Cut-outs of magazine advertisements are used to make a statement on consumerism. Enthusiastic smiles become unsettling in the context of this short film.
Content Warning: This short contains some subliminal nudity.
Monthly Archives: March 2012
WEIRD HORIZON FOR THE WEEK OF 3/30/2012
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 (WIDE RELEASE):
Mirror Mirror: Julia Roberts stars as the evil queen in this Snow White adaptation from sometimes weird director Tarsem Singh (The Cell, The Fall) that the marketing department originally promised would put a “dark twist” on the legend; now they’re positioning it as “hilarious fun for the whole family.” From the synopsis to the cast and crew to the early reviews there is nothing really inspiring about this version of the fairy tale, but we’re still hoping it’s better than the upcoming video-game styled Snow White and the Huntsman. Mirror Mirror official site.
FILM FESTIVALS: ANN ARBOR FILM FESTIVAL (Ann Arbor, MI, Mar 27-Apr 1):
Let’s face it: with over 200 experimental films (mostly shorts) screening, most of them from directors so obscure even we’ve never heard of them, writing even a short guide to the 2012 AAFF is too daunting a task for us to take on. We’ll only mention a few of the highlights we noticed: “Maska,” the latest short by the Quay Brothers; “Visitation,” surrealist Suzan Pitt‘s first new animation since 2006 (a rush job from an artist known for producing a new piece once every ten years); and a decade-by-decade program chronicling Japanese avant-garde film from the 1970s to the 2000s. Wander into any random screening at Ann Arbor and chances are what you see would qualify as “weird.” Ann Arbor Film Festival homepage.
SCREENINGS (Los Angeles, Cinefamily):
“The Unbelievable Genius of Andrzej Zulawski”: We forgot to mention the first American retrospective of the work of outre Polish auteur Andrzej Zulawski when it was in New York last week, but we can let you know about the Los Angeles version of the screening. All of the films apparently are appearing in restored versions ahead of planned Region 1 DVD releases by Mondo Vision. It’s already to late to catch much of this mini-festival but we can report on the following dates: the notorious (even around here!) Possession plays Apr. 1-4 (this is the big ticket item), along with the following films: Boris Godounov, Apr. 1; On the Silver Globe, Apr. 2; The Third Part of the Night, Apr. 8; and The Devil, Apr. 10. Thanks to L. Rob Hubbard for the heads up! The Unbelievable Genius of Andrzej Zuwalski at Cinefamily.
NEW ON DVD:
“Bobobo-Bo Bo-Bobo: The Complete Series, Part 1” (2003): We don’t usually mention anime series in this space—they are in their own universe, weird-looking to outsiders but quite normal to their peculiar devotees—but we’ll make an exception for this nonsensical parody series about a man with a giant blond afro fighting an evil emperor who wants to rid his kingdom of hair. Hopefully the clip below will explain why we’re bringing this one to your attention. Buy “Bobobo-Bo Bo-Bobo: The Complete Series, Part 1”
Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel (2011): A documentary on Roger Corman is not in itself weird, but a portrait of a film outsider who’s had his fingers in some weird pies is worth noting. An odd assortment of Oscar winners and cult figures turn out to pay tribute to the King of the B’s, including Jack Nicholson, Pam Greer, Martin Scorsese and Traci Lords. Buy Corman’s World
“The Found Footage Festival, Vol. 3”: The fine folks at Found Footage Festival have been collecting awkward, embarrassing bits of pop-culture effluvia from VHS instructional tapes, public access TV shows, and other moldy sources since 2004. They’re friendly rivals to the gang at Everything is Terrible (with less ambition but better distribution). Buy “The Found Footage Festival: Volume 3”
“The Found Footage Festival, Vol. 4”: Even more from the seemingly bottomless trash bin of thrift-store cinema. Buy “The Found Footage Festival: Volume 4”
The Gruesome Death of Tommy Pistol (2011): Read our capsule review. Three comic nightmares of a struggling actor trying to make it in the L.A. independent film scene. We named it #10 on our Weirdest Movies of 2011 list. Buy The Gruesome Death of Tommy Pistol
NEW ON BLU-RAY:
Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel (2011): See description in DVD above. Buy Corman’s World [Blu-ray]
FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON YOUTUBE:
Red Scream Nosferatu (2009): A very low-budget, color/talkie sort-of remake of Murnau’s Nosferatu. It’s got some blood, bad acting, clips from the original, a rented fog machine, and a vampire with a goatee. It’s not very good but there is some priceless dialogue sprinkled throughout: a junior bride of Dracula complains that the other brides don’t like her and make her wash their coffins (!) Watch Red Scream Nosferatu 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.
MARCH MAD MOVIE MADNESS: THE FREAKY FOUR IS HERE!
March is winding down, and our weird movie elimination tournament is heating up. We’re down to the Freaky Four: in one bracket, the Leopard Hermaphrodites of The Holy Mountain face off against the White Rabbits of Alice. Awaiting them in the championship round is the winner of the contest between the Mugwumps of Naked Lunch and the Radiator Girls of Eraserhead. Voting will only take you a few seconds, but the memory will last a lifetime!
ALIEN TERROR (1971)
*This is the sixth and final installment of the series “Karloff’s Bizarre and Final Six Pack,” which also featured Fear Chamber, House of Evil, Curse of the Crimson Altar, Cauldron of Blood, and Isle of the Snake People.
Alien Terror (1971) (AKA) Sinister Invasion is one of the oddest of Boris Karloff‘s final six movies, but it’s hardly the most exciting. It begins with typical Sixties screen credit font and pseudo jazz that sounds like it was composed for period porn.
Boris is Professor Mayer, and he and his scarred (Ygor-like) assistant Isabel (Maura Monti) are playing around with some power ray thingamajig. It shoots through the roof and hits a spaceship which just happens to be flying by and looks like one of those rocket invader ships from the old Atari arcade games. You half expect this to be some kind of lost Adventures of Superman episode and sense that at any moment some green Martian is going to show up. Alas, all that shows up is Laura (Christa Linder), the professor’s niece; she is having a fit because her uncle has just blown another hole in the roof.
The guys in the fly by UFO are not so forgiving. They realize that those Earthers possess a mighty power that could annihilate the universe. So, of course they must do something in order to stop us. Their solution is something akin to a Plan 8 from Outer Space, which makes about as much sense as Plan 9 did. One of the E.T.s, a foppy Buck Rogers type (Sergio Kleiner), steps out of a really cool, psychedelic spaceship (complete with lava lamp things inside) and possesses serial sex murderer Thomas ( Yerye Beirute). Why would he do that, you may ask? Well, obviously it’s the only way for an alien to stop Earthers from using their molecular power ray thingamajig (!)
The only problem is that Thomas still has half of his own mind and he kills a few too many girls, arousing the anger of the villagers (one of the villager is even named Frankenstein. Get it?) There are some odd touches amidst an entirely nonsensical film. One of Thomas’ victims actually loves her serial killer hero, fully knowing of his psychopathic tendencies. The alien, when it’s not looking like Barry Manilow in aluminum foil, takes on the shape of a floating transparent tribble that possesses both the professor and his niece.
Karloff has a bit of screen time in this, his last released film (he died two years before). He looks slightly better here and he is the only decent actor in the entire cast, although Beirute is an amusingly quirky non-actor. He is known–if you call it that—for this and for his briefer role inFace of the Screaming Werewolf (1966) where he was victim to Lon Chaney Jr.‘s rotund lycanthrope.
After it ends badly for half the cast, the professor destroys this power machine, which we on earth are to too stupid to harness (you can just hear Ed Wood yelling: “stupid! stupid! stupid!”) Alien Terror is no Invisible Ray (which wasn’t that good to begin with) but there is a certain amount of dumb fun to be found here. Just don’t ask me to tell you where exactly—the “magic” is in its overall peculiar flavor. It lacks the blatant drive-in antics of Fear Chamber (1968) and it could have used Ed Wood’s stamp of branded lunacy (!?!).
Still, there is a certain iconic aptness in Boris, like Bela Lugosi, ending his career with some of the weirdest bad move extravaganzas imaginable (or unimaginable). I think Poelzig and Werdegast would have appreciated the perverse irony.
LIST CANDIDATE: THE BED SITTING ROOM (1969)
The Bed Sitting Room has been promoted to the List of the 366 Weirdest Movies Ever Made. This post is closed for commenting. Please make all comments on the official Certified Weird entry.
DIRECTED BY: Richard Lester
FEATURING: Ralph Richardson, Michael Hordern, Rita Tushingham, Richard Warwick, Arthur Lowe, Mona Washbourne, Marty Feldman, Spike Milligan, Dudley Moore, Peter Cook
PLOT: After the Bomb falls, a family who lives on a still-functioning subway train travels to the surface in search of a nurse for their pregnant daughter.
WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: This absurd anxiety nightmare about the Bomb could only have come out of the Swinging Sixties; it’s one of the weirder relics of an era when filmmakers felt it was their patriotic duty to laugh in the face of the imminent apocalypse.
COMMENTS: The Bed Sitting Room began its life as a one-act play, written by comedian Spike Milligan and John Antrobus in 1962, the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis. At that time, at the height of Cold War paranoia, nuked-up powers were playing games of chicken with each other and worldwide nuclear annihilation seemed inevitable. In the average person’s eyes the world and its leaders had gone insane, and who better to depict the inevitable aftermath of our self-destructive impulses than Milligan and his “Goon Show” squad, under the cheerfully absurd direction of A Hard Days Night‘s Richard Lester? The results are a ridiculous apocalypse the likes of which has never been depicted on screen before. Looking like it was shot in a Welsh garbage dump, with heaping mountains of discarded boots and crockery and the police flying through the sky in a burnt-out VW bug attached to a balloon, the movie anticipates the junkyard visuals of post-apocalyptic films to follow. Tonally, however, Bed Sitting Room is miles away from the cutthroat scavenger worlds of Mad Max or A Boy and His Dog; it’s Theater of the Absurd performed by vaudevillians. The jokes are almost feather-light, contrasting with the inherent horror of the situation. “I’m not eating,” complains a patient. When the doctor asks why, he answers matter-of-factly, “can’t get the stuff.” In another scene a lonely recluse asks “would you do for me what my first wife did?” to a nervous middle aged woman who’s fallen into his fallout shelter. Having no choice, she reluctantly agrees, and he hands her pots, pans and teacups to throw at him as he dodges them shouting “she means nothing to me!” The movie is full of corny Continue reading LIST CANDIDATE: THE BED SITTING ROOM (1969)