Jennifer Eiss's 500 Essential Cult Movies

Director Mankiewisz’s tragic comedy about the American show business is one of the darkest and most cynical films ever made. Bette Davis is brilliant in her roll as a once Broadway Diva who takes care of the promotion for the talented actress Eva (played by Anne Baxter). All together the film won six Oscars in 1951.

based on the novel of the same name by Rumer Godden. It is a psychological drama about the emotional tensions within a convent of nuns in an isolated Himalayan valley

Richard Dadier is a teacher at North Manual High School, an inner-city school where many of the pupils frequently engage in anti-social behavior. Dadier makes various attempts to engage the students' interest in education, challenging both the school staff and the pupils. He is subjected to violence as well as duplicitous schemes.

Easy Rider is the classic cult film from the 1960’s. A road movie that embodies the feeling of being a hippie as two friends head cross-country to Mardi Grass. A controversial period film by Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda with some classic music from a generation of wanderers.

A deadpan young man obsessed with death meets an eccentric septuagenarian who teaches him to live life to the fullest.

Longtime alcoholic Don Birnam has been sober for ten days and appears to be over the worst... but his craving has just become more insidious. Evading a country weekend planned by his brother and girlfriend, he begins a four-day bender that just might be his last – one way or another.

The successful film drama from director Milos Forman portrays the life inside a psychiatric ward where the line between the insane and the not insane is blurred. Based on the novel by the same name by Ken Kesey.

The Outsiders is Francis Ford Coppola’s translation of the novel by Susan Eloise of the same name. It tells the story of two rival youth gangs. Filmed in 1983 with a superstar hunk of a cast.

Imprisoned in the 1940s for the double murder of his wife and her lover, upstanding banker Andy Dufresne begins a new life at the Shawshank prison, where he puts his accounting skills to work for an amoral warden. During his long stretch in prison, Dufresne comes to be admired by the other inmates -- including an older prisoner named Red -- for ...

A man spends a summer day swimming home via all the pools in his quiet suburban neighborhood.

A lackadaisical handyman and aspiring novelist tries to support his younger girlfriend as she slowly succumbs to madness.

In director Abel Ferrara's THE ADDICTION, New York University anthropology grad student Kathleen (Lili Taylor) becomes a philosophic vampire after an alleyway attack, trying to come to terms with her new lifestyle and frequent craving for human blood.

Almost Famous is an autobiographical inspired film about a 15-year-old who is hired by Rolling Stone magazine to follow and interview a rock band during their tour. A film about growing up, first love, disappointment, and the life of a rock star.

In Mexico City the lives and stories of three people become tied up in an intense Oscar winning film. Valeria and El Chivo have one thing in common: their souls stimulate them towards a relationship with their dogs. Amores Perros is the first in a film trilogy from Inárritus

While imprisoned in a Confederate girls boarding school, a Union soldier cons his way into each of the lonely women's hearts.

An expose of the lives and loves of Madison Avenue working girls and their higher ups.

'Big Wednesday' is a gentle rites-of-passage movie that covers many years in the lives of three friends as they grow up but never entirely grow apart. Both touching and humorous, the film authentically recreates the spirit of 60s and 70s America, looking at the big issues of the time through the eyes of three ordinary young men.

Harold is celebrating a birthday, and his friend Michael has drafted some other friends to help commemorate the event. As the evening progresses, an unexpected guest shows up, the alcohol flows, the knives come out, and dormant and unspoken emotions are unleashed.

A struggling young jazz dancer (Lucinda Dickey) meets up with two break-dancers. Together they become the sensation of the street crowds. Features ICE-T in his film debut as a club MC.

Brief Encounter is a classic from British director David Lean about two people who fall in love yet face the fact that they are already married and can never be together.

An American bartender and his prostitute girlfriend go on a road trip through the Mexican underworld to collect a $1 million bounty on the head of a dead gigolo.

Battleship Potemkin is the classic masterpiece silent film from director Sergej Eisenstein from 1925. The film is based on the true events of the Russian Revolution of 1905. The film had an incredible impact on the development of cinema and was a masterful example of montage editing.

Tired of being a small-town waitress, Donna departs with the latest carnival show, living with entertainers Frankie and Patch in a tense, emotional triangle.

Cisco is an ex-rock star who has become a drug dealer. A corrupt cop blackmails Cisco to sell marijuana for him. Cisco has one weekend to sell it to his friends.

Warren Oates plays a world-weary gambler trying to make big money cockfighting. Always on the road, he works inside and outside the rules to try to work up to the biggest fight of the year.

Das Experiment is a shocking psycho thriller about the aggression potential of humans. Even more shocking is the fact that it’s based on an actual occurrence. In 1971 at Stanford University an experiment began that because of moral reason had to be aborted.

The Original "Dawn Patrol" renamed to aka "Flight Commander"

In 1916, a Chicago steel worker accidentally kills his supervisor and flees to the Texas panhandle with his girlfriend and little sister to work harvesting wheat in the fields of a stoic farmer.

In 17th-century France, Father Urbain Grandier's protection of the city of Loudun from the corrupt Cardinal Richelieu is undermined by a sexually repressed nun's accusation of witchcraft.

Don’t Look Now is a thriller starring Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland as a married couple who tragically loose their daughter and thereafter are confronted with only mysterious occurrences.

In 1800, as Napoleon Bonaparte rises to power in France, a rivalry erupts between Armand and Gabriel, two lieutenants in the French Army, over a perceived insult. For over a decade, they engage in a series of duels amidst larger conflicts, including the failed French invasion of Russia in 1812, and shifts in the political and social systems of E...

In 1950s Connecticut, a housewife's life is upended by a marital crisis and mounting racial tensions in society.

A drop-out from upper-class America picks up work along the way on oil-rigs when his life isn't spent in a squalid succession of bars, motels, and other points of interest.

Two psychotic young men take a mother, father, and son hostage in their vacation cabin and force them to play sadistic "games" with one another for their own amusement.

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947) is a romantic fantasy film starring Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison. It is based on a 1945 novel written by Josephine Leslie under the pseudonym of R. A. Dick.

The inmates and guards of a modern, clean and efficient maximum security wing are slowly and increasingly brutalized until they erupt in violence. Dark and macabre, and based in truth, the story is told in a traditional dramatic style combined with telephone interviews and narration.

Ghost World is the film adaptation of the popular graphic novel by Daniel Clowes about a high school girl and her friendship with a eccentric 40-year-old record collector. The film touches on themes of alienation, the transition from teenager to adult, friendship and being different than the masses.

Newly-married Rebecca leaves her husband's Alsatian bed on her prized motorbike - symbol of freedom and escape - to visit her lover in Heidelberg. En route she indulges in psychedelic reveries as she relives her changing relationship with the two men.

Glen doesn't dare tell his fiancée Barbara that he is a transvestite known as Glenda; in addition, Alan is undergoing medical treatment to become a woman named Anne; both stories are told by a psychiatrist.

A psychiatrist comes to the aid of a compulsive gambler and is led my a smooth-talking grifter into the shadowy but compelling world of stings, scams, and con men.

The arrival of a lost relative, engulfs terror upon an aging southern belle, forever plagued by a horrifying family secret.

The invasion of a village in Belarus by German forces sends young Florya into the forest to join the weary Resistance fighters, against his family's wishes. There he meets a girl, Glasha, who accompanies him back to his village. On returning home, Florya finds his family and fellow peasants massacred. His continued survival amidst the brutal deb...

Two business executives--one an avowed misogynist, the other recently emotionally wounded by his love interest--set out to exact revenge on the female gender by seeking out the most innocent, uncorrupted girl they can find and ruining her life.

A controversial portrayal of teens in New York City which exposes a world which is deeply disturbing. The film focuses on a freckled boy Telly, whose idea of safe sex is to have sex with only virgins. But one girl from one of his past unprotected passion test positive for HIV, and soon finds him making love yet to another unsuspecting girl

The life of a soap opera actress begins to unravel as she fears her character will be written out of the series.

Returning from a year up the Amazon studying snakes, the rich but unsophisticated Charles Pike meets con-artist Jean Harrington on a ship. They fall in love, but a misunderstanding causes them to split on bad terms. To get back at him, Jean disguises herself as an English lady, and comes back to tease and torment him.

Contempt / Le Mépris is a film about filmmaking. Godard’s Masterfully staged melodrama tells of a woman’s love for a middle-class lifestyle and how a film maker must buy it for her while at the same time working as a writer for the film ‘The Odyssey’ to be directed by Fritz Lang.

The story of acerbic 1960s comic Lenny Bruce, whose groundbreaking, no-holds-barred style and social commentary was often deemed by the Establisment as too obscene for the public.

Two whimsical, aimless thugs harass and assault women, steal, murder, and alternately charm, fight, or sprint their way out of trouble. They take whatever the bourgeoisie holds dear, whether it’s cars, peace of mind, or daughters. Marie-Ange, a jaded, passive hairdresser, joins them as lover, cook, and mother confessor. She’s on her own search f...

John LeTour is a recovering drug user who suffers insomnia and still deals to a high-end New York clientele, even though he’s trying to move on from the business. John’s professional midlife crisis becomes something more acute — and dangerous — when he re-encounters an old flame while a string of seemingly drug-related murders rocks the city.