100 Best Canadian Films – Paul Corupe

A hidden gem of Canadian film scholarship: Canuxploitation! Your Complete Guide to Canadian B-Film. If you’ve taken any undergrad Canadian cinema class you probably already know that throughout the history of Canadian films there have been a lot of documentaries, but it’s probably thanks to rep cinemas or friends (for millennials that didn't live through this earlier period) that you would have discovered the grindhouse films of the tax-shelter years or other more eccentric titles: The Silent Partner, Strange Brew, Brain Candy, The Brood, Drying up the Streets, Black Christmas, Ginger Snaps and so on (quite a few of these that I saw for the first time at the Mayfair in Ottawa). And thanks to Canuxploitation! there’s a great immediate resource to read more about them and discover similar titles. And I need to thank Paul Corupe for contributing such an eclectic list, an alternative canon for Canadian cinema.

Paul founded the up-to-date Canuxploitation! site, and has written on Canadian cinema in magazines like Rue Morgue and Take One, but perhaps an even greater accomplishments are his script writing for the Bravo On Screen series, which in each episode focused on specific canonical Canadian titles, which includes Nobody Waved Good-bye, Roadkill and Crime Wave (these really need to be released on DVD).

100 Best Canadian Films is a series of personal surveys of the history of Canadian cinema. Other lists includes those by David L. Pike, Jerry White, André Loiselle, Paul Williams, Greg Klymkiw, Pat Mullen, Jason Anderson, Daniel Kremer, Yves Lever, Piers Handling, Marcel Jean, Mike Hoolboom and myself. – D.D.

***

Canuxploitation's 100 important Canadian films: Towards an Alternative Canon 

- A Cool Sound from Hell (Furie, 1959)

- Across This Land with Stompin' Tom Connors (Saxton, 1973)

- The Adventure of Faustus Bidgood (Jones and Jones, 1986)

- Adulterous Affair (Leversuch, 1966)

- Amanita Pestilens (Bonnière, 1963)

- American Nightmare (McBrearty, 1983)

- Back in Action (Ziller, 1993)

- Bambi Meets Godzilla (Newland, 1974)

- Beyond the Black Rainbow (Cosmatos, 2010)

- Beyond the Seventh Door (Benedikt, 1987)

- Big Meat Eater (Windsor, 1982)        

- Blood and Guts (Lynch, 1978)

- Black Christmas (Clark. 1974)

- Blackout (Matalon, 1978)

- The Bounty Hunters (Pischiutta, 1985)

- Brain Candy (Makin, 1996)

- Breaking Point (Clark, 1976)

- The Brood (Cronenberg, 1979)

- The Canadian Conspiracy (Boyd, 1985)

- The Changeling (Medak, 1980)

- Class of 1984 (Lester, 1982)

- Comic Book Confidential (Mann, 1988)

- Corpse Eaters (Passmore and Vetter, 1974)

- Crime Wave (Paizs, 1985)

- Cross Country (Lynch, 1983)

- Cube (Natali, 1997)

- Deadline (Azzopardi, 1981)

- Death Weekend (Fruet, 1976)

- Deathdream (Clark, 1972)

- Deranged (Gillen, 1974)

- Diary of a Sinner (Hunt, 1974)

- Deux Femmes en Or (Fournier, 1970)

- Downtime (Hanec, 1985)

- Dragon Hunt (Wiener, 1990)

- Drying Up the Streets (Spry, 1978)

- East End Hustle (Vitale, 1976)

- Elvis Gratton (Falardeau and Poulin, 1981)

- FUBAR (Dowse, 2002)

- The Gate (Takacs, 1987)

- Gina (Arcand, 1974)

- La guerre des tuques (Mélançon, 1984)

- Heartaches (Shebib, 1981)

- Heavenly Bodies (Dane, 1984)

- Hell Bent (Kozak, 1994)

- High Ballin' (Carter, 1978)

- H.I.Z.: Erection Der Zombie (Kennedy and Sweeney, 2007)

- Hobo With a Shotgun (Eisener, 2011)

- Hookers on Davie (Cole and Dale, 1984)

- Hot Wheels (McBrearty, 1979)

- Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS  (Edmonds, 1975)

- Ilsa the Tigress of Siberia (Lafleur, 1977)

- Ivy League Killers (Davidson, 1959)

- IXE-13 (Godbout, 1971)

- Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang (Flicker, 1978)

- Kubasa in a Glass: the Fetishised Winnipeg TV Commercial 1976-1992 (L'Atelier national du Manitoba, 2006)

- The Last Pogo (Brunton, 1978)

- The Little Girl who Lived Down the Lane (Gessner, 1976)

- Loving and Laughing (Sone, 1971)

- The Mask (Roffman, 1961)

- Metal Messiah (Takacs, 1978)

- Midnight Matinee (Martin, 1988)

- Mindfield (Lord, 1989)

- Mondo Nude (Tudhope, 1979)

- Montreal Main (Vitale, 1974)

- My Bloody Valentine (Mihalka, 1981)

- Mysterious Moon Men of Canada (Brunton, 1988)

- Naked Flame (Matlansky, 1964)

- Oddballs (Lente, 1984)

- Parents (Balaban, 1989)

- The Peanut Butter Solution (Rubbo, 1985)

- Pin: A Plastic Nightmare (Stern, 1989)

- Porky’s (Clark, 1981)

- Project Grizzly (Lynch, 1996)

- Recommendation for Mercy (Markowitz, 1976)

- Rituals (Carter, 1979)

- Rock 'N' Roll Nightmare (Fasano, 1987)

- Rock and Rule (Smith, 1983)

- Safety or Slaughter? (Crawley, 1958)

- Satan’s Choice (Shebib, 1965)

- Scanners (Cronenberg, 1981)

- Science Crazed (Switzer, 1989)

- Sexcula (Hollowich, 1974)

- Shivers (Cronenberg, 1975)

- Shoot (Hart, 1976)

- Siege (Donovan, 1982)          

- The Silent Partner (Duke, 1979)

- Sins of the Fathers (Rosen and Jarvis, 1949)

- Sissy Boy Slap Party (Maddin, 2004)

- Skip Tracer (Dalen, 1977)

- Social Acceptability (Crawley, 1957)

- Springtime in Greenland (Paizs, 1981)

- Strange Shadows in an Empty Room (De Martino, 1976)

- The Suburbanators (Burns, 1995)

- Sudden Fury (Damude, 1975)

- Things (Jordan, 1989)

- Tomorrow Never Comes (Collinson, 1978)

- Top Of The Food Chain (Paizs, 1999)

- Valérie (Heroux, 1969)

- Vengeance is Mine (Trent, 1976)

- Wrestling Queen (Vallely, 1973)