AURORA | These movies can still make Patrick Jager feel like a kid again.
Jager, an executive at Aurora-based High Noon Entertainment television and film company, hasn’t been skewed by decades spent working in the industry. He may spend his days producing, developing and programming film, but the magic of the art form hasn’t evaporated. Instead, certain titles are still liable to make him drag his friends and family members to an indie movie theater for a midnight showing.
“I actually have quite a few movies like that. I used to act out the ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show’ at the Ogden Theatre when I was a kid,” Jager said. “There’s also stuff from the ‘70s and ‘80s like ‘The Warriors’ and ‘Harold and Maude’ that are still fun for me.”
That kind of nostalgia is powerful, and it hasn’t gone unnoticed by programmers at movie theaters across the metro area. There’s a sizable market for cult films in Colorado, and it has considerably expanded in the past 20 years. That popularity may seem like a contradiction in terms.
“What makes something cult, by definition, is that it has a small but rabid following,” Jager said. “You’re looking to create something that’s going to play to the strengths of that group.”
But the cult movie scene has grown far beyond small showings of well-known titles like “Rocky Horror,” even though that movie still comes up every month in the Esquire Theatre’s “Midnight Madness” series. Savvy moviegoers now have a good deal of choice when it comes to content and venue for their cult movie fix.
“Cult films are all about coming out with your secret likes and desires. In the beginning, there seemed to be a little bit of shame associated with B movie titles,” said Keith Garcia, programming director for the Denver Film Society. Twenty years ago, Garcia helped launch a midnight movie series at the Mayan Theatre on South Broadway, and has since played a key role in building a stronger film culture in the metro area. “Since then, cult film has actually become mainstream.”
That mainstream acceptance is clear in the variety and breadth of cult movie events across the metro area.
There’s the “Film on the Rocks” series at Red Rocks Amphitheater, a summer pairing of cult flicks and live music that often sells out the 9,000-plus capacity venue in Morrison. The Mile High Sci Fi comedy group follows the “Mystery Science Theatre 3000” model and jabs at bad movies in front of a live audience at different Denver-area theaters. At the SIE Film Center on East Colfax Avenue in Denver, “The Watching Hour” film series features lesser-known cult movies and new flicks that show promise of attracting a big audience.
“Every year, there are at least a dozen new movies that are going to go through a cult metamorphosis,” said Garcia, who created “The Watching Hour” as an alternative to the series that feature the same titles month after month. “I call it my neo-cult series. I try to pull themes that are so buried underneath everything that they get entirely missed.”
In the coming weeks, for example, “The Watching Hour” will feature films like “Streets of Fire,” an epic musical from the 1980s that failed to find an audience. “Welcome to the Dollhouse,” the Thai western “Tears for a Black Tiger,” both “Sister Act” movies and “Requiem for a Dream” will also figure into the program.
It’s a departure from the formulaic approach to cult movie programming that guided the Mayan series in its early years, Garcia said. Instead of the reliable titles like “The Goonies” and “Friday the 13th” that pull in a reliable crowd, Garcia wants to feature cult movies that are actually underground.
“With ‘Requiem for a Dream,’ I thought that everyone who saw that movie thought, ‘That was a great movie, but I’m never going to see that movie again,’” Garcia said, referencing Darren Aronofsky’s dark 2000 film rooted in themes of abuse, loss and hopelessness. “I feel there’s an entire generation that has now missed that movie.
“That’s where ‘The Watching Hour’ comes in. Let’s be that friend that shares these films,” he said.
Garcia and his cohorts at the Denver Film Society also know the value of the more mainstream cult titles, the movies that are likely to draw thousands of fans to one of Colorado’s premiere concert venues. The “Film on the Rocks” series has become one of the premiere movie events in the metro area, a showcase that combines film and local music. Films like “The Big Lebowski,” “The Goonies” and “Office Space” have sold out the massive venue, and Garcia said that successful formula came after some puzzling misses.
“There was definitely an interesting renaissance about five years ago that took us by surprise,” Garcia said, adding that classic films like “Casablanca” failed to draw a crowd. A screening of “Top Gun” changed that formula. “We’re trying to attract an audience of thousands of people. That’s a wildly varied scale. What title is going to bring 8,000 people hiking up Red Rocks to sit down outside for a couple of hours and share that experience?”
Finding that kind of appeal is part alchemy, but Garcia has come up with some general guidelines after programming cult movie series for decades.
“The ones that I think elevate to massive status are the ones that were always just perfect the way they are. Due to chance and circumstance, they didn’t hit what they needed to become a film classic,” Garcia said. “It all comes back to the audience.”
Audiences can be fiercely loyal when it comes to these movies. It’s the kind of loyalty that lasts decades, a brand of fidelity that made Jager make the trip out to a small theater for a midnight screening of a low-budget horror movie from the 1960s.
“I took my son and two friends and my nieces to a ‘Night of the Living Dead’ screening last year,” Jager said. “My son loved it.”
For more information about “The Watching Hour” and “Film on the Rocks” selections, log on to denverfilm.org. For listings for the “Midnight Madness” series at the Esquire theater at 590 Downing St. in Denver, visit landmarktheatres.com. The schedule for the “Mile High Sci Fi” comedy and film series is available at milehighscifi.com.
Reach reporter Adam Goldstein at agoldstein@aurorasentinel.com or 720-449-9707