We’ve got almost 250,000 different titles on HotMovies! That is an awful lot of content. Did you know that you don’t have to jerk off or fuck to the stuff you watch on our site, though?! It’s strange, but true! This fun fact, and that we just recently started streaming titles from the Erotica Movie Channel, got my mind thinking in terms of movies that could be enjoyed equally with or without your genitalia being involved. To be clear, these movies are absolutely wank-worthy in whole or in part.
So that all got me thinking about one of my favorite kinds of movies: cult classics. What’s a cult classic? It’s a movie that, while not typically a big box-office or even critical success, maintains a small and dedicated following. So while Star Wars is technically a cult classic, the first midnight movie (another name for them, because many became popular with midnight screenings at movie theaters) most people throw out as an example is The Rocky Horror Picture Show or Blue Velvet.
So here is where things get interesting: cult classics and porn have a really strong connection to one another. Many cult classics are heavy on nudity, subversive themes and behavior, and stay underground and not often spoken about in “polite company”—sound familiar? Many directors and actors regarded in cult circles have found their way to porn, erotica, or nudie flicks as a way of making ends meet or getting their ideas out there when nobody wanted to finance a movie without tits or penetration.
While I did my research, I found a ton of directors famous in the midnight circuit that have movies on HotMovies (that is, porn). Herschell Gordon Lewis is considered the father of the splatter film with 1963’s Blood Feast. His movies were low-budget and sleazy as heck. And on top of super gory grindhouse movies, H.G. Lewis wound up doing skin flicks. Then there’s Ray Dennis Steckler (who also directed as Cindy Lou Sutters). While he did a fair number of stag films, he is best known for directing The Thrill Killers, The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living And Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!?, and Rat Pfink a Boo Boo. He also acted in several films, including Eegah, which is commonly thrown around as possibly the worst movie ever.
Known for artsy vampire movies and the zombie film The Grapes Of Death, Jean Rollin (who also worked as Michel Gentile) padded his resume with porn. Jess Franco of Vampyros Lesbos fame and far too many midnight masterpieces to his name to count took his unique brand of eroticism to the blue screen. Although, to be fair, we only have a softcore title from him—Tender Flesh. Charles Kaufman directed The Secret Dreams Of Mona Q, then went on to write and direct The Toxic Avenger and Mother’s Day. He also wrote episodes of cartoons like The Real Ghostbusters, Dennis The Menace, and Bravestarr in the 1980s.
The most celebrated and decorated female director of exploitation films ever, and the esoteric slasher A Night To Dismember, Doris Wishman (who also directed as Luigi Manicottale), has several titles on HotMovies. The director of gems like The Driller Killer and Bad Lieutenant, Abel Ferrara, both directed and performed in 1977’s 9 Lives Of A Wet Pussy Cat. Joe D’Amato did the infamous Anthropophagous, several Emmanuelle titles, and hit all the hallmarks of grimy Italian directors in his career: jungle cannibals (including an Emmanuelle jungle cannibal film), the post-apocalyptic, zombies, sword-and-sandals adventures, westerns, and war films. And he has a whole library of adult films (including some featuring a young Rocco Siffredi and Ramon Nomar). AVN Hall-of-Fame director Fred J. Lincoln (sometimes credited F.J. Lincoln) had a big role in Wes Craven’s brutal The Last House On The Left. And lastly, Ed Wood, whose life and effort to make the quintessential bad cult classic Plan 9 From Outer Space, was immortalized in a Tim Burton biopic. Well, he was no stranger to skin, and we have a handful of his bawdy efforts.
That was a lot, I know. Needless to say, porn and cult film are good friends. So on that note, I am presenting some of the greatest cult classics on HotMovies. I decided to do my best to not include movies that veered too far to the porn side of things, like Alice In Wonderland and Hot & Saucy Pizza Girls. You get those gems in a different article! I recommend getting some friends together, pound some beers, make some popcorn, and have a movie night with these!
Lust For Freedom
Troma Entertainment is one of the most beautiful gifts ever given to mankind. The studio is probably best known for The Toxic Avenger, Sgt. Kabukiman, NYPD, Surf Nazis Must Die, and Tromeo & Juliet. Most of their films are a unique blend of punk-rock DIY ethics, slapstick comedy, junior-high-level grossout humor, buckets of blood and/or slime, and boobs. And everyone seems like they had the best time making them. While we don’t have nearly enough Troma on the site (seriously, Troma, who do I have to kill to get more of your movies?!), each one of their titles we have on the site could well be in this list.
I wound up choosing Lust For Freedom. It’s a fun and foxy women-in-prison flick (and who doesn’t love those?) directed by Eric Louzil (who also made two of the highly entertaining Class Of Nuke ‘Em High sequels). Gun battles, human trafficking, vigilante justice, lezzing out—this movie has it all! It also features scream queen Michelle Bauer (Puppet Master III, Nightmare Sisters, Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama). Bauer, for those that don’t know, also did porn under the name Pia Snow. If you’re still unsure about Lust For Freedom, just watch the first ten minutes and you’ll become a believer, too!
Inga
Ingenue movies (naive young women learning about both sex and her own sexuality throughout the movie) don’t come much better than Inga. Directed by Joe Sarno, a legend in the sexploitation and softcore genres, Inga follows a young woman who moves in with her aunt after her mother passes away. It’s a gorgeously shot artifact of the 1960s and should not be missed. Sarno has other really important films here on HotMovies, including All The Sins Of Sodom and Butterflies (which is a favorite of our Stoney Rubble). Inga comes to us by way of Retro Seduction Cinema—and I recommend you just scour their library, because there’s an awful lot of awesome in there.
S&M Hunter
So this one is a little on the porny side, but it is just too bonkers to not mention! S&M Hunter, released in the states by Pink Eiga (who have some really incredible features in their library), is a perfect blend of absurdist humor, Japanese weirdness, and BDSM. From 1986, the movie is so cool and wild that it was selected to be screened at the 2008 Fantastic Fest (a film festival in Austin founded by the dudes behind The Alamo Drafthouse and Ain’t It Cool News). The titular S&M Hunter is a dapper dude in an eyepatch and bowler that uses his expertise with ropes and shibari to control women and get them off. Director Shuji Kataoka made a series of these: the equally watchable S&M Hunter Begins, S&M Hunter, and S&M Hunter: Legend Of Yakuza (which we don’t presently have on the site). I really can’t recommend this movie enough if you and your friends are okay with edgy cult films.
P.O. Box
I couldn’t have an article about cult classics on HotMovies and not have a movie by Tinto Brass on here. Tinto Brass is considered perhaps the greatest erotica director of all-time. His most famous work, Caligula, is in every book about cult films ever, basically. And while it’s not an especially good movie, it is very entertaining, historically important, features huge actors like Peter O’Toole, Malcolm McDowell, and Helen Mirren, was written by Gore Vidal, and was very publicly bankrolled by Bob Guccione (founder of Penthouse Magazine). While nowhere near as grand a scale as Caligula, I’d argue P.O. Box is a more entertaining, more competent, more engaging film. And it is definitely more erotic. The idea is Tinto, who also made the hugely popular erotic films All Ladies Do It and Frivolous Lola, is reading through the erotic fan mail he receives. Each letter creates its own vignette, and each vignette is capital-S “Steamy.”
The Hardcore Collection: The Films Of Richard Kern
Richard Kern is one of the most famous erotic photographers of all-time. His work has been highly influential. But he never exactly took off as a filmmaker. In The Hardcore Collection, though, you can see some of what was swirling around in Kern’s mind, visually. It’s artsy and it’s challenging, and like something you might see at an Art School showcase… but that doesn’t mean it’s bad. It’s chaotic and violent and daring and sexy at different points. There is hardcore in it, but that is not the point of all the short films in this collection. And I want to mention how dripping this collection is with cult and coolness cred: punk-rock icon Lydia Lunch is in it (and does dirty stuff in it!!!), as is former Black Flag and S.O.A. frontman Henry Rollins. The music in the films come from legendary experimental rock band Sonic Youth and Foetus (the hugely influential industrial/experimental project of JG Thirlwell—who went on to score The Venture Brothers and Archer). But don’t worry if this all sounds like too much for you! You can still enjoy Kern and the sexiness he brings out in people with these two volumes, Shot By Kern: Volume 1 and Richard Kern: Extra Action (And Extra Hardcore).
Blue Summer
Let me take a minute here to talk about Vinegar Syndrome. They are, no fooling, one of my favorite companies ever. They have a gigantic library of cult films, adult films, and everything in-between… and they show them all the true love and care that they deserve. The movies are digitally remastered (they’re all over our remastered category), given covers that feature the original movie artwork, and hyped with just the right amount of social media work and merch (I just missed out on adult-sized dino pajamas they re-printed because of a horror movie called Don’t Panic, and I’m bummed). It was tough to not use up more than a couple slots on this list with their stuff, so I just wanted to shout-out a few here: The Suckers is a sexploitation take on The Most Dangerous Game (which has been adapted ad infinitum like as Ready Or Not and Ice T’s The Game), there’s the groovy nudie documentary Sexual Liberty Now, and the infamous Wendy O. Williams (of the classic punk band The Plasmatics) porno, Candy Goes To Hollywood. The list goes on, but I’ve already written an essay of a love letter before even talking about the movie I actually picked.
Blue Summer is pure early 1970s joy. It’s one of those buddy, young-dude sex comedies (think Sex Drive or Road Trip) that revels in the popularity of van culture, hitchhiking culture, and free love in equal amounts. The movie is softcore, but it is still both fappable and movie-night appropriate. Any time you have a movie about anyone hitting the road in a van called ‘The Meat Wagon’ you know you’re in for a good time. While director Chuck Vincent did his fair share of hardcore movies (including the revered Roommates, he was best known for his softcore sex comedies like Blue Summer, Summer Camp, Preppies, and Hollywood Hot Tubs. He also did the equally smutty Sybil Danning barbarian flick Warrior Queen, and the bizarre cult thriller Deranged (which happens to star porno legends Veronica Hart, Jerry Butler, and Jamie Gillis).
Let My Puppets Come
This definitely has to be the silliest movie I am listing here. Let My Puppets Come is an absolutely bizarre concept. It’s a porn populated almost exclusively by puppets. I honestly am unsure what the market was for this or who it was geared towards except maybe hoping there would be enough people saying to themselves, “Let me see what the fuck they were thinking,” to merit some sort of financial return. And it’s possible it worked, because here I am almost 50 years later telling everyone, “Go check out this weird puppet porno.” The film is very funny in spots and ridiculously dumb in others… but it is sure to go over well with any group looking for a good time. The film is directed by Gerard Damiano, perhaps the most-celebrated adult director of the Golden Age. His other credits include Deep Throat, The Devil In Miss Jones, and The Satisfiers Of Alpha Blue. This is not quite on that level. But it does feature a scene of a puppet making it with a real live lady… so, there’s that.
Escape From Hell
I am here to tell you that Escape From Hell is legit. It’s an early-1980s women-in-prison movie set in the jungle, complete with a sadistic warden and guards, and a jailbreak through the rainforest! It’s got plenty of boobs and bush, lesbian prison sex, punishment and whipping, and more! And like all the best cult films, it was released under several different titles: I’m Coming Your Way, Escape, and Hell Prison among them. The director, Edoardo Mulargia (because of course it’s an Italian film), has solid cult credentials chock full of Spaghetti Westerns mostly… including a Django “sequel.” I don’t want to spoil too much, but Escape From Hell hits every jungle WIP note: catfights, random titillation dances, and group showers among them.
Score
The Erotica Movie Channel is making some serious waves on HotMovies! They’ve given us a movie that was up for the Palm D’Or at Cannes in The Flesh (La Carne), one of the most historically important X-rated movies of all-time in Blue Movie, a rad Bettie Page biopic, and they are feeding us even more Tinto Brass! Love letter over: Score is an absolute classic. It is an adaptation of an Off-Broadway play that none other than Sylvester Stallone was in. It was partly responsible for adult film going mainstream. It is a fun and funny feature about swinger culture, and it is very highly rated on the film nerd website Letterboxd.com. The director, Radley Metzger, also did the adult classics The Opening Of Misty Beethoven and Barbara Broadcast. I don’t want to say any more because: (A) You should just watch it, and (B) as of the writing of this there should be a special movie review on the way for it.
Play-Mate Of The Apes
You know what makes a good cult classic sometimes? Just being bad. Not any old kind of bad… but so bad you groan out loud bad. And movies that bad, to have even a sniff at being cult classics, need to be either taken super self-seriously or the cast and crew needs to seem as if they are having the most fun a human being can have (aka the Troma approach). Play-Mate Of The Apes falls squarely into that second category. The movie is not good, but it is the bad kind of good. Misty Mundae is the star of this, and it’s easy to see why she has her own cult. She has a very girl-next-door look and is super sexy. She has also acted under the name Erin Brown. Apart from all the bad-good parody(-ish) titles she’s been in for Seduction Cinema (like Mummy Raider and Spider Babe) and horror-themed softcore from Factory2000, Misty also appeared in Lucky McKee’s entry in the Masters Of Horror series, Sick Girl, and the fantastic-sounding Dickshark (note to self: hunt down Dickshark). And as far as Play-Mate Of The Apes goes? Well, let’s just say alcohol won’t hurt your enjoyment of this one.
(Fun Fact about Seduction Cinema: They also have what are currently our only Brinke Stevens titles on the site)
Cafe Flesh
Cafe Flesh is a porn. But Cafe Flesh is also a weird fucking movie. Director Rinse Dream started out as a creative director for Hustler, and went on to direct the non-porn cult classic Dr. Caligari (an unofficial sequel to the German Expressionist classic), and a music video for the band Wall Of Voodoo (famous for the song “Mexican Radio”). The movie was co-written by Jerry Stahl (who also co-wrote Dr. Caligari). Stahl has worked in TV and movies—writing episodes of Maron and Twin Peaks, among others. Stahl’s other big cult contribution is Permanent Midnight, a book-turned-biopic that starred Ben Stiller of Stahl himself chronicling his working in show business (like writing for ALF) while a heroin addict. The movie is post-apocalyptic, super arty, very funny, and features a bit part (non-sex) from Richard Belzer. Even being a porn, it was hugely popular on the midnight movie circuit. In 2020, our Ed Mann named it one of the “Must-See Movies From The 80s”.
Women In Cell Block 7
Does it surprise you that a number of really good cult classics on HotMovies are women in prison movies? Because it didn’t surprise me. Women In Cell Block 7 features my favorite action sequence in all of HotMovies. This movie is the directorial debut of Rino Di Silvestro. Di Silvestro went on to make the Nazisploitation flick, Deported Women Of The SS Special Section and 1976’s The Legend Of The Wolf Woman—a surprise selection of Quentin Tarantino’s hand-curated film festival that he loved so much that every year contained a surprise pick (that was dubbed the “Wolf Woman” selection). Cell Block 7 is another gem of a WIP movie: violent, tawdry, and titillating. Not only that, but it stars cult siren Anita Strindberg, who is famous for starring in two classic Sergio Martino giallos: The Case Of The Scorpion’s Tail and Your Vice Is A Locked Room And Only I Have The Key. She also appeared in Lucio Fulci’s Lizard In A Woman’s Skin . When I saw that Cell Block 7 was part of our After Hours Cinema library, I just had to add it to the article. I seriously urge you all to not only watch this movie, but comb through their catalog on the site!