ABSTRACT
Oc/cult and esoteric films use special techniques to engineer a specific type of “buzz” for aficianados. Ernest Mathijs and Jamie Sexton’s substantial study Cult Cinema contends that “overall, critics and scholars are vague about this component”. Several oc/cult films have contemporary settings, such as The Witches in which the cult do their ritual cavorting to jazz. Oc/cult film production and circulation continues in both mainstream commercial “occultism” and material from within oc/culture itself. Oc/cult films are affective events experienced by the fan’s shifting singularity in affective connection with them. Paul Wegener played the evil magician Oliver Haddo in Rex Ingram’s 1926 film of Somerset Maugham’s novel The Magician, the poster for which promises “a thousand thrills and mysteries never seen on the screen”. Alejandro Jodorowsky performs with kitsch panache, clad in white, with platform boots and wearing an enneagram, on a throne flanked by naked, shaven twins.
