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12 PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE (1959) Edward D. Wood Jr.

Loving Wood is like adoring a child who spins shameless whoppers -- he's so wrong, but the brio! And never did Wood flail (and fail) bigger than Plan 9, in which flying saucers wobble by on fishing line and players overemote as IF THE FUTURE OF EARTH DEPENDED ON IT!!! Why do we love it so? Because, as the twee-est of the tunic-ed ''alien'' invaders explains... SIGNATURE LINE ''All you of Earth are IDIOTS!'' WHO'S IN THE CULT Tim Burton and Johnny Depp, the director and star, respectively, of Ed Wood.

13 BRAZIL (1985) Terry Gilliam

The director's twisted epic about a flesh-cog fighting to escape brain-numbing bureaucracy is a metaphor for his own filmmaking frustrations. But even without that info, you can be dazzled by the serpentine story, surrealist shifts, and bleak, retrofitted futurism that makes Alien look like The Jetsons. SIGNATURE LINE ''That is your receipt for your husband...and this is my receipt for your receipt.'' WHO'S IN THE CULT? The L.A. Film Critics Association, which named it the best film of the year before it was even released.

14 ERASERHEAD (1977) David Lynch

The movie opened at New York City's Cinema Village, and then played only on Saturdays, only at midnight. Soon it spread -- a traveling avant-garde event, supported by fans who wore badges that bragged, I saw it. And what was ''it''? To say ''A plotless nightmare about a shock-haired man who sires a monstrous baby'' would miss the point. Eraserhead is about that which can't be described. The only way to understand it is to be able to say, I saw it. SIGNATURE SOUND A pervasive hiss of unsettling white noise. SENSELESS ACT OF VIOLENCE The protagonist has his head ground, inexplicably, into erasers.

15 FASTER, PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL! (1966) Russ Meyer

A thrill-seeking karate-master stripper named Varla (the supremely bodacious and abundantly hammy Tura Satana) leads two buxotic and go-go-booted cohorts on a murderous rampage in the desert. If ''thrill-seeking karate-master stripper'' hasn't gotten you off your butt and sent you out to the video store, then the dime-store dialogue, girl-on-girl fights, gratuitous booty shots, and incongruously arty black-and-white photography would be lost on you anyway. Charlie's Angels gone very, very bad. SIGNATURE LINE ''Honey, we don't like nothing soft. Everything we touch is hard.'' BLAME IT FOR The band Faster Pussycat and every woman on the Sunset Strip.

16 THE WARRIORS (1979) Walter Hill

There's a reason why hill's nightmarish vision of a showdown between NYC gangs has been embraced by hip-hoppers, and it ain't the Joe Walsh closing-credits tune. With its violent, antisocial stance, The Warriors exists in a fantasy world where dressing like a baseball-playing clown is acceptable. The film's release was marred by alleged real-life gang violence in theaters; late-night TV allowed the nerdier among us to enjoy it at home. SIGNATURE LINE ''Can...you...dig it?'' WHO'S IN THE CULT Eminem, Shaq, Mudvayne.


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