Bloomsbury Cult Film as a Guide to Life: Fandom, Adaptation, and Identity

Cult Film as a Guide to Life investigates the world and experience of cult films, from well-loved classics to the worst movies ever made. Including comprehensive studies of cult phenomena such as trash films, exploitation versions, cult adaptations, and case studies of movies as different as Showgirls, Room 237 and The Lord of the G-Strings, this lively, provocative and original book shows why cult films may just be the perfect guide to making sense of the contemporary world. Using his expertise in two fields, I.Q. Hunter also explores the important overlap between cult film and adaptation studies. He argues that adaptation studies could learn a great deal from cult and fan studies about the importance of audiences' emotional investment not only in texts but also in the relationships between them, and how such bonds of caring are structured over time. The book's emergent theme is cult film as lived experience. With reference mostly to American cinema, Hunter explores how cultists, with their powerful emotional investment in films, care for them over time and across numerous intertexts in relationships of memory, nostalgia and anticipation. Review I.Q. Hunter has seen everything, read everything, remembered everything, and miraculously retained all his fans love for a wildly improbable filmography stretching from Casablanca to Pink Flamingos, from Plan Nine from Outer Space to The Rocky Horror Picture Show. His autobiographical framework and his impassioned, inimitable voice drive this valentine to all things cultish with wit, vigor, and irresistible appeal without ever sacrificing razor-sharp analysis or theoretical sophistication. The result is one of those rare academic monographs you can read for fun. Whether or not cult film can indeed save your life, writing like Hunters could go a long way to save cinema studies from itself. --Thomas Leitch, Professor of English, University of Delaware, USACult Film as a Guide to Life is an elegant exploration of a number of themes and debates such as cult adaptations, cultural capital and exploitation cinema. Weaving together a number of essays, cult film expert Hunter probes why these films are so important to those who love them and, in the final chapter, begins to outline how they can indeed function as a guide to life. --Jamie Sexton, Senior Lecturer in Film and Television Studies, Northumbria University, UKIn his characteristically bold and distinctive way, I. Q. Hunter raises vital questions, provokes debate and sets the agenda for new approaches within the continually shifting and evolving field of cult film studies. Cult Film as a Guide to Life is an engaging, highly readable and endlessly thought-provoking book. --Kate Egan, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, Aberystwyth University, UK About the Author I.Q. Hunter is Professor of Film Studies at De Montfort University, UK, and the author of British Trash Cinema (2013), editor of British Science Fiction Cinema (1999) and co-editor of British Comedy Cinema (2012) and The Routledge Companion to British Cinema History (2016).