366 Weird Movies

SATURDAY SHORT: SEMÁFORO (2013)

Cameron Jorgensen — Sat, 18 May 2013 14:40:47 +0000

“Semáforo” is an enjoyably morbid look into “the life of the people who live under a stoplight and the people who watch them.”

WEIRD HORIZON FOR THE WEEK OF 5/17/2013

admin — Fri, 17 May 2013 20:11:36 +0000

Our weekly look at what’s weird in theaters, on hot-off-the-presses DVDs, and on more distant horizons…

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

FILM FESTIVALS – Cannes Film Festival (Cannes, France, May 15-26):

Sneer all you want about the Cannes Film Festival being a place where snooty brie-nibbling European directors go to premier their latest movie about brie-nibbling transgendered cabaret singers whining about their bad relationship with their dying fathers. While that’s certainly true, many great weird films have also seen their debut at the venerable snooty festival, including such Certified Weird selections as The Tree of Life, Antichrist (whose genital mutilations and talking foxes created a certified Cannes scandal), and Dogtooth. In fact, every year since we began 366 Weird Movies something that played Cannes has ended up making the List. 2013, however, looks like the year that streak may come to an end, as an unusually conventional slate leaves us with only a couple of weird Cannes contenders this year. Fortunately, the “Director’s Fortnight,” a more independent-minded satellite festival that runs concurrently with the main competition, features some very interesting selections this year.

Borgman – Strange things happen when a rich woman harbors a mysterious fugitive. From the intriguing Dutchman Alex van Warmerdam, who says it is his darkest movie yet. Screening at Cannes in competition.
The Congress - Ari (Waltz with Bashir) Folman’s animated adaptation of the Stanislaw Lem novel about a dystopian future where hallucinogenic drugs are used to control the populace arrives a year or two later than expected. At Director’s Fortnight.
The Dance of Reality – Alejandro Jodorowsky‘s first movie in 23 years is an autobiography, of unknown hallucinatoriness. Director’s Fortnight.
Jodorowsky’s Dune – Speaking of Jodorowsky, this documentary covers his failed attempt to adapt Frank Hebert’s cult sci-fi novel to the big screen (a task later completed less than admirably by David Lynch). Hopefully it features lots of surviving footage. At the Director’s Fortnight.
Only Lovers Are Left Alive – Jim Jarmusch‘s latest tackles vampires in love; we suspect it will resemble Twilight about as much as Dead Man did Young Guns. With Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton (as vampires “Adam” and “Eve”) and Mia Wasikowska in a rare villainous role. In competition at Cannes.

Though the surreal slate is fairly bare, there are a lot of less-weird films debuting from some of our fave auteurs: Coen Brothers (the folksinger portrait Inside Llewellyn Davis), Nicolas Winding Refn (Only God Forgives, a Drive-style arthouse thriller), Roman Polanski (an adaptation of the masochism play Venus in Fur), and Takashi Miike (the actioner Shield of Straw).

Cannes Film Festival official site.

Director’s Fortnight official site.

NEW ON DVD:

The Book of Life (1998)/The Girl from Monday (2005): A double feature from curious auteur Hal Hartley. In The Book of Life Jesus and the Devil debate on the eve of the Apocalypse; The Girl from Monday involves aliens and a stock exchange that trades in human beings. Buy The Book of Life/The Girl from Monday.

Cloud Atlas (2012): Six separate stories, set between 1849 and the distant future and spanning the gamut from mystery-thriller to mystical sci-fi, with the main cast playing different roles in each story. In one of the tales Tom Hanks is bedeviled by an evil leprechaun from the future, which is the main reason we’re mentioning this ambitious, polarizing box office flop here on a weird movie site. Buy Cloud Atlas.

Crimewave (1985): A pair of exterminators cum hit men go on a crime spree in this campy slapstick spoof. This movie has a legendary reputation due to the talent involved: it was co-written by the Coen Brothers and directed by Sam Raimi (immediately after Evil Dead) and backed by a major studio (Columbia) who thought it too quirky for 1985. Columbia pulled it from theaters almost immediately and it has never been seen on DVD—until this Blu-ray/DVD combo pack. Buy Crimewave [BluRay/DVD Combo].

A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III (2013): In a casting stretch, Charlie Sheen plays an obnoxious, hedonistic lout who has misogynistic Walter Mitty-like fantasies that have him fleeing a tribe of busty Native Americans in buckskin bikinis and female assassins from the “Secret Society of Ball Busters.” Directed by Roman Coppola, who co-wrote The Darjeeling Limited and Moonrise Kingdom, this was an embarrassing flop; Salon’s Andrew O’Hehir claimed Swan is “one of the strangest and most painful films in recent memory.” Buy A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III.

“The Marx Brothers Silver Screen Collection”: This 5-disc collection compiles the Brothers’ first five films for Paramount, including the arguably surreal Duck Soup. The other classics are The Coconauts, Animal Crackers, Monkey Business, and Horse Feathers. Buy “The Marx Brothers Silver Screen Collection”.

Transmigration (2011): Every now and then some low-budget movie no one’s ever seen or heard of sets off our weird radar just because of the plot synopsis. This one reads, in part, “While hiking, Curtis is bitten by a snake. As he enters a venom induced hallucinogenic dream the two brothers are captured as slaves by a fantasy tribe of Amazonian women, and given to the tribal queen…” Buy Transmigration.

The Unbelievable Truth (1989): A gloomy high-school girl falls for a convicted murderer in this offbeat (to say the least) romantic comedy. Hal Hartley’s first (and most popular) film isn’t as strange as some of his others, but it’s at least high quirk. Buy The Unbelievable Truth.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Cloud Atlas (2012): See description in DVD above. It’s a Blu-ray/DVD combo pack, naturally. Buy Cloud Atlas [Blu-ray/DVD].

Crimewave (1985): See description in DVD above. Buy Crimewave [BluRay/DVD Combo].

A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III (2013): See description in DVD above. Buy A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III [Blu-ray].

What are you looking forward to? If you have any weird movie leads that we have overlooked, feel free to leave them in the COMMENTS section.

LOSING LULU

Alfred Eaker — Thu, 16 May 2013 18:18:32 +0000

The promiscuous motion picture camera has had many memorable romances: Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Gary Cooper, Audrey Hepburn, Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor. Yet, the great love affair of the it’s 100 plus year life was also one of its briefest: actress Louie Brooks. Despite, or perhaps because of, that brevity, this love affair has never really been equaled in intensity.

Louise Brooks is primarily remembered for the cinematic masterpiece Pandora’s Box (1929), made with G.W. Pabst. He was considered by some the greatest of all German directors; he was certainly one of the most intelligent. Pabst only made one other film with Brooks, Diary Of A Lost Girl (1929), which although not quite the equal of their first collaboration, is rightly and belatedly being recognized for its own merits. Brooks made a final film of some interest: Beauty Prize (1930) with director Augusto Genina, which together with the Pabst films finished off a feminist trilogy.

Pabst had earlier convinced Hollywood of Greta Garbo’s abilities with Joyless Street (1925), which also featured a remarkable performance by Asta Nielson. He directed Brigitte Helm in The Love of Jeanne Ney (1928) and Leni Riefenstahl in The White Hell of Pitz Palu (1929). Being a certified woman’s director, Pabst virtually invented Brooks’ screen personality. Brooks later confessed in her interviews with Kenneth Tynan that, at the time, she had little clue as to what Pandora’s Box was even about, turning herself over to the director’s hands. In Brooks’ eyes, she was only playing herself. She, and the film, was aided immensely by Gunther Krampf’s illuminating cinematography.

Pandora’s Box is considered a primary example of Weimar Cinema. Simultaneously expressionistic and naturalistic, Pandora’s phantasmagoric quality inspired the composer Alban Berg, who adapted his libretto, as Pabst did his screenplay, from playwright Frank Wedekind’s “Lulu” cycle. In both cases, the result was a beautifully repulsive work.

Pabst initiated an extensive search for his Lulu, testing and rejecting hundreds of aspiring actresses. Upon seeing Brooks’ ravishing portrayal of a femme fatale in Howard Hawks’ amiable, comic A Girl in Every Port (1928), Pabst felt he had found his Lulu. It’s easy to see why. Brooks’ memorable part, though small, registers as a rudimentary prototype of Lulu. Brooks later complimented her Svengali’s perception: “It was clever of Pabst to know even before he met me that I possessed the tramp essence of Lulu.” Brooks’ only other early Hollywood film of merit is William Wellman’s Beggars of Life (1928). For years Malcolm St. Claire’s The Canary Murder Case (1929) was considered lost. Stills hinted at a missing gem. Unfortunately, the film was discovered and released. Perhaps some things should remain lost.

That Pandora’s Box has a lurid plot is a given. Pabst wisely simplifies Wedekind’s source material, concentrating on Lulu’s relationships with her first “patron,” the haggard Schigolch (Carl Gotz), Schon (Fritz Kortner), Schon’s son Alwyn (Franz Lederer), and her lesbian lover Countess Geschwitz (Alice Roberts). Pabst and Krampf give Pandora’s Box an crepuscular sheen. The girl, with her bobbed, jet black hair contrasting sharply with a white dress flickering like a candle, engages in a balletic promenade. Brooks, the trained dancer, is a naive succubus, flippantly unconcerned with bourgeoisie seasoned ideas of morality. Communal mores demand a comeuppance and the sordid finale gifts it in spades at the hands of Jack the Ripper (Gustav Diessl). Aptly, Brooks later wrote that the only actor she was sexually attracted to on the set was the man who killed her.

Pandora’s Box was successful enough in Europe to produce the followup Diary Of A Lost Girl, based on Margarete Bohme’s controversial best-selling novel. Brooks plays Thymiane, who stands in marked contrast to Lulu, although both are societal misfits. Thymiane is the daughter of a well-to-do pharmacist (Josef Rovensky). When Papa’s pregnant maid commits suicide, a devastated and naive Thymiane seeks to understand why. Papa’s slimy assistant (Fritz Rasp) is all too eager to give the virgin, willing or not, a lesson on the facts of life. Off with the communion dress, and nine months later Thymiane herself is pregnant. Averting scandal, Papa and new scheming maid (Franziska Kinz) send Thymiane off to a reformatory. A Dickens-like hell awaits our heroine. With the aid of friends, Thymiane escapes her tormentors, falls into prostitution, marries a count and has the last word in a somewhat unconvincing, censor-mandated happy ending. Pabst intensifies the contrast of Brooks’ angular, dark emerald face with the white of a confirmation dress and a garland of white flowers round her saintly countenance.

On paper, Diary Of A Lost Girl is a soapy melodrama, but one rich in the symbology of avarice, wide-eyed innocence lost, lesbianism, sex and bourgeoisie hypocrisy. Brooks is again a mesmerizing figure, masterfully manipulated by Pabst and cinematographers Sepp Allgeier and Fritz Wagner. Pabst’s camera repeatedly caresses Brooks’ neckline, conveying the arching beauty of innocence. The sadistic couple sending her to the reformatory bristle with perverse deviance: his dome pate and long sinister fingers are surely patterned after Max Schreck. Although not the equal of their first collaboration, Diary Of A Lost Girl has an inimitable texture that only Pabst and Brooks could give it.

The point is made clear with Augusto Genina’s Beauty Prize. Written primarily by Rene Claire in collaboration with Pabst, this is Brooks’ first sound film. The plot is simple. Brooks’ Lucienne Garnier is a typist at a Parisian newspaper who wins the Miss Europe Beauty contest. A jealous fiancee (Georges Charlia) is a prototype for Paul Snyder. Again, Brooks’ plays an innocent feminist who suffers at the hands of a misogynist. However, the film is saddled with problems typical of early sound. While lacking the imaginative direction of Pabst, Beauty Prize has a beautiful fluidity, astute use of mise en scene, and an exceptionally lurid finale (which is indeed worthy of Pabst). Genina was among those who singled out praise for Brooks, yet that praise was tinged with regret.

Pabst attempted to cast himself as Brooks’ Svengali in the same way Josef von Sternberg had been to Marlene Dietrich. However, Brooks was too promiscuous and too free-spirited for Pabst, which resulting in his letting her go. She returned from Germany to California, but was all too candid regarding her disdain for Hollywood and filmmaking in general. Brooks’ independent streak made her unpopular. She never bothered to read her scripts in full and, unwisely, she turned down a leading role in Public Enemy (1931) because filming would have interfered with a liaison she was having at the time. Tinsel town responded by wasting her in dreadful B-movie bit parts. As Pabst predicted, Brooks, whose life closely mirrored Pandora’s Box’s Lulu, met a similar fate to her character (or close to it). She was reduced to being a washer woman in Kansas, followed by alcoholism and prostitution in New York.

Cinematically, Lulu was lost, but she returned, in advanced age, to write one of the most charming, erudite, and incisively brilliant of Hollywood memoirs: “Lulu in Hollywood.” Her autobiography was a series of essays, written with Kenneth Tynan, revealing the actress’ shrewd assessment of herself and her image as an embodiment of sex and death. Brooks’ cinematic persona was an authentic descendant of the femme fatale found in 19th century Symbolist painting and literature. Brooks’ readers, like the viewers of Pandora’s Box, are rendered voyeurs to her captivating shrug at amorality. Despite the fact that her films were poorly received upon release and died at the American box office, she emerged, against all odds, as the cult actress. Hailed belatedly by influential critics and film historians, Brooks lived long enough to see her own revival. She utilized the surprising turn of luck with Tynan’s assistance. Her last days were spent reading, painting, and (with humorous shrug intact) impatiently waiting for death, which finally arrived in 1985.

CAPSULE: AT MIDNIGHT I’LL TAKE YOUR SOUL (1964)

G. Smalley (366weirdmovies) — Wed, 15 May 2013 22:57:49 +0000

À Meia-Noite Levarei Sua Alma

DIRECTED BY: José Mojica Marins

FEATURING: José Mojica Marins, Magda Mei

PLOT: Brazilian undertaker Zé do Caixão (“Coffin Joe”) eats meat on Friday, terrorizes peasants, and plots to steal his best friend’s fiancee; a gypsy witch is the only person in town who dares to defy him.

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Up until its nightmarish finale, At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul is only weird in the sense that it features a one-of-a-kind antihero: Zé do Caixão, a the stovepipe hat wearing undertaker and self-appointed ubermensch who eats lamb on Holy Friday, rails against God during a thunderstorm, and gleefully murders his friends and acquaintances. The vicious character was popular enough to spawn a series of films, and Zé became an iconic boogeyman in Brazil, along the lines of a Freddy Kreuger in the States. Although not all that strange, the original At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul is arguably the best of the Coffin Joe movies; the character, however, would return in weirder guises…

COMMENTS: When José Mojica Marins made At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul in 1964, there were no previous Brazilian horror films for him to model his movie after. That explain why Midnight, while cheap, sleazy, and cheesy in design, feels fresh and unique. Marins begins Midnight with not one, but two prologues. In the first Coffin Joe explains the concepts of life, death, existence and blood; in the second, an old gypsy hag waves a Universal Studios surplus skull in front of the camera and warns audiences there’s still time to turn around and go home. In between the introduction and the foreword, the sadistic highlights are previewed over the credits. A leather gloved hand bloodies a woman’s face, the same hands strangle a man in a bathtub, and a tarantula crawls over a bound victim, all while the wind howls and screams, moans and cackles echo in the background like a soundtrack for a Halloween haunted house. The opening impression is of a cross between a Universal horror and a grindhouse roughie; throw in a bit of Anton LaVey posturing, and that’s a fairly accurate description. The violence, which includes severed fingers and gouged eyeballs, is astounding for the early 1960s (there’s no nudity, of course—modesty must prevail). There’s a brutal rape scene, but Zé’s casual blasphemies probably shocked the original audience even more. The plot is simple but unusual: it’s mostly a series of scenes of Coffin Joe scandalizing pious villagers with his sacrilegious antics, then beating and whipping them while daring them to gather the courage to confront him. Meanwhile, he obsesses about fathering a son to carry on his bloodline, and decides to get rid of his barren girlfriend in favor of his only friend’s fiancée. A gypsy woman hangs around the edges of the picture predicting doom for the blackguard. Coffin Joe finally goes too far in his iniquities and one night, at midnight, the spirits of those he’s wronged come to take his soul. It’s not the plot (and certainly not the production values) that impresses, however, but the character of Coffin Joe. Clad head to toe in black, with a stovepipe hat, cape, pipe, bristly beard, and three-inch long fingernails sharpened like knife points, Zé is an instant nightmare icon from the moment he arrogantly strides onscreen. But what makes him terrifying is that he freely chooses evil: there is no backstory to humanize him or explain how he became embittered and corrupted. He’s simply a sociopath who delights in causing pain to his fellow human beings, and who is smart enough to justify his lusts and strong enough to seize them. His philosophy of evil is summed up by his assessment of the villagers he terrorizes: “They’re weak because they fear what they don’t know. I am free. Therefore, I am stronger.” Because Zé, an atheist in a superstitious Catholic society, has no fear of eternal punishment, he can take whatever he wants. A woman he rapes tells him she will kill herself: Zé’s chilling response is to wipe her blood from his lips and inform her that all the women say that—at first. Coffin Joe is repulsive, but he’s also charismatic; the cinematic figure he resembles most is Alex from A Clockwork Orange. We can’t actively root for him, but we can’t help but secretly envy him; he is what we fear in ourselves. That makes for a great character, even if the technical qualities of the movie surrounding Coffin Joe can’t quite live up to Marins’ ghoulish persona. Zé’s downfall satisfies the censors; evil is punished. But at the end, when the forces of superstition and the vengeful spirits of the dead swamp the undertaker, Coffin Joe’s comeuppance has all the sincerity of a fallen preacher’s tearful apology to his parishioners. It’s there for show, to convince the audience that wickedness has been buried once and for all. As Coffin Joe’s words echo in our ears, we remain unconvinced.

Director José Mojica Marins says he took the role of Coffin Joe because he could not find a professional Brazilian actor willing to play the part. He portrayed Zé do Caixão for 45 years, through three canonical Coffin Joe films and a host of guest appearances, including cameos in Marins’ more surreal offerings, including the LSD horror Awakening of the Beast and the cut-and-paste highlight reel Hallucinations in a Deranged Mind.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Morality is annihilated, transgression is exalted — a confrontational close-up makes Mei’s mauled mouth as bizarrely erotic as Barbara Steele’s punctured face in Black Sunday…”–Fernando Croce, Cinepassion (DVD)

(This movie was nominated for review by EricSG, who praised the “eerie atmosphere” and “surrealistic touches that hint upon Bunuel (albeit more evil)” and added “the ending catapults it into the weird netherworld with psychedelic camera tricks…” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

366 UNDERGROUND: SAVAGE WITCHES (2012)

L. Rob Hubbard — Tue, 14 May 2013 20:21:14 +0000

DIRECTED BY: Daniel Fawcett, Clara Pais

FEATURING: Christina Wood, Victoria Smith

PLOT: Two teenage girls, Gretchen and Margarita (Wood & Smith), want nothing more than to play games, dress themselves up and have all kinds of adventures, but they constantly find themselves in conflict with the world around them. So they set out to transform it and break free…

COMMENTS: With a title like that and two teenage girls in the main roles, you might be expecting another grindhouse gem to assert itself onto the film scene. Not in this universe, however—in fact, Savage Witches is best served by throwing out all expectations and just going with the flow of images and sounds in this “motion picture exploration,” as it bills itself. Savage Witches hearkens back to earlier days of experimental film—the makers cite the works of the Kuchar brothers and Derek Jarman as influences, and the film itself is a direct homage to the Czech film classic Daisies by Vera Chytilová, which also is about the adventures of two young women who decide to break out of their roles and have adventures by ‘being bad.’

Where Daisies was seen as an overt attack on society by the ‘bad’ behavior of its lead characters, Savage Witches is far less political, but it is still an aesthetic attack on the audience’s expectations of film as entertainment. There are no character arcs and not much in terms of action driving the plot forward. In fact, there’s only the barest hint of any sort of plot… instead, the action is mainly abstract, with the film changing from live action, to photo collage, to storyboards, to Super-8 as Gretchen & Margarita explore their freedom; although the real liberty is the freedom of cinema from the strictures that we commonly bring to it.

The film begins with a myriad of colors across the screen, and a voice inviting the audience to join in on an exploration—a dream—through which the voice informs the audience, “we can go anywhere, see anything”. The colors coalesce into two faces, Gretchen and Margarita, and from here on they function as guides/proxies for the audience, as they move forward into adventure: an adventure of form and format, rather than any sort of plot or story that has to be followed in the service of ‘business’ or whatever. That is the only ‘savagery’ exhibited by these pair of “savage witches”: the refusal to conform to the typical structure of what we expect when we sit down to watch a film. It is perhaps for this reason that the “savage witches” are burned at the end (besides the fact it provides an exciting ending), and our last glimpse of them is of them resting in state, but even then, they continue to flout our expectations… in contrast to the heroines of Daisies, who are definitely punished at the end for their bad behavior. Of course the attack that the protagonists of the Czech film lead against their society is far more pointed and nastier than Savage Witches. Also, the girls of Witches are not as sexualized as the women in Daisies, who use their erotic appeal as a battle tactic.

For a 70 minute experimental feature film, Savage Witches is highly entertaining, which may come as a surprise to audiences in the U.S., whose exposure to experimental film is usually in short form and viewed as something to be endured, like a visit to the dentist. It doesn’t really qualify as weird, except perhaps to someone who has never viewed any sort of film that didn’t have a linear narrative, but that probably qualifies it as a good gateway for people to get into experimental films – its ‘weird’ factor isn’t quite high enough to alienate the General Viewer, but it’s just strange enough to be engaging to fans of weird film. It’s also helped by the music of Fiona Bevan and sound design of Simon Keep, and the engaging performances of Christina Wood and Victoria Smith as the lead characters.

Savage Witches should continue to screen in film festivals in 2013, and DVDs should be available directly from the filmmakers from their website within a month or so.

Savage Witches Facebook

DISCLAIMER: A copy of this film was provided by the production company for review.

LIST CANDIDATE: THE PHANTOM OF LIBERTY (1974)

Otto Black — Mon, 13 May 2013 17:19:28 +0000

Le Fantôme de la Liberté

DIRECTED BY: Luis Buñuel

FEATURING: Jean-Claude Brialy, Adolfo Celi, Michel Piccoli, Monica Vitti

PLOT: There isn’t one! Numerous bizarre situations are briefly explored, but none are resolved. It’s the ultimate shaggy dog movie.

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: Monks behaving badly are randomly exposed to exhibitionist sadomasochism. Two people are somehow the same person. A spider-fixated family find architecture pornographic. The dead make phone-calls from their coffins. People who feel no shame about sitting on lavatories together are embarrassed and disgusted by any mention of eating. Etc., etc., etc…

COMMENTS: As with the other two films (Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and That Obscure Object of Desire) in Buñuel’s very loose swansong trilogy, Phantom of Liberty gives us a sense of an artist tying up loose ends. In many ways Phantom is one of his most Surrealist movies, as if he was revisiting the glories of his youth one more time. And yet, it should be remembered that, although he is often described as a Surrealist filmmaker, Buñuel formally abandoned Surrealism in 1932, being forced to choose between active membership of the Spanish Communist Party, which regarded Surrealism as a decadent bourgeoise affectation, or belonging to a pretentious club that mucked about with art and pretended it mattered. Or maybe, like most other short-lived Surrealists, he simply couldn’t stand the movement’s awful, awful founder, André Breton. Since Buñuel was a control-freak himself, the latter explanation is perhaps the more probable.

Given his obvious intelligence and love of complex in-jokes and hidden meanings, it’s significant that in an interview recorded around this time, Buñuel says—very perceptively—that Surrealism triumphed on a superficial level, while utterly failing to change the world in any way that truly mattered. (In the same interview, he jokes about making a melodramatic but utterly insincere deathbed conversion to Catholicism just to wind up those of his friends who militated against religion in the most humorless way imaginable). Sure enough, The Phantom Of Liberty uses almost exactly the same dramatic structure as “Monty Python’s Flying Circus“: the ultimate manifestation of unofficial Pop Surrealism. And yet, given the very short difference in time between the creation of Python and this film, and the implausibility of an initially marginal BBC series being sufficiently internationally famous for Buñuel to have already seen it in a language he understood, it has to be assumed that any similarities are purely coincidental.

And similarities there most certainly are! The episode in which a crazed sniper randomly kills numerous people (which was cut from early UK TV broadcasts on grounds of unacceptable nastiness) and then, having been found guilty, is unaccountably released with no consequences at all, and instantly becomes tremendously popular, is almost identical to a Python sketch aired the previous year. Plagiarism? I doubt it. Zeitgeist? Almost certainly. More significantly, the entire film follows the Python ethos of not wasting a good idea just because you can’t think of a punchline. Problem ending the scene? Forget it, and arbitrarily move on to something else!

As more than one critic has observed, Richard Linklater’s 1991 Slacker is remarkable for being the first film (or at any rate, the first film that anyone’s heard of) to use the technique invented by Buñuel 17 years previously. But actually they’re wrong. Richard Linklater shows us vignettes from the lives of various people who are going nowhere, then cuts away to somebody else because if we followed this particular non-story any longer it would become boring. Buñuel gives us glimpses into situations that have no rational explanation whatsoever, and abandons them because any punchline he could possibly provide would be an anticlimax. The title, insofar as it refers to anything, seems to invoke a spirit which pervades the movie without ever being in any way discernible to the characters or the audience—a direct reference to The Exterminating Angel, in which the Angel of Death is supposedly responsible for the inexplicable events without directly manifesting itself at any point in the film. The characters drift into completely random situations, every one of which involves a massive breach of social norms, or laws even more fundamental than that. And nobody notices a thing. The entire film could, if the title is taken literally, be said to document the progress of an invisible and otherwise totally undetectable entity that capriciously drifts around altering the nature of reality for reasons all its own. And that’s the spirit in which it should be viewed. Buñuel’s best film? No. Buñuels weirdest film? Definitely in the top three. Worth watching? Yes! Just don’t expect a satisfying sense of closure.

PS – In recent years certain scenes in this movie have been played out for real in the UK by radical Islamists with no understanding of irony, who used their democratic right to demonstrate to hold demonstrations against democracy. What a pity Buñuel didn’t live to see it! Though maybe he wouldn’t have been all that surprised.

PPS – Are there any other films featuring two Bond villains?

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“An uproarious summary of Luis Bunuel’s surrealistic concerns… a crazy, subversively funny film about convention-bound characters who have a hard time dealing with sexuality and freedom.”–Michael Scheinfeld, TV Guide

(This movie was nominated for review by “viqman.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE

admin — Mon, 13 May 2013 00:31:37 +0000

Next week we’ll continue plumbing the depths of Luis Buñuel with coverage of the Neosurrealist classic The Phantom of Liberty; then we’ll step into the modern age for a look at the Daisies tribute Savage Witches; from the reader suggested review queue we’ll quake at the blasphemous horror of At Midnight I Take Your Soul; and Alfred will peep at the career of scandalous but talented Hollywood bad girl Louise Brooks.

Google’s new privacy settings are really putting a crimp in our weekly search for the Weirdest Search Term of the Week. About half of all searches we see our marked “not provided.” Weirdos, please opt out of this despicable confidentiality agreement; it’s not like their going to stop selling your search results to advertisers. It’s only weird search term contests that suffer. At any rate, we make due with the search terms we have left, which are still fairly bizarre. We’ll start with a search for Disco Duck’s less popular cousin, “surrealism duck.” Then, there’s the enthusiastically Anglophile search for “mom man odd classic taboo (in english!!) movie.” But as usual, it’s the sexual deviants that carry the day. The average person might consider a search for “anime chick has sex with bigfoot” pretty weird, but it doesn’t really move the needle around here (no pun intended). We here at 366 Weird Movies regularly encounter much more strange and specific fetishes, however, such as this weeks winner: “tom sawyer stripped naked while becky thatcher watches erotic stories.” We always love the use of the plural in these cases, as searchers assume there are multiple erotic Mark Twain fanfiction stories floating out around there.

Here’s how the ridiculously-long-and-ever-growing reader-suggested review queue stands: The Phantom of Liberty (next week!); At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul (next week!); Liquid Sky (re-review); Society (official review); The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao; The Trial [Le procès] (1962); Marquis; Hell Comes to Frogtown; Allegro Non Troppo; Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus; 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; Garden State; The Real McCoy; Rat Pfink a Boo Boo; Themroc; Candy (1968); Run Lola Run; Pink Flamingos; Buffalo ’66; Northfork; 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; Innocence; 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; 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); 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; 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; 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; 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; “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]; 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; L’Âge d’or; Breakfast of Champions; Heavenly Creatures; Vase de Noces; Lucky; Ichi the Killer; La antena; Mystics in Bali; Feherlofia; Versus; Birth of the Overfiend; A Dog Called Pain; Memento Mori; That Deadwood Feeling; Happiness; Let the Right One In; Porcile [AKA Pigpen]; 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; Marat/Sade; Darjeeling Limited; Space Thang; Drunken Wu Tang; Insidious (2010); The Earl Sessions (2011); Sitcom; They Came Back, Prometheus’ Garden, “Harpya”; Bruce Lee vs. Gay Power; Dumplings; Return to Oz; “Star Maidens”; “The Mighty Boosh”; The Element of Crime; Lo; Roller Blade; “The Act of Seeing With One’s Own Eyes”; Mind Game (2004); Down and Dirty Duck; Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure; Dante’s Inferno; Bad Timing (AKA Bad Timing: A Sensual Obsession); Troll 2; Calamari Wrestler; Death Powder (1986); Big Man Japan (official review); Angel in the Flesh: The Confidential Report on Mr. Dennis Duggan aka The King of Super 8 (if it’s released; the director says it might be); Static; “The Big Shave”; Incubus; W.R.-Mysteries of the Organism; Marebito; The Appointment (1981); “The Big Shave,” Pierrot Le Fou; and The Cement Garden; Visions of Suffering; Singapore Sling (re-review); Koyaanisqatsi; In the Mouth of Madness; Uzumaki [AKA Spiral] (official re-review); The Exterminating Angel; All That Jazz; Hanger (2009); “Analog”; Daymaker; Nails; Monobloc (2005); Big Time; “Slow Bob in the Lower Dimensions”; Vakvagany; Momo (1986); Organ; Dance with the Devil; Frankestein Meets the Space Monster; “Alicia”; Space Is the Place (official review); Killer Nun; The Beyond; The Nine Lives of Thomas Katz; Ascension; Mind Last Life in the Universe; Street Trash; Brick; Rubber (official re-review); Wax, or The Discovery of Television Among the Bees; Bliss (1985); Creatures of Destiny; Strange Circus; Goodbye 20th Century; Conspirators of Pleasure; Boxing Helena; Chappaqua; The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai; Man Facing Southeast; Night Across the Street; City of Pirates; Pink Narcissus; 11:14; Teknolust; Dark Side of the Heart; Period Piece; “One Soldier”; Thriller: A Cruel Picture; Phantom of the Paradise; The Million Dollar Hotel; Killer Joe, Peeping Tom; Diamond Flash; Green Snake; The 10th Victim, City of Women, Anatomy of Hell, Christ the Movie, Pola X, Phase IV; Welcome to the Dollhouse; No Smoking; “Next Floor”; Berberian Sound Studio; L’Inferno (1911); Heartbeeps; Bibliotheque Pascal; Marutirtha Hinglaj; A Pure Formality; The Mysterians; Branded; Rock n’ Roll High School; Possession (re-review); Johnny Aquarius; Confessions of a Dangerous Mind; If…; Citizen Dog; Of Freaks and Men; “The Brothers Quay Collection”; Criminal Lovers; The Cat in the Hat; The Sea That Thinks; Angst; In Search of the Titanic; Creating Rem Lezar; I Think We’re Alone Now; Hugo the Hippo; Edward II (Jarman); Wild Tigers I Have Known; I Never Left the White Room; Faust: Love of the Damned; King Lear (1987); Daughter of Horror; Alien Alibi; The Pornographers; Paperhouse; La Cabina; Kung Pow: Way of the Fist; Four Rooms; Point Blank (1967); and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.

SATURDAY SHORT: ROOM 8 (2013)

Cameron Jorgensen — Sun, 12 May 2013 14:43:59 +0000

A prisoner is relocated to Room 8 where a peculiar new roommate awaits him.

WEIRD HORIZON FOR THE WEEK OF 5/10/2013

admin — Fri, 10 May 2013 23:29:54 +0000

Our weekly look at what’s weird in theaters, on hot-off-the-presses DVDs, and on more distant horizons…

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

SCREENINGS – (Cinefamily, Los Angeles, CA, Saturday, 5/11/2013 & 5/18/2013):

The Drifting Classroom (1987): From Hausu director Nobuhiko Obayashi comes this tale of a high school classroom set adrift in the cosmos thanks to a trans-dimensional tornado. Never released on DVD (though hopefully that will change), this rarity is available to lucky Los Angelinos for a pair of midnight showing. Part of a Obayashi retrospective sponsored by the Japan Foundation Los Angeles. More info on this and other Obayashi events at Cinefamily.

NEW ON DVD:

“Drive In Collection: The Dungeon of Harrow (1962)/Death by Invitation (1971)”: The Dungeon of Harrow is a forgettable horror-drama that the promotional material, in a moment of shocking self-deprecating honesty, confesses is a lot like The Terror. Death by Invitation, a witchcraft tale set in the 1970s with 17th century flashbacks, is slightly more promising; All Movie Guide only gave it one-and-a-half stars, but did call it a “weird little picture.” Buy “Drive-In Collection: The Dungeon of Harrow/Death by Invitation.”

Foodfight! (2012): How’s this for an oddity: a badly-animated, pro-advertising kids movie about corporate spokescartoons like Charlie the Tuna and Mr. Clean who come to life at night when the supermarket shuts down to fight evil fascist generic products that threaten their wholesome way of life. Who else would voice the hero in such a project but than every kid’s favorite role model and branding genius, Charlie Sheen? It sounds like a “Simpsons” gag, but God help us, this thing exists. Buy Foodfight!.

The Rabbi’s Cat [Le Chat du Rabbin] (2011): In this animated fantasy set in Algeria in the early 20th century, a rabbi’s cat find he’s able to speak after he swallows a parrot; he makes sarcastic comments, lusts after his master’s daughter, and tries to secure a bar mitzvah for himself. Director/artist Joann Sfar was last seen directing live actors (and giant-headed puppets) in Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life. Buy The Rabbi’s Cat.

The Telephone Book (1971): A woman falls in love with her obscene phone caller, and her quest to track him down leads to encounters with crazy Manhattanites. This underground sex comedy reprtedly features a dream sequence where a giant woman attempts to have sex with a skyscraper, which may be reason enough to track it down. For now, at least, the DVD and Blu-ray are not being sold separately. Buy The Telephone Book [Blu-ray + DVD Combo].

Upstream Color (2013): Read our capsule review. Shane Carruth‘s hard-to-describe, dreamlike sophomore feature is now out there for everyone with a DVD player to see; it’s a candidate for the List, so don’t forget to stop by and tell us what you think of it after you see it! Buy Upstream Color.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Jesus Christ Superstar (1973): Read our capsule review. No word on any special features (or the sound and picture quality) on this first Blu release of the cult musical. Buy Jesus Christ Superstar [Blu-ray].

The Rabbi’s Cat [Le Chat du Rabbin] (2011): See description in DVD above. This is a Blu-ray/DVD combo. Buy The Rabbi’s Cat [Blu-ray/DVD].

The Telephone Book (1971): See description in DVD above. Buy The Telephone Book [Blu-ray + DVD Combo]

Upstream Color (2013): See description in DVD above. This listing is also for the DVD/Blu-ray combo pack. Buy Upstream Color [Blu-ray/DVD].

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.

THE CAMERAMAN (1928) AND FILM (1965)

Alfred Eaker — Thu, 09 May 2013 18:21:39 +0000

Both Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd warned Buster Keaton against signing with MGM studios. Keaton was enticed by a financially lucrative offer, but his peers cautioned that such a deal would not be worth losing artistic control. Keaton signed anyway and, in his own words, “wound up making the biggest mistake of my life.” MGM in the 1920s was the closest a Hollywood studio ever came to a fascist state and, as predicted, Keaton discovered he had sold his soul. He was finished as an artist.

The Cameraman (1928) was Keaton’s first film for MGM and studio interference quickly became the status quo. The Cameraman primarily succeeds because Irving Thalberg succumbed to Keaton’s pleas for “some” improvisation (much to director Edward Sedgwick’s chagrin). Although it was a box office hit, this would be Keaton’s last film in which he had any artistic input. For the most part, The Cameraman began the new formula of strictly following badly written scripts. Furthermore, Keaton was never allowed to direct another feature.

Although Keaton did not take writing credit, Cameraman follows his “keep the narrative simple” style and builds to a kinetic finale. Buster plays a street photographer in love with a pretty girl (Marceline Day) trying desperately to win her by landing a job at the newspaper she works at.

Keaton improvised two scenes, one of which has him playing baseball (by himself) at Yankee Stadium. It’s a brilliantly executed vignette. In the second Keaton undresses and dresses in a claustrophobic changing room shared with an oversized man.

However, it is the grand scale Tong War in Chinatown that burns the celluloid. Naturally, the stereotypes abound, but the sequence is so loaded and breathless that there is hardly time to notice. Keaton and a monkey sidekick (!) manage a daring escape. Naturally, the pretty girl winds up on our hero’s arm, even if she’s not much more than a mannequin. Still, The Cameraman is a near masterpiece, and it is the last Keaton film worth watching with one strange exception…

Samuel Becket’s Film (1968) is a short, and that may be the sole reason for not seriously considering it a certified 366 Weird Movie status. By this time Keaton had been reduced to a second-rate Stooge by MGM. Various DVD collections of Keaton’s “Lost Years” seem to indicate a revisionist thought that hidden treasures lie within those sound shorts and Z-grade features. Although, on occasion, a slither of the Keaton magic might shine through, for the most part they are a painfully embarrassing lot.

Chaplin had offered Keaton a role in his Limelight (1952). Strangely, some still consider this Keaton’s comeback. Actually, in Limelight we see Chaplin’s saccharine meltdown in overdrive, and even though it has a few personal moments, the good parts are encased in much dreck, and Chaplin mercilessly takes Keaton down with him. With Limelight, one tends to be thankful, for once, that Keaton was wasted in what amounts to little more than a cameo for him.

Instead, rescue came from the unlikely source of an Irish avant-garde playwright. Keaton didn’t see it that way, and neither did the late Andrew Sarris, who essentially dismissed Film as pretentious garbage. Taking nothing from Roger Ebert‘s brand of populist film criticism, Andrew Sarris, who died in 2012, is the greatest loss we have faced in the art of film criticism since the passing of Pauline Kael. Naturally, neither Sarris nor Kael is infallible. Indeed, in their authentic (and virtually extinct) reverence for film, both had a point, and both were off in their infamous back-and-forth row regarding the auteur theory. Another case in point of critical fallibility might be Sarris’ dismissive assessment of Film.

Beckett had longed to work with Harry Langdon, but Langdon died prematurely. When Beckett began considering casting Film (his only screenplay), his first choice for the role of “O” was Chaplin, but the star proved impossible to reach. Beckett’s next choice was Zero Mostel, who also did not work out. Despite being an admitted “Keaton fan” Beckett settled belatedly and reluctantly on the aging silent comedian (who only had two more roles after this before dying in 1966). Perhaps the reason behind Beckett’s reticence to cast Keaton lies in the actor’s having turned down Beckett’s offer to appear in the 1956 Broadway production of “Waiting for Godot.” At that point, Keaton had been Beckett’s first choice, but after Keaton’s rejection, the role went to Bert Lahr instead. (An MP3 sound file of Lahr’s acclaimed performance is available. It is recommended with reservations. Although listening to the performance is a remarkable experience, it grates to me to recommend something as impersonal as an MP3 sound file. Of course, my reservation is completely subjective, due to having absorbed too much Jacques Ellul and living long enough to see that philosopher tragically become a prophet).

Keaton was as crabby in regards to Beckett and Film as I am to a superficial, hyper-capitalist 21st century, postmodern mass media: Beckett’s meeting with Keaton reportedly was a struggle. Considering that Beckett was the quintessential iconoclast and Keaton, at this point, was something of an icon, their tense relationship was, in retrospect, predictable. It was Beckett’s long time (and long-suffering) director Alan Schneider who eventually persuaded Keaton, along with a hefty salary for three weeks work. Unlike his experience at MGM, this time Keaton’s ambition to sign for financial reasons yielded something remarkable, even if the artist failed to realize it. Regardless, the casting of Keaton is something approaching ideal. Keaton’s weathered face poignantly suits the nonsensical pathos of Film. Keaton’s entire aged body, mostly shot from behind, sets the expressive, balletic narrative in ways far different than how he used his body in the silent era. Film serves, quite possibly, as a simple, yet delightfully startling tribute to Keaton’s mortality and his body of work.

The second main character in the film is the camera itself, named “E”: E and O, Eye and Object. Director Alan Schneider’s interview (he credits Beckett as Film‘s true director) and Simon Critchley’s essay cannot be bettered and should be considered essential reading.