366 Weird Movies

Celebrating the cinematically surreal, bizarre, cult, oddball, fantastique, psychotronic, and the just plain WEIRD!

Entries for July, 2009

WEIRD HORIZON FOR THE WEEK OF 7/31/09

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):
Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! (2009):  This documentary on Australian exploitation films of the 1970s and 1980s—the sleaze that was even madder [...]

REPRINT: STALEY KUBRICK, CULTURAL OMNIVORE

Fringe Cinema, normally published on Thursdays, will not appear this week. In it’s place is this guest essay is by Alfred Eaker, originally published Mar. 26, 2009, which offers some additional insights on Stanley Kubrick and A Clockwork Orange.
“We must be cultural omnivores and raid all the art forms to enhance our own art”- [...]

30. A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1971)

“The story functions, of course, on several levels, political, sociological, philosophical and, what’s most important, on a dreamlike psychological-symbolic level.”–Stanley Kubrick

DIRECTED BY: Stanley Kubrick
FEATURING: Malcolm McDowell, Patrick Magee
PLOT:  Alex is the leader of a small gang of violent, thrill-seeking youths in England sometime in the indefinite near future.  After a home invasion goes bad, his [...]

CAPSULE: CREATURE FROM THE HAUNTED SEA (1961)

DIRECTED BY: Roger Corman
FEATURING: Robert Towne (as Edward Wain), Antony Carbone, Betsy Jones-Moreland
PLOT:  Opposed by incompetent spy Sparks Moran, a shady American expatriate and his

gang of crooks try to cheat General Tostada and his crew out of  the gold they are smuggling out of post-revolutionary Cuba by pretending a sea monster is on the loose.

WHY [...]

29. THE CITY OF LOST CHILDREN [La cité des enfants perdus] (1995)

“…someone who didn’t dream but, just the same, lived very well, yet would want to see, in dreams, a greater dimension of the imagination. For us, someone who is deprived of that is condemned to die. That’s part of what we wanted to say…  If one cannot dream and imagine things, and if one is [...]

WEIRD HORIZON FOR THE WEEK OF 7/24/09

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):
Loren Cass (2006):  Merely going off the film’s own press release, it’s difficult to discern what this movie is, although we learn a lot about how [...]

THE EXQUISITE CHAMBER WESTERNS OF BUDD BOETTICHER, PART ONE: SEVEN MEN FROM NOW (1956)

In a brief span of four years, from 1956 to 1960, Director Budd Boetticher, writer Burt Kennedy and actor Randolph Scott collaborated on a series of seven chamber westerns which rank as one of the most rewarding achievements in the art of American Cinema.
While a number of prominent film critics, historians and luminaries have rightly praised the ‘Ranown’ series [...]

CAPSULE: MOON (2009)

DIRECTED BY: Duane Jones
FEATURING: Sam Rockwell, Kevin Spacey
PLOT: Sam, two weeks away from finishing a lonely three year contract on a one man

lunar mining base, finds to his shock that he’s not alone on the moon—and the identity of his new companion leads him to investigate the true nature of his assignment.

WHY IT WON’T MAKE [...]

28. THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (1975)

“You’ve seen all kinds of movies, but you’ve never seen anything like The Rocky Horror Picture Show.  The Rocky Horror Picture Show is wonderfully weird.  It’s fabulously freaky… The story is strange…  the scenery is smashing… the cast is completely crazy!”–ad copy from the extended 3 minute trailer

DIRECTED BY: Jim Sharman
FEATURING: Tim Curry, Susan Sarandon, [...]

BORDERLINE WEIRD: CURE (1997)

DIRECTED BY: Kiyoshi Kurosawa
FEATURING: Kôji Yakusho, Masato Hagiwara
PLOT:  A detective with a mentally ill wife seeks to solve a series of murders committed

by ordinary people, each of whom has come into contact with a strange, amnesiac man.

WHY IT’S ON THE BORDERLINE: There’s no doubt Cure is a weird one, what with its unexplained creatures tied [...]