ABSTRACT
This chapter examines potential bridges and links between the realms of underground cinema and cult film. Underground films are often associated with transgression, at the level of aesthetics, form and depicted content. Underground film’s transgression also incorporated taboo-breaking content. The history of underground cinema is largely one of men making films. Cult cinema stars and underground stars are connected through their lack of mobility. A further key connection between cult cinema and underground film is that both have fostered their own circuits and instances of stardom that operate counter to the mainstream’s nurturing and promotion of a particular roster of highly paid mass-appeal actors. As Mark Betz writes, ‘Underground films at times shared not only same representational codes of marketing and the same police lockup shelves, but also the same exhibition space and quite heterogeneous audiences’. Many of the spaces associated with cult cinema, such as the midnight movie theatre auditorium, or the fan convention, are predominantly gendered as masculine.
