinson, video clerk at Liberty Hall video, 642 Massachusetts St., said that a cult movie was usually a film that contained content matter that was sometimes offensive to the general public.
"Generally it's a movie that didn't get wide acclaim, but it's embraced by a specific group of people," she said.
Liberty Hall has a cult section that contains about 200 movies.
"We have Russ Meyer films and Blackspotation films like Shaft among them," Atkinson said.
Hastings, on the other hand, takes a more casual attitude toward these films, filing them simply under "really weird movies."
In this category are forgotten films with titles like Lobsterman From Mars, Assault Of The Killer Bimbos, Flesh Eatin Mothers and Surf Nazis Must Die.
But among these wacko titles are some truly good, if not strange, films. During your vacation, try some of these flicks out. Keep in mind, this is by no means a com-
plate list of good cult movies, just a taste. So kick back, enjoy the popcorn, and let's go to the movies:
Film: Hairspray
Director: John Waters
Starring: Ricki Lake,
Divine, Sonny Bono,
Debbie Harry
Best Line: "Roaches?!
My little Tracy is a clean teen.
There are no bugs on our baby!"
Welcome to Baltimore, 1962, where hair hoppers rule and the Corny Collins Show is the hottest dance show around. Tracy Tumblad (Lake) is a plump, young dancer who steals the top spot as well as the boyfriend of rich brat Amber Von Tussle. Just as the race for Miss Auto Start begins, Tracy and her friends are faced with segregation, jail and bad hardays. The movie is filled with gr
mixed with great songs, good dancing, and lots of camp
good quality of work or other
Other films by John Waters worth seeing.
Pink Flamingos
Polyester
Serial Mom
Film: Tapeheads
Director: Bill Fishman
Film: Tapeheads
**Starring:** John Cusack, Tim Robbins
**Best Scene:** The sobriety test in which both characters do the alphabet in sign language, backwards, while skipping all the vowels.
Ivan (Cusack) and Josh (Robbins)
have a dream. They want to make
music videos. After losing jobs as
security guards and being swindled by their new agent,, the boys hook up with their idols the Swanky Modes (played by real life legends Sam and Dave). They promise to revive the Modes' career, all-the-while they are a political hit list. Music by the likes of Fishbone, The Dead Kennedys, Circle Jerks and Devo. It's the kind of movie you have to watch more than once to get it all, but it's fun.
Other films starring John Cusack worth seeing:
Starring: John Cusack, Kim Darby
Director: Savage Steve Holland
Film: Better Off Dead
Best Line: "Gee Ricky, I'm really sorry your mom blew up."
Lane Myers is having a bad day. His girlfriend, Beth, just dumped him for a guy that could ski the K12. He didn't make the ski team, and his breakfast just crawled off the table. Lane decides to kill himself,
Better Off Dead
The Griffers
Grosse Pointe Blank
One Crazy Summer
Say Anything
Sixteen Candles
except he can never quite succeed. But then he meets the beautiful French exchange student next door. This movie contains some of the best one-liners ever. It brought us the
"gimme back my two dollars" joke. Enjoy.
dollars" joke. Enjoy.
Other movies by Savage
Steve Holland:
One Crazy Summer
How I Got Into College
Film: Raising Arizona Directors: Joel and Ethan Coen
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Holly Hunter
Best Line: "Mind you don't .cut yourself, Mordecai."
H. I. and Ed look like the perfect couple except for the fact he is an ex-con and she is an ex-police officer. When Ed finds out she can't have children, the two devise a plan to kidnap one of the quintuplets from the wealthy Arizona family. Things go
smoothly until two escaped felons drop in for a visit and a crazy bounty hunter catches up with them. This is one of the best movies ever made. The dialogue is poetry. The acting is Oscar worthy. And besides, it's damn funny. If you can't laugh at a grown man with a panty on his head, what can you laugh at?
Other films by the Coen brothers:
Blood Simple
Rarton Fink
Hudsucker Proxy
Fargo
Film: Shattered
Director: Wolfgang Petersen
**Starring:** Tom Berenger, Bob Hoskins, Greta Scacchi
Best Scene: The end.
It starts with a car crash. A man survives, only to awaken to disfigurement and amnesia. Dan Merrick (Berenger) tries to reconstruct his life but finds more questions than answers. He hires a private detective, Gus Klein (Hoskins), to help him. What he finds will shock you. Even though the cast isn't great and the story line seems contrived, this is one of the best mystery films I've seen.
- Other good mystery films:
- Rear Window
- The Stepford Wives
If you are in the mood for a true, twisted cult film, check out the most politically incorrect movies ever, *Freak*. A circa-1930 film starring real-life circus freaks, it has a loose plot about money, greed and beauty. During its day it was banned in theaters, and it still shocks today.
Other Cult Movies Worth Seeing:
Shakes The Clown; Bobcat Goldthwait stars as an alcoholic clown.
Fletch; Chevy Chase in a role of a lifetime.
*Top Secret; See Val Kilmer before he took himself too seriously.*
Bad Lieutenant; Harvey Kielt is a realy,really.bad guw.
Reservoir Dogs; Watch it just for the Madonna scene.
Breakfast Club: Basically, any John Hughes film except for Curly Sue is going to be funny.
But this is my list: Go make your own.
RAISING
ARIZONA
A comedy beyond belief.
LEAD STORIES
Family Values: In March, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that a local woman, 66, and her husband were searching for a surrogate mother for their deceased son's sperm so they could fulfill their longing to be grandparents. And three days earlier, a Milan, Italy, newspaper reported that a 35-year-old woman was three months pregnant with the fetuses of two couples, whose children she agreed to bear because of a shortage of surrogate mothers. She said blood tests after birth would determine which baby is which. (The Vatican and Italy's health minister announced that they were appalled.)
Life Imitates Monty Python: The Salem (Mass.) Evening News reported in March about an incident in which Carmen LaBrecque, 51, had to outrun a rabid skunk, which was snapping at her heels, for 15 minutes before an animal control officer arrived to shoot it. Unable to slow down enough even to open her front door and get inside, LaBrecque circled her yard 12 times, a foot or two in front of the skunk. On one pass by her front door, LeBrecque's elderly mother handed her a cell phone, which LaBrecque pantingly used to call 911.
In March, at the height of the civil unrest in Albania when the U.S. diplomatic mission was evacuating person
NEWS OF THE JUDGMENT-IMPAIRED
nel for safety reasons, The Washington Post reported that the State Department had just sent a cable to the diplomats in Tirana reminding them of the department's evacuation policy for safeguarding of sterling silver cutlery flatware.
The public service goal of an advertising campaign by England's Children's Society was to enlighten people that child sex abuse could occur in anyone's town and not just in notorious sex-tourist spots in the Far East. However, its slogan, announced in billboards released in February, came out
A 38-year-old apartment building manager was arrested in Whitewater, Wis., in January and charged with surrepti-
In January, motorist John Tanayo, 30, was stopped in New York City and a search of his car turned up 573 pounds of cocaine worth about $5 million. He only drew police officers' attention when, in traffic in front of a police cruiser, he failed to signal a right turn.
this way; "Why travel 6,000 miles to have sex with children when you can do it in (the English town of Bournemouth)?" When questioned by a reporter, a society spokesman expressed pride in the campaign and said it would be extended to Manchester and Leeds.
tiously videotaping a female tenant with a camera hidden in the ceiling of her shower. The 20-year-old tenant had become suspicious because of the fixture the manager had installed to disguise the lens: Why, she thought, was a smoke detector placed in the ceiling of a shower?
The Robles family placed an ad in a newspaper in the town of Leon, Guanajuato, north of Mexico City in January, to the attention of robbers who had been breaking into the house and stealing items. In exasperation, but perhaps unwisely, the family begged robbers to stay away, announcing that they had been cleaned out except for the TV, the VCR and the refrigerator.