Night Of The Cult Wizard

Nowadays, the term"cult movie"is mentioned and discussed by more and more reviewers and movie fans on Internet and in movie magazines. Although the study of cult movie has not formed a popular cultural upsurge, yet the search, watching and discussion on cult movie and its phenomenon are gaining higher momentum recently. Maybe in most people's eyes, the term"cult movie"is just a peculiar and fashionable label. As a result, little attention has been paid to such questions as how it comes into being and changes, and what is its essence. This thesis mainly presents the historic development of cult movie and comprehensively explores its subculture essence, revealing the changing trend of cult movie---a subculture capital from marginalization to mainstream.The thesis contains three parts:The introduction is about the retrospection and brief literature review of the term"cult movie". It points out its initial definition with the English origin and introduces the basis of the"cult movie"translation after it was introduced into China.The upper sheet explores the initial appearance of cult movie, and tells us how it came into being in American Midnight Movie in the 1970s. It gives a specific analysis of four classical cult movies: EI Topo(1970), Night of the Living Dead(1968), Pink Flamingos(1972) and The Rocky Horror Picture Show(1975), and demonstrates how they flourish in the Midnight Movie, pointing out the main factors of promoting them to become cult movies.By the above analysis, in the conclusion part of the upper sheet, the thesis points out the distinctive features of cult movies from ordinary ones, and further analyzes the special significance of cult movie on the subculture groups as well as its resulting social factors. Cult movies, appearing in the context of postmodernism, belong to one of the expressive forms of western post-modernistic subculture in essence.The above sheet first analyzes how the movies of various forms are brought into the research area of cult movie by movie fans, reviewer, manufacturers and sellers under the influence of video and cable television since the 1980s, which makes it more complex and difficult to define what is cult movie. Then this part presents its new development and indicates that cult movie is being utilized by the mainstream commercial movies under the drive of network media and commercial tide, showing the development trend from marginalization to mainstream. And at last, by analyzing the different styles of Japanese, Hong Kong and Korean cult movie, this sheet points out the distinctive features of cult movie under different cultural backgrounds and gives emphasis to the movies with the cult-oriented characteristics in Chinese mainland, presenting the possible path to develop Chinese cult movie.By the above analysis, in the conclusion part of the above sheet, this thesis concludes the diversification, mainstream and territorialization trend of cult movie development under the drive of various new media. As a subculture capital, cult movie has a great significance on the mainstream culture and therefore this thesis reveals the fundamental factors of the existence and development of cult movie.