Category Archives: Canonically Weird (The List)

Apocryphally Weird

60*. RAGGEDY ANN & ANDY: A MUSICAL ADVENTURE (1977)

1 Comment

366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.

“This is really weird.”–Raggedy Andy, when a camel asks him to climb on and join him as he chases an invisible caravan in the sky

DIRECTED BY: Richard Williams

FEATURING: Claire Williams, voices of Didi Conn, Mark Baker, Fred Stuthman, Niki Flacks, George S. Irving, Marty Brill, Joe Silver, Alan Sues

PLOT: On her owner’s birthday, Raggedy Ann and her brother Andy meet Babette, a snobbish new doll from France. Babette is quickly abducted by snowglobe pirate Captain Contagious. Ann and Andy venture out into the night, where they encounter a camel, a taffy pit, and an inflatable Loony king, before finally confronting the pirate ship.

Still from Raggedy Ann and Andy: A Musical Adventure (1977)

BACKGROUND:

  • Raggedy Ann began her life as a mass-produced rag doll in 1915. A series of children’s books based on the character followed in the 1920s, continuing until the 1970s. Fleischer Brothers studios made three animated Raggedy Ann and Andy shorts in the 1940s. The dolls are still produced today.
  • This feature film was loosely adapted from the 1924 children’s book “Raggedy Ann and Andy and the Camel with the Wrinkled Knees.“
  • Director Richard Williams took over for originally-slated director Abe Levitow, who died before production began.
  • The adaptation was originally conceived as a Broadway musical, then a TV special, before becoming a feature film. An actual Broadway musical with many of the same characters (but a different plot) followed in 1986.
  • The film ended up costing more than double its original budget, and was a box office failure. It was released on VHS, but has never officially been released on DVD or Blu-ray.
  • Voted onto the Apocrypha by readers in this poll.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: The Greedy, an inexplicable being who inhabits the Taffy Pit and exists as a sort of candy-themed, eternally mutating ian horror-cum-cupcake.

TWO WEIRD THINGS: Ghost camel caravan in the sky; expanding looney king

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Raggedy Ann was a hobo doll, the cheapest and most unassuming children’s toy imaginable. Throwing this plain Jane toy into a backyard “Alice in Wonderland” scenario shouldn’t have produced results as odd as it did. A Musical Adventure is uneven, but in its insaner moments, it genuinely goes for broke.

Original trailer for Raggedy Ann and Andy: A Musical Adventure (1977)

COMMENTS: “Good mescaline comes on slow. The first hour is all Continue reading 60*. RAGGEDY ANN & ANDY: A MUSICAL ADVENTURE (1977) →

Apocryphally Weird

59*. REQUIEM FOR A VAMPIRE (1972)

2 Comments

Requiem pour un vampire, AKA Vierges et Vampires, Caged Virgins

366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.

“[M]ore than thirty years later, Requiem remains one of my favorite films. In my view, it’s a real naïve film, written naively without thought, almost automatic writing, without prior idea and above all without reflection. It’s nothing else but a simple stream of ideas out of an unconstituted imagination. It’s a real ‘B’ movie with all that that involves. No intellectual reflection, no intentional symbolism. Nothing but this free and disordered imagery which I care so much about.” —, “The Making of Requiem for a Vampire” (2005)

DIRECTED BY: Jean Rollin

FEATURING: , Mareille Dargent, Dominique, Louise Dhour, Michel Delesalle

PLOT: Two teenage delinquents disguised as clowns escape unknown pursuers in a car; their getaway driver is gunned down in the chase. After escaping they remove their harlequin makeup and make their way across the countryside. They are eventually bitten by bats and wind up trapped in the medieval castle lair of a dying vampire and his minions.

BACKGROUND:

  • Rollin’s script for his fourth film, written in two days in a stream of consciousness, evolved out of two scenes: the car chase through the countryside and the piano concert in the cemetery.
  • The first half of the film is nearly silent. Inspired by the pioneering adventure serials of Louis Feuillade, Rollin chose to emphasize the action sequences by keeping them mostly dialogue-free.
  • The art direction was inspired by surrealist painters Clovis Trouille and Paul Delvaux.
  • The dungeon scenes were filmed in the twelfth century Château de la Roche-Guyon, after the crew was evicted from their first choice of castle when the owner caught sight of the film’s nudity. Edmée, Duchess de la Rochefoucauld never saw the script; she agreed to rent her chateau for filming under the impression the story was, in Rollin’s words, “a sort of fairytale.”
  • The dungeon torture scene is ten minutes long, the minimum length of sleaze sales agent Lionel Wallman required in order to sell the film on the international grindhouse circuit. Wallman also donated the getaway car that gets shot to pieces and set on fire.
  • Interpol briefly investigated the film’s production after local gendarmes discovered the shot-up car with Belgian plates in a secluded patch of forest and assumed it belonged to foreign drug traffickers.
  • The cemetery scenes were filmed in a burial ground for medieval plague victims in Crèvecoeur-en-Auge, a small village in Normandy, believed by locals to be cursed.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: Many fantastic scenes in Requiem haunt the mind (the vampire Erika playing the organ in a chapel to an audience of skeleton monks, the crimson torture chamber, the master vampire’s coffin in a green-glowing crypt), but the two main characters dressed as stock clowns stand out whenever they appear, whether in a golden field, a collapsing barn, or a cemetery at dusk.

TWO WEIRD THINGS: Clown car getaway; vagina bat

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: A car chase gunfight along a winding country road; a solitary food truck in the middle of nowhere; a motorcycle in an abandoned water tower; a chapel doorway glowing crimson in the dead of night. Requiem for a Vampire transitions from scene to scene with the abrupt illogical shifts of a dream, as the intrepid heroines traverse a deserted landscape freighted with mystery. Mysterious themselves, the girls transform from clowns to teenage outlaws with handguns in their miniskirts. It remains unknown quite how they’ve ended up here, who was chasing them, and even where “here” is.

Trailer for Requiem for a Vampire (1972)

COMMENTS: Disregard for normal narrative conventions (establishing the setting, introducing the characters) give Rollin’s films a Continue reading 59*. REQUIEM FOR A VAMPIRE (1972) →

Apocryphally Weird

58*. GOD TOLD ME TO (1976)

4 Comments

366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.

AKA Demon; God Told Me To Kill

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.” – Proverbs 3:5-6

DIRECTED BY: Larry Cohen

FEATURING: Tony Lo Bianco, Deborah Raffin, Sandy Dennis, Sylvia Sidney, Sam Levene, Mike Kellin, Richard Lynch

PLOT: NYPD detective Peter Nicholas investigates a series of spree killings in which the perpetrators all seem to act with no provocation or explanation, each justifying their actions by saying “God told me to.” Nicholas, a devout Catholic, is infuriated by this claim, but equally plagued by their certainty and his shame over his own sins and infidelities. His investigation leads him to an unearthly suspect, an individual with stories of alien abduction, virgin birth, and Nicholas’ own family history.

Still from God Told Me To (1976)

BACKGROUND:

  • Cohen was a genre chameleon whose c.v. includes the blaxploitation gangster flick Black Caesar, the giant-beast-in-New-York movie Q: The Winged Serpent, and the consumerism horror-satire The Stuff, and his previous film It’s Alive, the tale of a monstrous baby that our own Alfred Eaker called “one of the best horror films of the decade.”
  • Cohen planned to engage Bernard Herrmann, who provided the music for It’s Alive, to compose the score for the new film. According to Cohen, Herrmann watched a rough cut and afterwards discussed his plans with the director over dinner. Unfortunately, Herrmann passed away in his sleep that night. (The film is dedicated to the composer.) Cohen’s next choice, Miklós Rózsa, turned down the job, saying, “God told me not to.” Frank Cordell eventually scored the film.
  • Cohen first cast Robert Forster in the role of the detective. Forster worked on the film for several days before tiring of the director’s methods and leaving the production.
  • The policeman who goes on a shooting rampage at the St. Patrick’s Day parade is portrayed by Andy Kaufman, in his film debut. Cohen crashed the actual parade to film without a permit, and said later that he had to intervene with onlookers to protect Kaufman when the comedian taunted them.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: In their final showdown, the glowing, androgynous Bernard tempts Nicholas to join forces and spawn a new race of beings on earth. As proof of his bonafides, Philip pulls up his tunic to reveal a pulsing vagina located squarely in the left side of his chest. It’s a startling sight (and a curious location at that), but it clears the bar for shock value, and ensures that Nicholas is definitively unconvinced to join the cause.

TWO WEIRD THINGS: Abstract alien abduction; ribcage vagina

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: God Told Me To builds upon the intriguing decision to take the rantings of homicidal lunatics seriously, and to consider the possibility that God really is commanding the insane to do their horrible deeds. Upon this simple subversion, Cohen piles up a child’s treasury of conspiracy theories and paranoid tropes, including shadowy cabals of power, police corruption, ancient astronauts, hermaphroditism, mind control, and angel/devil dichotomies. It’s a mad melange of wild ideas and outlandish plot twists that guarantees you never quite get your footing.

Original trailer for God Told Me To (1976)

COMMENTS: “It’s based on a true story!” Larry Cohen told the Village Voice about God Told Me To in 2018. “No, seriously, it’s a picture about religion, and the violence people do in the name of religion — which feels really relevant today.” Of course, Cohen was far Continue reading 58*. GOD TOLD ME TO (1976) →

Apocryphally Weird

57*. HALLUCINATIONS OF A DERANGED MIND (1978)

Leave a comment

Delírios de um Anormal

366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.

“…there’s this spiritist center in Bahia that summons an Exu, or Zé do Caixão spirit. I’ve been to these places, incognito of course, wearing sunglasses, hiding my nails, the whole deal. And then someone channels Zé do Caixão, claiming it’s me. There’s this narrative that Zé do Caixão was already a spirit and I just summoned him. I pay them homage in this film. I leave it up to the viewers to decide for themselves. Is he real?”– on the commentary track to Hallucinations of a Deranged Mind

DIRECTED BY: José Mojica Marins

FEATURING: José Mojica Marins, Jorge Peres, Magna Miller

PLOT: Psychiatrist Hamilton has terrible nightmares where he believes Coffin Joe is coming to take his wife away to use her to breed his offspring. His concerned colleagues call in José Mojica Marins, the creator of the Coffin Joe character, to convince him that the character is fictional and all in his imagination. The cure works; or does it?

hallucinations of a deranged mind (1978) still

BACKGROUND:

  • Zé do Caixão (Anglicized as “Coffin Joe”) was a character created and portrayed by low-budget Brazilian filmmaker José Mojica Marins. Beginning in the late 60s, Coffin Joe appeared in a trilogy of canonical feature films, also appearing in Marins’ work in dream sequences, host segments, personal appearances, his own line of comic books, and so on. The character is sadistic, but ultimately more amoral than evil; he disdains religion and the supernatural, and quests eternally to find the perfect “superior” woman to breed with so he can sire superhuman progeny. Joe was known for his black top hat and cloak, his monobrow, and, most notably, for his uncut fingernails, which Marins grew to over 9 inches in length. Though nearly unknown outside of Brazil during the height of his popularity, within that country Coffin Joe was a homegrown bogeyman of superstar status, roughly equivalent to Freddy Kruger.
  • Hallucinations of a Deranged Mind was created from repurposed and unused footage from This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse, The Strange World of Coffin Joe, The Awakening of the Beast, and others, mixed with newly shot scenes (there is approximately 35 minutes of new footage in the 86-minute movie). Some of the reused scenes had previously been nixed by censors.
  • The Bloody Exorcism of Coffin Joe (1974) used a similar premise of director Marins facing off against his own character.
  • Marins says that the inspiration for this film came from a real life request from a psychiatrist. The doctor’s wife was obsessed with Marins’ Coffin Joe character, and seemed to believe he existed independently. Marins visited the couple and watched one of his films with them on a midnight TV broadcast; during the screening, he reminisced how he suffered from diarrhea and painful corns during the shooting of certain scenes. The spell was broken and the woman no longer believed in Coffin Joe.
  • Editor Nilcemar Leyart estimates that the final film contains more than 4,700 cuts.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: There are so many garage-surrealist possibilities here it boggles the mind—the woman-headed spider, the magic-markered buttocks, the human staircase—but ultimately the dominating figure is, appropriately, Coffin Joe himself: the dark, dagger-fingered nightmare undertaker who orchestrates this parade of Boschian delights.

TWO WEIRD THINGS: Faces on asses; multi-headed torture blob

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: A circus of the damned crawling out of a cinematic scrapheap, Hallucinations of a Deranged Mind is the distilled essence of Coffin Joe at his most irrational and insistent.


Clip from Hallucinations of a Deranged Mind

COMMENTS: A man circles a bikini babe while beating a bongo; after each circuit he stops and a new set of female legs pop into the Continue reading 57*. HALLUCINATIONS OF A DERANGED MIND (1978) →

Apocryphally Weird

56*. TOMMY (1975)

1 Comment

366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.

“The Old Testament teems with prophecies of the Messiah, but nowhere is it intimated that that Messiah is to stand as a God to be worshiped. He is to bring peace on earth, to build up the waste places–to comfort the broken-hearted, but nowhere is he spoken of as a deity.”—Olympia Brown

DIRECTED BY: Ken Russell

FEATURING: Roger Daltrey, Ann-Margret, Oliver Reed, , , Jack Nicholson, Eric Clapton, Elton John, Barry Winch

PLOT: Tommy witnesses the murder of his WWII fighter-pilot father at the hands of his mother and step-father, who demand silence. The boy obliges, becoming wholly unresponsive to stimuli, aside from touch. When Tommy happens upon a pinball machine in a junkyard, he soon rockets to fame and messianic adulation from rebellious youths countrywide.

Still from Tommy (1975)

BACKGROUND:

  • The Who’s Tommy hit number two on the UK charts, going Gold within four months. Ken Russell did not care much for the music, but was intrigued by the ideas explored in the double album.
  • Russell’s Tommy was a box-office smash, garnering two Academy Award nominations (for Best Actress and Best Score).
  • George Lucas was slated to direct Tommy but opted instead to develop his own film, American Graffiti.
  • Every pinball machine featured in the film predates the original album’s release date of 1969.
  • Elton John refused the role of “Pinball Wizard” until he was promised the oversized Doc Marten boots worn by the character.
  • Mick Jagger, Tiny Tim, and were considered for the role of the Acid Queen before Tina Turner was signed on.
  • Every actor performs their own vocals—some more capably than others.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: At the height of his powers—and that would include the year of Tommy‘s release—Ken Russell made nothing but indelible images. But for stylistic and thematic reasons (not to mention sheer poetic excess), Tommy’s ordeal as he is installed within a syringe-imbued iron maiden during Tina Turner’s blow-out performance takes at least as much of the cake as any of the other wonders blaring on the screen.

TWO WEIRD THINGS: Chrome-twinkling sex drug and rock ‘n’ roll body cage; a flood of beans fit for a queen

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: The Who provide the blaring wall of sound, Ken Russell’s crew manifest the blazing visuals, and a crack squad of heavy-hitter, top-of-their-game actors provide impressively calibrated bombastic characters, making for an audio-visual adventure that giddily drags you through a bonanza of immoderation. All somehow within the bounds of a “PG” rating.

Trailer for Tommy (1975)

COMMENTS: When you have a narrative that is as flimsy as it is outlandish, one way to make it work is cover it with lights, champagne, Continue reading 56*. TOMMY (1975) →