Discover the Top 10 Must-Watch Cult Classics: Essential Films for Every Movie Buff

It’s important to note that cult movies aren’t crafted for universal appeal. They attract a dedicated following who appreciates them deeply. When suggesting that everyone should watch the ten films on this list at least once, the aim is not to convert every viewer into a fan. Rather, it is to showcase the diverse forms that cult classics can take. Discovering a film you connect with might lead to multiple viewings, as these films often inspire repeated engagement.

Consider “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” directed by Jim Sharman and adapted from Richard O’Brien’s stage production “The Rocky Horror Show.” This film epitomizes the essence of a cult classic. It’s a campy, transgressive, queer sci-fi/horror B-movie musical. Its charm lies in its imperfections, clever self-parody, and unabashed strangeness, ensuring it remains unforgettable. Though it initially flopped in 1975, it continues to draw lively audiences to late-night screenings more than half a century later.

Meanwhile, the 1977 Japanese horror-comedy “House” offers a different flavor of cult filmmaking. Created by Nobuhiko Obayashi, an experimental filmmaker known for surreal TV commercials, “House” was Toho Studio’s response to the success of “Jaws.” Obayashi, seeking genuine terror, consulted his 10-year-old daughter, Chigumi, whose fear of being consumed by furniture inspired the film. The result is a bizarre story where seven teenage girls face gruesome fates at the hands of haunted household objects, orchestrated by a malevolent cat ghost. If you’ve ever wondered about the grinning orange cat seen on many an arthouse enthusiast’s t-shirt, “House” is your answer.

The movie is fun enough on its own terms — you can’t not have a blast watching Tim Curry as Dr. Frank-N-Furter singing “Sweet Transvestite” — but if you’re going to see “Rocky Horror” once in your lifetime, you’ll want to experience one of those late-night showings for maximum enjoyment. Normal rules of theater etiquette go out the window in favor of controlled chaos, with audience interaction via callbacks and props and a theatrical accompaniment by shadow casts reenacting the film as it plays. There may be some embarrassment arriving as a “virgin,” but once you’ve tasted blood, you’ll know if you want more (more … MORE … MOOOOORE!).

The 1977 Japanese horror-comedy “House” is the result of the Toho studio asking Nobuhiko Obayashi, an experimental filmmaker then most successful for surreal TV commercials, to make something like “Jaws.” Feeling that true terror could only come from a child’s perspective, the director asked his then-10-year-old daughter Chigumi what scared her. Her big fears involved being eaten by furniture, and so “House,” a movie wherein seven teenage girls get massacred by pianos, mattresses, and other haunted household objects controlled by an evil cat ghost (if you ever wondered what that smiling orange thing on the T-shirts of many an arthouse moviegoer was, here you go).

With copious green screen and handmade animated effects, “House” looks like pretty much no other movie out there. It’s completely absurd and overall funnier than it is scary, yet there is some real trauma in the film that’s hard to shake: Obayashi was working on the script for the World War II drama “Hanagatami” (eventually finished and released in 2017) when Toho assigned him “House,” and the heavier historical themes of that opus bleed into this B-movie.

John Carpenter’s “The Thing,” based on the John W. Campbell Jr. novella “Who Goes There?” wasn’t just a bomb in 1982, but a laughingstock. Critics hated it. Sci-fi fans hated it. Christian Nyby, director of the classic 1951 “Who Goes There?” adaptation “The Thing From Another World,” hated it. Ennio Morricone’s score got a Razzie nomination. Carpenter lost his contract with Universal over the failure of “The Thing.”

Looking back at the sci-fi horror epic’s contemporary reception, many would respond to those ’80s crowds like Marty McFly did to the ’50s audience in “Back to the Future”: “I guess you guys aren’t ready for that yet, but your kids are gonna love it.” In a summer movie season dominated by “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial,” Carpenter’s much darker vision of an alien encounter was too gory, nihilistic, and ambiguous for anyone to properly process.

Time has been kind to the same qualities that once got “The Thing” dismissed as schlock. Its practical effects are still disgusting, but now we can appreciate the marvelousness of that disgust, and its bleak view of human nature enhances the horror. Everything from “The X-Files” to “The Hateful Eight” to “Among Us” has paid homage to this cult classic.

“This Is Spinal Tap” wasn’t the first mockumentary, but it’s one of the movies that’s come to define the form. The general public was unaccustomed to this style in 1984, causing the whole joke to fly over most people’s heads. Many viewers questioned the point of seeing a “documentary” about an unsuccessful rock band they never heard of, and the film flopped. Even among those who liked it, some didn’t get it: Liam Gallagher of Oasis was upset to find out Spinal Tap was fictional.

That Rob Reiner’s directorial debut caused such confusion is a testament to how successfully it commits to the bit, mocking the pretension and ridiculousness of rock star mythology with a straight face. Nowadays, everyone loves a good mockumentary, but the cult fans of “This Is Spinal Tap” have the ultimate hipster claim of liking it before it was cool.

Star and co-writer Christopher Guest went on to direct many more mockumentaries of his own, while Reiner would have both cult and mainstream hits in just about every genre imaginable — his final film before his untimely death in 2025 was the legasequel “Spinal Tap II: The End Continues.”

It wouldn’t be a proper cult classic list without some “so bad, it’s good” representation, but this flavor of trash is such an acquired taste that it becomes difficult to decide on one that everyone should see. “Plan 9 From Outer Space” is the old standard and endearingly hokey, but it can also be kind of boring. “The Room” might have surpassed its infamy in recent years, but it’s really boring for long stretches between the bits everyone quotes.

“Troll 2” is atrocious on every level, but it’s also never boring. It’s not just awful, but awful in weird ways that provide nonstop unintentional comedy. For starters, it’s neither about trolls nor is it a sequel — it’s about vegetarian goblins with crappy masks who feed humans green goop to turn them into plants. It makes zero sense, and it’s all the funnier knowing that, as shown in the documentary “Best Worst Movie,” director Claudio Fragasso was genuinely convinced he was making good art.

Watching “Troll 2” is an educational experience that will teach you that you can’t piss on hospitality, that the power of goodness comes in a double-decker bologna sandwich, and that letting yourself be seduced by a witch runs the risk of being drowned in popcorn. It must be seen to be believed, but we can’t guarantee your sanity after watching it.

Quentin Tarantino has been many people’s gateway into the world of cult cinema. Many of his films have become big blockbuster success stories, but Tarantino’s a movie geek who wants to get you hooked on his own obsessions. Pulling from arthouse classics and grindhouse schlock in equal measure, his movies blur the distinction between highbrow and lowbrow until it no longer exists; they’re as reverent toward cinema in all its forms as they are irreverent toward everything else.

“Reservoir Dogs,” Tarantino’s 1992 debut feature, didn’t break into the mainstream the way his follow-up “Pulp Fiction” did two years later, but it immediately announced him as an auteur voice to be reckoned with. This low-budget crime flick, about a team of color-coded criminals turning on each other after a botched heist, established Tarantino’s trademarks of pop culture-savvy dialogue, nonlinear storytelling, and sadistic yet entertaining bursts of extreme violence. Whether you love the director’s style or hate it, you need to see “Reservoir Dogs” at least once to understand just how much it changed the face of American independent movies.

The first major midnight movie phenomenon of the 21st century, “Donnie Darko” is the sort of cult classic that leaves everyone scratching their heads over what the hell they just watched — and leaves some wanting to watch it many more times to figure it out (for more recommendations of this sort, check out Looper’s list of the 13 best movies like “Donnie Darko”). Yes, you could watch the inferior director’s cut, which gets bogged down in explanations for what’s happening, but why would you want to when the theatrical version’s mysteriousness is part of the appeal?

Richard Kelly’s mind-bending debut film involves time travel, biblical apocalypse, mental illness, teen angst, dark satire of suburbia, retro ’80s music and cultural references, doubtful commitment to Sparkle Motion, and a star-making lead performance by Jake Gyllenhaal. It also involves, as part of its climax, an airplane falling from the sky, which explains why it was completely unmarketable coming out just six weeks after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Flopping in its original run, it found its audience as DVDs circulated through college dorm rooms and hip arthouse theaters brought it back for midnight runs.

If you’re not already a fan of the Wachowskis’ 2008 “Speed Racer” movie, you may assume it’s on this list as another “so bad it’s good” pick. After all, most critics hated this expensive candy-colored flop on release, and that release was in recent enough memory that the initial negative reception weighs on its terrible Rotten Tomatoes score in a way that doesn’t happen for older hated-at-the-time films like “The Thing.” We’re here to inform you that “Speed Racer” is actually awesome, albeit a little overwhelming, and that’s why it’s increasingly reassessed as a cult classic.

Lana and Lilly Wachowski treated their unusually faithful adaptation of the 1960s anime as an experiment in “cubist” or “postmodern” cinema, leaning into the cleanliness of digital cinematography and the unreality of CGI to compress time and show multiple angles at once. It was ahead of its time, preceding the pop art stylization of the “Spider-Verse” movies and the ADHD perspective of “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” The combination of earnest anti-capitalist messaging, childish straight-from-the-cartoon comedy, and hallucinogenic racing scenes was never going to be for all tastes, but more people are recognizing the delights of this one-of-a-kind big-budget experiment.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe might have dominated pop culture in the 2010s, but not every comic book adaptation was guaranteed to be a blockbuster hit. If you were going by the hype at Comic-Con in 2010, you might have expected “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” Edgar Wright’s movie based on Bryan Lee O’Malley’s graphic novel series, to be the next big thing. Its failure at the box office was proof that just because the geeks love a movie doesn’t mean the rest of the world is going to care.

It’s the rest of the world’s loss, then, because the geeks were right about the awesomeness of “Scott Pilgrim.” The film, about a loser musician (Michael Cera) battling the Seven Evil Exes of his dream girl Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), is a hilarious hybrid of grounded rom-com and cartoon/video game-style action. Fans of the comic can quibble with Wright’s changes to the then-unfinished story, but once you’re able to converse about those adaptational issues, you’re already in the cult. Today, it’s extra fun to see so many soon-to-be-big actors, including Kieran Culkin, Brie Larson, and Chris Evans, filling out the supporting cast (all of whom reprised their roles for the English dub on the Netflix anime series, “Scott Pilgrim Takes Off”).

One of the major forms of the cult classic is the camp classic — the sort of movies that are so exaggerated and over the top, whether intentionally or unintentionally, that some viewers, especially in gay subcultures, can’t help but love them. Robert Aldrich’s 1962 melodramatic thriller “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?” is a masterpiece of intentional camp, with Bette Davis and Joan Crawford hamming it up as former child star sisters terrorizing one another.

“Baby Jane” was more successful in its initial release than a lot of films on this list, earning solid box office and getting five Oscar nominations. Yet there was something disreputable about its campy nature that’s kept it regarded as a cult film. Many critics at the time dismissed it as a shallow caricature (critics today are more positive about it). Its cultural impact was felt strongest in the wave of “psycho-biddy” exploitation films that followed. The rumors that Davis and Crawford hated each other as much in real life as their characters did, as dramatized in the limited series “Feud: Bette and Joan,” only added to the film’s lurid mystique.

There’s a strong argument that the lack of serious respect for “Baby Jane” compared to other horror movies of similar quality comes down to sexism. What’s great about cult movies is they don’t need to be “respectable” to be brilliant.