The Rough Guide to Cult Movies - Softcover

THE PITCH For almost as long as I can remember, movies were always important, an event, like church, the only difference being that the queue to get in to see Jungle Book was a fair bit longer. But movies took you out of yourself, made you belong to something, a quasi-religious experience if you like. Which is why, today, whenever I go to the cinema, I spend the first minutes of every movie worrying in case the audience is going to talk all the way through it. This book has something to do with all that but it really exists for one reason only – to increase your enjoyment of the movies. If you want a thoroughly exhaustive reference work, put this back on the shelf now. If you want a film buff’s guide to cinema as an art form, sorry. Or if you want a list of the cast and crew on every film, best go elsewhere, there are certain websites we’d recommend. But if you want several hundred socking good reasons to visit your local rep house, watch a late-night rarity on! TV or splash out on that DVD movie you’ve been promising yourself, you’ll find them in here. There are no dull films in this book. Mad films, yes. Great films, certainly. Films that provoke fierce disputes as to whether they’re well cool or, well, crap: you bet. So if your ambition is to spend even more of your life watching films than you already do, this should serve you well. Now go. Use it wisely. And may the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end at least once. Paul Simpson

Paul Simpson is author of Rough Guides to Elvis, Cult TV, Kids'' Movies, James Bond, Lord of the Rings and more.