366 Weird Movies

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

Entries for September, 2009

CAPSULE: LIFEFORCE (1985)

DIRECTED BY: Tobe Hooper
FEATURING: Mathilda May, Steve Railsback, Peter Firth
PLOT: A space shuttle investigating Halley’s comet discovers a spaceship containing

three suspended, nude human bodies; returned to Earth, the bodies come alive and begin vampirically sucking the life force out of humans.

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST:  Lifeforce is a grandly cheesy and frequently nonsensical mishmash [...]

RECOMMENDED AS WEIRD: DEADGIRL (2008)

DIRECTED  BY: Marcel Sarmiento and Gadi Harel
FEATURING: Jenny Spain, Shiloh Fernandez, Noah Segan
PLOT: Two high school delinquents find an undead young woman and use her as a sex

slave.
WHY IT SHOULD MAKE THE LIST: Deadgirl is weird by virtue of its highly unconventional subject matter, which is treated in as matter-of-factly as a conventional [...]

CAPSULE: NEKROMANTIK (1987)

DIRECTED BY: Jörg Buttgereit
FEATURING: Daktari Lorenz, Beatrice M.
PLOT:  A necrophiliac who works for a corpse disposal service loses his job, his perverted

girlfriend, and finally his mind.
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST:  Although Nekromantik is indisputably weird—not simply in its bizarre concept, but in its numerous nightmare digressions from linearity—it can’t be recommended as a viewing [...]

WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE

We have a lot of articles pending this week—and we’re not sure, even at this late date, in exactly what order the pieces will be published.  We can promise next week that you’ll see our long-pending reader-suggested review of the notorious underground necrophilia shockfest Nekromantik and Alfred’s review of Heart of the Beholder (a documentary [...]

SATURDAY SHORT: HENRI

Another Saturday brings another short film for our readers.
This week was exceptionally difficult, but with some help I selected another short film, “Henri” directed by Will Braden. Henri is a feline who is going to show us a different view on the seemingly carefree life of a house cat. Although this clip is [...]

WEIRD HORIZON FOR THE WEEK OF 9/25/09

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.
There’s nothing of weird interest coming to the big screen this week.  The desperate might try Pandorum, whose synopsis makes it sound like an uncredited Alien remake… but beware, [...]

366WEIRDMOVIES TOP 10 WEIRD MOVIE LISTS – THE FIRST PASS

After officially inducting Time Bandits as the 37th entry on the List of the 366 Best Weird Movies of all time, it occurred to me—the project is now just over 10% of the way complete.  What better time to announce my personal (provisional) top 10 picks in two categories: the best weird movies ever made, [...]

CAPSULE: INTACTO (2001)

AKA Intact

DIRECTED BY: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo
FEATURING: Leonardo Sbaraglia, Eusebio Poncela, Mónica López, Max von Sydow
PLOT:  In a world where the power of luck is real and spread unequally, fortune’s
favorites square off against each other in a series of secret tournaments, sometimes for mortal stakes.

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST:  A weird kernel of an [...]

BORDERLINE WEIRD: $9.99 (2008)

DIRECTED BY: Tatia Rosenthal
FEATURING: Voices of: Geoffrey Rush, Anthony LaPaglia
PLOT:  A series of intertwined tales about the residents of a Sydney apartment complex,

including a repossesor, a supermodel, a lonely old man, a dour angel, three miniature surfer dudes, and an aimless young man who buys a book promising to supply him with the Meaning of [...]

RECOMMENDED AS WEIRD: THE NIGHT WALKER (1964)

DIRECTED  BY: William Castle
FEATURING: Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Taylor, Irene Trent, Joyce Holland, Hayden Rorke.   Written by horror master Robert (“Psycho”) Bloch.
PLOT: The Night Walker is about a woman who has frightening, recurrent nightmares about being taken on repeated surreal and horrifying nocturnal odysseys by a mysterious and enigmatic stranger.

WHY IT SHOULD MAKE THE LIST: [...]