Next week we’ll dip into the reader-suggested review queue with a guest review of Ken Russell‘s shock-rock opera Tommy (1975); we’ll cover the Asian antiwar amputee sex flick Caterpillar (2010); and we’ll bring you a double-shot of Buñuel with the recently Criterionized Belle de Jour (1967) (Catherine Deneuve is a housewife with masochistic fantasies) and Simon of the Desert (1965) (about a saint who lives on a pillar).

We know why you’re reading this column.  It’s weird search terms you want, and it’s weird search terms you shall have.  We start off in porn corner, always a fertile source of deranged Google queries, with the search for “men licking awful porn.”  Speaking of awful porn, the following kink has to qualify as the least erotic fetish in all of sexuality: “sudicidal horse porn movie.”  We wonder if the first searcher would be satisfied seeing a picture of a man licking a DVD copy of the second movie.  Moving on to slightly less pornographic searches, we have to admit to being amused to see a quest to find that truly obscure film, “they saved hitler’s vagina.”  But this is a family website, and we can’t award our Weirdest Search Term of the Week to such perverted entries, however bizarre they might be.  Therefore, we award our weekly prize to the guy looking for info on “how do i use noir orangutan pills.”   Well played, sir!

Here’s the ridiculously long and ever growing reader-suggested review queue (as always, many more titles after the break): Tommy (next week!); The Bride of Frank; La Grande Bouffe; Hedwig and the Angry Inch; Even Dwarves Started Small;  “My Wrongs 8245-8249 and 117″; Freaked;  Schizopolis; Strings; Dellamorte Dellamore [AKA Cemetery Man]; The Hour-glass Sanatorium [Saanatorium pod klepsidra] (turns out this is out of print in north America, but we’ll keep looking); Liquid Sky (re-review);  The Quiet; Shock Treatment; Tuvalu; “Zombie Jesus”  (if we can locate it); The Bed-Sitting Room; 3 Dev Adam;  Fantastic Planet; “Twin Peaks” (TV series); Society;  May; The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th  Dimension; Little Otik; Final Programme;  Careful; Sweet Movie; The Triplets of Belleville;  “Foutaises” (short); Johnny Suede; The Tale  of the Floating World, Un Chien Andalou, Bloodsucking  Freaks; Fellini Satyricon; Three Crowns of the Sailor;  8 1/2; Dororo; Lost Highway; Valerie and Her Week  of Wonders; Dogville; Julien Donkey-boy; Amelie;  The Ten; The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao; 1; Fast, Cheap and Out of Control; Tokyo Gore Police; At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul; The Trial [Le procès) (1962); Marquis;  Hell Comes to Frogtown;  Seom [The  Isle]; Allegro Non Troppo; Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus; Lust in the Dust; Celine and Julie Go Boating;  “Franz Kafka’s It’s a Wonderful Life;” The Magic Christian; Black Cat, White Cat; The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T; Abnormal: The Sinema of Nick Zedd; Robot Monster; Nightdreams; 3  Women; “To Oblivion”; Rubin & Ed; Teeth;  Vera; Weirdsville; Prospero’s Books;  Inferno; Garden State; Persona; The Real McCoy; Rat Pfink a Boo Boo; Themroc; Candy (1968); Run Lola Run; Pink Flamingos; Buffalo ’66;  Northfork; Weekend; The Room; Glen or Glenda?; Night of the Hunter; The Fox Family;  Midnight Skater; Angelus; Cloudy with a Chance of  Meatballs; Twister (1989); Yokai Monsters, Vol. 1: Spook Warfare [AKA Big Monster War]; Britannia Hospital; This Filthy Earth; Conspirators of Pleasure; Piano Tuner of Earthquakes; Clean, Shaven; Bubba Ho-Tep; Sheitan; Innocence; “Chingsao the Clown”; Léolo; 2001: A Space Odyssey; Blue Velvet;  ID (2005); Master of the Flying Guillotine; Yesterday Was a Lie; The Ninth Configuration; Love Me If You Dare;  Forbidden Zone; The Cell; My Dinner with Andre;  The Illustrated Man;  Fando y Lis; Rampo Noir; Head; Christmas on Mars; “Broken Glass”; Videodrome; Air Doll; The Ossuary and Other Tales; Arrebato; Symbol; Wicked City (1992  live action); Barbarella; Picnic at Hanging Rock; The Cars that Ate Paris; The Boxer’s Omen [aka Mo];  Portrait of Jennie; Salo, the 120 Days of  Sodom; The Last Sunset (1961); Orpheus (1950); A Scanner Darkly; Safe; The Atrocity Exhibition; Slacker; Goke, Body Snatcher From Hell; Color of Pomegranates; Horror Express; Noroi; Cutie Honey; The Shape of Things; On the Silver Globe; Monty Python and the Holy Grail; Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band; 2012 Aficionado DVD Zine Issue #0; The Last Days of Planet Earth;  “Charleston Parade”; Tales from the Quadead Zone; A Snake of  June; The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover; The Neverending Story; Cat Soup; Jack and the Beanstalk (1974, Japan); Drowning by Numbers; Fudge 44; From Beyond; The Saragossa Manuscript; The Drifting Classroom; Brain Dead; Uncle Meat;  Meet the Hollowheads; Nuit Noire; Screamplay; Grendel Grendel Grendel;  Eyes Wide Shut; Twilight of the Cockroaches; The Ruling Class; Indecent Desires; Daughter of Horror [AKA Dementia];  The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie; Daisies; Beauty and the Beast [Panna a Netvor] (1978); Parents; Dark City; Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters; 1 Day; The Doom Generation; Black Devil Doll;  Multiple Maniacs; Phantasm IV; and Vermilion Souls (2007) (depending on availability); Lovers on the Bridge; No Smoking (2007); Reflections of Evil; The War Zone; Gahjini; Natural Born Killers; The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb; One Eyed Monster; Reflections of Evil; Natural Born Killers; The Fountain; Save the Green Planet; Crimewave (d. Sam Raimi); Wool 100%; Murder Party; The Annunciation (1984); Funeral Parade of Roses; Stroszek; Primer; Bad Taste; Aguirre, the Wrath of God; Audition; The Fall; Me and You and Everyone We Know; Visitor of a Museum [Posetitel muzeya]; “Serial Experiments: Lain” (TV show); Darc Arc; Russian Ark; Genius Party; Watership Down; Tampopo; Goodbye Uncle Tom; The Idiots; Repo Man; Der Todersking [The Death King]; Titicut Follies; Mr. Nobody; The Shout; Rubber (this will probably jump in line and be reviewed early as a new release); “Premium” (depending on availability); Sleepaway Camp; The Pit (1981); Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams; The Falls; Spermula; Killer Condom; The Godmonster of Indian Flats; Perfect Blue; I Am Here Now; Sir Henry at Rawlinson End; The Bothersome Man; Moebius; Skeletons; Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song; The Brave Little Toaster; The Adventures of Picasso; Charly: Dias de Sangre (depending on availability); Meet the Feebles; The Adventures of Mark Twain; Tourist Trap (1979); Thundercrack!; SLC Punk; Anguish (1987); Buddy Boy (1999); Bliss (1986); La cicatrice intérieure; Avida (2006); Brain Damage; Amazon Women on the Moon; Chronopolis; Blue (1993); Metropia; Zachariah; Labyrinth; Battle in Heaven; The Taste of Tea; Evil Ed; I Will Walk Like a Crazy Horse; Cafe Flesh; Buffet Froid; Dunyayi Kurtaran Adam [AKA Turkish Star Wars]; Rubber’s Lover; The Signal; “Alma” (short); The Double Life of Veronique;  “Chick”, Felidae; Spirited Away; Decasia (2002); Killdozer;  I (heart) Huckabees;  Electric Dragon 80,000 V;  Santa Claus (1959); Strange Circus; Mad Detective; Wild at Heart; Revolver; The Tenant; A Zed and Two Noughts; Litan (1982) (depending on availability); Dark Waters; La Razon de Mi Vida (pending English language DVD release); The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea; Bernie (1996) ( depending on availability); The Ruling Class; Tank Girl; Things (1989); Hair Extensions; Haggard; Svidd neger (depending on availability); RoboGeisha; Schramm; Executive Koala;  Coonskin; Time Masters; Hard Candy; Waiting for Godot (2001); Crash (1996); La Dolce Vita; La Cravate; Spirits of the Air, Gremlins of the Clouds (depending on availability); Last Year in Marienbad; Alphaville; Savages; Big River Man; This Must Be the Place; Heart of Glass; Little Deaths; Akira; L’Ange; La Teta y La Luna; Finisterrae;  The Adventures of Baron Muchausen; L’Âge d’or; Breakfast of Champions; Heavenly Creatures; Vase de Noces; Lucky; Ichi the Killer; La antena; Mystics in Bali; Feherlofia; Versus; “Meshes of the Afternoon”; Birth of the Overfiend; A Dog Called Pain; The Bed Sitting Room; Memento Mori; That Deadwood Feeling; Happiness; Let the Right One In; Porcile [AKA Pigpen]; Lisa and the Devil; Django, Kill!; Underground; Caligula; Hotel (2004); Hardgore; Survive Style 5+; Fantasia; Philosophy of a Knife; The Last Movie; Lord Love a Duck; Amarcord; The Swimmer (official re-review); I Married a Strange Person; Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale; The Canadian Films of Paul Driessen; And The Ship Sails On; Mondo Trasho; Teorema; Marat/Sade; Darjeeling Limited; Casino Royale; The Phantom of Liberty; Space Thang; Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life; Drunken Wu Tang; Insidious (2010); The Earl Sessions (2011); Sitcom; They Came Back, Prometheus’ Garden, “Harpya”; Bruce Lee vs. Gay Power; Dumplings; and Attenberg.

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

IN THEATERS (LIMITED RELEASE):

Kill List: A psychologically scarred hit man agrees to the proverbial “one last mission” and finds it ironically horrifying.  This off-the-radar British horror-thriller is drawing a lot of comparisons to The Wicker Man (something that didn’t happen for the “official sequel,” The Wicker Tree).  Kill List official site.

IN DEVELOPMENT:

Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter (June 2012 release):  The title tells all: this is a movie about the Great Emancipator freeing the undead from the curse of living death.  A silly concept, but the talent behind it makes it of some interest: Timur Bekmambetov (Nightwatch) is directing and Tim Burton is producing.  It’s being filmed in 3D, unfortunately.  No official site (yet).

NEW ON DVD:

Blubberella (2011): Another exercise in tasteful restraint from the inimitable Uwe Boll: a comedy about a fat, half-vampire superheroine who fights Nazis in WWII.  Boll gives himself a cameo as Hitler. Buy Blubberella.

Dream House (2011): Psychological thriller about a man who relocates his family to a suburban house where a murder once took place and starts seeing strange things, etc.  A troubled production which was virtually shelved by the Universal despite the presence of box office draws Daniel Craig, Rachel Weisz, and Naomi Watts in the cast.  The director tried to have his name removed. Buy Dream House.

The Mill and the Cross (2011):  Artist/director Lech Majewski brings Pieter Brueghel’s sprawling canvas “The Way to Calvary”—which set the Crucifixion in the painter’s own 16th century Flanders—to life, using CGI to overlap real actors with the artwork.  Maybe it’s not all that weird, but it’s certainly not normal.  Rutger Hauer stars as Brueghel and becomes the first actor ever to portray a Flemish painter and a hobo with a shotgun in the same year. Buy The Mill & The Cross.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Adaptation (2002):  Read our capsule review.  Nicolas Cage stars as twin screenwriters Donald and Charlie Kaufman in this seminal metamovie scripted by Charlie Kaufman.  From bargain label Image Entertainment, so there are no special features. Buy Adaptation [Blu-ray].

Dream House (2011): See description in DVD above. Buy Dream House [Blu-ray].

The Mill and the Cross (2011): See description in DVD above. Buy The Mill & The Cross [Blu-ray].

Monkeybone (2001):  Brendan Fraser plays an underground cartoonist who meets his libidinal alter-ego, Monkeybone, in a coma in this Roger Rabbit-style feature mixing animated and real life characters.  It’s from Henry Selick, co-stars Whoopi Goldberg as Death, and is actually pretty nasty for a PG-13 movie. Buy Monkeybone [Blu-ray].

FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON YOUTUBE:

My Beautiful Girl, Mari (2002): Korean animation about a boy’s first love, with a girl who may be a spirit of some sort.  Critic were divided but it looks mildly weird (though audiences and critics used the word “confusing” instead).  Watch My Beautiful Girl, Mari 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.

Who makes up the Weirdcademy, you ask? Membership is open to all readers of 366 Weird Movies. The rules for joining the Weirdcademy of Motion Picture Arts and Weirdness have changed slightly this year, so pay attention. To officially join the Weirdcademy, locate an official online ballot (such as the one printed below) and hover your mouse pointer over the radial button representing the choice of movie you would like to see win any award in any category. Then, simply depress the left button of your mouse to make your selection. Selections made using the right mouse button will be disregarded, and you will be forced to reapply. If your application for membership is provisionally approved, a dot will appear next to your choice. You are not done with the application procedure yet, so continue reading. To be certified as a voting member of the Weirdcademy, at some point subsequent to making your selection, you must navigate your mouse button to the box marked “vote.” Now, again depress your left mouse button to confirm your membership as a voting member of the Weirdcademy.

Alternatively, you can just use one of those iPhone thingees to make your selection. Anyone with an iPhone thingee is immediately accepted into the Weirdcademy.

(Vote as many times as you like, but only once per day, please. We’ll keep voting open until February 26 at 1:00 PM EST, so we can announce our results before the Academy Awards and steal their thunder).  There is no requirement that you’ve have to actually see all the movies in any category before voting.

This year we have added an exciting new category to the Weirdcademy Awards: Weirdest Short Film of the Year.  To watch all ten nominees and to cast your vote, please click here.

Without further delay, here are the nominees for the 2011 Weirdcademy awards:

A special thanks goes out to Cameron Jorgensen, 366 Weird Movies under-appreciated shorts Czar, who discovered most of these films through his own research.

Chicken – Part 2: Resurrection (d. Black Milk Productions): There’s something strange about this short film about diners sharing a chicken dinner, and it’s not just that the quartet is made up of two guys with leprosy, a harlequin, and a Nazi with a mustache, monocle, and cleavage.

Judy’s Smile (d. Rob Parrish): Choice narration alters an educational hygiene film to turn it into a man’s lament over his lifelong abhorrence for his sister’s smile.

Laugh Years Light Trax (d. Freakcast): Audio and video of laughter is dubbed, tweaked, and distorted until it becomes the substance of nightmares.

Mound (d. Allison Schulnik): A community of creepy clay people smile, conjoin, hold hands, and dance to “It’s Raining Today” by Noel Scott Engel in this eerie featurette.

The Piano (d. Matthew Brown): A beautiful, high-intensity piano duet comes to life, and the performers of the piece become the victims of its story.

Salma (d. Martin Sand Vallespir): An animator uses weirdness to protest the issue of unexploded ordinance.

S-Bahn (d. Markus Neidel): Strange creatures ride the subway in this mix of animation and live action.

Snowballs (d. Harmony Korine): Features two characters in Native American inspired clothing, and, not surprisingly for Korine, white trash.  CONTENT WARNING: This short contains some profanity.

Strife on Mars (d. Gibby Goo Bop): An overly-enthusiastic, sandal-wearing, peace-loving, tree-hugging entity presents his first ever music video.

This Moment Is Not (d. Larry Carlson): A monotone soundtrack and the heavily reverberated insights of a mystic.

It was a pretty great week for weird search terms, though we’re still having difficulty plowing through about 1,000 queries a day (!)  Soon, we’ll have to hire an intern just to read Google Analytics reports.  First off, we are proud to announce that, according to search engines, 366 Weird Movies remains your number one source of information about “haunted by an apple” (the exact phrase).  We have no advice for you if you’re coming here because you’re actually being haunted by an apple, but we appreciate the traffic anyway.  But that’s not the only bizarre information Google believes we can supply you with!  Tired of all those inferior guides and looking for “better pillow maturation videos”?  Apparently, we can help!  Looking for “dinosaur bras”?  Us again!  Of course, we specialize in weird movies, so it doesn’t surprise us that someone would think of us when looking for “movie where a lactating man drinking beer.”  But our favorite Weird Search Term of the week is the poetically sleazy “naked massage with its relished mysteries.”  Why just accept the mystery, when you can get naked and relish it?

Here’s the ridiculously long reader-suggested review queue: Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (next week!); The Bride of Frank; La Grande Bouffe; Hedwig and the Angry Inch; Even Dwarves Started Small;  “My Wrongs 8245-8249 and 117″; Freaked;  Schizopolis; Strings; Dellamorte Dellamore [AKA Cemetery Man]; The Hour-glass Sanatorium [Saanatorium pod klepsidra]; Liquid Sky (re-review);  The Quiet; Shock Treatment; Tuvalu; “Zombie Jesus”  (if we can locate it); The Bed-Sitting Room; 3 Dev Adam;  Fantastic Planet; “Twin Peaks” (TV series); Society;  May; The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th  Dimension; Little Otik; Final Programme;  Careful; Sweet Movie; The Triplets of Belleville;  “Foutaises” (short); Johnny Suede; The Tale  of the Floating World, Un Chien Andalou, Bloodsucking  Freaks; Fellini Satyricon; Three Crowns of the Sailor;  8 1/2; Dororo; Lost Highway; Valerie and Her Week  of Wonders; Dogville; Julien Donkey-boy; Amelie;  The Ten; The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao; 1; Fast, Cheap and Out of Control; Tokyo Gore Police; At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul; The Trial [Le procès) (1962); Marquis;  Hell Comes to Frogtown;  Seom [The  Isle]; Allegro Non Troppo; Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus; Lust in the Dust; Celine and Julie Go Boating;  “Franz Kafka’s It’s a Wonderful Life;” The Magic Christian; Black Cat, White Cat; The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T; Abnormal: The Sinema of Nick Zedd; Robot Monster; Nightdreams; 3  Women; “To Oblivion”; Rubin & Ed; Teeth;  Vera; Weirdsville; Prospero’s Books;  Inferno; Garden State; Persona; The Real McCoy; Rat Pfink a Boo Boo; Themroc; Candy (1968); Run Lola Run; Pink Flamingos; Buffalo ’66;  Northfork; Weekend; The Room; Glen or Glenda?; Night of the Hunter; The Fox Family;  Midnight Skater; Angelus; Cloudy with a Chance of  Meatballs; Twister (1989); Yokai Monsters, Vol. 1: Spook Warfare [AKA Big Monster War]; Britannia Hospital; This Filthy Earth; Conspirators of Pleasure; Piano Tuner of Earthquakes; Clean, Shaven; Bubba Ho-Tep; Sheitan; Innocence; “Chingsao the Clown”; Léolo; 2001: A Space Odyssey; Blue Velvet;  ID (2005); Master of the Flying Guillotine; Yesterday Was a Lie; The Ninth Configuration; Love Me If You Dare;  Forbidden Zone; The Cell; My Dinner with Andre;  The Illustrated Man;  Fando y Lis; Rampo Noir; Head; Christmas on Mars; “Broken Glass”; Videodrome; Air Doll; The Ossuary and Other Tales; Arrebato; Symbol; Wicked City (1992  live action); Barbarella; Picnic at Hanging Rock; The Cars that Ate Paris; The Boxer’s Omen [aka Mo];  Portrait of Jennie; Salo, the 120 Days of  Sodom; The Last Sunset (1961); Orpheus (1950); A Scanner Darkly; Safe; The Atrocity Exhibition; Slacker; Goke, Body Snatcher From Hell; Color of Pomegranates; Horror Express; Noroi; Cutie Honey; The Shape of Things; On the Silver Globe; Monty Python and the Holy Grail; Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band; 2012 Aficionado DVD Zine Issue #0; The Last Days of Planet Earth;  “Charleston Parade”; Tales from the Quadead Zone; A Snake of  June; The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover; The Neverending Story; Cat Soup; Jack and the Beanstalk (1974, Japan); Drowning by Numbers; Fudge 44; From Beyond; The Saragossa Manuscript; The Drifting Classroom; Brain Dead; Uncle Meat;  Meet the Hollowheads; Nuit Noire; Screamplay; Grendel Grendel Grendel;  Eyes Wide Shut; Twilight of the Cockroaches; The Ruling Class; Indecent Desires; Daughter of Horror [AKA Dementia];  The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie; Daisies; Beauty and the Beast [Panna a Netvor] (1978); Parents; Dark City; Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters; 1 Day; The Doom Generation; Black Devil Doll;  Multiple Maniacs; Phantasm IV; and Vermilion Souls (2007) (depending on availability); Lovers on the Bridge; No Smoking (2007); Reflections of Evil; The War Zone; Gahjini; Natural Born Killers; The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb; One Eyed Monster; Reflections of Evil; Natural Born Killers; The Fountain; Save the Green Planet; Crimewave (d. Sam Raimi); Wool 100%; Murder Party; The Annunciation (1984); Funeral Parade of Roses; Stroszek; Primer; Bad Taste; Aguirre, the Wrath of God; Audition; The Fall; Me and You and Everyone We Know; Visitor of a Museum [Posetitel muzeya]; “Serial Experiments: Lain” (TV show); Darc Arc; Russian Ark; Genius Party; Watership Down; Tampopo; Goodbye Uncle Tom; The Idiots; Repo Man; Der Todersking [The Death King]; Titicut Follies; Mr. Nobody; The Shout; Rubber (this will probably jump in line and be reviewed early as a new release); “Premium” (depending on availability); Sleepaway Camp; The Pit (1981); Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams; The Falls; Spermula; Killer Condom; The Godmonster of Indian Flats; Perfect Blue; I Am Here Now; Sir Henry at Rawlinson End; The Bothersome Man; Moebius; Skeletons; Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song; The Brave Little Toaster; The Adventures of Picasso; Charly: Dias de Sangre (depending on availability); Meet the Feebles; The Adventures of Mark Twain; Tourist Trap (1979); Thundercrack!; SLC Punk; Anguish (1987); Buddy Boy (1999); Bliss (1986); La cicatrice intérieure; Avida (2006); Brain Damage; Amazon Women on the Moon; Chronopolis; Blue (1993); Metropia; Zachariah; Labyrinth; Battle in Heaven; The Taste of Tea; Evil Ed; I Will Walk Like a Crazy Horse; Cafe Flesh; Buffet Froid; Dunyayi Kurtaran Adam [AKA Turkish Star Wars]; Rubber’s Lover; The Signal; “Alma” (short); The Double Life of Veronique;  “Chick”, Felidae; Spirited Away; Decasia (2002); Killdozer; Tommy; I (heart) Huckabees;  Electric Dragon 80,000 V;  Santa Claus (1959); Strange Circus; Mad Detective; Wild at Heart; Revolver; The Tenant; A Zed and Two Noughts; Litan (1982) (depending on availability); Dark Waters; La Razon de Mi Vida (pending English language DVD release); The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea; Bernie (1996) ( depending on availability); The Ruling Class; Tank Girl; Things (1989); Hair Extensions; Haggard; Svidd neger (depending on availability); RoboGeisha; Schramm; Executive Koala;  Coonskin; Time Masters; Hard Candy; Waiting for Godot (2001); Crash (1996); La Dolce Vita; La Cravate; Spirits of the Air, Gremlins of the Clouds (depending on availability); Last Year in Marienbad; Alphaville; Savages; Big River Man; This Must Be the Place; Heart of Glass; Little Deaths; Akira; L’Ange; La Teta y La Luna; Finisterrae;  The Adventures of Baron Muchausen; L’Âge d’or; Breakfast of Champions; Heavenly Creatures; Vase de Noces; Lucky; Ichi the Killer; La antena; Mystics in Bali; Feherlofia; Versus; “Meshes of the Afternoon”; Birth of the Overfiend; A Dog Called Pain; The Bed Sitting Room; Memento Mori; That Deadwood Feeling; Happiness; Let the Right One In; Porcile [AKA Pigpen]; Lisa and the Devil; Django, Kill!; Underground; Caligula; Hotel (2004); Hardgore; Survive Style 5+; Fantasia; Philosophy of a Knife; The Last Movie; Lord Love a Duck; Amarcord; The Swimmer (official re-review); I Married a Strange Person; Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale; The Canadian Films of Paul Driessen; And The Ship Sails On; Mondo Trasho; Teorema; Marat/Sade; Darjeeling Limited; Casino Royale; The Phantom of Liberty; Space Thang; Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life; Drunken Wu Tang; Insidious (2010); The Earl Sessions (2011); Sitcom; They Came Back, and Prometheus’ Garden.

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, Jeremy Kasten, Tom Savini, and Richard Stanley.  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 Christopher Lee 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, Zach Galifianakis, 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.

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″; Freaked;  Schizopolis; Strings; Dellamorte Dellamore [AKA Cemetery Man]; The Hour-glass Sanatorium [Saanatorium pod klepsidra]; Liquid Sky;  The Quiet; Shock Treatment; Tuvalu; “Zombie Jesus”  (if we can locate it); The Bed-Sitting Room; 3 Dev Adam;  Fantastic Planet; “Twin Peaks” (TV series); Society;  May; The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th  Dimension; Little Otik; Final Programme;  Careful; Sweet Movie; The Triplets of Belleville;  “Foutaises” (short); Johnny Suede; The Tale  of the Floating World, Un Chien Andalou, Bloodsucking  Freaks; Fellini Satyricon; Three Crowns of the Sailor;  8 1/2; Dororo; Lost Highway; Valerie and Her Week  of Wonders; Dogville; Julien Donkey-boy; Amelie;  The Ten; The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao; 1; Fast, Cheap and Out of Control; Tokyo Gore Police; At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul; The Trial [Le procès) (1962); Marquis;  Hell Comes to Frogtown;  Seom [The  Isle]; Allegro Non Troppo; Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus; Lust in the Dust; Celine and Julie Go Boating;  “Franz Kafka’s It’s a Wonderful Life;” The Magic Christian; Black Cat, White Cat; The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T; Abnormal: The Sinema of Nick Zedd; Robot Monster; Nightdreams; 3  Women; “To Oblivion”; Rubin & Ed; Teeth;  Vera; Weirdsville; Prospero’s Books;  Inferno; Garden State; Persona; The Real McCoy; Rat Pfink a Boo Boo; Themroc; Candy (1968); Run Lola Run; Pink Flamingos; Buffalo ’66;  Northfork; Weekend; The Room; Glen or Glenda?; Night of the Hunter; The Fox Family;  Midnight Skater; Angelus; Cloudy with a Chance of  Meatballs; Twister (1989); Yokai Monsters, Vol. 1: Spook Warfare [AKA Big Monster War]; Britannia Hospital; This Filthy Earth; Conspirators of Pleasure; Piano Tuner of Earthquakes; Clean, Shaven; Bubba Ho-Tep; Sheitan; Innocence; “Chingsao the Clown”; Léolo; 2001: A Space Odyssey; Blue Velvet;  ID (2005); Master of the Flying Guillotine; Yesterday Was a Lie; The Ninth Configuration; Love Me If You Dare;  Forbidden Zone; The Cell; My Dinner with Andre;  The Illustrated Man;  Fando y Lis; Rampo Noir; Head; Christmas on Mars; “Broken Glass”; Videodrome; Air Doll; The Ossuary and Other Tales; Arrebato; Symbol; Wicked City (1992  live action); Barbarella; Picnic at Hanging Rock; The Cars that Ate Paris; The Boxer’s Omen [aka Mo];  Portrait of Jennie; Salo, the 120 Days of  Sodom; The Last Sunset (1961); Orpheus (1950); A Scanner Darkly; Safe; The Atrocity Exhibition; Slacker; Goke, Body Snatcher From Hell; Color of Pomegranates; Horror Express; Noroi; Cutie Honey; The Shape of Things; On the Silver Globe; Monty Python and the Holy Grail; Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band; 2012 Aficionado DVD Zine Issue #0; The Last Days of Planet Earth;  “Charleston Parade”; Tales from the Quadead Zone; A Snake of  June; The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover; The Neverending Story; Cat Soup; Jack and the Beanstalk (1974, Japan); Drowning by Numbers; Fudge 44; From Beyond; The Saragossa Manuscript; The Drifting Classroom; Brain Dead; Uncle Meat;  Meet the Hollowheads; Nuit Noire; Screamplay; Grendel Grendel Grendel;  Eyes Wide Shut; Twilight of the Cockroaches; The Ruling Class; Indecent Desires; Daughter of Horror [AKA Dementia];  The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie; Daisies; Beauty and the Beast [Panna a Netvor] (1978); Parents; Dark City; Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters; 1 Day; The Doom Generation; Black Devil Doll;  Multiple Maniacs; Phantasm IV; and Vermilion Souls (2007) (depending on availability); Lovers on the Bridge; No Smoking (2007); Reflections of Evil; The War Zone; Gahjini; Natural Born Killers; The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb; One Eyed Monster; Reflections of Evil; Natural Born Killers; The Fountain; Save the Green Planet; Crimewave (d. Sam Raimi); Wool 100%; Murder Party; The Annunciation (1984); Funeral Parade of Roses; Stroszek; Primer; Bad Taste; Aguirre, the Wrath of God; Audition; The Fall; Me and You and Everyone We Know; Visitor of a Museum [Posetitel muzeya]; “Serial Experiments: Lain” (TV show); Darc Arc; Russian Ark; Genius Party; Watership Down; Tampopo; Goodbye Uncle Tom; The Idiots; Repo Man; Der Todersking [The Death King]; Titicut Follies; Mr. Nobody; The Shout; Rubber (this will probably jump in line and be reviewed early as a new release); “Premium” (depending on availability); Sleepaway Camp; The Pit (1981); Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams; The Falls; Spermula; Killer Condom; The Godmonster of Indian Flats; Perfect Blue; I Am Here Now; Sir Henry at Rawlinson End; The Bothersome Man; Moebius; Skeletons; Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song; The Brave Little Toaster; The Adventures of Picasso; Charly: Dias de Sangre (depending on availability); Meet the Feebles; The Adventures of Mark Twain; Tourist Trap (1979); Thundercrack!; SLC Punk; Anguish (1987); Buddy Boy (1999); Bliss (1986); La cicatrice intérieure; Avida (2006); Brain Damage; Amazon Women on the Moon; Chronopolis; Blue (1993); Metropia; Zachariah; Labyrinth; Battle in Heaven; The Taste of Tea; Evil Ed; I Will Walk Like a Crazy Horse; Cafe Flesh; Buffet Froid; Dunyayi Kurtaran Adam [AKA Turkish Star Wars]; Rubber’s Lover; The Signal; “Alma” (short); The Double Life of Veronique;  “Chick”, Felidae; Spirited Away; Decasia (2002); Killdozer; Tommy; I (heart) Huckabees;  Electric Dragon 80,000 V;  Santa Claus (1959); Strange Circus; Mad Detective; Wild at Heart; Revolver; The Tenant; A Zed and Two Noughts; Litan (1982) (depending on availability); Dark Waters; La Razon de Mi Vida (pending English language DVD release); The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea; Bernie (1996) ( depending on availability); The Ruling Class; Tank Girl; Things (1989); Hair Extensions; Haggard; Svidd neger (depending on availability); RoboGeisha; Schramm; Executive Koala;  Coonskin; Time Masters; Hard Candy; Waiting for Godot (2001); Crash (1996); La Dolce Vita; La Cravate; Spirits of the Air, Gremlins of the Clouds (depending on availability); Last Year in Marienbad; Alphaville; Savages; Big River Man; This Must Be the Place; Heart of Glass; Little Deaths; Akira; L’Ange; La Teta y La Luna; Finisterrae;  The Adventures of Baron Muchausen; L’Âge d’or; Breakfast of Champions; Heavenly Creatures; Vase de Noces; Lucky; Ichi the Killer; La antena; Mystics in Bali; Feherlofia; Versus; “Meshes of the Afternoon”; Birth of the Overfiend; A Dog Called Pain; The Bed Sitting Room; Memento Mori; That Deadwood Feeling; Happiness; Let the Right One In; Porcile [AKA Pigpen]; Lisa and the Devil; Django, Kill!; Underground; Caligula; Hotel (2004); Hardgore; Survive Style 5+; Fantasia; Philosophy of a Knife; The Last Movie; Lord Love a Duck; Amarcord; The Swimmer (official re-review); I Married a Strange Person; Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale; The Canadian Films of Paul Driessen; And The Ship Sails On; Mondo Trasho; Teorema; Marat/Sade; Darjeeling Limited; Casino Royale; The Phantom of Liberty; Space Thang; Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life; Drunken Wu Tang; Insidious (2010); The Earl Sessions (2011); Sitcom; and They Came Back.

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 Robert Morgan 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 Don Hertzfeldt‘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 Don Coscarelli 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 Stanley Kubrick‘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, Zach Galifianakis, 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.

We’re faced with a ragtag bunch of questionable queries, but rest assured we’ll find something to nominate as our Weirdest Search Term of the Week.  First off, as a public service announcement, we’d like to advise people who don’t speak English not to try to search for porn in this language.  You can hardly query Google for something innocuous like “best coffeemaker reviews” without half the suggestions directing you to a some site specializing in big busted drunk horny Asian cheerleaders, yet bizarre phrases like “free videos of girls bended worsely for sex” and “rassian old women and men foucing videos” completely confound the search engine—and send them to our site instead.  Now, nrmally, a term like “beard ninja rapes stone game” would win the weirdest award hands down, but we had to subtract points because this refers to something that actually exists (though after watching it, we still don’t know what the hell it is).  That leaves us going with the simple and subtle option for our Weirdest Search Term of the Week: “pants in the movies.”  We like to think the searcher is in the opening research stages of writing his master’s thesis for a dual degree in film studies/men’s fashion.

Here’s the reader-suggested review queue, which, as long as it is, is still filling up faster than we can knock out reviews: The American Astronaut (next week!); Kairo [AKA Pulse] (next week!); Session 9 (next week!); Blood Tea and Red Strings; Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory; The Bride of Frank; La Grande Bouffe; Hedwig and the Angry Inch; Even Dwarves Started Small; “I Killed My Lesbian Wife, Hung Her on a Meat Hook, and Now I Have a Three-Picture Deal at  Disney” (we think we’ll be dropping this one, as director Ben Affleck has suppressed it, and it does not appear to be either very good or particularly weird); “My Wrongs 8245-8249 and 117″; Freaked;  Schizopolis; Strings; Dellamorte Dellamore [AKA Cemetery Man]; The Hour-glass Sanatorium [Saanatorium pod klepsidra]; Liquid Sky;  The Quiet; Shock Treatment; Tuvalu; “Zombie Jesus”  (if we can locate it); The Bed-Sitting Room; 3 Dev Adam;  Fantastic Planet; “Twin Peaks” (TV series); Society;  May; The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th  Dimension; Little Otik; Final Programme;  Careful; Sweet Movie; The Triplets of Belleville;  “Foutaises” (short); Johnny Suede; The Tale  of the Floating World, Un Chien Andalou, Bloodsucking  Freaks; Fellini Satyricon; Three Crowns of the Sailor;  8 1/2; Dororo; Lost Highway; Valerie and Her Week  of Wonders; Dogville; Julien Donkey-boy; Amelie;  The Ten; The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao; 1; Fast, Cheap and Out of Control; Tokyo Gore Police; At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul; The Trial [Le procès) (1962); Marquis;  Hell Comes to Frogtown;  Seom [The  Isle]; Allegro Non Troppo; Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus; Lust in the Dust; Celine and Julie Go Boating;  “Franz Kafka’s It’s a Wonderful Life;” The Magic Christian; Black Cat, White Cat; The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T; Abnormal: The Sinema of Nick Zedd; Robot Monster; Nightdreams; 3  Women; “To Oblivion”; Rubin & Ed; Teeth;  Vera; Weirdsville; Prospero’s Books;  Inferno; Garden State; Persona; The Real McCoy; Rat Pfink a Boo Boo; Themroc; Candy (1968); Run Lola Run; Pink Flamingos; Buffalo ’66;  Northfork; Weekend; The Room; Glen or Glenda?; Night of the Hunter; The Fox Family;  Midnight Skater; Angelus; Cloudy with a Chance of  Meatballs; Twister (1989); Yokai Monsters, Vol. 1: Spook Warfare [AKA Big Monster War]; Britannia Hospital; This Filthy Earth; Conspirators of Pleasure; Piano Tuner of Earthquakes; Clean, Shaven; Bubba Ho-Tep; Sheitan; Innocence; “Chingsao the Clown”; Léolo; 2001: A Space Odyssey; Blue Velvet;  ID (2005); Master of the Flying Guillotine; Yesterday Was a Lie; The Ninth Configuration; Love Me If You Dare;  Forbidden Zone; The Cell; My Dinner with Andre;  The Illustrated Man;  Fando y Lis; Rampo Noir; Head; Christmas on Mars; “Broken Glass”; Videodrome; Air Doll; The Ossuary and Other Tales; Arrebato; Symbol; Wicked City (1992  live action); Barbarella; Picnic at Hanging Rock; The Cars that Ate Paris; The Boxer’s Omen [aka Mo];  Portrait of Jennie; Salo, the 120 Days of  Sodom; The Last Sunset (1961); Orpheus (1950); A Scanner Darkly; Safe; The Atrocity Exhibition; Slacker; Goke, Body Snatcher From Hell; Color of Pomegranates; Horror Express; Noroi; Cutie Honey; The Shape of Things; On the Silver Globe; Monty Python and the Holy Grail; Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band; 2012 Aficionado DVD Zine Issue #0; The Last Days of Planet Earth;  “Charleston Parade”; Tales from the Quadead Zone; A Snake of  June; The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover; The Neverending Story; Cat Soup; Jack and the Beanstalk (1974, Japan); Drowning by Numbers; Fudge 44; From Beyond; The Saragossa Manuscript; The Drifting Classroom; Brain Dead; Uncle Meat;  Meet the Hollowheads; Nuit Noire; Screamplay; Grendel Grendel Grendel;  Eyes Wide Shut; Twilight of the Cockroaches; The Ruling Class; Indecent Desires; Daughter of Horror [AKA Dementia];  The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie; Daisies; Beauty and the Beast [Panna a Netvor] (1978); Parents; Dark City; Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters; 1 Day; The Doom Generation; Black Devil Doll;  Multiple Maniacs; Phantasm IV; and Vermilion Souls (2007) (depending on availability); Lovers on the Bridge; No Smoking (2007); Reflections of Evil; The War Zone; Gahjini; Natural Born Killers; The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb; One Eyed Monster; Reflections of Evil; Natural Born Killers; The Fountain; Save the Green Planet; Crimewave (d. Sam Raimi); Wool 100%; Murder Party; The Annunciation (1984); Funeral Parade of Roses; Stroszek; Primer; Bad Taste; Aguirre, the Wrath of God; Audition; The Fall; Me and You and Everyone We Know; Visitor of a Museum [Posetitel muzeya]; “Serial Experiments: Lain” (TV show); Darc Arc; Russian Ark; Genius Party; Watership Down; Tampopo; Goodbye Uncle Tom; The Idiots; Repo Man; Der Todersking [The Death King]; Titicut Follies; Mr. Nobody; The Shout; Rubber (this will probably jump in line and be reviewed early as a new release); “Premium” (depending on availability); Sleepaway Camp; The Pit (1981); Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams; The Falls; Spermula; Killer Condom; The Godmonster of Indian Flats; Perfect Blue; I Am Here Now; Sir Henry at Rawlinson End; The Bothersome Man; Moebius; Skeletons; Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song; The Brave Little Toaster; The Adventures of Picasso; Charly: Dias de Sangre (depending on availability); Meet the Feebles; The Adventures of Mark Twain; Tourist Trap (1979); Thundercrack!; SLC Punk; Anguish (1987); Buddy Boy (1999); Bliss (1986); La cicatrice intérieure; Avida (2006); Brain Damage; Amazon Women on the Moon; Chronopolis; Blue (1993); Metropia; Zachariah; Labyrinth; Battle in Heaven; The Taste of Tea; Evil Ed; I Will Walk Like a Crazy Horse; Cafe Flesh; Buffet Froid; Dunyayi Kurtaran Adam [AKA Turkish Star Wars]; Rubber’s Lover; The Signal; “Alma” (short); The Double Life of Veronique;  “Chick”, Felidae; Spirited Away; Decasia (2002); Killdozer; Tommy; I (heart) Huckabees;  Electric Dragon 80,000 V;  Santa Claus (1959); Strange Circus; Mad Detective; Wild at Heart; Revolver; The Tenant; A Zed and Two Noughts; Litan (1982) (depending on availability); Dark Waters; La Razon de Mi Vida (pending English language DVD release); The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea; Bernie (1996) ( depending on availability); The Ruling Class; Tank Girl; Things (1989); Hair Extensions; Haggard; Svidd neger (depending on availability); RoboGeisha; Schramm; Executive Koala;  Coonskin; Time Masters; Hard Candy; Waiting for Godot (2001); Crash (1996); La Dolce Vita; La Cravate; Spirits of the Air, Gremlins of the Clouds (depending on availability); Last Year in Marienbad; Alphaville; Savages; Big River Man; This Must Be the Place; Heart of Glass; Little Deaths; Akira; L’Ange; La Teta y La Luna; Finisterrae;  The Adventures of Baron Muchausen; L’Âge d’or; Breakfast of Champions; Heavenly Creatures; Vase de Noces; Lucky; Ichi the Killer; La antena; Mystics in Bali; Feherlofia; Versus; “Meshes of the Afternoon”; Birth of the Overfiend; A Dog Called Pain; The Bed Sitting Room; Memento Mori; That Deadwood Feeling; Happiness; Let the Right One In; Porcile [AKA Pigpen]; Lisa and the Devil; Django, Kill!; Underground; Caligula; Hotel (2004); Hardgore; Survive Style 5+; Fantasia; Philosophy of a Knife; The Last Movie; Lord Love a Duck; Amarcord; The Swimmer (official re-review); I Married a Strange Person; Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale; The Canadian Films of Paul Driessen; And The Ship Sails On; Mondo Trasho; Teorema; Marat/Sade; Darjeeling Limited; Casino Royale; The Phantom of Liberty; Space Thang; Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life; and Drunken Wu Tang.

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

IN THEATERS (LIMITED RELEASE):

We Need to Talk About Kevin: After her son commits an atrocity, a mom looks back on their troubled relationship and wonders if she was to blame, or if Kevin was evil from the womb.  Not thoroughly weird, but it is heavily stylized and impressionistic, and it does inexplicably begin with the protagonist being hoisted over a vat of tomatoes.  Expect an Oscar nom for Tilda Swinton.  Opening in New York, then L.A., then the rest of us.  We Need to Talk About Kevin official site.

SCREENINGS (NEW YORK CITY, Jan 12-16, 18):

Toll Booth [Gise Memuru] (2010): A psychological drama from Turkey about an unbalanced tollbooth operator who hallucinates on the job. Few reviewers have seen it but their notices have all been positive.  No English language trailer exists for this interesting film. Playing at the Museum of Modern Art as part of the “Global Lens” series.  Toll Booth at the Global Film Initiative.

NEW ON DVD:

Film Socialisme (2010): Jean-Luc Goddard’s latest film is enigmatically described as “a symphony in three movements,” titled “Things Such As,” “Quo Vadis Europe,” and “Humanities.”  No one has been able to satisfactorily synopsize the plot.  It’s split critics right down the middle, and it looks very weird.  Buy Film Socialisme.

The Hellstrom Chronicle (1972): Today the fake documentary is considered a vehicle for comedy, but this 1972 mockumentary presents itself as a horror/sci-fi outing.  A fictional scientist explains the threat insects pose to humanity, illustrated with then state-of-the-art microphotography of the sick and perverse world of bugs.  A minor cult item that played college campuses in its heyday.  Buy The Hellstrom Chronicle.

Jesus Christ Superstar (1973):  The film adaptation of the seminal Andrew Lloyd Weber/Tim Rice rock opera takes some weirdish liberties with the setting, putting  tanks and machine guns in ancient Judea (as if the rock music wasn’t anachronistic enough).  It’s an interesting staging of a surprisingly thoughtful play about the paradoxes of predestination, but a big downside is that the vocal performances suffer in comparison to the mesmerizing 1970 concept album.  We’re not aware of any special features (other than a digital copy) on this Universal re-release.  Buy Jesus Christ Superstar.

Touch of Evil (1958):  Orson Welles’ overheated noir about a Mexican lawman (Charlton Heston!) who uncovers border town corruption, embodied in the massive, commanding personality of bad cop Hank Quinlan (Welles).  Maybe it’s not completely weird, but if you’ve never seen it you’ll likely be amazed at the ornate camerawork, frighteningly quirky characters, Code-challenging evocations of drugs and rape, and general ahead-of-its-time style.  Again, there are no known extras other than a digital copy but this classic crime film has historically been underrepresented on home video, so any release counts as a good one. Buy Touch of Evil.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Film Socialisme (2010):  See description in DVD above. Buy Film Socialisme [Blu-ray].

The Hellstrom Chronicle (1972): See description in DVD above. Buy The Hellstrom Chronicle [Blu-ray].

FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON YOUTUBE:

Maniac (1934):  Read the certified weird entry! Here it is: all the orangutang men, eyeball-eating, cat-skinning, and syringe catfights one person can stand!  It’s widely considered one of the worst movies ever made, yet holds an 89% positive rating at Rotten Tomatoes.  Can your sanity handle the unsettling madness that is Maniac?  It is not unlike a grape, or an oyster…  Watch Maniac 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.