TLA Celebrates Underground Film with the TLA Cult Awards

Philadelphia, PA March 1^st, 2012 – Movie lovers recovering from a long award season have one more celebration of cinema to look forward to, but, this time, there aren’t any adorable dogs or 3D orphans in sight. TLACult.com, the cult, horror and exploitation arm of legendary Philadelphia movie retailer TLAvideo.com, has launched the 2012 TLA Cult Awards and this year’s pack of nominees is a rag tag bunch of mind-boggling cinematic delirium.   

Eschewing typical award fare, TLA’s programmers ignored the multi-million dollar “indies” and Hollywood pictures celebrated elsewhere and instead focused on the oftentimes strange, more oftentimes sexually graphic films that cult movie enthusiasts come to TLACult.com to buy. The TLA Cult Awards include categories for Best Cult DVD, Best Grindhouse/Exploitation DVD, Best Artsploitation DVD and Best Taboo Erotica DVD among others. 

“Look, we’re not trying to knock the big movie awards. They even managed to nominate one or two good movies this year,” proclaimed Dan Reed, Managing Editor of TLACult.com, “But there’s a lot more moviemaking going on out there that’s getting almost completely ignored by the mainstream. Our nominees include a sexploitation flick about a man whose body is infested with ants, a movie from the ‘70s about the sexual benefits of smoking marijuana, a horror movie done entirely with puppets and, of course, A Serbian Film. These movies may not have been made to target affluent urbanites with advanced degrees who consider themselves cultured, but that doesn’t mean they don’t deserve some recognition.”

Nominees were selected by members of TLA’s editorial and purchasing staff and were limited to DVD and Blu-ray releases from 2011. TLA also has a category, Best Website/Blog/Podcast/Whatever, that honors bloggers and other web personalities who help celebrate underground cinema and help keep cult movies alive. Nominees can be viewed and votes can be cast at TLACult.com/TLACultAwards2012. Voting is open through April 1^st, 2012 and winners will be announced on April 16^th, 2012.

“Our awards are for those with a taste for the weird and the shocking. Most have very small budgets and even smaller marketing campaigns supporting them. Many of them are in what polite society would call bad taste. But, we’ve got no interest in hiding our passion for these twisted, underground flicks. Sure, there are a lot of financial pressures on the film industry right now and that’s doubly true for small filmmakers on the margins, but every year there are more and more of us who love these films coming out of the woodwork and showing our passion. We see voting in these awards as one more way that fans can show their love for underground film.”