Drawn by the delectable panel title “Our Favorite Cult Films,” with images of my own favorite cult film Eating Raoul floating about like tacos gliding through a taqueria, I waited with great expectations while the panelists, led by moderator and Film Festival and Film Track Director Matthew Foster, discussed their favorite cult status films. The panel was held at 7PM Friday in the Hyatt’s Learning Center.

Foster led the charge with a review of “nunsploitation” films (yes, that’s a word), concluding with his choice School of the Holy Beast (Japan, 1974). Not only a fine example of the soft porn genre, Foster described the film as “strangely beautiful” and focused on the dichotomy of Nagasaki as both the most Christian city in Japan but also a World War II victim of bombing by a “Christian” superpower, the United States.

The other panelists, John L. Flynn, Chris Gore, and Shannon Strucci, chose their own cult favorites followed by contributions from a lively full-house audience. Troll 2 (USA, 1990), featuring an Alabama dentist attacked by vegetarian goblins, Pink Flamingos (West Germany, 1979), starring the incomparable Divine, and Born in Flames (USA, 1983), a mockumentary feminist SF film set in an alternative USA, led the parade of cult classics.