FEATURING: Pavla Marsálková, Milos Ctrnacty, Frantisek Havel, Josefa Pechlatová, Václav Zák, Vera Mrázkova, Vladimír Boudník, Alzbeta Lastovková, Dana Valtová, Ivan Vyskocil

PLOT: Short adaptations of five stories from Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal: racing enthusiasts

are obsessed with crashes, two old men in a nursing home reminisce, functionaries try to sell insurance to a mad artist, a man who may be a killer meets a bride in a restaurant, and a timid apprentice plumber falls for a fiery teenage Gypsy girl.

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Only two of the five segments in this anthology are significantly bizarre, and a paltry 40% weird rate is not going to get your omnibus movie onto the List.

COMMENTS: The Czech New Wave was part of a fascinating period of creativity that resulted from an unprecedented liberalization of film and literature in Communist Czechoslovakia in the 1960s; the movement brought the world the novels of Milan Kundera and the films of director Milos Forman. During this time writers and filmmakers often turned towards surrealism as a way to implicitly critique the absurdity of the totalitarian status quo while maintaining deniability about their political aims (after all, they were merely writing obscure nonsense fiction in the tradition pioneered by national icon Franz Kafka). The New Wave essentially ended in 1968 when, concerned that the rapid pace of democratization might lead Czechoslovakia to exit the Warsaw Pact, the Soviet Union invaded the country and installed a hard-line regime. Based on short stories by New Wave writer Bohumil Hrabal and featuring entries from five of the top directors of the New Wave, Pearls of the Deep is a sort of sampler of this moment in history when Iron Curtain artists briefly wiggled out of the shackles that had bound them to an ideological wall for decades.

In the wild, you have to open a lot of oysters to find a single pearl; something similar is true of feature length anthology of short films, where the entries have an inevitable tendency to average out. Although even Hrabal’s straightest stories contain small doses of absurdism (which show up in non sequitur dialogues or little narrative oddities), only two of these adaptations have conceits baroque enough to form surrealistic pearls. Since our focus is on weird films, we’re going to briefly open and reject three out of these five New Wave oysters before looking more carefully at the two more peculiar specimens.

The first selection, Jirí Menzel’s talky “Mr. Baltazar’s Death” involves three death-obsessed fans who go to a motorcycle race hoping to see a fatality; they do. It’s a strange choice for an opener, since it’s both a bit boring and the only film not from an established director (Menzel was still a film student at the time). In Jan Nemec’s “The Impostors,” two elderly men reminisce about their careers; it ends with an easily guessed twist that isn’t worth the wait. This is the worst and most pointless of the short films, giving no hint of Nemec’s talent. One of Pearls‘ flaws is that the two segments which start the film are the least interesting installments, but at least the final entry, Jaromil (Valerie and Her Week of Wonders) Jires’ “Romance,” is one of the strongest. It compresses a strange romance between a teenage peasant and a young plumber—a relationship that morphs from flirtation into prostitution into an engagement as the manic Gypsy dream girl changes her moods and motives—into a matter of hours. The unreality of this scenario, combined with the fact that the tale ends inconclusively with a surprise shot of a gypsy boy tinkling towards the audience, makes it a borderline weird film experience, but even the most dogmatic cinematic realists will appreciate the genuine chemistry between the two young leads. The unknown Dana Valtová (like most of the actors here, this is her only known role) oozes exotic sex; her seduction of the Czech lad seems not so much easy as inevitable. It doesn’t matter how crazy she acts, she has him from the first moment he glances at her, and she knows it.

The two weirdest pearls are sandwiched in the middle of the film. Centered around a crazy artist who is painting pictures over every inch of his abode (even the windowpanes), Evald Schorm’s “The House of Joy” is the anthology’s least subtle entry, and the only film shot in color. Two Communist functionaries try to sell the obviously deranged painter unnecessary insurance policies; it’s a broad and strange comedy, with aggressively dissonant blasts from a pipe organ deployed at odd points like absurdist punctuation marks. As the artist reveals more and more eccentricities, one of the agents becomes fascinated and repeatedly asks him where he gets his ideas (“it’s inside me, like the inside of a goat” is the clearest answer), while his partner presses ahead with his hard-sell sales pitch. We meet an unexpected muse, and are treated to scenes illustrating the painter’s mad inner life: he dances with a knife in a field of livestock, erects a sheet-metal crucified Jesus at a crossroads in a double-time flashback, and a dream of a line of prepubescent girls waiting to take communion inspires his latest work. It’s a strange, chuckle-inspiring sketch with the take-home message “some things should be left as they are.”

Even weirder is Vera (Daisies) Chytilová’s offering, “Automat Svet” (translated as “The Restaurant the World”). It’s the only pure surrealist segment; it’s also the favorite of many critics, thanks to some remarkable slow-motion black and white photography. The dreamlike plot defies rational explanation, but it involves the discovery of a corpse in a restaurant/bar that forces the patrons out into the rainy city streets. The sounds of revelers singing polkas at a wedding party next door seep into the depressingly empty saloon. A few favored customers are allowed in for a glass of beer while crowds outside wait patiently at the window to be let back in. One of the inner circle is a factory worker/artist who makes industrial engravings with tools and dies, and also crafts death masks for his friends to cheer them up; he tells a involved, wandering tale about his lost fiancée.  The police arrive and then, soaked with rain, the bride from the party next door somehow enters the automat through the locked door, angrily fills her shoe with water from the faucet, and takes a drink from it. It is revealed that her groom was arrested for punching one of the cops in the eye; she’s horny on her wedding night, so she picks up the artist (who likes her because her hair “looks like it was cut at a juvenile detention facility”). In slow motion the newly-minted couple dances away into the rainy street, with the bride’s gown and massive veil billowing magically in the wind. Among other lingering mysteries, we’re left to wonder if the corpse of the woman found in the automat is the artist’s missing fiancée…

Pearls of the Deep is the structural center of the Criterion Collection’s 2012 Eclipse series box set “Pearls of the Czech New Wave.” The compilation contains one feature length effort from each of Pearls’ contributors, for a total of six movies (on four DVDs). Two of the features, Nemec’s unsettling A Report on the Party and the Guests and Chytilová’s psychedelic Daisies, are significantly weird enough to merit separate reviews in upcoming weeks. The other three pieces, in increasing order of interest, are Schorm’s Return of the Prodigal Son (1967) (a bleak drama about a suicidal man that owes a little too much to Western influences like Antonioni and Godard); Menzel’s Capricious Summer (1967) (a chaste Czech sex comedy); and Jires’ The Joke (about an apolitical college student who is sentenced to six years hard labor for writing “long live Trotsky” as a joke on a postcard). The Joke, which only played for a few weeks in the Prague spring of 1968, is likely the most anti-Communist movie ever produced in a Communist country. It was immediately banned after the Soviet invasion; it is a small miracle that this film even exists.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…fascinating omnibus film… based on semi-surrealist tales by national literary lion Bohumil Hrabal… the films look totalitarian life square in the eye, but they’re also living testaments to the era’s lovable, grungy Euro-slacker esprit.”–Michael Atkinson, The Village Voice (DVD)

Although I watch a lot of films, for various reasons I’m not huge on reviewing them. However, seeing as I’ve been a “Dark Shadows” fan for over 40 years and a Tim Burton fan since Pee Wee’s Big Adventure (1985), I thought perhaps his new epic deserved a paragraph or two from me. I saw it this past weekend on the Hamilton IMAX screen in what seemed liked a rather depopulated theater, but I’m not sure what their usual Sunday crowd is like–perhaps everyone else was taking their mom to dinner for Mother’s Day. At any rate. . .

I had followed the dribbling out of info and photos over the past year or so and had seen the infamous trailer that makes the film look like “Vampires Suck Part Deux”. As a disciple of the original series, none of this sat any better with me than I think it did for most fans. Once more we have Tim Burton going his own way without much regard for audience’s expectations or their affection for the originals (think especially Planet of the Apes or even more so his Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the latter of which I still haven’t managed to make it all the way through.) I can understand not working toward expectations, but is it always necessary to tread on sacred ground with jackboots? This being said I will consider Dark Shadows from two different perspectives: as a remake of the original series, and as another entry in the auteur’s canon.

Many fans of the original series are going to hate this film. Hands down. Jonathan Frid’s beloved, beautiful, complex, tortured Barnabas Collins has been morphed into a typically Burtonesque, overly made-up, funny pages version of the character, ripe for rendering into dolls and action figures. Johnny Depp‘s pancake makeup is so thick and obvious he constantly makes the viewer think of someone made up as Dracula for Halloween (indeed, one wonders if this isn’t partly the idea–this is Tim and Johnny’s make-believe, pretend Barnabas, their version of going out for trick-or-treat.) The makeup of many of the other major characters is similarly troweled-on, particularly Helena Bonham Carter‘s Julia Hoffman and Eva Green’s Angelique. Beyond that, Depp’s face is not possessed of the same stately aquilinity as was Frid’s, and in this makeup he looks more like Eddie Munster (or perhaps Michael Jackson.) Other characters are monkeyed with under the surface. The strong willed Dr. Julia Hoffman of the series here becomes a jaded alcoholic, played by Carter with slovenly disdain. Green’s Angelique is all bitch with no real passion. Bella Heathcoat’s Josette/Victoria Winters are both doll-eyed ciphers. Jackie Earl Haley is largely wasted as Willie Loomis. Nods to the original are brief and obligatory; a snatch of Robert Cobert’s breakthrough series score before the credits and a faithfully executed Collinwood exterior, together with breathtakingly brief cameos from four of the original cast, including Frid (who died before the film was released).

Burton intentionally sets his film in 1972, the year directly following the original series’ cancellation–either to say he will not “mess with the past” or “I ain’t goin’ there”, take your pick. Despite that, the film picks up pretty much from the beginning of the Barnabas epic (Frid didn’t actually join the series till it had been going for nearly half a year.) Occasionally Seth Grahame-Smith’s script quotes the series to good effect, but not often. Apparently obligatory nods are given to other cinematic vamps, especially F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu, and we get a cameo from ’50′s and ’60′s king vampire Chris Lee, nowadays a Burton regular. Beyond that, and aside from the basic key plot points, the film has almost nothing to do with the original series in either style or intent. It has a lot more in common with “Scooby Doo” or “The Munsters,” and while it isn’t quite the total send-up the trailers threatened, it is definitely “over-the-top” in a way the original never was. Grahame-Smith’s script tries to pack far far too many plot points into 113 minutes, some of which blindside the audience (like Carolyn’s inexplicable late-film advent as a werewolf.) In the meantime Burton seems far too fascinated with the idea of bringing in as many blasts-from-1972 as he can; perhaps in an attempt to pander to the ’70′s-chic fad, which I believe was over 10 year ago. In the end it’s the kind of film that often passes for comedy these days; high octane, breathless, shallow, dumbed-down. The humor here is more like those bad old vampire jokes about “iron poor blood” than anything truly dark and interesting.

Dispensing with its value as a “Dark Shadows” remake (or a comedy), I’m left to consider whether it succeeds simply as a Tim Burton film. Some of the script and character anomalies are explainable within the Burton canon. Burton is always more interested in style than substance and what passes for theme in most Burton films is the simplistic search for acceptance for the less-normal among us. The Burton/Depp Barnabas joins the long line-up of characters in this vein: Edward Scissorhands, Lydia in Beetlejuice, Pee Wee Herman, Batman, Ed Wood, Jack the Pumpkin King. In Burton’s world there is a nearly scrupulous distinction between those innocently, perhaps organically, drawn to darkness, versus those with a psychological twistedness, which may or may not be expressed physically (as it is with the Batman villains, for instance.) For Burton, it is the dark psyche that leads to doom (Catwoman, Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood.) In Dark Shadows we are presented with a Barnabas who, like Scissorhands, is basically childlike, innocent, blameless for his misdeeds (his vampirism is the result of a curse) and, frankly, not overly tortured by them. Indeed, the Depp Barnabas makes bare pretense toward disguising what he is (and looking like that how could he?) as if to say “I refuse to live a lie” (only Michelle Pfieffer’s Elizabeth Stoddard works to keep that news under wraps.) All of this works against the original’s “House of Secrets” tone, straightening out all the fun kinks in the plot, but nevertheless, in light of Burton’s canon it does make sense. In the end, Burton goes the extra mile in confirming Barnabas’s vampire-liberation, as he finds acceptance from his lost love Josette only when she too is made a vampire.

Lastly, does the film succeed on what is often named as Burton’s strong point, its visual presentation? It’s an attractive film overall, with good sets, good photography. But the lighting is often overly harsh, as mentioned before making the made-up characters appear clown-like and unconvincing. There’s no real delight or visual surprises, as if Burton’s bag of tricks has run dry (which, sadly, for many it seems it has). Despite all of this there are moments of fun to be culled from the film, and Depp is too clever an actor not to score occasionally even when being hampered by a bad script and tired direction. A bright point is Michelle Pfeiffer’s Elizabeth, one of the few portrayals in the film, aside from Depp’s, with some dimension (not that the breathless pace gave many of them much of a chance.)

I would not rate this at the apex of the Burton canon by any means, but neither would I say it belongs at the bottom (that I’ll reserve for the ridiculous, if high grossing, Alice in Wonderland or the aforementioned Charlie and the Chocolate Factory). Final verdict, I would give it a gentle thumbs down, with the hope that the soon-to-come remake of “Frankeweenie,” which was trailered before Dark Shadows, will somewhat redeem Tim Burton.

DIRECTED BY: Commodore Gilgamesh, Ghoul Skool

FEATURING: None (found footage and movie clips, although you can catch glimpses of faded celebrities like Tim Allen and Gary Busey)

PLOT: 55 minutes of 1 to 5 second clips of strange and funny dog footage from movies and

videotapes, arranged into a psychedelic montage that loosely follows the plot of Alejandro Jodorowsky‘s surrealist epic The Holy Mountain.

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: You would think a “remake” of The Holy Mountain made up from found footage of dog movies would easily qualify as one of the 366 weirdest movies of all time. There are only two obstacles to adding Doggiewoggiez! to the List immediately. One is a philosophical issue: since this is just a compilation of clips—albeit one put together with wit and skill—with no original material save for a few kaleidoscopic canine collages, does it even meet the definition of a “movie”? The second objection is more practical than philosophical: if Doggiewoggiez! is in fact a “movie,” it potentially fails “the grandma test.” When considering a movie for the List, I imagine showing the movie to my grandma (God rest her soul); if at any time during the imaginary screening she leaves the room, muttering under her breath, “that was weird,” I add the film to the List. Now, I didn’t show this movie to my dead grandma, but I did show it to a living grandma—and she loved it and thought it was cute. Can a movie be truly weird if dog-loving grandmas find it adorable?

COMMENTS: A startling indictment of the indignities desperate Hollywood producers will inflict upon man’s best friend in the name of cheap entertainment, Doggiewoogiez! features every terrible sub-Disney talking dog movie in which an uncomprehending pooch is forced to recite a horrible pun acting against a slumming Dave Thomas, Fred Willard, or Cuba Gooding, Jr. And it’s not just the major Hollywood players that are into abusing the long-suffering fidos, either, as Doggiewoggiez! collects plenty of examples of amateurs touting undignified forms of dog massage, puppy training, and owners posing nude with their pooches. The consortium at Everything is Terrible! bring us morphing mutt montages of lifted legs, doggie-style rutting, and bitches attacking crotches. Watching this compilation you’ll see more footage of dogs surfing or riding dolphins than you ever thought existed, along with vintage racist dogs, dogs in sports, dogs going to heaven… well, you get the picture. It’s a non-stop assault of pop-culture canine iconography, often trippily manipulated (where else but in Doggiewoggiez! “The Dog Molecule” segment will you see a dog puffing on a tiny duplicate pipe version of its own head, that’s also puffing on itself?) And, as promised, the organization of this dog show does mimic The Holy Mountain, from the opening scene of “ritual” poodle shaving to the “zoom back, camera!” fourth-wall smashing finale. Much of Jodorwosky’s music and dialogue is slyly integrated into the compilation; the line “your sacrifice has completed my sanctuary of one thousand testicles” is followed by a dog breeder observing “the more testicles you cut off, the fewer dog fights there are.” There’s no real meaning to the cross-breeding of Mexican surrealists with preposterous puppy clips, other than that Everything is Terrible! (correctly) thinks that both are cool, and that the mixture is uniquely bizarre. Picking out the clever correspondences is a fun bonus for those intimately familiar with Mountain, but it’s not necessary to enjoy the bow-wow barrage of barking mad dog clips.

Doggiewoggiez! runs 55 minutes, which is about the perfect length to keep it from overstaying its welcome. Fortunately, there’s almost 3 hours (!) of “extra” material on the disc, so you won’t feel ripped off. The supplemental features are divided into three separate categories. “2 Minute Movies” are expertly compressed versions of ten truly horrible films like Revenge of the Red Baron, featuring a wheelchair-bound Mickey Rooney haunted by a remote controlled toy airplane possessed by the spirit of the WWI ace. “Best Of” contains a selection of demonically bad found-footage discoveries including several accidentally frightening Christian puppet shows (and, to show that bad taste knows no denomination, scenes from a terrible Jewish children’s video called “Torah Tots” featuring a character who promises to float around the world vacuuming up all the Jews and depositing them in Israel). And, just so you won’tbe shocked when you come across it, we’ll mention that hidden inside the ten minute “Mondo Bigfoot” compilation collected from the 1970s Sasquatch craze are the fake hardcore porn scenes from the Bigfoot rapist oddity The Geek (1971) (grandma would not approve). Finally, there’s a special section devoted to “Music Videos,”of which the most famous number is Tim Curry’s rendition of “Anything Can Happen on Halloween” from The Worst Witch; the strangest item, however, is “Don’t Do Drugs,” in which a teenager in a skimpy black bikini falls asleep on a beach, dreams about four much younger kids doing an anti-drug rap while imagining herself buying smack and being arrested for vagrancy, then wakes up to a guy offering her a bottle of booze. Because of copyright issues (the main feature constitutes fair use but some of the supplements are problematic), new copies of Doggiewoggiez! Poochiewoochiez! is unlikely to be sold through legitimate retail sites. Look for used copies or buy directly from Everything is Terrible! while supplies last.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“The movie could easily coast on the ridiculous amount of work that went into realizing its weird conceit… Seemingly thousands of videos ranging from the obscure to the I-wish-it-were-obscure (Tim Allen’s public nude scene in The Shaggy Dog) have been shredded like the morning paper into seconds-long fragments, and then meticulously sequenced into a variation on Jodorowsky’s psychedelic-surrealist masterpiece that conveys pretty much every memorable image in the film…”–Benjamin Pearson, Tiny Mix Tapes (DVD)

DIRECTED BY: W.D. Richter

FEATURING: Peter Weller, John Lithgow, Ellen Barkin, Jeff Goldblum, Christopher Lloyd, Vincent Schiavelli

PLOT: We are first introduced to Buckaroo Banzai as he rushes by helicopter from completing a delicate neurosurgery to test-drive a trans-dimensional race car in the Nevada desert. Banzai successful breaches the Eighth Dimension with his oscillation overthruster, but the experiment attracts the attention of the mad Dr. Lizardo, as well as a gang of Lectroid aliens who also want the device. Between rock and roll gigs and particle physics press conferences, Buckaroo and his band of scientist/musician/adventurers, the Hong Kong Cavaliers, will uncover an alien conspiracy that (naturally) threatens the fate of the world.

BACKGROUND:

• This was writer W.D. Richter’s first directorial effort after having half-a-dozen screenplays produced (including the 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers). Banzai eventually became a hit on VHS but was a huge flop in theaters, losing six million dollars and bankrupting the production studio. Richter only directed one other movie, the 1991 independent comedy Late for Dinner, although he continued to write screenplays (including Big Trouble in Little China). Richter did not write the script for Buckaroo Banzai, however; it was penned by his pal Earl Mac Rauch.
• The name of the evil front corporation in Banzai, Yoyodyne, is a reference to a fictional corporation that appears in Thomas Pynchon’s novels.
• In 2003 Entertainment Weekly ranked Buckaroo Banzai as the #43 cult movie of all time.
• The sequel promised by the end credits, Buckaroo Banzai vs. The World Crime League, was of course never made, although legend has it that Richter is still trying to get it produced to this day. In 1998 pre-production work was done on a Buckaroo television series for the Fox network, but the show was never picked up. The Buckaroo brand has persisted through the years with a novelization and comic book adaptations.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: We require a flashback to show how the Eighth Dimension was originally discovered by a then-sane Dr. Emilio Lizardo—but how to introduce it without disrupting the flow of the story? This movie believes the most natural way to incorporate the memory is to have a now-insane Dr. Lizardo hook electrodes onto his tongue and shock himself so that arcs of lightning fly out of his eardrums. We have to assume this bizarre home-electroshock therapy explains the perfect cinematic precision of the following flashback sequence, because no other sane theory is offered for Lizardo’s act of high-voltage masochism.

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Refer to the plot synopsis. Any movie that successfully incorporates

Original trailer for The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eight Dimension

a band of rock and roll scientists, an invasion by aliens uniformly named “John,” the Eighth Dimension, inexplicable watermelons, and Jeff Goldblum as a New Jersey neurosurgeon who dresses like a cowboy—while working inside the Hollywood system, with a $12 million dollar budget—has worked hard enough to deserve a space on the List of the Best Weird Movies ever made.

COMMENTS: According to an unofficial Buckaroo Banzai FAQ, the most frequently asked question about The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai is not, as one might expect, “what in the hell did I just watch?” or “how in the world did this thing get made?” or even “why does Jeff Goldblum dress up like a cowboy if he’s from New Jersey?” but instead, “what exactly is the watermelon doing there?” To those not yet in the know, this query refers to the point in the movie where alien John Bigboote has infiltrated the Banzai Institute to try to re-kidnap Professor Hikita and obtain the overthruster, and Buckaroo and the Hong Kong Cavaliers are prowling the corridors looking for him. As they pass through one lab area, New Jersey asks Reno why there is a large watermelon lodged in an industrial vice. “I’ll tell you later,” promises the senior Cavalier, but he never gets around to it.

No one ever wonders about the fact that, in the very same sequence, Buckaroo passes a fire that’s inexplicably burning in a file cabinet and makes no comment—he simply shuts it with his foot, not even bothering to put out the flames. Nobody asks “what exactly is that spinning plastic musical elephant carousel doing in the middle of a hallway in Yoyodyne corporation?” There are lots of unanswered questions in Buckaroo Banzai—why does Lizardo shock himself on the tongue? Why do good aliens appear as Rastafarians?—but people focus on the watermelon because that’s the point at which the movie draws attention to its own background craziness and pledges to answer one single absurdity. Of course, it never delivers the promised resolution, because this is a case of Buckaroo‘s script explicitly tipping you off to the entire story’s shaggy dog nature. Pressed by fans, director W.D. Richter later concocted an explanation which involved the Banzai Institute working to create a watermelon with a super-hard shell so that the fruit could be clandestinely dropped from airplanes into starvation-plagued regions of third world dictatorships without shattering. A likely explanation; but I have my own little theory about the watermelon, which I’ll provide later in the review.

It’s fruitless to obsess about the watermelon, because large swaths of Buckaroo Banzai make little sense. If you’re not hopelessly confused half an hour into this picture, then you haven’t been paying attention. The script seems to have been edited down from something about three times as long, with subplots that are hinted at but not followed up on and characters who are mentioned but never appear. There’s simply not enough time in the 100 minutes allotted to flesh out all the ideas Richter and Rauch are anxious to get on the page, so the plot rushes by with a heedless recklessness that sweeps you along. Buckaroo has a love interest in the charming person of Penny Priddy, who by a freak coincidence happens to be the spitting image of his dead wife, but he’s so busy dealing with subplots and shootouts he barely has time to romance her between abductions. We never get time to draw a bead on any of Buckaroo’s boon companions and backing band, the Hong Kong Cavaliers. They have names like Reno Nevada and Rawhide, but few distinguishing characteristics beyond uncanny competence and killer chops (both instrumental and karate). Of the Cavaliers, Lewis Smith makes the biggest impression as “Perfect Tommy,” but that’s largely because of his improbably blond mane of hair. With all of these guys standing around in the background just waiting for their moment in the sun, Buckaroo goes out and recruits yet another sidekick who demands his share of screen time, in the person of fellow neurosurgeon named New Jersey, who dresses inconspicuously in a cowboy hat, bright scarlet shirt and shaggy llama-hair chaps. There’s also a helpful Jamaican alien who joins the fray, and a father-son pair of Buckaroo Banzai Irregulars who chip in to put the beatdown on evil. And as if this weren’t enough, the characters reference other characters who never made it into the final script, like Cavalier Pecos (who we’re told is in Tibet).

This colorful army of good guys is opposed by an even more colorful gang of alien miscreants. (Keep in mind that the good aliens are Black Lectroids, and they come from Planet Ten and say “hey mon,” while the bad aliens are Red Lectroids who hail from the Eighth Dimension and carry guns that shoot spiders—got it?) A pair of fine character actors in Dan Hedaya and the angular Vincent Schiavelli are bumbling, none-too-bright foot soldiers in the alien army. The Red Lectroids’ chief lieutenant, John Bigboote (pronounced, he is anxious to remind everyone, “Bigboo-tay,” not “Big-booty”) is memorably portrayed by the great Christopher Lloyd (fresh off his stint as Reverend Jim on “Taxi”). But it’s John Lithgow as Dr. Lizardo (who, we figure out after multiple viewings, is possessed by the spirit of a Red Lectroid named John Whorfin) who steals the show. With bad teeth and an even worse Italian accent, Lizardo is prone to rambling lines like “we’re home free… home is where you wear your hat… I feel so break up, I want to go home!” and “laugh-a while you can, monkey boy!” Lithgow rants like Chico Marx with a God complex and slinks around like Ygor in a Frankenstein movie. Lithgow’s performance throws both good taste and sanity out the window, and he gets more into the spirit of the material than anyone else involved in the production.

Peter Weller, by comparison, is totally deadpan, and to me this is the movie’s greatest flaw. His coolness certainly contrasts with Lithgow’s craziness, but for a guy who’s a combination secret agent and rock star, he shows little charisma, just a bland handsomeness. Weller’s restrained, somewhat arrogant persona is perfect for Robocop, or for the emotionally shut-down writer William Lee in Naked Lunch, but he lacks the spark to portray a larger than life character like Buckaroo. We’ll never know how the film would have played out with a more vigorous Banzai—maybe it would have pumped the movie up too much, to the point where it exploded—but I would have loved to see what would have happened had Weller and Jeff Goldblum’s roles been switched. Goldblum is underutilized as a gimmicky sidekick, and it seems the lead role could have benefited from the nervous energy he brings to the screen.

Halfway through the movie, Banzai recaps the plot thus far for the President of the United States. The Prez’ bemused reaction speaks for the audience: “Buckaroo, I don’t know what to say. Lectroids, Planet 10, nuclear extortion, a girl named John…” There’s another quote near the beginning of the movie that’s even more to the point, considering this venue. Buckaroo has just performed neurosurgery and penetrated solid matter by accessing the Eighth Dimension. He caps off the evening by headlining at a nightclub, soloing on electric guitar, trumpet and piano. He stops in the middle of a rollicking blues number, having psychically sensed that someone in the audience isn’t having a good time. In fact, the stick in the mud is a depressed woman who’s “down to her last nickel in this lousy town.” Buckaroo tries to cheer her up by putting a spotlight on her, advising her that “wherever you go, there you are,” and launching into a cover version of that comforting ballad “Since I Don’t Have You.” As Buckaroo sits at the piano and croons, “I don’t have plans or schemes, I don’t have hopes or dreams” to the sobbing suicidal gal with smeared mascara, one of the backup saxophonists turns to another and says, “This is weird.” To which his companion says, “Sure is.” To which I would have responded, “You’re just noticing that now?”

By the way, the reason that they put a watermelon in the vice is because a grape wouldn’t have shown up on camera.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…Richter doesn’t bring out the baroque lunacy of the material—a kind of fermented parody of M*A*S*H, Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark and the TV series ‘The A-Team’—but though the characters don’t develop and the laughs don’t build or come together, the film’s uninflected deadpan tone is somehow likable.”–Pauline Kael, The New Yorker (contemporaneous)

“…like coming into the middle chapters of some hilariously overplotted, spaced-out 1930′s adventure serial, neither the beginning nor the end of which ever comes into sight. At its best, which it frequently is, it’s a lunatic ball…pure, nutty fun.”–Vincent Canby, The New York Times (contemporaneous)

“Some movies become cult classics by being bad in a charming and/or entertaining way, some by being transgressive in ways mainstream society isn’t prepared to deal with, others by just being flat-out weird. I submit, with great fondness, that The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension, belongs to the latter category.”–Danny Bowes, Tor.com (DVD)

OFFICIAL SITE: MGMs Official Site for the Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai – Basically, a one-page ad to buy the film with a trailer, synopsis, cast list and some stills. Of course, most movies this old aren’t given even that much attention by major studios.

IMDB LINK: The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension (1984)

OTHER LINKS OF INTEREST:

BANZAI INSTITUTE – This repository of news items and trivia is written in a style similar enough to the DVD supplemental material (e.g., referring to the movie as a “docudrama”) that you halfway suspect director Richter and/or writer Rauch is behind the site

Banzai Institute – Facebook – From the makers of the above site, now conveniently on Facebook for more frequent updates

World Watch Online: The Buckaroo Banzai Mailing List – Another Buckaroo Banzai fan site. There’s a wealth of archived material here for fans to plow through, including downloadable newsletters dating back to 1985!

NYFF: Buckaroo Banzai Intro + Q&A – Complete question and answer session with Peter Weller and John Lithgow, hosted by Kevin Smith at the 2011 New York Film Festival (this YouTube video is over an hour long)

Buckaroo Banzai Frequently Asked Questions – Almost all the Buckaroo minutiae that you would ever want can be found in this online FAQ

Yoyodyne.com – A fake website for the fake corporation in Buckaroo Banzai. Why? The Banzai fan base is just that thorough. You may use this site to email John Bigboote, should you wish.

Rotten Tomatoes Show: Top 5 Aborted Franchises – The Rotten Tomatoes Show names Buckaroo Banzai the top aborted franchise of all time, explaining that it was “a tad to weird for America”

Buckaroo Banzai: Across The 8th Dimension, The Adventures of Easter Eggs – information on accessing the hidden features on the Buckaroo Banzai DVD

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

“The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension: The Novel”- Scriptwriter Earl Mac Rauch’s 1984 novelization of the movie, which adds much-needed backstory and supplemental material to flesh out the legend

“Buckaroo Banzai: Return Of The Screw” – A 2007 Rauch-penned graphic novel continuing Buckaroo’s adventures

DVD INFO: MGM’s 2002 Special Edition of Banzai (buy) did this cult classic right and thrilled even the movie’s demanding fan base. The commentary track features Richter and Rauch, with the director pretending the film is a biopic of a real life figure and Rauch pretending to be one of the Hong Kong Cavaliers. An optional subtitle track serves up additional tidbits of information about the Banzai universe. Many deleted scenes are included, most notably one where Jamie Lee Curtis plays Buckaroo’s mom in a flashback. There’s a 22-minute featurette called “Buckaroo Banzai Declassified” with Richter which, like the commentary track, stays in character, pretending Buckaroo is real. Character profiles provide even more background information on the Banzai mythology, and photo galleries, promotional materials and the original trailer round out a treasury of special features.

Banzai is also the weirdest offering on MGM’s 3 disc “Astronomy 101″ collection (buy), which also contains the mildly weird Killer Klowns from Outer Space and Mel Brooks’ not-so-weird (but inexplicably popular) Star Wars spoof Spaceballs.

Buckaroo Banzai is not yet available on Blu-ray, though it seems like a likely candidate for an upgrade. It is available on Video-on-Demand, for rental only (rent on demand).

(This movie was nominated for review by multiple readers.  Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

To see the full short, visit Deadly Serious Productions here. This Is Why Everyone Hates You contains strong language and adult content.

FEATURING: Alex Winter, Randy Quaid, Megan Ward, Michael Stoyanov, William Sadler, Brooke Shields, Bobcat Goldthwait, Morgan Fairchild, Mr. T,  Keanu Reeves (uncredited), Larry “Bud” Melman

PLOT: A sleazy Hollywood actor is hired by an evil corporation to go to South America where he

is immediately kidnapped by a freak show owner who transforms him and his friends into Hideous Mutant Freekz.

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: While Freaked is a very weird movie, its weirdness stems more from the “anything goes” school of gonzo comedy. It’s like Harvey Kurtzman’s Mad Magazine come to life with the aesthetic sensibility of a Robert Williams painting. Heck, maybe it should make the List.

COMMENTS: Freaked is a fine example of a small wave of bizarre films that made their way into theaters in the early 1990s. Too strange for the mainstream and too unpolished for the art houses, most of these movies were dumped into a few theaters with no fanfare and only found later life on VHS, cable or DVD, if even then. Other examples include Rubin and Ed (1991) and the Certified Weird The Dark Backward (1991).

Originally titled “Hideous Mutant Freekz,” Freaked was the brainchild of directors Tom Stern and Alex Winter, who were then coming off their short-lived sketch comedy show The Idiot Box. Winter, who is still most well known as being half of the duo Bill & Ted, also stars as the lead, Ricky Coogin.

That this is a ’90s affair should be immediately obvious from the opening, which features some of the most eye-blistering claymation you will ever see, set to the tune of a Henry Rollins song. From there we jump right into the plot, which involves ex-teen heartthrob Ricky Coogin being romanced by the evil EES Corporation (“Everything Except Shoes”) to act as their spokesperson in South America for their product Zygrot 24. After a few gags and character introductions, the movie finds itself in the freak show fun by Elijah C. Skuggs (Randy Quaid). Skuggs immediately kidnaps our protagonists and transforms them into monstrosities by using (surprise!) Zygrot 24.

The freak show camp is really the heart of the film. In fact, the sequence introducing the freaks may give you the best sense of the movie: it’s done using the set-up for the game show Hollywood Squares, complete with the skeleton of Paul Lynde as center square. Other freaks include the Worm, Sockhead (who has a sock-puppet for a head), Mr. T as the Bearded Lady, and so on.

What separates this film from other mile-a-minute comedies, and makes it most memorable as weird, is the density and bizarreness of its gags. Like a comic book, every frame of the film is packed with jokes that may go completely unnoticed upon first viewing. On top of that, the gags are just strange piled upon strange. For example, Coogin’s first escape attempt, which involves a milkman and a turd shaped like a naked Kim Basinger, is thwarted by a pair of giant Rastafarian eyeballs with machine-guns. Why? Because that’s always funny.

At this point I should mention the entire movie is told in flashback during a talk show hosted by none other than Brooke Shields.

This is a pretty great movie, and of the funniest unknown movies to make its way out of the ‘90s. It’s a shame that it died an ignoble and unsupported death, but it’s not clear that a wider release would have enabled the film to find an audience either. Freaked clearly isn’t for everybody. However, for those whom it is for (“Mad” Magazine-addicts, kids who grew up with “Big Daddy” Roth model kits, C-list celebrity fans), it’s a love letter in animatronic clothing. If you can find it, it’s worth picking up.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“I suppose there could be some sort of subversive angle to all the madness on display here, but I suspect it’s just what happens when you get a bunch of hipsters too weird for their own good in a room together and ask them to come up with something funny.”–Keith Breese, AMC filmcritic.com (DVD)

I say that up front because I have watched this film in the company of such alien types as the Hyperrealists. Their melodramatic, aggressive reactions were the same as I saw in a showing of the films of  Busby Berkeley (be forewarned: a series on Berkeley is coming). Naturally, I saw it as my aesthetic duty to cut those sophistic assailants down to size.

The Marx Brothers, perhaps, are the quintessential comedy team with an edge. W.C. Fields exhibits a comparable level of surrealism, but as a predominantly solo act, he’s a mono whisper compared to the quadrophonic Brothers. 1930s audiences showed themselves to be a somewhat more imaginative lot (not by much) than us in that they not only accepted the Brothers level of unhinged zaniness, but they even made stars out of them.

Note that “but not by much,” because Duck Soup (1933) was the Marx Brothers most revolutionary film, a surrealist-politico masterpiece, and it totally bombed at the box office. This resulted in the Brothers being released from their Paramount contract.  MGM and Irving Thalberg were quick to snap them up, but Thalberg, a self-confessed fan, knew he had to polish their act in order to increase their accessibility.

The MGM films that followed Soup retained a certain level of  zaniness, but it was noticeably diminished.  The new producers added musical numbers aplenty (the songs in Duck Soup are minimal and non-intrusive—and although I love musicals, saturating a Marx Brothers film with dance numbers is a really bad idea), and sacked the bland Zeppo (the sole good move). The best of the Thalberg lot was probably Night At The Opera (1935) directed by Sam Wood, a fleetingly competent commission director. Wood lacked the consummate craftsmanship and idiosyncratic comedic intuition of Duck Soup director Leo McCary. McCary had cut his teeth with some eccentric peers. He started as an assistant to Tod Browning and had worked, as a writer, with Chaplin, Stan Laurel, and W.C. Fields.  With Wood and Thalberg reigning the Marx Brothers in, a slow descent into the pedestrian was inevitable.

Still, we have Duck Soup, which has rightly been lauded (by those who know better) as the great anti-war masterpiece (along with 1964′s Dr. Strangelove). (Although, if I remember correctly, the late critic Leslie Halliwell preferred Fail Safe to Kubrick,’s film, a judgment I’ve never fully understood).

The irreverence displayed in Duck Soup should delight any weird movie lover. Nothing is sacred. Much to FDR’s dismay, patriotism was lampooned, as was religion: “We got guns! They got guns! All God’s children got guns!” Hallelujah! Bourgeoisie society is likened to fascism, and the boys libidos are raging.

Groucho is new President, Rufus T. Firefly, and his kingdom is the fictional Freedonia (only W.C. Fields could come up with wackier names). The object of Rufus’ affection is the aptly named Mrs. Teasdale (the hilarious Margaret Dumont—stocky, unattractive and no spring chicken, she couldn’t even make a local commercial today). Mrs. Teasdale is a wealthy widow, and Groucho’s painted mustache and ceegar have come ‘ a courtin’ her—and his ceegar is noticeably stiff.

The antagonistic neighboring country Sylvania has sent two spies into Freedonia (Chico and Harpo—go figure). Of course, this is a set-up for nonsensical dialogue, political intrigue, seductive vamps, surreal one-liners, even more surreal slapstick (during the eventual war), and raging testosterone.

A cabinet meeting scene is typical. Rufus is handed a report: “Your excellency, here is the treasury Department report. I hope you find it clear.” “Clear? A four-year old child could understand this report.” Rufus then hands the report to secretary Zeppo and instructs him: “Run out and find me a four-year-old child. I can’t make heads or tails out of it.”

Of course, Zeppo ignores him and goes about his business. And that’s sort of reaction led to much of the complaining I heard during the screening of the film. The unrealistic exchanges throw many modern audiences off. “He didn’t even respond to what she said!” “He looked at the camera!” and so on.

While Duck Soup was a subversive anti-status quo film, it was not rejected by the masses at the time because of all the unrealistic zingers (one of which will immediately be recognized by fans of the Addams Family movies, but then that’s old business). Rather, it’s unpatriotic irreverence went too far for a nation trying desperately to unite together during the depression (which few of us could fathom, I’m sure!) and for a nation on the brink of war. However, escapism was the order of the day, and the Marx Brothers were happy to oblige.

Although their films were probably not considered weird in their day, they have evolved into time capsule misfits because of shifting aesthetics and ideologies. That Duck Soup is still, unfortunately, frighteningly relevant possibly goes unnoticed.

The film is often callous, cruel, uncouth, and laced in spiked Jewish humor, but it never resorts to dumbing down to its audience. And that is a refreshing change of pace.

FEATURING: Ralph Richardson, Michael Hordern, Rita Tushingham, Richard Warwick, Arthur Lowe, Mona Washbourne, Marty Feldman, Spike Milligan, Dudley Moore, Peter Cook

PLOT: After the Bomb falls, a family who lives on a still-functioning subway train travels to the

surface in search of a nurse for their pregnant daughter.

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: This absurd anxiety nightmare about the Bomb could only have come out of the Swinging Sixties; it’s one of the weirder relics of an era when filmmakers felt it was their patriotic duty to laugh in the face of the imminent apocalypse.

COMMENTS: The Bed Sitting Room began its life as a one-act play, written by comedian Spike Milligan and John Antrobus in 1962, the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis. At that time, at the height of Cold War paranoia, nuked-up powers were playing games of chicken with each other and worldwide nuclear annihilation seemed inevitable. In the average person’s eyes the world and its leaders had gone insane, and who better to depict the inevitable aftermath of our self-destructive impulses than Milligan and his “Goon Show” squad, under the cheerfully absurd direction of A Hard Days Night‘s Richard Lester? The results are a ridiculous apocalypse the likes of which has never been depicted on screen before. Looking like it was shot in a Welsh garbage dump, with heaping mountains of discarded boots and crockery and the police flying through the sky in a burnt-out VW bug attached to a balloon, the movie anticipates the junkyard visuals of post-apocalyptic films to follow. Tonally, however, Bed Sitting Room is miles away from the cutthroat scavenger worlds of Mad Max or A Boy and His Dog; it’s Theater of the Absurd performed by vaudevillians. The jokes are almost feather-light, contrasting with the inherent horror of the situation. ”I’m not eating,” complains a patient. When the doctor asks why, he answers matter-of-factly, “can’t get the stuff.” In another scene a lonely recluse asks “would you do for me what my first wife did?” to a nervous middle aged woman who’s fallen into his fallout shelter. Having no choice, she reluctantly agrees, and he hands her pots, pans and teacups to throw at him as he dodges them shouting “she means nothing to me!” The movie is full of corny one-liners that are uncomfortably ludicrous coming from refugees of a collapsed civilization; other aspects of post-nuke England are even weirder. Radiation causes some survivors to spontaneously mutate into cupboards, parrots or (of course) bed sitting rooms. The holocaust even caused bug-eyed comic Marty Feldman to dress in nurse drag. Sometimes it seems like the only thing that survived the “nuclear misunderstanding” intact were civil servants and the British class structure. A man on a bicycle generates the electricity that keeps the Underground running, officials roam the wasteland personally delivering death certificates to survivors, and the BBC keeps broadcasting by sending a correspondent around to give live reports from inside of the empty shells of television sets. The Queen may have burnt up into an irradiated husk and blown away, but the survivors have switched allegiances to a new symbolic head of state; they patriotically sing “God save Mrs. Ethel Shroake of 393A High Street, Leytonstone,” in honor of the woman who’s next in line for the throne after 40 million citizens were incinerated. A father still prefers to marry his daughter to a man of breeding, rather than the father of her child; maybe he can get a political appointment out of the connection… Even after Armageddon, the British keep plugging on as they always have. After the bomb drops Australians might grow mohawks and go racing about the Outback in muscle cars fighting over oil and water, but in the United Kingdom, there are proper channels to be followed; you may be starving for food and supplies but you’ll still think twice about breaking into a locked room (“that’s public property!”) There’s (almost literally) a gag a minute, and although many wind up as duds, enough get through to ignite your sense of black humor. In the end it’s all more silly than satirical, but there is some affectionate lampooning of British propriety. In a 1988 interview Spike Milligan said his purpose in the play was to show that after the Bomb, “the moment the cloud had dispersed and sufficient people had died, the survivors would set up all over again and have Barclays Bank, Barclay cards, garages, hates, cinemas and all… just go right back to square one. I think man has no option but to continue his own stupidity.” That is a sentiment we suspect that Mrs. Ethel Shroake of 393A High Street, Leytonstone would fully endorse.

The Bed Sitting Room (and the work of Lester, Milligan and their cronies in general) was an obvious influence on Monty Python (whose television series debuted on the BBC the very same year). Unlike the Pythons, however, this cataclysmic farce was a big flop with audiences, and Lester did not work again for four years. Promoters acknowledged the film’s “specialized” appeal with the tagline “we’ve got a BOMB* on our hands” and the footnote (“*BOMB – a motion picture so brilliantly funny it goes over most people’s heads”). The film is rarely screened and has never been released on DVD in Region 1, but at the time of this writing it is available on Netflix’s instant streaming service (which may be the wave of the future for obscure films).

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“A field day for funny collection of Brits. Weird picture originated in a well-known weird place, the mind of ‘Goon Show’ alumnus Spike Milligan… the players manage to keep the laughs flying thick and fast.”–TV Guide

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