The 10 Greatest Fantasy Cult Classic Movies, Ranked
Ryan Heffernan is a Senior Writer at Collider. Storytelling has been one of his interests since an early age, with his appreciation for film and television becoming a particular interest of his during his teenage years.
This passion saw Ryan graduate from the University of Canberra in 2020 with an Honours Degree in Film Production. In the years since, he has found freelance work as a videographer and editor in the Canberra region while also becoming entrenched in the city's film-making community.
In addition to cinema and writing, Ryan's other major interest is sport, with him having a particular love for Australian Rules football, Formula 1, and cricket. He also has casual interests in reading, gaming, and history.
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From the dystopian intrigue of science fiction to the tantalizing terror of horror, there are several genres that can lay claim to being the greatest contributors to the ranks of cult classic cinema. Chief among them is fantasy, with the genre’s penchant for otherworldly wonder, magic and mysticism, and beautifully bizarre and bold story worlds imbuing it with a transfixing splendor that has appealed to niche audiences for decades.
Whether they’re charming viewers with their thrilling sense of escapism, stunning them with their cutting-edge practical effects, or simply making an impression with their imposing sense of ambition and originality, many of these fantasy flicks aren’t just glimmering gems of cult fandom. Instead, they stand tall among the greatest achievements in genre-centric filmmaking. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the decade’s dominion over cult cinema, the 1980s feature on this list in abundance, but everything from decades-old delights to underappreciated modern marvels defines the ravishing allure of cult fantasy film at its best.
10 'Dragonheart' (1996)
There’s a corniness to Dragonheart that undeniably plays in its favor when it comes to evaluating it as a forgotten cult gem of fantasy adventure fun. Its flaws are certainly noticeable, from the distractingly janky CGI to the violently oscillating tone that swerves between kid-friendly chaos and gritty medieval drama. Yet, within every misstep there is an earnestness and ambition that is so sincere in its execution that it becomes entirely endearing.
The largely forgotten 1996 movie unfolds as a disillusioned dragon-hunting knight forms an uneasy bond with the last living dragon—the Sean Connery-voiced Draco—to bring an end to the rule of a tyrannical king whose grasp on immortality is intricately linked to Draco. Its heroic stakes mix wonderfully with its borderline buddy-comedy emotional heart to make for one of the more arresting fantasy gems of its decade. Randy Edelman’s score and director Rob Cohen’s commitment to simple fun further contribute to its success.
9 'Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves' (2023)
When Paramount Pictures announced that an adaptation of Dungeons & Dragons had been greenlit for production, many fantasy lovers let out a collective groan of dismissive disgust. Sometimes, however, cinema throws up a pleasant surprise that no one saw coming. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves presents a lively marriage of high-concept fantasy and playful heist thrills as it follows a ragtag band of unlikely adventurers whose efforts to retrieve a long-lost relic land them in the midst of a potentially world-ending evil.
While it isn’t immune to the occasional misfire, the movie largely thrives by combining the epic scale of blockbuster spectacle with a fun and energized procession that stays true to the unpredictability and frenetic fervor of the tabletop game. Sadly, preconceived notions led many to initially reject it, leading to an underwhelming box office intake. However, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves has seen more success on streaming, making it not only one of the more entertaining cult classics of fantasy film, but one of the more defining hits of cult cinema across all genres of the 2020s so far.
8 'Dragonslayer' (1981)
Combining the otherworldly adventure of medieval fantasy with a fierce and gritty tone that pushed Walt Disney Productions to its darkest edges, Dragonslayer marks an engrossing and surprisingly ageless descent into the genre. Besieged by a terrible dragon, Urland enters into an oppressive arrangement that includes the kingdom routinely sacrificing young virgin girls to appease the devastating beast. When the princess is selected to be the next sacrifice, the king commissions an aging wizard and his apprentice to rid the dragon from the land forever.
Awake to the power dynamics of kings, princesses, and peasants, Dragonslayer grounds its story world in a sense of grim, realistic maturity that works perfectly in tandem with the visuals, be it the atmospheric richness of the bleak and hostile physical settings or the spellbinding realization of the dragon, Vermithrax Pejorative. While this tonal dare and more coarse and piercing presentation may have been factors in Dragonslayer’s initial box office despair, those qualities have ensured its endurance as a cult fantasy favorite.
7 'The Dark Crystal' (1982)
Marking the first-ever movie comprised entirely of puppets, The Dark Crystal is a milestone for practical effects and advanced animatronics. While this approach may seem playful and fun-loving, the movie combines it with a dark and disconcerting aesthetic that revels in the creeping, imaginative evils fantasy storytelling can produce. Jim Henson was inspired by The Brothers Grimm fairy tales to walk a fine line between kid-friendly fantasy and eerie unease.
The movie transpires in the fantasy land of Thra, where a young Gelfling named Jen (Jim Henson) is bestowed the task of retrieving the missing piece of an enchanted crystal before a looming solar event, or else the evil Skesis will rule the planet forever. With many torn between the impressive depth of its story, characters, and production, and the much darker, more dramatic tone compared to Henson’s previous works, The Dark Crystal had a mixed reception initially. Critical re-evaluation and a growing cult following have seen it endure as one of fantasy cinema’s most defining cult gems.
Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes What Fantasy World Do You Belong To? Middle-earth · Grand Line · The Continent · Camp Half-Blood
Pick your magic, your crew, where you want to wake up and who you would rather be fighting, and we will tell you which world you actually belong in. Four are open to you: an ancient kingdom living through its last good age, an endless sea full of pirates, a continent that pays people to kill monsters, and a summer camp where the Greek gods are extremely real and mostly a nuisance.
💍Middle-earth(Rings of Power)
👒Grand Line(One Piece)
🐺The Continent(The Witcher)
🔱Camp Half-Blood(Percy Jackson)
01
What kind of power do you want? Every one of these worlds runs on a completely different sort of magic.
02
Who is travelling with you? Nobody gets through any of these stories entirely on their own.
03
Where do you want to wake up tomorrow? The best fantasy is usually just somewhere you would genuinely like to live.
04
How are you making a living out there? Even in fantasy somebody has to pay for the horse.
05
There is something in the woods. What do you do about it? All four of these worlds keep something unpleasant out there in the dark.
06
Who is the villain of your story? The enemy tells you far more about a world than the hero ever does.
07
What do you actually believe in out there? Every world hands its heroes one rule and asks them to hold onto it.
08
A thousand years from now, how are you remembered? Eight questions in, this is the one that decides your world.
The Map Is Drawn Your World Is…
Four worlds and four completely different ideas of what a good life looks like. This is where you belong, what it would ask of you, and what you would get back in return.
Middle-earth
You belong somewhere old enough that the mountains have names and somebody can still tell you who gave them. Middle-earth is for people who think the right thing is worth doing even when it will not be finished in their lifetime.
- This is the only world on the list where doing good is understood as a very long defeat, fought anyway, by people who will never see how it ends.
- You are drawn to grandeur, to white cities and deep forges and the sense that almost everything you touch is older than your entire family line.
- The Rings of Power is set in the last good age before it all goes wrong, which gives every quiet scene in it a slightly unbearable weight.
- You would take the hard road, and you would take it on foot.
The Grand Line
You want the sea, a crew, and absolutely nobody telling you where you are allowed to go. The Grand Line is the world for people whose main ambition in life is finding out what is over there.
- One Piece has run for decades on one very simple engine, which is a group of people who each want something impossible and have decided to go and get it together.
- You collect people. Your ideal crew is a set of misfits who were each written off somewhere else before you turned up and offered them a better idea.
- The world is enormous and deliberately ridiculous, and the emotional gut punches land harder because of that rather than in spite of it.
- You would set sail knowing the map runs out, which is more or less the entire point of it.
The Continent
You would rather be feared and useful than liked and useless. The Continent is a world where the monsters are the straightforward part of the job and the people are where it all gets complicated.
- Witchers get paid to do what nobody else will and resented for existing at all, which is a trade most people would refuse and you would probably accept.
- You have no real illusions about which side is the good one, largely because on the Continent that question tends to have a disappointing answer.
- The best of these stories are not about the fighting. They are about somebody with a rigid code being repeatedly cornered into caring about people.
- You would take the coin, finish the job properly, and be out of town before the story got told wrong.
Camp Half-Blood
You want the myths to be real and loose in the actual world, and you want to find out at about thirteen that you were never anywhere near as ordinary as everybody kept telling you.
- Percy Jackson takes the oldest stories we have and drops them into car parks and diners, which makes the gods considerably funnier and a great deal worse.
- You would be the kid every school gave up on, who turns out to have been built for something nobody thought to test for.
- The series is genuinely about friendship rather than destiny, and it says so out loud every time a prophecy tries to get in the way.
- Camp Half-Blood is the real fantasy here: a place where the thing that made you difficult everywhere else is the thing that makes you belong.
6 'Ladyhawke' (1985)
The ‘80s certainly knew how to incorporate sweeping emotional stakes into their spectacles of excess and bombast, a point that is particularly clear in Ladyhawke’s ability to mix high-concept fantasy magic with tragic romance. Captain Etienne (Rutger Hauer) and Isabeau (Michelle Pfeiffer) are lovers separated by a curse that sees Etienne take the form of a wolf by night while Isabeau lives as a hawk by day. They enlist the help of Phillipe (Matthew Broderick), a young thief, as they set out to overthrow the corrupt bishop that bewitched them.
In many respects, Ladyhawke feels uncoordinated in how it is pieced together. The pacing is self-indulgent, logic is treated as suggestive, and, most notably, Andrew Powell’s progressive, synth-infused rock score clashes ferociously with the movie’s 13th-century setting. Yet, it’s never anything short of enchanting. For all its shortcomings, Ladyhawke demands celebration for its audacity to be completely unique. That it does have a tendency to ensnare viewers in its big-swing emotional grandeur is an added benefit that makes the largely forgotten fantasy cult gem so easily enjoyed by many genre lovers the world over.
5 'Labyrinth' (1986)
Another cult classic that is quintessentially ‘80s not only in style and aesthetic, but in sheer excess and ambition as well, Labyrinth is now revered as one of the greatest cult hits of all cinema. It’s difficult to pinpoint what exactly its defining quality is. David Bowie’s hypnotic villainous performance and soundtrack play a part, but so too do Jim Henson’s charismatic puppetry and direction, the surreal imagery of the set design, and the peculiar mixture of fairy tale heroics and dark coming-of-age drama.
Jennifer Connelly stars as Sarah, a 16-year-old girl who ventures into a mystical labyrinth to rescue her baby brother after she wished him away in anger. Confronted by the Goblin King, Jareth (Bowie), she is given just thirteen hours to solve his maze before her brother is lost forever. Labyrinth initially baffled critics and viewers, but the film’s arresting visuals and kinetic marriage of puppetry and performance have enshrined it as one of the defining cult gems of the ‘80s and an essential viewing experience for all lovers of fantasy cinema.
4 'The Fall' (2006)
The 2000s were a golden era for fantasy cinema, but amid the litany of great titles the genre produced across the decade, one that has never gotten the credit it deserves is 2006’s The Fall. An awe-inspiring production, the film was shot at intervals in 24 different countries over four years. The result is one of the most visually spectacular marvels cinema has ever been treated to, a painterly beauty that captures a breathtaking sense of otherworldly adventure without a single green screen.
More than just a feat of filmmaking, however, The Fall delivers a powerful story of escapism and humanity. In it, a paralyzed movie stuntman in a hospital in 1920s L.A. tells a young girl with a broken arm an astonishing story of six heroes who band together to defeat a powerful evil. Despite its initial critical dismissal and horrific box office performance, The Fall has become a true cult gem of fantasy cinema through the conviction of Tarsem’s direction, its clever emphasis on the purpose of storytelling, and the striking visual majesty of the finished product.
3 'Stardust' (2007)
Another hidden gem of the 2000s that has never received the widespread credit it so thoroughly deserves, Stardust excels as an enrapturing romantic adventure that fills its epic scale with a litany of unforgettable characters, mesmerizing worldbuilding, and a rousing tale of true love and self-discovery. Charlie Cox stars as Tristan, a lovestruck boy who ventures into the magical land of Stormhold to retrieve a fall star for his beloved. However, when he discovers the star is actually a woman being pursued by evil witches and ruthless princes for her power, he struggles to keep Yvaine (Claire Danes) ahead of her pursuers while deciding what exactly he wants for himself.
Its mixture of swashbuckling action-adventure, self-aware comedic wit, and genuine romantic stakes makes for an absorbing masterpiece, bolstered by its cozy comfort-watch warmth and incredible ensemble cast. Heavily inspired by The Princess Bride, director Matthew Vaughn captures an air of light-hearted fun that plays with genre clichés lovingly rather than with cynicism or sanctimonious arrogance.
2 'Excalibur' (1981)
Perhaps more so than any other movie feature on this list, Excalibur feels like a cult movie that should have been an outright genre-defining classic. Director John Boorman envisions Arthurian legend not as being a heroic fairy tale of chivalry and honor, but as a bloody and grandiose descent into the darkest catacombs of ambition, power, and violence. The medieval fantasy follows Arthur (Nigel Terry) as he retrieves Excalibur and becomes the new king before rallying his knights to rise against his evil half-sister, Morgana (Helen Mirren), while being advised by the wizard Merlin (Nicol Williamson).
In lieu of wholesome escapism, Excalibur conjures a sense of feverish intensity that is beautifully bolstered by grounded, practical filmmaking and surreal lighting techniques that imbue it with majesty and mysticism. Through its dark and gritty tone, it also finds an air of operatic gravitas that imposes itself on viewers in every quiet, meditative moment and every chaotic battle sequence. The result is a masterpiece of dark fantasy drama that should be heralded as one of the most daring and visually breathtaking pictures the genre has ever seen.
1 'The Princess Bride' (1987)
If anyone were to suggest that The Princess Bride has broken free of any “cult hit” label to now exist simply as an outright classic of fantasy cinema, it would be difficult to argue. However, the 1987 amalgamation of fantasy adventure, quirky comedy, romantic yearning, and meta-storytelling still presents a convergence of ideas and styles that epitomizes the impressionable fervor of cult cinema at its triumphant best.
Adapted by William Goldman from his novel, it unfolds as a farmer-turned-swashbuckling pirate fights to free his true love from an arranged marriage with a cruel prince. In his romantic conquest, he finds unlikely allies in a kind-hearted giant and a Spanish swordsman hell-bent on avenging his father. Its enduring legacy is propped up by faultless pacing, iconic performances, endlessly quotable dialogue, and spirited, genre-mixing magnificence. The Princess Bride is a cherished favorite of fantasy cinema, a quintessential highlight of ‘80s fun, and one of the most universally beloved cult movies of all time.
The Princess Bride
- Release Date
- September 25, 1987
- Runtime
- 99 minutes
- Director
- Rob Reiner
- Writers
- William Goldman
KioskNews shows a cleaned-up reading view extracted from the publisher’s page — the original always lives on their site, not ours.