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.
IN DEVELOPMENT:
Lazy Susan (est. late 2014): There’s no real specific info on the plot of this Seattle-shot low-budget flick other then that it will be in the “supernatural terror” genre. However, when asked if the film will be weird, director Kelly Hughes (of La Cage Aux Zombies and the public access soap opera “Heart Attack Theater”) responded “oui”… and he’s not even French! Starring punk rock frontgrrl Taylor Kimbrough (DEEP Throat) in her acting debut. Lazy Susan info at KellyWayneHughes.com.
NEW ON DVD:
The Ganzfeld Haunting (2014): Some teenage college students engage in ESP experiments and things get weird… and sexy! The Amazon comments are littered with descriptions like “[b]asically young adults doing drugs and licking each other and then once in a while a ghost had a monologue” and “[n]ot so much a movie as a series of edits randomly strung together, periodically interrupted by people snorting cocaine” that appeal to the masochist in us. Buy The Ganzfeld Haunting
Hanging Shadows: Perspectives On Italian Horror Cinema (2007): Documentary on Italian horror cinema with emphasis on the giallo. Subjects and interviewees include Dario (Suspiria) Argento and Michele (Cemetery Man) Soavi. Buy Hanging Shadows: Perspectives on Italian Horror Cinema
Hellbenders (2012): The “Augustine Interfaith Order of Hellbound Saints” are a team of exorcists who remain in a constant state of sin so that demons will possess them and they can then commit suicide and take the critters back to Hell with them. We have some minor doubts about the theological foundation of this plot. Buy Hellbenders
Sick Birds Die Easy (2013): Documentary (mockumentary?) about a crew of hippies, junkies and burnouts who go to Gabon in search of iboga, the hallucinogenic plant rumored to cure addiction. The cover proudly quotes a blogger who calls it a “feverish acid trip through the lunatic fringe.” Buy Sick Birds Die Easy
NEW ON BLU-RAY:
Hellbenders (2012): See description in DVD above. Buy Hellbenders [Blu-ray]
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.
Somebody I work with is the president of Elite Entertainment, the guys who licensed Hanging Shadows for the home video market, so he got me an early copy like a month ago. I finally watched it sometime last week. It’s not very good. I love Italian horror but that doc had pretty much nothing new to tell me. But then again it was previously only available in classrooms. It’s an educational video for beginners and it certainly looks/feels like it. So I can somewhat forgive it but I’m still not going to say it’s an entertaining watch. I give it a 2/5 probably.
Too bad, Ryan. It seems those kinds of docs frequently disappoint. If Elite’s got anything better/weirder in the pipeline, be sure to let us know!
Yeah, unfortunately my friend says Elite is moving farther away from movies due to home video being too competitive a market nowadays and more towards horror-themed music distribution. Also, he’s planning an app for Xbox I believe that will house over thousands of streaming horror titles, and will allow you to recommend certain movies to friends and stuff. And these aren’t necessarily cheap indie films, though there will probably be quite a few of them; Scream Factory has offered up their library and I think so has Synapse. The app drops this Halloween, he says.