Introduction

In the 1970s and early 1980s, when the first academic pieces on cult film were published, the concept of cult film or cult cinema was far from straightforward. Features of films that have been considered important cult factors include: strange and weird aesthetics; transgressive content; heightened intertextual self-awareness. The complexities of cult cinema are evident in the variable processes that feed into the idea of a cult film, as well as additional dimensions that have been considered important to cult status since the 1970s, including social, cultural, and technological factors. Cult cinema studies questions how we come to find meaning in experiences that often resist containment. Part of that comes from areas of the study that maintain that what is marginal in culture cannot remain so and should either be brought into ‘conventional’ studies, through methods commonly used and taught in psychology, sociology, or art criticism.