There is the Hollywood, big-budget blockbuster. There is the so-called indie
flick with name actors and a budget over $20 million, but its just not released
in 1,000 theaters. We get the art house movies and their normal companions,
foreign films. But of my favorite movies are the ones that have a status
unrelated to their budget, release pattern or language: the cult film.
My definition of cult cinema:

a film initially deemed not appropriate for the mainstream- be it unknown actors/director, questionable subject matter/story, low budget- that is picked up by people and deemed worthy of their time- be it multiple viewings, fan sites, conventions, and more.

Cult films do have generic traits, but they are not restricted to these, allowing many different types and kinds of movies to fall under the cult cinema label. The first traits are some I mentioned above; unknown actors or director, questionable subject matter or storyline and low budgets help place a movie in the position to become a cult classic. A say places it within position, because a movie like Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead had many of these traits, but it still had to be accepted by the fans and they needed to deem it worthy of cult status, not the director or producer.

A true cult film proves its worthiness within the pantheon of independent, off-beat or just plain weird cinema by creating a following of worshipers (a.k.a. viewers). This is done with a large number of multiple viewings, fan
websites and conventions for the ubër-fans to gather with others of the same ilk. The true characteristics of a cult film must contain certain elements mentioned already, but it still must be accepted and created by the fans into a
cult movie. The true cult film creates a fan culture for itself; one that demands a certain level of knowledge about the film to enter the cult created around the film. This is the one standard that a cult film must create. Movies like The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Star Wars create fan cultures that require the “true” fans to know more about the movie than plot points and lines of dialogue. The cult fan must make the movie a major part of their free time, for some their entire lives. We have cult films because they hit the right note within the right persons.

Cult films don’t add elements to make family movies and appropriate for all-ages, allowing them to pack more people into the multiplexes. Cult films explore the mostly un-explored and are able to reach certain people more deeply than Hollywood’s latest family-animation movie. Sometimes they makes points, sometimes they just entertain and sometimes they gross us out, but we love them and keep coming back to them.