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WEIRD HORIZON FOR THE WEEK OF 1/27/2012

A look at what’s weird in theaters, on hot-off-the-presses DVDs, and on more distant horizons…

Trailers of new release movies are generally available on the official site links.

IN THEATERS (LIMITED RELEASE):

The Theater Bizarre:  A six-film horror anthology from directors Douglas Buck, Buddy Giovinazzo, David Gregory, Karim Hussain, , Tom Savini, and .  Apparently Hussain’s segment is surreal.  The Theater Bizarre official Facebook page.

The Wicker Tree:  Two missionaries travel to a remote Scottish town where the villagers still worship the old pagan gods in this re-make/boot/hash of the Certified Weird The Wicker Man (1973).  It’s from original director Robin Hardy and brings back star for a cameo, but early reviews suggest Hardy should have left the old gods sleeping.  We’ll probably check it out anyway: could it be worse than the infamous 2006 remake with Nicolas Cage?  The Wicker Tree official site.

VIDEO-ON-DEMAND:

Tim & Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie:  The Cartoon Network cult comics get their own billion dollar extravaganza, but blow the entire budget on celebrity cameos by Jeff Goldblum, , and Will Ferrell, among others.  The plot has something to do with shrim [sic].  This will be released to theaters in early March, but you can rent the movie now. Rent Tim & Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie on Video-on-Demand.

The Wholly Family:  Terry Gilliam‘s much anticipated short film is set in Naples and involves Fellini-esque clowns and the director’s typically visionary visuals.  It was commissioned by a pasta company and is believed to run around 15 minutes; it’s available for a $3 rental from Gilliam’s official site.  Rent The Wholly Family at Terry Gilliam’s official site.

NEW ON DVD:

Fascination (1979):  This week, Redemption Video is remastering and re-releasing five of the seldom-seen, dreamlike erotic vampire films of the infamous Jean Rollin (a box set would have been nice, but we’ll take what we can get).  Fascination, the most recent of this bunch, features ex-porn star Brigitte Lahaie as a bisexual vampire aristocrat with a scythe, and is one of the director’s most popular and well-received movies.  Buy Fascination.

The Iron Rose [AKA Rose of Iron] (1973):  A couple wander into a cemetery and can’t find their way out.  There’s a vampire, Gothic atmosphere, and a clown delivering flowers to a grave. Buy The Iron Rose.

Lips of Blood (1975):  An amnesiac man is reminded of his life as a vampire after seeing a his family castle on a poster. Rollins was nearly killed making this film when he dived into the sea to try to save a coffin prop and was struck on the head and knocked unconscious. Buy Lips of Blood.

The Nude Vampire (1970): This is the immediate followup to Rollin’s Rape of the Vampire (1968), the movie that kicked off the director’s mildly surrealistic, exploitative erotic vampire fetish formula.  This one throws in interdimensional portals and a stag-headed man alongside the marquee vampire(s).  Buy The Nude Vampire.

Shiver of the Vampires [AKA Strange Things Happen at Night] (1971):  A honeymooning couple stay in a castle run by vampires.  The usual nonsensical atmosphere and nude women Rollin fans crave. Buy Shiver of the Vampires.

Sister Mary (2011): We’re going entirely off the plot synopsis here, but this does sound weird: a homophobic cop teams up with a flamboyantly gay partner to stop a serial killing nun, and they end up uncovering a conspiracy by the Catholic Church.  So it’s a homoerotic blasphemous comedy thriller; oh, and it’s listed as a musical, too.  Starring Judy Tenuda (remember her?) as the serial Sister. Buy Sister Mary.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Annie Hall (1977): Read our capsule review.  Not a weird movie per se, but a classic fourth wall breaker. Buy Annie Hall [Blu-ray].

Fascination (1979):  See description in DVD above.  Buy Fascination [Blu-ray].

The Iron Rose [AKA Rose of Iron] (1973): See description in DVD above. Buy The Iron Rose [Blu-ray].

Lips of Blood (1975): See description in DVD above. Buy Lips of Blood [Blu-ray].

The Nude Vampire (1970): See description in DVD above. Buy The Nude Vampire [Blu-ray].

Restless (2011):  In Gus van Sant’s latest, a boy obsessed with funerals (a la Harold in Harold and Maude) romances a girl with terminal cancer.  Also, his best friend is the ghost of a Japanese kamikaze pilot.  We chose to skip this bit of sentimental quirky magical realism when it briefly played in theaters, but it might make for an OK rental.  This offering is a DVD/Blu-ray combo pack. Buy Restless (Two-Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo).

Shiver of the Vampires [Strange Things Happen at Night] (1971): See description in DVD above. Buy Shiver of the Vampires [Blu-ray].

Spellbound (1945):  The new psychiatrist (Gregory Peck) at a mental hospital has amnesia and may actually be crazier then any of the patients; a glacial female doctor (Ingrid Bergman) helps him work though his repressed memories to discover a horrifying secret.  So may of Hitchcock’s great movies tease us with near-weirdness; this flirtation is the director’s most serious, as Hitch actually hired Salvador Dalí to prepare the dream sequences. Buy Spellbound [Blu-ray].

FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON YOUTUBE:

Star Wars Uncut (2012): You may remember this project.  Hundreds of amateurs and semi-professionals were invited to recreate scenes from Star Wars: A New Hope (1977).  The resulting pastiche switches styles from one submission to another every 15 seconds, turning the completed movie into a disorientingly hilarious experience.  Contributions range from relatively sophisticated animations to textspeak iPhone transcripts to people acting out the scenes using their pets, and it features more hairy guys playing Princess Leia in drag than you’d ever want to see in one lifetime. Worth a watch.  Watch Star Wars Uncut on YouTube.

What are you looking forward to? If you have any weird movie leads that I have overlooked, feel free to leave them in the COMMENTS section.

Posted in Free Online Weird Movies, Miscellanea.

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By admin – January 27, 2012

FEAR CHAMBER (1968)

*This is the first part of “Karloff’s Bizarre and Final Six Pack,” a series examining Karloff’s final films.

A lot of people have expressed the wish that horror icon  could have ended his career with Peter Bogdanovich’s Targets (1968).  But Karloff, on his last leg, pushed himself through six more movies, four of which were the Mexican films for producer  and director Juan Ibinez.  This last six pack of films is, by consensus, godawful.  Why did Karloff do it?  According to his biographers, the actor said that he wanted to “die with his boots on.”  And he nearly did just that.

This series is not going to be a revisionist look at those six films.  They are awful within the accepted meaning of the word.  Several of them, however, are downright bizarre products of their time, which now might be looked at as examples of .  The films are: House of Evil (1968), Fear Chamber (1968), Curse of the Crimson Altar (1968), Cauldron of Blood (1970), Isle of the Snake People (1971), and Alien Terror (1971).

Still from Fear Chamber (1968)Fear Chamber ranks as one of the weirdest of the lot, and that is saying much.  It begins with pseudo-torture of scantily clad women.  The scene is soaked in garish sixties colors and a “bleepy” soundtrack.  The various female victims are tormented by a goateed chap, wearing turban, sunglasses (in an underground cavern), white gloves, and black turtleneck.  With “all the macabre horror of  Edgar Allan Poe” these poor sixties chicks are subjected to hot coals and boiling cauldrons.

The scene shifts to the crevice of a volcano where two scientists are “worried about strange Continued…

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By Alfred Eaker – January 26, 2012

103. BLOOD TEA AND RED STRING (2006)

“The doll character had been working its way into my drawings since 1990.  A lot of these things evolved from drawings.  The drawing is coming from the subconscious, really, so you don’t really know why, or say ‘why am I drawing it’?”–Christiane Cegavske on the DVD commentary to Blood Tea and Red String

Recommended

DIRECTED BY: Christiane Cegavske

FEATURING: With one minor exception, all characters are silent animated puppets

PLOT:  A group of aristocratic white mice commission rodentlike creatures with beaks (called the “Creatures Who Dwell Under the Oak”) to create a doll for them, but once the puppet is fashioned the Creatures refuse to give it up; instead, they revere it and sew an egg they find floating in a creek inside its torso.  The mice steal the doll and take it to their lair, so the Creatures set out on a journey to recover it.  Along the way they meet a frog sorcerer and a spider with a human face, and everything changes when the egg inside the doll hatches.

Still from Blood Tea and Red String (2006)

BACKGROUND:

  • The film took 13 years to make, with Cegavske animating perhaps 10 seconds a day.  Many of the models and effects used show up in the director’s 1992 short Blood and Sunflowers.
  • Cegavske intends for Blood Tea and Red String to be part of a trilogy, and in 2011 she announced the second part of the project, titled Seed in the Sand.  She estimates this installment will take five years to complete.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: Blood Tea is bizarre throughout, and many will be attracted to the psychedelic splashiness of the sequence where the Oak Dwellers eat hallucinogenic berries and see morphing pink and green leaf patterns overlaid on the courtyard garden.  For my money, though, things are at the weirdest when we climb inside the dark mouse hole and watch the well-dressed vermin pour bloody tea onto the lips of the lifeless doll while their skull-headed pet raven looks on.

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: A dialogue-free stop-motion animated fable done in the style of Jan


Original trailer for Blood Tea and Red String

Svankmajer, but with a darkly feminine spin, Blood Tea and Red String gently folds surrealism into its fairy tale structure to create a weirdly compelling world.  It’s an inverted Alice, told from the perspective of mutant rodents, depraved white mice, and mystical frogs.

COMMENTS:  Artist Christiane Cegavske had been living with the haunting creatures of Blood Continued…

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By G. Smalley (366weirdmovies) – January 26, 2012

CAPSULE: FILM SOCIALISME (2010)

Beware

DIRECTED BY: Jean-Luc Godard

FEATURING: Marine Battaggia, Catherine Tanvier, Christian Sinniger, Gulliver Hecq, Eye Haidara, Élisabeth Vitali

PLOT: Snippets of scenes involving passengers on a cruise ship are followed by a long segment

Still from Film Socialisme (2010)

exploring a rural French family who run a gas station; it’s topped off with impressionistic travelogues to Egypt, Palestine, and other locales.

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST:  It’s weird—by way of being random and impenetrable—but it’s also boring.  Really boring.  Had Jean-Luc Goddard’s name not been attached, this movie would remain happily unseen by all but a handful of unlucky film festival attendees.

COMMENTS: Jean-Luc Goddard has been telling French magazines that “cinema is dead” (though he would say “le cinéma est mort” and translate it as “film    dead.”)  Film Socialisme is the work of an auteur who truly believes that sentiment: it’s a dispassionate, bloodless dissection of moving images.  It offers us actors but no characters, situations but no drama, incidents but no story, ideas but no argument, and challenges but no rewards.  Deliberately obtuse, Film Socialisme sets out to frustrate: the first thing English speakers will notice is that Godard chooses not to fully translate the French dialogue, opting instead to tell the story through what he calls “Navajo English.”  Large portions of the French dialogue are left untranslated, and when the viewer does see subtitles he reads only snatches like “watch    notell    time” and “itshim    wariswar.”  Sometimes the language will switch from French to English or German or Russian, sometimes in the middle of a conversation; one presumes that this provides brief  opportunities for Francophones to enjoy “Navajo French.”  Structurally, Film Socialisme is divided into three chapters.  The first, titled “Des choses comme ça,” takes place aboard a cruise liner and explores fragments of stories from various travelers that don’t appear to add up to anything: a woman is trying to learn to speak cat by watching kitties on her laptop, a couple have a conversation about the Allied landing in North Africa while ignoring an apparently drunk woman Continued…

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By G. Smalley (366weirdmovies) – January 24, 2012

366WEIRDMOVIES TOP 10 WEIRD MOVIE LIST(S): THE SECOND PASS

We’ve now certified over 100 of an eventual 366 movies here, and it’s time to step back, take stock, and make a provisional list of the “Best of the Weird”—and a list of the “Weirdest of the Weird.”  We first took a stab at this list about two years ago, and my how things have changed since then (at least, at the bottom).  We’ve added new movies, and reshuffled our ratings for some of the others, and—well, you can read for yourself.

Recognizing that “weirdest” and “best” aren’t always the same thing, we’ve actually created two top ten lists here: one for the best movies that fall into the weird genre (these are the ones to start your timid friends off with), and one for the absolute weirdest movies we’ve seen (these are the ones to put on at a party when you want to clear the room).  Because we’re giving you two top ten lists for the price of one, you’re actually getting 20 recommended weird movies.  Well, actually 19, since one movie appears on both lists, but who’s counting?  Oh, wait, we are, that’s the entire point…

Feel free to agree with my choices, disagree, or hurl hurtful epithets at me in the comments.  But do remember that this list only covers movies we’ve already reviewed.  Your favorite movie we omitted may be coming down the line, and may make this list the next time we formulate it (in another two years or so).

With that said, let’s get to it!

# 10 Best Weird Movie: Kwaidan (1964). “Although on the surface it’s just a collection of bare-bones ghost stories, in telling these tales director Kobayashi wisely jettisons reality in favor of a stylized, expressionistic, visually poetic aesthetic that gently detaches the viewer from everyday life and floats him into an ancient spirit world that seems simultaneously to have never and always existed.”

#10 Weirdest Movie: House [Hausu] (1977). “Rife with images of flying heads, murderous painos, laughing watermelons, an invisible wind machine, and a truly demonic kitty, the film’s surrealist atmosphere and ever-shifting styles are as hilarious as they are inscrutable.  There is no way to get a handle on Hausu—the viewer is completely at the mercy of Obayashi’s bizarre whims.”

#9 Best Weird Movie: The Wicker Man (1973): “Hardy and Shaffer create an atmosphere like no other; it’s an encounter of civilized man with strange, primeval beliefs…. The viewer himself undergoes a dread confrontation with Old Gods who are at the same time familiar and terrifyingly strange.”

Continued…

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By G. Smalley (366weirdmovies) – January 23, 2012

WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE

Now that we’ve certified over 100 movies weird, we’ll be kicking off next week by taking a second pass at our semi-official “top 10 weird movies” list.  I know this will be a rehash for you long-time 366 veterans, but it’s a useful service for new visitors who want a best-of-the-best primer to start off with; and, you would not believe how much Googlers love top 10 lists!  Don’t worry, though, we’ll still be adding new reviews to the database, including our take on Jean-Luc Goddard’s divisive latest movie essay, Film Socialisme (2010), and, from the reader-suggested review queue, we’ll break down the bizarre stop-motion fairy tale Blood Tea and Red String (2006).

We’re getting more and more search engine traffic—over 1000 unique queries most days.  This is making it harder, not easier, to find a Weirdest Search Terms of the Week, as we’re forced to scan the server logs with a quicker eye to keep the project from eating up our little bit of free time.  Nonetheless, we’ll continue to point out the strange noises we do find amidst the massive signal.  First, we’re proud (though a bit confused) that we continue to hold a top 5 ranking for the term “saxyshat.”  Also, we are now going to be on the lookout for “an alien movie that made some womens boobs grow” (personally, if I can find it, I think it would be worth a shot to show this one to my girlfriend).  We’re less enthused about the “movie where pregnant goat moves to woman,” and “monsther minds perverted wit tens ladys porno movies” is just outside our area of expertise. Our weirdest search term of the week, however, goes to ‘illuminati face “skinning” children.’  We knew the Illuminati worked in mysterious ways, but for God’s sake, can’t they leave the children out of it?

Here’s the massive, ever-growing reader-suggested review queue: Blood Tea and Red Strings (next week!); Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory; The Bride of Frank; La Grande Bouffe; Hedwig and the Angry Inch; Even Dwarves Started Small;  “My Wrongs 8245-8249 and 117″; Continued…

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By admin – January 22, 2012

SATURDAY SHORT: BIRDBOY (2010)

An industrial accident turns a beautiful village into a graveyard.  Birdboy has met with many positive reviews and has been preselected for the 84th Academy Awards.

Content Warning: This short contains brief drug use and violence.

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By Cameron Jorgensen – January 21, 2012

WEIRD HORIZON FOR THE WEEK OF 1/20/2012

A look at what’s weird in theaters, on hot-off-the-presses DVDs, and on more distant horizons…

Trailers of new release movies are generally available on the official site links.

IN THEATERS (LIMITED RELEASE):

Fullmetal Alchemist: The Sacred Star of Milos (2011):  The heroes of the long running anime series find themselves embroiled in a rebellion.  This is being released in the original Japanese with English subtitles to please purists.  It’s playing all over the U.S. and Canada, but for one day only in some locales, so schedule accordingly if you want to catch it.  Fullmetal Alchemist: The Sacred Star of Milos official Facebook page.

FILM FESTIVALS – SUNDANCE (Park City, Utah, Jan 19-29):

It’s that time again: time for Sundance, the make-or-break festival for American indies.  If last year’s slate is a predictor, about a third of the movies listed here will fail to find a distributor and virtually disappear, another third will struggle hard to earn only a limited release, and of the remainder one or two will become minor hits.  Nonetheless, it’s still our earliest indicator for what we’ll be anointing as “weird” in 2012.  Sundance festival home page.

  • Beasts of the Southern Wild – A six-year old girl named Hushpuppy contracts a fever, which seems to usher in the apocalypse and a plague of prehistoric creatures called aurochs. Screening Jan 20-24, 26.
  • Bobby Yeah – We don’t usual spotlight shorts, but this 23-minute film by the talented and macabre is an exception.  Watch the trailer to see why. Jan 20, 21, 24 & 27.

  • Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared -  We’re breaking our rule of not mentioning short films for a second time, but this time it’s because we scooped Sundance by featuring this creepy kids song about creativity gone too far way back in August.  If  you must see it on the big screen, then you can catch it screening before the indie drama Kid-Thing Jan 23-24 or 26-28.
  • Elena – Modern Russian class-struggle drama about an aging woman maneuvering to secure her husband’s inheritance.  Yawn, Sundance, we already reviewed this one.  Give us something new.  Jan 21-22, 24, 27-28.
  • Excision – Horror film about a spooky, morbid teen girl who decides to lose her virginity and then, per the synopsis, “the weirdness really begins.”  Not much is known about this one except that it’s playing in the “Midnight” category and it features both Traci Lords and the man who gave disgraced Traci her “big” break— John Waters.  Jan 21, 25, 27-28.
  • Grabbers – Irish monster movie where potential victims discover they can dissuade alien invaders from snacking on them by raising their blood alcohol levels. A “Midnight” feature.  Jan 23, 25-27.
  • It’s Such a Beautiful Day – Once again, we don’t focus on festival shorts, but we’ll make a third exception for ‘s latest, since it’s the third installment of the stick-figure psychodrama Everything Will Be OK, which we first embedded way back in May.  See it Jan. 21, 23, or 27-28, screened in the animated shorts program.
  • John Dies in the End – Cult director adapts a popular webseries about two losers saving the world from a psychedelic drug being used by aliens to take over the planet.  In the “Midnight” category, natch.  Jan 23, 25-26, 28.

  • L – A man lives in his car and delivers honey to a narcoleptic for a living in this “willfully bizarre,” bear-obsessed Greek feature.  Co-written by the co-writer of Dogtooth, so it starts with weird Hellenic cred.  Jan 23-25, 27-28.
  • Oversimplification of Her Beauty – An impressionistic, experimental, partially animated portrait of a young artist and his desire for a beautiful woman.  Part of the “New Frontier” series.  Jan 21, 23-24, 28.
  • Room 237 – Documentary about a phenomenon I didn’t realize existed, but am not at all surprised by: people who believe that ‘s The Shining contains hidden messages revealing vast international conspiracies.  One loony theorizes that the entire movie is Kubrick’s coded confession that he helped fake the footage of Americans landing on the moon.  Jan 23-24, 26, 28.
  • This Must Be the Place – Here’s a truly odd premise for a comedy: a retired goth-rock star hunts the Nazi who persecuted his father at Auschwitz.  Starring Sean Penn, of all people, as the laconic, androgynous angel of vengeance. Jan. 21-22, 25, 28.
  • Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie – The Cartoon Network cult comics get their own billion dollar extravaganza, but blow the entire budget on celebrity cameos by Jeff Goldblum, , and Will Ferrell, among others.  The plot has something to do with shrim [sic]. Jan 20-21, 24, 27-28.
  • V/H/S – A horror anthology wherein burglars are hired to break in to a home to steal a rare VHS tape, but find that every cassette they watch is stranger and more disturbing than the last one.  Playing at Midnight.  Jan 22-24, 28.
  • whiteonwhite:algorithmicnoir – Here’s something you’ll probably never see on home video.  If I’ve understood the synopsis correctly, this black and white dystopian noir selects, semi-randomly and in real time, a combination of film clips, voiceover dialogue, and background music to create an experience that’s different with every showing.  Catch it Jan. 22, 24-25.
  • Wrong – A man looking for his lost dog encounters bizarre characters and risks losing his sanity.  This is director Quentin Dupieux ‘s followup to his weird hit Rubber, and per the synopsis this one is “equally bizarre.”  Jan 21-22, 24, 26-27.

NEW ON DVD:

Belle de Jour (1967): Catherine Deneuve is a housewife by day, hooker by night in this masochistic, surrealistic erotic fantasy from Luis Buñuel.  At one point she’s tied up and splattered with shovelfuls of mud while workers insult her; strong stuff for a 1967 art film.  The Criterion disc comes with 30 minutes of supplemental material.  Buy Belle de Jour (Criterion Collection).

Bombay Beach (2011):  Footage of three residents of the decaying Salton Sea region—a bipolar boy, a high school athlete fleeing gang violence, and a retired oil-rig worker—is mixed with musical montages from Beirut and Bob Dylan to create what the makers describe as a “slightly surreal documentary experience.” Buy Bombay Beach.

Caterpillar (2010):  The Japanese emperor declares a deaf-mute quadruple amputee a Sino-Japanese war hero and orders his wife to take care of him—including sexually.  Not so surreal, but certainly unusual, and the scenario recalls the weird anti-war classic Johnny Got His Gun. Buy Caterpillar.

Cold Sweat (2010):  An elderly couple abduct women, strip them to their underwear, and douse them in liquid nitroglycerin to force their obedience in this odd low-budget Argentinian horror-thriller.  The consensus seems to be its utterly ludicrous but shamelessly fun. Buy Cold Sweat.

The Overcoat [Il Cappotto] (1952): A lowly bureaucrat buys, then loses, a fancy overcoat, then returns from the dead to look for it.  No idea how strange this seldom-seen Italian adaptation of Nicolai Gogol’s short story is, but the original tale was odd enough that Vladmir Nabokov gave a famous lecture on it in which he concluded “great literature skirts the irrational.” Buy The Overcoat [Il Cappotto].

The Platinum Pussycat (1968)/The Sexploiters (1965):  We mention this Retro-Seduction Cinema double-feature release for Pussycat [AKA The Losers]; it’s a gangster sexploitation/action feature, and simultaneously a silent film with tinted footage.  It may not be good, but at least it’s sure to be bad in a different way.  Less is known about The Sexploiters. Buy Platinum Pussycat/The Sexploiters.

Redline (2009): An anime about a futuristic race, and a rebel who tries to win it while foregoing the customary arsenal of weaponry.  It sounds like an animated Japanese version of Death Race 2000, from a director who worked as an animator on Ninja Scroll and Funky Forest.  Buy Redline.

Simon (1980): A psychology professor is brainwashed into thinking he’s a space alien, and winds up living with a hippie cult who worship TV Guide.  Starring Alan Arkin and Madelaine Kahn, we had to mention this long-forgotten satire based on the plot synopsis.  On DVD-R from Warner Archive.  Buy Simon.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Belle de Jour (1967):  See description in DVD above. Buy Belle de Jour (Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray].

Redline (2009): See description in DVD above. Buy Redline [Blu-ray].

NEW ON VIDEO ON DEMAND:

The Oregonian (2011):  Read our capsule review.  Many readers have asked about the availability of this movie (which debuted at Sundance last year). Here’s your chance to see what the fuss is about.  We’ll keep an eye out for a DVD release. Rent The Oregonian on Video on Demand.

FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON YOUTUBE:

Flatliners (1990):  Medical students experiment with inducing near-death experiences by deliberately stopping their own hearts; they have postmortem hallucinations.  The cast features then up-and-comers Julia Roberts, Kiefer Sutherland, and Kevin Bacon; it’s somewhat mainstream, but hey, it’s free.  Watch Flatliners free on YouTube.

What are you looking forward to? If you have any weird movie leads that I have overlooked, feel free to leave them in the COMMENTS section.

Posted in Free Online Weird Movies, Miscellanea.

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By admin – January 20, 2012

LA CASA DEL TERROR (1960) AND FACE OF THE SCREAMING WEREWOLF (1964)

The posthumous classification of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello erroneously places them on a level with  or The Marx Brothers.  However, few, if any, of the Abbott and Costello films withstand the test of time.  Their initial rendezvous with a trio of Universal monsters retains some dated charm, but little of it comes from the comedy team.  Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) is essentially a vehicle for ‘s Dracula parody and Lenore Aubert’s vamp.  The Monster (Glenn Strange) has little to do, and  seems mightily uncomfortable with the surrounding juvenile antics.  Even worse is Bud Westmore’s unimaginative assembly line makeup, which reduces Lugosi’s Count to baby powder and black lipstick and Lon Chaney Jr’s Larry Talbot to a rubbery lycanthrope.

La casa del terror (1960) is a south of the border imitation of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, along with about a half dozen other films, including King Kong (1933).  German Valdes (aka Tin Tan) is Casimiro and, just like in A & C Meet Frankie, he is doing some work in a house of wax horrors, which currently has a real mummy display.  Below the exhibit, the Professor (Yerye Beirut) is deep in mad scientist experiments (just like  in his Columbia movies or Lugosi at Monogram).  None too surprising, the Professor has an assistant who helps his boss steal bodies and blood.  When bodies are not to be found, the two extract fluids from Casimiro, which renders our hero lethargic (at least Lou Costello kept his energy level up).  Narratively, having your protagonist sleep through half of the film does not seem like a sound idea.  Casimiro’s gal Paquita (Yolanda Varela) doesn’t think so either.  After all, she is working a full time job and beau here is one lazy sot!  Perhaps the all too repeated shots of Casimiro counting sheep are not necessarily a bad device after all because when he does wake up, he breaks into comedic patter which actually makes Lou Costello look funny again.  Valdes elicits more groans than laughs and he even engages in a song and dance number with Valera.  YES, IT’S A MUSICAL TOO!  Valera does not have to work hard at making Valdes’ musical talents look pedestrian.

Still from La Casa del Terror (1960)Director Gilberto Martinez Solares cast Lon Chaney Jr, clearly past his prime, as a dual mummy/wolfman which, of course, were the two characters that Chaney played most often in the 40′s  cycle.  Chaney is only briefly glimpsed as a mummy, and a rather well fed one at that.  The make-up job is something akin to a glob of silly putty.  The Professor, tired of Casimiro’s rotten blood, decides to steal the mummy for experimentation. The Doc and his assistant put the ancient Egyptian into a big Son Of Frankenstein (1939) contraption.  Briefly, a Continued…

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By Alfred Eaker – January 19, 2012

CAPSULE: SESSION 9 (2001)

DIRECTED BY:  Brad Anderson

FEATURING: Peter Mullan, David Caruso, , Stephen Gevedon, Brendan Sexton III

PLOT: A hazmat crew removing asbestos from an abandoned asylum uncover secrets about the

Still from Session 9 (2001)

long-dead but deeply disturbed residents—and arguably more chilling secrets about each other.

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST:  The weirdometer registers only trace amounts of bizarrity in this eerie, complex psychological horror.  It’s worth a viewing for fright fans, but not thanks to its strangeness.

COMMENTS: Before Session 9, director Brad Anderson was best known (if he was known at all) for his romantic comedies.  Anderson co-fashioned Session 9‘s complicated, haunted script to take advantage of the availability of an abandoned mental institution, a dream location to shoot a horror movie, and wound up finding a more successful niche as a specialist in psychological suspense.  Disdaining shock violence and other teen horror tropes, Session 9 hoes a tougher row by creating its suspense through characterization, hidden secrets, and (for the most part) by encouraging the audience to imagine unspeakable carnage rather than to get off on seeing it laid out in splattery crimson glory.  The idea here is to throw five average Joes into a pressure cooker situation (finishing a three-week asbestos removal job in one week) inside a suggestively creepy locale, and let the tension build organically as they begin to crack under the stress.  Gordon is the most preoccupied of the bunch: he may lose his struggling business if he doesn’t complete this contract on time, and he’s got a newborn baby back home to feed.  Phil, his right hand man, has his own tense dynamic with the obnoxious Hank: they share an uncomfortable history with a common woman.  Mullet-headed young Jeff is the neophyte kid who gets picked on by the others, and Mike is the thoughtful guy who’s too good for this job (for unknown reasons, he’s dropped out of law school to schlep around in a hazmat suit).  The characterizations aren’t deep, but they’re efficient; we know these guys, we get their conflicting agendas.  Mike’s discovery of old tape recordings of hypnotherapy with a schizophrenic woman—reels labeled sessions 1 to 9—provides a parallel dramatic line, as we periodically hear a tranquil doctor probe the mind of a psychopathic woman with buried issues that may continue to haunt the hosptal’s halls to this day.  Like the Overlook Hotel in Session 9‘s closest ancestor, The Shining, the empty spaces of the asylum are virtually a separate character (there are plenty of tracking shots down abandoned corridors to remind us of ‘s horror).  The grounds are full of memories of the departed: Satanist graffiti scrawled on the walls by the teens who broke in to party there on weekends, old mementos and clippings pasted onto the walls of the patients rooms, and broken bric-a-brac left there by the long-gone staff and by homeless squatters.  Everything is linked by dark, dank underground tunnels connecting the various buildings.  It would be almost impossible to shoot a film in this setting that didn’t raise at least a couple of hairs on the back of your neck, and Anderson’s restrained direction and the ensembles’ paranoiac acting ably amplify the institution’s inherent creepiness.  The ending is too obvious to qualify as a twist, and I wish Anderson had shown Kubrick’s courage to go shamelessly over-the-top every now and then, but Session 9 satisfies as a mature, eerie, and mostly quiet horror—a type of film that’s all too rare nowadays.  What could be scarier than an isolated, crumbling building that may be full of ghosts?  The answer: an isolated, crumbling building that may be full of schizophrenic ghosts.

The asylum in the movie, Danvers State Hospital, was a real abandoned mental institution in Massachusetts. It holds the dubious honor of being known as the birthplace of the prefrontal lobotomy (a fact referenced in the movie), and later became infamous for overcrowding and inhumane treatment of its inmates.  Most of the buildings on the sprawling campus were torn down in 2006 to construct an apartment complex.  The units burned down in 2007 in a mysterious fire, though they were soon rebuilt.  A 12-minute featurette on the DVD documents the cruel history of the institution.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Save for the disappointing finale, Session 9 proves to be a remarkably spare journey into the confines of the mind and a unique evocation of just how terrifying it is to loose one’s mind.”–Ed Gonzalez, Slant (contemporaneous)

(This movie was nominated for review by “Jack Mort.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

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By G. Smalley (366weirdmovies) – January 18, 2012

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