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The Top 10 Cult
Movies |
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10 The Shawshank
Redemption |
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A Best Picture nominee,
TNT ''New Classic,'' and cult flick? We
crawled through 500 yards of unimaginable
sewer foulness to deliver it to this list,
so you'd better believe it. C'mon, it
flopped only to explode on video,
culminating in a long-standing No. 1 rating
on IMDb's best-movies ranking. (It's now
fallen behind ''The Godfather.'') And Tim
Robbins' Andy Dufresne lends subversive
appeal that offsets Morgan Freeman's Oscar- |
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bait narration; solitary and
stoic, Andy fits neatly alongside Willy Wonka and
Bud Cort's Harold in the pantheon of cult-movie
heroes.
SIGNATURE LINE ''Get busy livin' or get busy
dyin'.''
WHO'S IN THE CULT Your dad. |
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9 Blade Runner |
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Screw Han Solo and
Indiana Jones; Harrison Ford was never
cooler than when he was hunting replicants
(like the one played by Daryl Hannah) in
this future-shock noir. The setting: 2019
L.A., a neon hellhole where the rain barely
ever lets up and threats are uttered in a
babel of pidgin languages. In the middle of
it all is Ford's gumshoe Rick Deckard -- a
riff on Raymond Chandler's Marlowe, with the
Lucky Strikes replaced by retinal scans. The
constant? Knockout |
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dames like Sean Young, whose
bloodred kisses promise doom. Based on a Philip K.
Dick story, ''Blade Runner'' is a classic that's as
twisty as a Möbius strip.
SIGNATURE LINE ''Wake up. Time to die.''
ORIGINAL OR DIRECTOR'S CUT? The latter, which
features a sequence that hints that our hero may be
a replicant too. |
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8 Scarface |
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We suppose the saga of
penniless Cuban refugee-cum-wealthy drug
kingpin Tony Montana's rise and fall has a
moral, if you want to look for it. But
frankly, it's a lot more fun to simply enjoy
this amazing Al Pacino vehicle for the
bloody, politically incorrect, relentlessly
macho potboiler that it is. Bodies are
chainsawed, lines are snorted, boots are
knocked, guns are fired; no wonder it's the
fave flick of 9 out of 10 gangsta rappers.
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SIGNATURE LINE ''Shay 'jello
to my wittle vrend!''
REFERENCED BY Rock band Smash Mouth, who
called their 1997 album ''Fush Yu Mang'' in homage
to Montana's mangled speech patterns. |
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7 Repo Man |
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Beer-swigging suburban
punks and blue-collar repo men collide as
they track down a 1964 Chevy Malibu --
which, by the way, just might be from outer
space. Exec-produced by an ex-Monkee
(Michael Nesmith) and directed by a onetime
Oxford law student, ''Repo Man'' was
destined for weirdness. But the movie found
its audience in rebellious high schoolers
and alienated Reagan-era hipsters, who
grooved to its surf-punk soundtrack and
memorized its riffs on society, space
aliens, and, of course, |
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shrimp.
SIGNATURE LINE ''Let's go get sushi and not
pay!''
SENSELESS ACT OF VIOLENCE Future Mighty Duck
Emilio Estevez slam-dancing awkwardly to the Circle
Jerks. |
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6 The Texas
Chainsaw Massacre |
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If the first two
minutes don't scare the bejesus out of you,
well, you're one cold fish. Based on the
ghoulish true-life killing spree of Ed Gein
(as was ''Psycho''), ''Chainsaw'' is about
five kids who happen upon a house in the
sweltering Texas badlands only to become
fodder for a clan of cannibalistic freaks
led by the power-tool-waving bogeyman
Leatherface. But back to those first two
minutes: A narrator's |
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ominous voice-over sets the
scene. Then the screen goes black. Black for too
long. Finally, split-second flashes of light from
crime-scene photographers reveal glimpses of the
carnage. Hold on tight. ''Chainsaw'' (look for New
Line's remake next year) is one of the scariest
movies of all time not because of its gore --
although there's plenty -- but because it feels like
a documentary. One you shouldn't be watching.
SIGNATURE LINE ''Hey, Grampa, we're gonna let
you have this one!''
HE'S IN IT? The narrator's voice belongs to
none other than John Larroquette. |
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