Before I start, I have to delineate the difference between B-List and Cult – this is my own interpretation, so take it as you will. B-List is a movie that has been utterly shunned by the general populace as being bad. I’d pay no more than $5 to see a B-List movie at a repertory theatre but there’s a 50/50 chance said movie is not in my collection at home. Meanwhile, a Cult movie would be a B-List movie that more than 75% of the populace has seen and hate, yet somehow lives on in the hearts of the socially inept.

5. Akira. I struggled with this one. Akira is as popular in Japan as Goin’ Down The Road is in Canada. My animation history class was shown a 20 min clip of this movie as an example of how Japan dominates the world in cartoons. If you’ve any appreciation for hand drawn cartoons, there’s a good chance you’ve seen it and the sequence (Hand drawn! No computers!) of the psychic bubble blast racing through Neo-Tokyo is iconic*. You may know that there’s a remake being made right now in the US which is getting fanboys up in a tizzy. With Geekcred so high and steering the almighty Hollywood dollar nowadays, I’m pretty sure it is destined to fall upon it’s sword.

4. Blue Velvet. As Stock, Aitken and Waterman were telling me that they were never going to give me up, I wandered into a theatre in London to witness this David Lynch movie. Britons went mental for Blue Velvet, purely because of it’s campy undertones of US society rotting from the inside. To everyone else it was just a melodramatic freakshow that was signature Lynch – three times a charm! I wanted to include Dune in with this entry (Dino De sets! Costumes!) as that they both seem to be so obviously riling against the Hollywood studio machine yet still have uber-symbolic moments of “uh…what the fuck?” See: Dean Stockwell singing like a half mounted drag queen into a light. Blue Velvet has the distinction of having a scene so uncomfortable for me, that I nearly… nearly… left the theater: Where Jeffery is slowly taken around the underbelly of his hometown and eventually beaten to a pulp. We know Frank is going to pummel him but not before taking him for a joy ride in his world. Yes. It freaked me out.

3. Flash Gordon. Yet another Dino De Laurentiis boilerplate, trying to compete with Star Wars and Buck Rogers (??) bandwagons. Like Barbarella, but a hell of a lot less sexy/campy, we’re treated to a plethora of characters in various states of undress. Max Von Sydow’s over the top Ming will always be burned into my memory as being the prime example of my “British Make the Best Villains Theory”. Why do I find this movie “influential”? I think I’ve written about this before. It has more hairy men per frame than a lot of movies out there. Plus it has one of my top 5 favorite lines: “Dispatch War Rocket AJAX, to bring back his body!”

2. Blade Runner. “But Dead Robot,” I hear you whine, “This movie made millions! It was pivotal in it’s design and story! It ushered us into a new wave of Science Fiction that was taken seriously and even respected!” Oh shut it. No, I include this in the cult list purely because like when Lucas started to hack and cut his masterpieces, Ridley did the same to his one really good film… SEVEN TIMES. But unlike Star Wars, the cuts/re-edits are seamless and in every iteration of the movie, create something better, if not equal to each other. These many versions don’t sit well with many for whatever reason – “Dekker was a Replicant, his dream proved it! I hated the Unicorn, it was ass fake! The Voiceover was the only thing that made sense! Raspberries!” – yet there is a small group of fans who like them all! So I say “Cult” and here it sits! Now. Let me tell you about my mother…

1. The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. I’ve never seen a more polarizing movie. Those who don’t get it, can’t watch more than 20 minutes before their brains fry. Those who get it, swallow up every detail and revel in discovering something new with every viewing. The IMDB trivia page is of average content, but to me, each item there is a little starburst of fun. You have to love a sci fi movie that rifts on Thomas Pynchon novels in a fun way. I love how the whole movie was set up as if a franchise had been in place for years, much like Cloverfield had all those external clues to augment it’s story. If you pay attention to ABBA8D, you get much more appreciation for the movie.

*yes I used that word. Sorry.

5. Barbarella. At the influential age of 15 I pleaded with my mom to let me and an older friend to attend MapleCon, one of Canada’s first comic/fandom conventions. Parents certainly gave their kids longer leashes back then. One of the first midnight screenings I ever attended was of this sexy romp. Which I didn’t “get”. Seriously I didn’t find one moment of this movie funny at all but oddly enough I didn’t get angry at not getting the jokes. I was mesmerized by the chompy scary dolls on the ice planet and the full on hairy chest that Ugo Tognazzi (from the 1978 version of La Cage Aux Folles) sported half way through the movie. He was my first Wookiee crush. This was also one of my first Dino De Laurentiis movies where sets and costumes won out over story, script and sense – but more on that in my “Cult” list, coming soon.

4. Dark Star. I had heard that this movie was created by the same team that brought us Alien (as well as plucky John Carpenter) so I lost another night of sleep at the same ‘Con. It was the first independent film I ever saw and introduced me to the concept of “following the creative back to the source”, to get a better insight into the thought process of things. Both Dark Star and Alien dealt with isolation, claustrophobia and dread either humorously or disturbingly depending which theatre you were in. The best moment from Dark Star was the existential bomb’s logical rendering of killing itself.

3. Saturn 3. Know that I cringed along with the rest of the world when we saw Kirk Douglas’ floppy maboobs florp wildly in probably his last on-screen action shot. We do get to see a little more acting chops of Farrah Fawcet Majors Lee as she screams her way through this bizarre script, but its no Burning Bed. Really, there’s not much to this movie other than I really enjoyed the robot design, based on Leonardo Da Vinci’s anatomical drawings. Sure it had all the dystopian “we eat dogs in the future” vibe, and some excellent matte painting shots, but really it’s all about the scary robot design.

2. Battle Beyond The Stars. Johnboy Walton gets into his flying testicles and saves the universe. That’s all I remember about this one. I’m waiting for it to become available on instant access, here on Netflix Canada.

1. Millennium. Cheryl Ladd plays a time travelling, body snatching Sheena Easton look alike who gets romantically entangled with Kris Kristofferson. I liked this movie only because it was so awful while the book was a good fun read. John Varley is one of my favorite post-Heinlein authors and when I saw this movie come from out of nowhere, I had to see it. Come on, the star robot has a ton of lines and yet they didn’t bother to try to hide his human mouth. Though they did slather on silver makeup to make him look roboty.