Cult Classics: A to Z

The most influential single-camera sitcom since The Larry Sanders Show, Arrested Development never found mainstream success — because the show proudly never courted it. Lasting only three seasons in its initial run, the Mitchell Hurwitz-created comedy was sneakily political while encouraging audiences to mock the delightfully clueless Bluth family, a delicious parody of the entitled, out-of-touch one-percent. It introduced the world to under-the-radar talents like Tony Hale, Michael Cera and Will Arnett while revitalizing the career of child star Jason Bateman; its sarcastic Ron Howard narration and convention-busting techniques were symptomatic of a show that was determined to have a ball until the network bosses inevitably pulled the plug. “I don’t think any of us felt any bitterness or huge frustration that the show had gone away,” Bateman said when AD got a second life on Netflix, adding, “[W]e were upset but we felt pretty grateful we got that far.”

A shaggy-dog Raymond Chandler spoof? An elegy for the Southern California hippie? An allegory for the rise of the neo-conservative movement? The Coen Brothers’ 1998 crime comedy has been interpreted as all of these things, and has inspired countless other theories as well. What we do know for sure is that Jeff Bridges’ seamless portrayal of “The Dude” — an aging longhair with a passion for weed, White Russians and bowling — and the Coens’ hilariously convoluted (and profanity-laced) script have inspired a major cult following, a development no one could have foreseen when the film’s original theatrical run barely covered its $15 million budget. There are now annual Lebowski conventions in the U.S. and England, books, and even a religion: The Church of the Latter-Day Dude, a.k.a. Dudeism, which devotes itself to Taoist precepts embodied by the lead character’s Zen-like pronouncements. In other words, The Dude continues to abide, man.

Kevin Smith launched his directorial career with this 1994 day-in-the-life portrait of a twentysomething New Jersey convenience store clerk and his pal who works at the neighboring video emporium. Shot in black and white for the measly sum of $27,575 — and released with a soundtrack full of grunge and alt-rock songs that cost considerably more to license — Clerks touched a definite nerve with the Generation X demographic; the film grossed over $3 million at the box office during its original theatrical run, despite never playing on more than 50 theater screens in the US at the same time. As the first of Smith’s “ViewAskewniverse” films, it introduced Jay and Silent Bob to an unsuspecting world, and spawned a cult of obsessives who still debate the film’s subtleties as passionately as Dante and Randal discuss the destruction of the second Death Star in The Empire Strikes Back.

BBC’s long-running sci-fi series may be the only show whose fans can be just as obsessive whether they’ve been watching the show for one year or three decades. Having been on the air since 1963 (with a 16-year break in there somewhere), the cult TV show has won, lost and re-hooked fans again thanks to a bit of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey genius: regenerating its time-traveling, endlessly charismatic lead character into a new body. Twelve men have piloted the TARDIS to date — from William Hartnell to the current Who Peter Capaldi — and its premise has allowed the show to constantly reinvent itself, as the Doctor and his ever-shifting roster of (mostly) human companions come to reflect the interests and anxieties of whatever generation is watching. But whether you’re a 65-year-old Tom Baker devotee or a 25-year-old David Tennant disciple, that vwoorp vwoorp sound is sure to get your heart racing.

Shot on a shoestring budget in a remote Tennessee cabin and a cut above your average low-budget gorefest, Sam Raimi’s inventive contribution to the cabin-in-the-woods horror subgenre elicited raves from Stephen King, who called it the “most ferociously original film of the year.” The author’s praise helped the film find a devoted following who found Raimi’s “splatstick” combo of Three Stooges comedy and slasher-flick bloodiness to be worth its weight in Fangoria back issues. It’s one of the most controversial horror films of the 1980s as well as one of the most influential, spawning a series of films (1987’s Evil Dead II and 1992’s Army of Darkness), a musical, several video games, multiple unofficial sequels, countless imitations and — most recently — the new Starz horror comedy series Ash vs. Evil Dead, and which stars Campbell reprising his role as Ash Williams. Groovy.

Its cast featured future stars such as James Franco, Seth Rogen, Jason Segel, Linda Cardellini, and Martin Starr. It was created by Paul Feig, who’d go on to direct Bridesmaids and Spy. And it was executive produced by Judd Apatow, who’d change the entire comedy landscape (often with the F&G gang in tow) with everything from Anchorman and Knocked Up to Girls. Now that’s a high school reunion no one would want to miss. But this one-season wonder — a regular topper of gone-too-soon TV-series lists and one of the best high-school shows of all time — did more than just predict the shape of comedy to come. Freaks and Geeks used its vividly realized early-Eighties setting to tell a universal story about the daily indignities smart, weird teenagers suffer, and the quiet heroism of everyone who survived.

This Swedish metal band isn’t the heaviest group in the world, but few of its musical brethren have ever ranked anywhere near as high on the “WTF?” scale. Currently consisting of corpse-painted, kazoo-tooting Papa Emeritus III and five anonymously masked “Nameless Ghouls,” Ghost crank out melodic hard rock that comes off like Mercyful Fate wrestling Blue Oyster Cult with “Weird Al” Yankovic serving as the referee. They also have a decided flair for Satanic lyrical themes, German Expressionism-influenced graphics, ritualistic stage performances, weirdly inspired cover choices (including Roky Erickson and Depeche Mode), and archly-worded social media posts. The debate continues to rage over whether they’re pushing the stylistic boundaries of heavy metal or are merely an elaborate put-on, but their loyal cult of fervent followers (which includes Dave Grohl, who produced and played drums on 2012’s If You Have Ghost EP) continues to grow.

From its jaded, prickly heroine to its oddball title, nothing about this underground rock musical asks you to like it. So naturally, the people who do love Hedwig love it fiercely. And how can you not fall for the acid-tongued, genderqueer punk singer who tears up the stage in John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask’s funny, angry banger? It began life as an off-Broadway sleeper hit in 1998, before Mitchell adapted it into a 2001 indie film and eventually opened on Broadway, with everyone from crowd pleaser Neil Patrick Harris to Dexter’s Michael C. Hall to Taye Diggs playing the lead. But its still a cult play through and through. “You know you’re doing alright! So hold on to each other,” the singer wails to the “misfits and the losers” in the show’s anthemic closing number — and every kid who ever felt different nodded along to the beat.

Inspired by an exchange he witnessed while waiting in line at Disneyland, writer-director Mike Judge came up with a blistering, brilliant sci-fi comedy set in the most dumbed-down future imaginable. Every aspect of society from health care to the government has been corporate-franchised to death, and extreme stupidity reigns supreme; when time-traveler Luke Wilson suggests that folks try using H2O instead of Gatorade for crop nourishment, the response is “Water? You mean like in the toilet?” The studio thought it was getting Beavis & Butt-head Redux instead of a Swiftian satire, and promptly buried the film with a limited release and no promotion. When folks eventually discovered it on home video (as they did with Judge’s white-collar takedown Office Space), its cult became legion. “A comedy that became a documentary” is the UrbanDictionary.com definition of the title — and seen in the Year of Our Trump Campaign, it’s hard to disagree.

The American music scene has often fostered a specific type of earnest, troubled outsider, armed only with an acoustic guitar and basic recording equipment. Such is Daniel Johnston, a singer-songwriter from Texas who struggled all his life with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. The musician has been revered by indie-rockers for his wounded, sincere songs about love, despair and isolation, his voice gentle and brittle; it didn’t hurt that Kurt Cobain was famously photographed in the Nineties wearing a T-shirt that bore the cover art of Johnston’s album Hi, How Are You. And he may be the only artist who was fought over by major record labels while institutionalized. In 2004, a covers album of his songs by artists like Bright Eyes, TV on the Radio and Beck helped to reignite Johnston’s cult, and the 2005 doc The Devil and Daniel Johnston brought his work to an even wider audience.

Like Elvis Presley, the performer he lovingly imitated, Andy Kaufman prompts plenty of conspiracy theorists to speculate that he faked his death in 1984. It’s understandable: For a decade, the stand-up cemented his legacy as a comedian of misdirection — reading The Great Gatsby to an audience rather than entertaining them, adopting combative onstage personas such as Tony Clifton or Foreign Man — and so the faithful wondered if his passing was merely his latest prank. And yet, 31 years later, his influence lives on everywhere: from David Letterman’s anti-showbiz demeanor to Jim Carrey’s Man on the Moon biopic to the throngs of alt-comics gleefully torturing crowds by withholding punch lines. Even established old-school comedians bowed to Kaufman’s upstart genius. “He was strangely psychological,” Dick Van Dyke once admired. “He liked to lead you one way and then suddenly turn the tables around and make you angry. And then vice versa.”

Like the castaways of Oceanic Flight 815 themselves, no one involved in the making of Lost had any idea how the journey they were about to take would change everything. Under the watchful eye of ABC executive Lloyd Braun (who was fired before his instant smash even reached the screen), hotshot director-producer J.J. Abrams, up-and-coming writer Damon Lindelof, and TV veteran Carlton Cuse crafted an endlessly unfolding puzzle box of sci-fi-inflected mystery, mayhem, sex appeal, and smoke monsters — set on a deserted island that became a character in and of itself. More than the often ridiculous theories fans generated to explain the show, it was the pulp thrills, the strong, diverse cast, and the fantasy of leaving your bad old life behind no matter the cost that made this show a pop-culture phenomenon. People are still debating the show’s loose ends, red herrings and divisive finale today.

To call this collectible trading-card juggernaut a “game” is like calling the Grand Canyon a hole in the ground; for the now 20 million faithful that play regularly among friends or in tournaments, it’s closer to a religion. Designed by Richard Garfield, Magic pits its players against fellow “planewalkers” (wizards to you and me) who, using a deck of colored cards that double as spells and weapons, fight each other to the metaphorical death. Booster packs can help increase one’s arsenal; if you happen to stumble upon a Doom Blade, your enemies had better run the other way. Folks have been known to drop small fortunes to get the choicest cards, and top Magic-ians have become bona fide rock stars in the role-playing community. And with competitions offering up to $7000 prizes, you’d best believe that people are playing to win.

When it came out in 1998, this Louisiana indie-folk band’s seminal album In the Aeroplane Over the Sea sounded like nothing else before it — a weird-rock carnival sound combined with quasi-mystical lyrics inspired by, of all things, the life and death of Anne Frank. Singer-mastermind Jeff Mangum is the kind of Salinger-esque recluse who inspires devotion in music fans, appearing live in the 2000s with the rarity of Bigfoot. He’s one of the cofounders of the influential Elephant 6 Recording Company, the Athens, Georgia-based collection that also spawned the likes of Elf Power, Of Montreal and the Apples in Stereo. After Neutral Milk Hotel announced a series of reunion shows in 2013 and 2014, indie-rock fans flocked to their sold-out gigs with the blissed-out expressions of religious fanatics whose messiah has, against all odds, returned to earth.

In a lot of ways, the Oddworld franchise is to Super Mario Bros. what Game of Thrones is to The Lord of the Rings —only with a lot more farting. Designer Lorne Lanning gave this humble platform game a major makeover, where players have to think their way through each Oddworld game’s levels at rather than the usual button-mash and mad-dash. The cheery nonsense plots or standard action storylines of most video games are replaced by an elaborate anti-corporate parable about defying exploitation in a nightmarishly polluted planet — though pretty much every character and environment you encounter is designed for maximum laughs. And with Oddworld: New ’n’ Tasty, a remake of the original installment Abe’s Oddysee, having come out this year, a whole new generation can experience this frustrating, disgusting, challenging, thought-provoking, relentlessly entertaining saga for themselves.

No film has ever been both derided and hailed for its sheer ineptitude as passionately director Ed Wood’s 1959 disasterpiece. His no-budget sci-fi/horror car crash features several notable trash-culture figures — wrestler Tor Johnson, TV personalities Vampira and Criswell, and (in his final role) horror film icon Bela Lugosi — and is renowned for its howlingly awful special effects, multiple continuity errors, inept camerawork and dialogue so nonsensical that it could have been randomly generated. But Plan 9 achieved fever-dream immortality via countless late-night television broadcasts during the Sixities and Seventies. And when it was dubbed “The Worst Film of All Time” in the Eighties by the Golden Turkey Awards, the movie gained immortality now among aficionados of “so bad it’s good” cinema. Wood would become the posthumous subject of a Tim Burton biopic starring Johnny Depp, but it was Plan 9 that really cemented his legend.

With all due respect to Lost, it wasn’t the first cult-classic television show to say “We have to go back!” Cue Quantum Leap, a forward-thinking, backward-traveling sci-fi series that paved the way for much reality-tampering TV to come. This episodic adventure followed unstuck-in-time scientist Sam Beckett as he leaps into the lives of people from the past, replacing them for just long enough right the wrongs of history. Usually these were small-scale personal dramas, while at other times — like when Sam leaped into Lee Harvey Oswald — they were world-changing events. Either way, the dream of being able to go back and fix what went wrong is one that nearly everyone shares, and that certainly included the show’s rabid fanbase. Anchored by the warm and funny odd-couple interplay between actors Scott Bakula and Dean Stockwell as Sam and his holographic advisor Al, the show was a leap forward for cult TV.

Upon its initial release in 1975, the film adaptation of the campy British stage musical The Rocky Horror Show was met mostly with bewildered shrugs. But it became a surprise cult hit in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, where audiences responded ecstatically to the film’s kitschy musical numbers, its winking tributes to B-movies of the 1950s, and its celebration of androgyny and bisexuality — the latter qualities beautifully embodied by Tim Curry in his iconic role as transvestite mad scientist Dr. Frank N. Furter. Midnight screenings soon evolved into raucous events wherein audience members dressed like RHPS characters, shouted lines, danced “The Time Warp” and threw toast, rice and hot dogs at the screen during specific moments. These rituals helped popularize the film further; and by the 1980s, just about every city in the US could boast its own Rocky Horror scene — and most still do so today.

From the moment the immortal words “Space: the final frontier” echoed in living rooms nationwide, the voyages of the starship Enterprise have taken creator Gene Roddenberry’s genre-defining series straight into nerd immortality. Anchored by a suite of campily iconic performances — William Shatner’s Captain Kirk, Leonard Nimoy’s Mr. Spock, Nichelle Nichols’ Lt. Uhura, and George Takei’s Mr. Sulu chief among them —Star Trek used its primetime slot, day-glo palette, and New Frontier optimism to inject a mainline dose of progressivism into the often reactionary sci-fi world. Not even the show’s cancellation could keep the faithful — “Trekkies” — from gathering together and throwing massive conventions dedicated to the series, and their rabid love for the show helped pave the way for movies, spin-offs, popular book series and a big-screen reboot. Thanks to them, the franchise continues to live long and prosper.

The Sopranos, Mad Men, True Detective — name a landmark TV drama, and you’ll find its creator singing the praises of the show that started it all. Co-created by Hill Street Blues writer Mark Frost and visionary Blue Velvet director David Lynch, Twin Peaks was, for a time, the best of both worlds: A compulsively watchable network drama that equaled or bettered any movie in the art houses for unforgettable imagery and haunting performances. The mystery of “Who killed Laura Palmer?” served as a springboard for an entire town full of weirdos, wonders, and supernatural horrors, investigated by the unflappable FBI Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan). Frost and Lynch left during Season Two and the show eventually died a painful death, but legions of diehards still wax poetic about its weirdness, oddball motifs and dedication to damn fine cups of coffee. The Showtime miniseries resurrection can’t come soon enough.

Since forming in South Bend, Indiana, in 1997, Umphrey's McGee has steadily evolved into a touring success story while remaining one of rock's better-kept secrets (maybe it's the Irish-bar-band moniker). Literally the first band to play Bonnaroo, the dual-guitar sextet embraces the jam-band template but replaces the Endless Noodle with mind-meld discipline, casual virtuosity, and value-added consumer experience. Two-set shows blend prog rock, metal, soul-jazz, and heady dance beats illuminated by candy-colored kaleidoscopic lights, while AC/DC, Talking Heads, Lionel Richie, Bill Frisell, and Yes covers pepper their no-two-alike setlists. (Want to really get into it? Rent a pair of headphones and relish an immaculate soundboard feed.) While none of Umphrey's nine studio album – from 1999's Greatest Hits Vol. III to this year's The London Sessions – has set the world afire, their taper-friendly shows draw cognoscenti into inside-baseball analyses, while intimate special UMBowl shows put fans in charge of the jams.

Jacqueline Susann’s 1966 novel about three women in show business (and the mountains of pills that they pop in order to deal with the pressure) was a massive bestseller, and its 1967 film adaptation was a pop hit as well, despite being roundly panned by critics. But the very things that earned the film a beating — stilted dialogue, hammy acting, histrionic cat fights, Sharon Tate’s “bust exercises,” and a flaming trash-heap of soap opera plot points — made Valley of the Dolls a camp favorite of LGBT movie mavensThe film also inspired another cult classic, Russ Meyer’s 1970 Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, which satirically transposed the storyline to a psychedelic Hollywood milieu while significantly upping the T&A factor; ironically, that film’s fabulously trashy screenplay was actually written by film critic Roger Ebert, who’d condemned the original VOTD for its “appalling vulgarity.”

Walter Hill’s 1979 film about warring street gangs in New York City triggered all manner of media hysteria upon its initial release, with mainstream pundits misinterpreting it as a) a quasi-documentary, b) an incitement to violence for the troubled youth of America, or c) all of the above. These self-appointed guardians of the public morality failed to notice that Hill’s film was really a live-action cartoon set in a gritty fantasy world that hardly bore a resemblance to anything actually happening in late-Seventies New York. But more open-minded viewers responded to Riffs leader Cyrus’s cry of “Can you dig it?” with an affirmative cheer, and the iconic visual and visceral power of the film — and its unforgettably costumed gangs like the Baseball Furies, who dress like KISS meets the New York Yankees — has only gotten stronger over the decades.

A diehard Twilight Zone fan, Chris Carter convinced Fox that modern network television was missing its own signature scary show. But executives balked at what sort of show Carter wanted to make. “They didn’t get the idea of two FBI agents investigating the paranormal,” Carter recalled in 2012. “That was weird to them.” Turns out, it was the investigators, not the paranormal activity, that was most crucial to The X-Files’ pop-cult success. Initially, the series was an odd-couple pairing between a kooky believer (David Duchovny) and a skeptical scientist (Gillian Anderson) who had to work together to solve each week’s freaky mystery. But as it evolved from whodunit to tense workplace romantic drama, it becoming something richer — a sci-fi show about loss and faith — with Mulder and Scully’s antagonism turning into a meeting of misfit minds that made them the unlikely Sam & Diane of the Nineties.

As Monty Python’s Flying Circus was to the Seventies, The Young Ones was to the Eighties: a televised blast of anarchic humor that found a cult audience in the States despite its extremely British subject matter. Ostensibly based around the comedic adventures of four students at the fictional Scumbag College — self-important anarchist Rick (Rik Mayall), morose hippie Neil (Nigel Planer), bellicose punk Vyvyan (Adrian Edmondson) and Mike the self-styled “Cool Person” (Christopher Ryan) — the BBC series regularly messed with viewers’ heads by breaking the fourth wall, throwing talking animals into the mix, or just abandoning the original story line without any explanation. Broadcast in the UK from 1982 to 1984, it reached the US in 1985, when MTV broadcast its 12 episodes. The show’s surreal humor immediately connected with college-age American viewers — and musical performances by guests like Madness, the Damned, and Motörhead didn’t exactly hurt, either.

Composer, songwriter, guitarist, bandleader, filmmaker, satirist, iconoclast, socio-political commentator, eccentric genius — the late, great Frank Zappa was all of these things and more. Influenced as much by free jazz and avant-garde classical music as he was by early doo-wop and R&B, Zappa began carving his own artistic niche in the early 1960s and never let up until his death in 1993. His prolific output — he finished 62 albums before he died, and 38 more have been released posthumously — can be appreciated on a number of levels; some fans dig it for his challenging compositions, some for his brilliant guitar playing, some for his snarky sense of humor. Though resolutely un-commercial (his only Top 40 US hit was the 1982 novelty track “Valley Girl,” which featured vocals by his daughter Moon Unit), Zappa’s music found a devoted audience of diehard fans around the world.