Film Bookazine Total Film Cult Classics First Edition Back Issue

The world of cinema today, and indeed the last few decades, may sometimes feel populated entirely by big-budget superhero films, polished family animation, oversized spy thrillers, sci-fi sequels and award-baiting costume dramas. But look just behind the glossy surface of the Friday-night multiplex, and a dimension of strange cinematic delights will open up for you. The term ‘cult classic’ has come to encompass many things over the last few decades; underrated genre flicks that were slated on release or flopped at the box-office, but enjoyed a later revival; low-budget independent films that never got a fair shake in cinemas but built their fandom through word-of-mouth of its fervent followers; or socially transgressive and provocative movies that upset and invigorated viewers in equal measure. But however different those films can be, one thing unites them: today they are celebrated. Maybe not by everyone, but those who love them champion and defend them with a passion that your everyday studio release can only dream of. Here we try our best to give you a cross-section of the many forms – sometimes misshapen, but always fascinating – that cult classics, the movements around them and the icons behind them have taken, through the decades and across seemingly every genre under the sun, be it anarchic comedies, subversive dramas, polarising horror or paradigm-shifting sci-fi. We can’t cover everything, of course, but on the following pages you’ll get a heady mix of classic Total Film features along with dozens of pages of brand-new retrospectives, career celebrations and genre investigations, all written with the love and enthusiasm those films deserve, by members of the cinema-loving TF family. So leave the mundanity of the mainstream behind, and dive head-first into the wondrously weird world of cult cinema with us.