366 Weird Movies

Celebrating the cinematically surreal, bizarre, cult, oddball, fantastique, psychotronic, and the just plain WEIRD!

Entries Tagged ‘Fantasy’

RECOMMENDED AS WEIRD: BREWSTER MCCLOUD (1970)

DIRECTED BY:  Robert Altman
FEATURING:  Bud Cort, Sally Kellerman, Michael Murhpy, Shelley Duvall, Rene Auberjonois, Stachy Keach, Margaret Hamilton, Jennifer Salt, William Baldwin
PLOT: An oddball genius constructs a one man flying device in the basement of the

Houston Astrodome, assisted by a sexy but murderous guardian angel.

WHY IT SHOULD MAKE THE LIST: Robert Altman’s [...]

CAPSULE: THE LOVELY BONES (2009)

DIRECTED BY: Peter Jackson
FEATURING: Saoirse Ronan, Stanley Tucci, Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz, Susan Sarandon
PLOT: A murdered 14-year old girl watches her family search for her killer from the

afterlife.
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST:  There are a few weird visual elements in Susie’s pleasant and candy-colored Purgatory, but The Lovely Bones tells a conventional, if unusual, [...]

RECOMMENDED AS WEIRD: THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS (2009)

DIRECTED BY: Terry Gilliam
FEATURING: Heath Ledger, Christopher Plummer, Lily Cole, Tom Waits, Colin Farrell, Johnny Depp, Jude Law
PLOT: A 1000 year-old mystic enlists the help of a seedy amnesiac to save his

daughter, whose life he exchanged for eternal youth, from the clutches of the Devil.
WHY IT SHOULD MAKE THE LIST: The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus [...]

43. INK (2009)

“It was just an extra splash of weird.  We decided it wasn’t weird enough to begin with, so what can we really do to make this weird?”–Kiowa Winans on Ink’s DVD commentary [explaining why the Incubi staves end in human hands]

DIRECTED BY: Jamin Winans
FEATURING: Chris Kelly, Quinn Hunchar, Jessica Duffy, Jeremy Make, Jennifer Batter
PLOT:  [...]

RECOMMENDED AS WEIRD: POWDER (1995)

DIRECTED BY:  Victor Salva
FEATURING:  Sean Patrick Flanery, Lance Henriksen, Jeff Goldblum, Mary Steenburgen
PLOT: A supernaturally gifted teen misfit fights against the grain when he is forcibly

integrated into a callous, backward community.

WHY IT SHOULD MAKE THE LIST:   A strange blend of fantasy and drama, Powder has shadings of The Enigma of Casper Hauser (1975), Carrie (1976), and The [...]

CAPSULE: HOUSEKEEPING (1987)

DIRECTED BY: William Forsyth
FEATURING: Christine Lahti, Sara Walker, Andrea Burchill
PLOT: Two orphaned girls are joined by their transient aunt who becomes their

unconventional guardian in this dreamy, pensive study of nonconformity and the breaking of social mores in a restrictive 1950’s environment.

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: While Housekeeping has an original plot about [...]

CAPSULE: WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE (2009)

DIRECTED BY:  Spike Jonze
FEATURING: Max Records, voices of James Gandolfini, Lauren Ambrose, Catherine O’Hara
PLOT: A troubled, rambunctious boy travels to a land where wild beasts anoint him

their king, but discovers that socialization is a struggle even in his imagination.

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST:  Jonze slips a couple of odd visions into this ersatz [...]

40. PAN’S LABYRINTH [EL LABERINTO DEL FAUNO] (2006)

“I’m more interested in truth than in reality.”—Guillermo del Toro, Time Out interview

DIRECTED BY:  Guillermo del Toro
FEATURING: Ivana Baquero, Sergi López, Maribel Verdú, Doug Jones, Álex Angulo
PLOT:  While blood trickles backwards from the ground into a prone girl’s nostril, a voiceover tells of a princess of the Underworld who escaped to the mortal realm and [...]

38. MALPERTUIS (1972)

AKA The Legend of Doom House; Malpertuis: The Legend of Doom House
“For sure, one of the weirdest films you’ll ever see, a cult film above and beyond anything else; a film for those initiated into midnight screenings.  Where else do such dreams take place?”—Ernest Mathjis, DVD liner notes for the Barrel Entertainment edition of Malpertuis

DIRECTED BY: Harry [...]

CAPSULE: THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939)

DIRECTED BY: Victor Fleming (credited), King Vidor, Mervyn LeRoy (uncredited)
FEATURING: Judy Garland, Margaret Hamilton, Frank Morgan, Bert Lahr, Ray Bolger, Jack Haley
PLOT:  A cyclone carries a Kansas girl (and her little dog, too) to a magical land over the

rainbow.

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST:  In creating a list of the 366 best weird movies of all [...]