The Criterion Collection, Cult-Art Films and Japanese Horror: DVD Labels as Transnational Mediators?

This article considers the circulation of Japanese horror titles in the West, focusing on the ways in which this is informed by the increasingly heterogeneous uses of the term ‘cult’ as a cultural category employed by specialist DVD and Blu-ray companies. The article focuses on the ways in which the celebrated high-end distributor, The Criterion Collection, have framed a number of Japanese horror titles as a kind of cult cinema which can be termed ‘cult-art’ (Andrews 2013). Through this case study, the article considers how the cultification of East Asian genre films, as they enter Western markets, can impact on the cultural canonisation and elevation of such titles, but in ways that draw productively on their original contexts of production rather than de-contextualising such titles through strategies of othering or exoticisation.