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.

As with Fear Chamber, House was co-directed by Jack Hill and Juan Ibanez and co-stars south of the border sexpot Julissa. A murdered girl has been found by local villagers and, just like another recent victim, her eyes have been torn out.  Upon hearing the news, Matthias Morteval (Karloff) is mightily upset.  His friend and doctor, Emery (Angel Espinoza), tries to simultaneously caution and calm Matthias.  Dr. Emery reminds Matthias of similar murders in Vienna, involving Matthias’ brother Hugo.  Before a painting of his late father, Matthias pulls himself together and vows to rid their garden of the evil weed that has sprung up.  As the camera pans, we see that the eyes have been cut out of the fatherly figure in the painting.

With the aid of Dr. Emery, Matthias calls all of his relatives to spend the weekend at Morhenge Mansion.  Most of the greedy relatives believe the aged Matthias is going to include them in his will.  Lucy Durant (Julissa) is Matthias’ niece and, although she is not given to avarice, she  too arrives for the weekend with her fiancee, the bland Charles (Andres Garcia), who also happens to be an inspector investigating the recent murders of young girls.

Given Karloff’s health, his portrayal of Matthias is surprisingly sprightly, and he imbues the character with eccentricity, cynicism and a degree of empathy. Unfortunately, his co-stars are all painfully amateurish.  Among the relatives are Ivar (Quintin Bulnes doing his worst Peter Lorre imitation), Cordella (Beatriz Baz), and Morgenstern (Manual Alvarado).  Matthias greets them from behind his ominous organ (ala Dr. Phibes), insults them, and issues a warning about the family curse: a genetic “shrinking of the brain” that causes madness and murderous tendencies, such as those his late brother Hugo suffered.  Hugo died after gouging out his own eyes (so, that’s what happened to Ray Milland’s X!).

After Matthias retires for the evening, Lucy is introduced to the family vocation: the Mortevals are the last toymakers to the king, but neither Fred Astaire nor Mickey Rooney are anywhere in sight.  The Mortevals make killer toys, diabolical toys!  Toys which sadistic kings used to eliminate their enemies.  He!  He!  He!

Of course, with the introduction of a mansion full of life-size Chucky dolls one can expect the body count to rise considerably.  In this, the film does not disappoint; but there are plenty of other disappointments on hand.  Boris seemingly dies off early in the film, leaving us alone with the rest of the cast, and that’s not a good thing.

The slipshod cinematography makes much of the film quite difficult to see.  On the other hand, we hear far too much vapid dialogue which bogs down an epic middle section.  Ideas are introduced, then dropped.  The dialogue is equally wretched, but even worse is the inept, shrieking score.

Fortunately, Matthias’ death turns out to have been greatly exaggerated and Boris returns, not a moment too soon, for a grand, albeit  brief, ham-fisted, fiery finale.  Poor, mad uncle Matthias!  The finale, with the red-robed Boris madly pounding away at his organ of death, almost makes this endeavor worthwhile.  Almost.  The surviving protagonists do get the traditional escape from the collapsing ruins, even if you really can’t see them through the poor lighting.

House of Evil is so haphazardly composed that any potential is squandered.  This first of Karloff’s films with Hill and Ibanez (and the only one released during the actor’s life), it at least mantains the facade of being a standard period horror yarn.  Yet, in doing, House of Evil only winds up an aesthetic cousin to Ed Wood‘s Bride of the Monster (1955). The attempt, in both films, to adhere to genre cliches actually undercuts their potential for inspired lunacy.  The younger siblings of Karloff’s Mexican quadruplet show no qualms towards anecdotal waywardness.

“What is this, a freak out?”–Violet Beauregarde

DIRECTED BY: Mel Stuart

FEATURING: Gene Wilder, Peter Ostrum, Jack Albertson, Julie Dawn Cole

PLOT:  Charlie is a poor boy supporting his mother and four bedridden grandparents with the earnings from his paper route.  When eccentric chocolatier Willy Wonka announces he will be awarding a lifetime supply of chocolate and a tour of his mysterious candy factory to the finders of five golden tickets, Charlie wants to win more than anything.  When he, along with four bratty companions, finally meets the exceedingly odd Mr. Wonka,  Charlie finds the factory, and its owner, far stranger and more magical than anything he could have imagined.

BACKGROUND:

• A note for those who believe product placement and corporate tie-ins are a recent phenomenon in movies: although this film was based on Roald Dahl’s bestelling children’s novel “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” it was retitled to incorporate the Wonka name in order to promote the release of real-life Wonka candy bars (which were still made up until 2010) by Quaker Oats, who financed the production.
• Dahl himself wrote the original script, but it was extensively rewritten by an uncredited David (The Hellstrom Chronicles) Seltzer, reportedly to Dahl’s displeasure.  (It’s worth noting that Dahl, like most authors, pretty much hated every adaptation of his work).
• This was the only movie Peter Ostrum (Charlie) ever acted in.
• The movie just broke even at the box office, but became a cult sensation thanks to television screenings and home video.  In 2003, Entertainment Weekly ranked Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory as the 25th biggest cult movie of all time.
• The score was nominated for a “Best Music, Scoring Adaptation and Original Song Score” Oscar but lost to Fiddler on the Roof.
• Despite the fact that he was rejected for the role of the candy shop owner in the film, Sammy Davis, Jr.’s 1972 rendition of the film’s first musical number, “The Candy Man,” became a #1 hit and a staple of his live shows.
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Tim Burton‘s 2005 adaptation of the same material with Johnny Depp as Wonka, is somewhat closer to Dahl’s original novel.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: Wonka’s face, bathed in flashing red and green lights, as he shrieks incoherently at the end of his terrifying trip down a psychedelic tunnel of horrors.  It’s the capping image of a horrifying scene that’s been scarring unsuspecting children for 40 years now.

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD:  Is it Gene Wilder’s ultra-eccentric performance as the charming

Original trailer for Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

but vaguely demonic candyman in a purple velvet jacket and burgundy top hat who suavely arranges for wicked children to hang themselves with the licorice ropes of their own vice?  Or the chorus of orange-faced, green haired, dwarf laborers who sing moralizing “Oompah Loompah” tunes after each victim ironically offs him or herself?  No, we all know it’s the bad trip boat ride, where Wonka recites Edgar Allan Poe inspired verse (“By the fires of Hell a’ glowing/Is the grisly reaper mowing?”) as the craft careens down a tunnel of horrors while colored strobe lights flash and avant-garde footage plays on the walls that tips this celebration of imagination into the weird column.

COMMENTS: When I was a kid, they used to play Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory ontelevision exactly once a year (just like that other annual TV staple Wonka so closely resembles, The Wizard of Oz).  The first time I saw it, what lodged itself in my mind was the singing and dancing Oompah Loompahs.  I think “oompah loompah doompity do” must have been stuck in my head throughout the third grade.  When the next year’s showing rolled around, I eagerly tuned in, expecting more hot candy, child jeopardy, and painted-midget action.  The second time around, I remember being disappointed at how long it took to actually get inside the magical candy factory; it was an eternity of waiting, 45 whole minutes of sickly singing, corny comedy, and a weepy family poverty drama before the debonair Mr. Wonka rolled himself down that red carpet and let the kids inside to try way too many experimental confectioneries and have some good, scary fun.

If there’s one legitimate criticism to be lodged against Wonka, it’s my old childhood complaint—it takes too long to get out of dreary reality and into the chocolate factory.  Remember how quickly Oz whisked us out of drab Kansas?  Wonka loiters in a mundane Munich.  As an adult, I find the pre-factory scenes mildly amusing—the worldwide furor over the chocolate contest, the incompetent teacher who multiplies Charlie’s candy bars by a factor of one hundred because he can’t figure out decimal percentage—but the movie, which limps along pleasantly enough to start, suddenly reveals hidden greatness when Gene Wilder somersaults onto the stage as Wonka.  Dressed like a Victorian fop outfitted by Hugh Hefner, quick with an erudite non sequitur (when a girl tells him there’s no such thing as a snozberry, Wonka replies “we are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams”), Wonka is, to say the least, an unpredictable fellow.  Wilder prances about, swinging his cane haphazardly at his guests, plucking hairs from their heads at random, and expressing mock concern for their fates after they disobey his direct orders. (“I don’t understand it, the children are disappearing like rabbits,” he says nonchalantly).  He’s sarcastic, and insults everyone in the tour group without their realizing it, yet he remains a lovable father figure—to Charlie, at least.

It’s partially his sincere, childlike love of “pure imagination” that makes any transgression Wonka commits seem harmless, but mainly its the fact that Wonka reserves his wry wrath for those who truly deserve it.  Besides pure-hearted Charlie, the chocolate mogul has invited along four of the most wickedly bratty children anyone could ever hope to see get their poetic comeuppances, along with their equally despicable chaperone parents.  Each kid represents some sort of childhood deadly sin—gluttony, greed, and, uh, gum-chewing and TV-addiction.  Wonka has filled his candy factory full of deadly attractive nuisances, like a river of chocolate and a teleportation machine, calculated to lure naughty children to their doom.  Each tot meets a nasty fate when they let their baser natures get in the way of good behavior.  One is half-drowned and sent to be boiled; another bloated with juice and threatened with explosion; one falls down a garbage chute leading to a furnace; and the final victim is shrunk and sent to be stretched on the rack.  Even Charlie himself has a moment of weakness that almost leads to him and his grandpa being cut to ribbons by fan blades.  The parents freak out, and Wonka shows an amusingly appalling lack of concern, explaining at one point that a kid’s odds of survival are pretty good, as the furnace is only lit every other day.  There’s an Old Testament pitilessness to the ironic punishments each sinful child endures; there’s a black and white moral lesson to be learned, but kids also thrill to the spectacle of bad kids getting theirs (as long as the good one gets his ultimate reward).  It’s as black of a comedy as most kids can endure, but they savor being pushed to their limits.

That punishment/reward morality play forms Chocolate Factory‘s basic structure, but what lodges the film in the memory is the parade of extravagant, imaginative, and often weird set pieces.  There’s the living coat hangers that grab visitor’s hats off their heads unbidden.  Our first glimpse of the Chocolate Room, with its liquid chocolate waterfall, candy toadstools, and lollipops growing on the banks of a muddy cocoa stream.  The refugee race of Oompah Loompahs, with their orange complexions, green hair, bushy white eyebrows, and synchronized dance numbers.  Violet turning into a blueberry and being rolled off for juicing.  Veruca Salt’s show-stopping, foot-stomping dance tantrum “I Want the World!” (“I want the world, I want the whole world/I want to lock it all up in my pocket, it’s my bar of chocolate!”)  Fizzy lifting drinks.  Wonka’s office with it’s half-lamp, half-clock and half-safe.  “You get nothing!”  And, of course, the cherry on the sundae, the mad boat ride through the chocolate factory’s tunnel of horrors, which looks like what Kenneth Anger would have delivered if he’d been hired to design the “It’s a Small World” ride at Disney World.  Among the images that play on the tunnel walls as the Loompah-propelled gondola speeds heedlessly along are a giant eye, a man with a snake slithering across his lips, and a chicken being decapitated (!)

Willy Wonka likely looks weirder to an adult than it does to a child, for whom it’s splendiferous wonders are just everyday magic.  But—and here’s why the film belongs on a weird movie list—Wonka‘s sugar-rush produces the kind of candy-coated hallucinations that stick with you for a lifetime.  Face it, if you saw this as a kid, a Greek chorus of Oompah Loompahs are forever bobbing up and down in your memory, warning you about the dangers of greed, gluttony, and gum-chewing every time you even think about climbing out on the precarious banks of a chocolate river.  Admit it—the mere thought of a three-course dinner compressed into a stick of gum now fills you with unthinking dread.  This is the sort of delightful lifelong psychological trauma Willy Wonka breeds in us.  It’s what makes it the perfect gateway weirdness for that treasured tyke in your life.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…never finds an appropriate style; it’s stilted and frenetic, like Prussians at play.”–Pauline Kael, The New Yorker (contemporaneous)

“…captures the spirit of Dahl’s children’s literature, which mixed typically bright and cheery flights of imaginative fantasy with unexpectedly dark and bizarre undertones… the film also reflects a sort of last gasp of ‘60s psychedelia: the bright colors of Wonka’s factory would not be inappropriate on a poster advertising a rock festival, and a scary boat ride through a dark tunnel (complete with flashing lights and horrifying images, like a chicken’s head being chopped off) feels like a bad acid trip… The supporting cast (including veteran character actors Jack Albertson and Roy Kinear) does a nice job of embodying Dahl’s weird caricatures.”–Steve Biodrowski, Cinefastique (DVD)

“For all the wonder of a film, with its bouncy, silly songs, art design in candy colors, and mix of innocence and strangeness, there is also an edge to Gene Wilder’s simultaneously weird and warm eccentricities, like a mix of storybook fantasy and Grimm Fairy tale updated to the industrial world of the twentieth century.”–Sean Axmaker, MSN Movies (DVD)

IMDB LINK: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971)

OTHER LINKS OF INTEREST:

Golden Tickets to Hell: Willy Wonka – Tour Guide of the Abyss – Good analysis by science fiction author Lou Anders, pointing out Wonka‘s debt to Dante’s Inferno

Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory Fan Club – There are some fun quizzes, polls and so forth on this FanPop page dedicated to the movie

Willy Wonka’s everlasting film plot – A BBC article on Dahl’s reaction to the adaptation of his book

20 Things You Might Not Know About ‘Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory’ – trivia nuggets about the film courtesy of the moviephone blog

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Dahl’s orginal children’s novel

Pure Imagination: The Making of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory – Director Mel Stuart’s account of the making of the film

I Want it Now! A Memoir of Life on the Set of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory – Memoir by actress Julie Dawn Cole (Veruca Salt)

DVD INFO:  As befits a peculiar movie, Willy Wonka has had an interesting video release history.  Wonka became one of the best-renting titles on VHS, far surpassing the popularity of its original theatrical run.  Today the Wonka fan has a large variety of options to choose from to own the film. In 2005, Warner released a “special edition” DVD containing numerous extras including the original trailer, the featurette “Pure Imagination: The Making of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” (named after director Mel Stuart’s memoir), a photo gallery, four karaoke-style sing along numbers, and commentary by the five grown-up child stars.  The odd thing about the release is that, underestimating the cultiness of the film’s rabid audience, Warner originally planned to release it only in a chopped pan n’ scan full screen version; after a letter writing/e-mail petition, they added a widescreen option.  Though now out of print, both of these DVDs are still widely available and can be purchased at bargain prices (Full Screen/Widescreen).

2011 saw Warner do it right (or go overboard, depending on your viewpoint) with the release of a deluxe 40th Anniversary Ultimate Collector’s Edition Blu-ray/DVD combo set (buy) that includes all the special features of the previous release but adds a new interview with director Mel Stuart and a short original promotional film and comes in a collector’s box with a 144 page (!) book, and even includes a pencil case shaped like a Wonka bar.

If you’re not interested in the knicknacks you can save money and purchase the DVD (buy) or Blu-ray (buy) separately (no word on special features available in these editions).

An even cheaper option is to rent or buy the film through Video-on-Demand (Video on Demand).

(This movie was nominated for review by “MCD,” who reminded us it comes “complete with one of the scariest moments in movie history, the infamous boat ride.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

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.

DIRECTED BY: Takeshi Koike

FEATURING: Takuya Kamura, Yû Aoi, Tadanobu Asano

PLOT: Set in a distant future and moving between multiple planets, this is a fairly simple tale of

a major road race taking place on a militaristic planet that doesn’t want it there.  Racers “Sweet” JP, the big-haired underdog, and Sonoshee, a single-minded gearhead, are the main focus of the story.

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Armed with an eclectic cast of alien characters and a host of over-the-top shenanigans, Redline might come off as “weird” to someone unfamiliar with anime, but I’d say the stranger humor and visuals fit in pretty squarely with other properties of the genre.  It’s an imaginative and enormously entertaining film, just not especially Weird.

COMMENTS:  The future laid out in Redline is certainly an intriguing one, if completely ludicrous.  Hot shot reckless racer JP makes it to the titular big interstellar race, held on a militaristic planet that hasn’t consented to be the host.  He cozies up to Sonoshee, a cute green-haired lady who is one of the most serious and intimidating drivers there, and together the two attempt to navigate a strange obstacle course against alien competitors (some with inexplicable magic powers) and large-scale weaponry.  Squeezing in ESPN-like profiles of various racers—from an experienced cyborg who’s fused himself with his machine to a pair of scantily clad pop stars hailing from a magical princess planet—there’s some room for satire, too.

This movie is essentially all spectacle and adrenaline, with very little comprehensible or meaningful plot holding it together, but it’s not like the filmmakers are operating under any pretense of depth.  They’ve created a gorgeously animated, pumped-up sci-fi thriller, and that’s all that’s needed!  The characters are slick, and the vehicle designs slicker, with plenty of exaggerated personalities and colorful attachments for an engaging race line-up.  Sure, there’s a silly romantic/secret-past subplot thrown in there, but it’s never taken very seriously.  Various secondary stories are introduced, such as the military planet’s worker resistance and JP’s involvement in race-fixing, but the race itself remains the focus and it’s easy to forget that anything else is going on (the script certainly seems to by the end).  The set-up can be confusing at times due to an influx of minor characters and limited explanation of the obviously complex political and environmental structures.

The strengths of Redline lie almost completely in its visuals and fast pacing.  The dark shading and bright color schemes, the over-the-top hair styles and imaginative alien creatures, the quick-cut-editing and crazy landscapes: it’s all fantastically sweet eye-candy, set to an ecstatic musical score.  It’s violent but fun, and there’s probably political commentary thrown in there somewhere.  The script is cheesy at points, but vaguely self-aware.  It’s just a very cool movie all around, rarely letting up for a moment in its quest to assault the senses with psychedelic imagery and revving engines.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“One of the most visually spectacular toons in recent years, pic is a thumping ride for fanboys, but the script’s underdeveloped central romance and the fizzling out of intriguing plot threads will impede wider acceptance… [Plays] like a twisted combo of “Death Race 2000,” “Speed Racer” and a ’50s hot-rod movie on steroids…”–Variety (contemporaneous)

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.

This series is not going to be a revisionist look at those six films.  They are awful within the accepted meaning of the word.  Several of them, however, are downright bizarre products of their time, which now might be looked at as examples of naive surrealism.  The films are: House of Evil (1968), Fear Chamber (1968), Curse of the Crimson Altar (1968), Cauldron of Blood (1970), Isle of the Snake People (1971), and Alien Terror (1971).

Fear Chamber ranks as one of the weirdest of the lot, and that is saying much.  It begins with pseudo-torture of scantily clad women.  The scene is soaked in garish sixties colors and a “bleepy” soundtrack.  The various female victims are tormented by a goateed chap, wearing turban, sunglasses (in an underground cavern), white gloves, and black turtleneck.  With “all the macabre horror of  Edgar Allan Poe” these poor sixties chicks are subjected to hot coals and boiling cauldrons.

The scene shifts to the crevice of a volcano where two scientists are “worried about strange frequencies!”  Psychotronic narration abounds. “I can’t believe that there exists an underground form of life.  If we find it we can electronically understand their messages!” one scientist tells the other (Julissa), who happens to be the daughter of Dr. Mantell (Karloff).

Karloff performs a subdued variation of his mad scientist archetype.  His scenes were shot in L.A., by Hill (who also scripted—sort of), while Ibanez shot the remaining scenes (and actors) in Mexico.  Karloff was wheelchair-bound at the time, so most of his scenes are staged behind an office desk or lying in bed.  Dr. Mantell heads the expedition which discovers the mysterious life form at the center of the earth! “It’s alive!”  It’s a rubbery rock of pure crystallized intelligence which, for the good of humanity, needs blood—but not just any blood!  When Baron Boris von Frankenstein hooks the rock up to his giant office computer, he discovers that the alien desires the “pure” blood of frightened young women, which will enable it to impart priceless information, mathematical formulae, and secrets of the universe!

So, naturally, Dr. Mantell’s assistants, a dwarf  (Santanon) and the scarred hunchback brute Roland (Yerye Beirute) go after buxom girls, clad only in their bras and panties.  Their job is to put the babes in a state of fright.  It’s pretty easy to do when you have a created Fear Chamber of tarantulas, pools of bubbling blood,  snakes, lizards, watery tentacles, hawks, skeletons, convenient cages, and shifting secret chambers at your disposal.  The sets are beautifully cheesy, with a sixties computer room adorned with reel-to-reel tape machines (providing lots of cool noises), seemingly bathed in Christmas tree color wheel lights.

Karloff and his henchman put on a mock black mass act and scare the beejeez out of a girl.  Once she passes out, Boris and gang trade their robes for hospital scrubs and do a quickie blood transfusion to the rock, who is now “happy to see them.”  The rock makes little dog whimpering noises as its being fed the red substance!

The only problem is the rock only makes empty promises, giving no real secrets.  As Karloff’s assistant says so poetically, “I don’t trust that thing.”  Roland bonds with the rock.  The rock bonds with the reel-to-reel computers.  The Fear Chamber employees are a tad over zealous in procuring girls.  The weird guy in the turban and gloves sneaks into girls’ bed chambers, the dwarf laughs and vanishes, and Helga the S & M assistant (Isla Vega) has equal cravings for Roland and girls, girls, girls!  All this adds up to disaster, in the form of the rock manufacturing a tentacle in order to grab girls and feed itself!  Helga could care less.  Those girls are just thieves and tramps!  Poor Boris discovers a conscience, and practically keels over.

Roland and Helga join forces and keep the supply of bikini babes a comin’.  Roland wants his rock friend to tell about the secrets of diamonds so he can be king of the world!  But, Helga warns, “you big fat idiot, it’s been lyin’ to us! There are no diamonds. Its just been sending messages, messages, messages to more of its kind,  more rocks below who want to take over the world!”

The flaming finale, incorporating stock footage of volcanoes, isn’t exactly Dr. No or even Edgar G.Ulmer, but it’s keeping in spirit with the rest of this mess of a film.  The lack of linear narrative in Fear Chamber is actually a plus.  One never walked into a 1970s chamber of horrors expecting a coherent experience.  Of course, the acting, apart from the ever-professional (but hoarse) Karloff, is, needless to say, atrocious.  Additionally, much of it is a lame excuse for late 60′s softcore vignettes, and there’s even a psychedelic rock and roll dance number with a Nancy Sinatra-esque “these boots are made for walkin’” babe in mini-skirt doing a strip tease.  On that level, this flick is a hoot, and best enjoyed as part of a baffling drive-in double feature experience.  I watched it with Mad Monster Party (1967) which, to me, made perfect sense given that both are essentially cartoons with Boris Karloff and cleavage.

Would this film retain an iota of interest without Boris’ presence?  Nah, but I’ll take this “pure” Karloffian trash over the mediocre bourgeoisie trash that Hollywood spews out weekly.  And I’ll certainly take it over the indie horror scene trash, which is rendered irredeemable without the benefit of nostalgia for a genre icon.

Surprisingly, the film has been remastered on the Elite label and it looks and sounds quite good.  It’s available on Amazon and, even on a decent label, it’s still cheaper than the snacks you just gotta have with it.