British Universities Film & Video Council

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Withnail and Us – Fan Worship

What makes a film become a cult and what are the characteristics of the cult film fan? Paul Booth digs deep for some answers in the light of Justin Smith’s new book, Withnail and Us.

About the author: Paul Booth, Senior Lecturer in Film, Department of Media, Manchester Metropolitan University.
E-mail: p.d.booth@mmu.ac.uk
Telephone : 0161 247 1946

‘Here. Hare. Here’ were the words inscribed on the door of the decaying Wet Sleddale Hall. It was a cold and snowy February morning in 2009 and the hall was for sale at auction the following week. The silence of the fresh Cumbrian morning was broken by shouts emanating from the hall. Inside, congregated in what was once the kitchen area, were approximately twenty squatters. ‘Have you got any booze?’ asked one, ’…I demand to have some booze’, shouted another. I understood. These were no ordinary squatters – Wet Sleddale Hall was ‘Crow Crag’, the holiday home location used in the cult British film Withnail and I (1986), written and directed by Bruce Robinson. These fans had made the pilgrimage up to the hall to spend the night there, performing scenes from the film and re-creating the language and dress of the characters in an almost obsessive devotion to the original text. This type of ritualistic role-play and pilgrimage is symbolic of the cult film fan, a devotion that sets them apart from other fans.

What makes a film cult? In the recently released book, Withnail and Us: Cult Film and Film Cults in British Cinema, Justin Smith provides a critical analysis of British cult film and the characteristics of the cult film fan. Using examples of British cult films such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), Performance (1970), Quadrophenia (1979), Tommy (1975), The Man Who Fell To Earth (1974), The Wicker Man (1973) and Withnail And I, Smith provides an engaging discourse for the rise in cult film.

American independent films such as Donnie Darko (2001) and The Blair Witch Project (1999) gained instant cult status and a huge fanbase, but how do these differ from British cult film? The qualities of these films make them a success but offer none of the usual attributes that define cult film. Often associated with niche audiences, a film doesn’t have to be particularly good in terms of aesthetics or story; in fact this kind of failing often assists a film in gaining cult status. British cult films occupy a nostalgic place in time developed from, according to Smith, ‘social changes and cultural production of the 1960s and the decline of the production industry in the 1970s’. The nostalgia of the 1960s captured in Withnail and I offers an antidote to the popular American portrayal of the decade as an often-idealised time of free love and radical change, a time when people felt that they really could make a difference to society. This is in contrast to the 60s realisation provided in Withnail and I which seems a rather unpleasant place, a culture in decline where the only way to succeed was to conform. The alternative view of that decade develops a parallel nostalgia that makes the film even more enduring to cult fans. The decline of the 1960s subculture is defined by Danny, the drug dealer in the film, who states ‘…they’re selling hippie wigs in Woolworths man’, marking the commodification of the subculture and its cultural appropriation into the mainstream.

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