Against Big-Budget-Film Glut, the Road to Cult Status Is Rocky

“It’s not the norm to get pictures of this budget released, not to mention reviewed in the mainstream press,” says Stephen Sayadian, director and co-writer of “Dr. Caligari.”

Lots of movies are made for low budgets--$750,000 in the case of “Caligari”--but most go straight to video, if they are seen at all. The glut of big-budget Hollywood releases keeps most others out of the theaters.

“To get a ‘Caligari’ out there and noticed in a world of ‘K-9’ and ‘Turner and Hooch’ is an uphill battle all the way,” Sayadian says.

Sayadian made an earlier cult-movie splash with “Cafe Flesh.” That first success, he now admits, was largely an accident. This time, he knew how to connect with the midnight-movie crowd.

The trick, he said, is to make a movie stand out. People who call “Dr. Caligari” non-commercial miss the point, according to Sayadian. “That fact that it’s so off the wall is what makes it commercial. It actually, for a film of that budget, is quite commercial and quite visible.”

“Rocky Horror Picture Show,” still playing as a midnight movie almost 15 years after its release, has long since proved that there is an audience for films outside the Hollywood mainstream. “People appreciate film makers who put themselves on the line, and they can sort of detect when they care about their work and they don’t go for the straight commercial hit,” says Danny Peary, the New York-based author of a series of cult movie compendiums.

Cult movies, says Peary, are “different from the crowd. They break from the Hollywood assembly line, and audiences appreciate that.”

Peary’s definition of cult movies takes in everything from such studio releases as “Harold and Maude” or even “It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World” to offbeat low-budget offerings such as David Lynch’s “Eraserhead” and Sayadian’s own “Cafe Flesh.”

“These are the films people have emotional attachments to. They are word-of-mouth films,” Peary says. “People will not only see the films again and again, but they’ll bring new people with them.”

While it can be difficult to predict which movies will become cult favorites, Peary says many are controversial when released. “It’s when there’s indifference that you realize there won’t be a cult for the movie.”

“Dr. Caligari,” as it happens, can cite noble lineage in its quest for cult success. Peary’s nomination for the first cult movie ever is the original “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,” which played in one Paris theater for seven consecutive years.