Miscellanea

CAPSULE: TOMMY (2017)

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Beware

DIRECTED BY: Jordan Stowe-Merritt

FEATURING: Emma Hallinan, Marcel Jortzik

PLOT: A parent mourns the loss of her pinball-playing son—but has the kid returned as a ghost?

Still from Tommy (2017)

WHY IT WON’T JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: We had retired this section explaining why individual movies wouldn’t make the List after we completed the first 366 entries, but Tommy stirs us to revive it. What in the world are our readers thinking in constantly promoting this pedestrian British hokum for inclusion on our sacred List? Are you all a bunch of idiots who just don’t get the mission of this site? Our own correspondent even stated that Tommy was “like something out of a bad acid flashback” with a “non-stop assault of insane imagery” resulting in a film that was “bizarre to the point of self-parody.” I’d like to know what the hell movie he was watching! These complaints are not to impugn the movie itself, which is well-enough-acted and shot (if way too short for a feature presentation)—but it’s nowhere close to one of the weirdest films of all time.

COMMENTS: In 1969, the cacophonous British rock and roll band the Who dropped a double-album-length “rock opera” about a messianic deaf, dumb and blind kid who could miraculously play pinball. In 2017, a team of fellow Brits dumped this faithless adaptation in which (spoiler alert) you never even see the title character. That’s right, apparently this revisionist version of Tommy takes place after the deaf, dumb and blind kid has turned into a dead, dumb and blind kid. And there is no pinball in the film whatsoever! It comes from a no-name director and is performed by a (capable) cast of unknowns, but with no cameos from the Who or “rock ‘n’ roll” celebrities (which would have been a great idea.)

Instead, this time the story focuses on a couple who are grieving the death of the woman’s son in a new house that may be haunted. It’s a cut-rate affair,  with just two main actors, two main locations, and no vintage pinball machines in sight—they obviously blew their entire budget just getting the rights to the IP. And, at about 20 minutes in length, it’s actually less than a third of the length of the original album. There’s not even much weirdness to be found. Sure, there’s a de rigueur ambiguous horror movie ending that saves you the trouble of having to spend money on a spectral special effect. And there’s the fact that the couple here buy their bananas in bag form (thanks to sharp-eyed YouTube commenter grilledcheese2084 for picking up on this and commenting “WTF, who buys bagged bananas?”) An even more subtle dollop of surrealism occurs after Ryan leaves the pub and races home to check on Lucy: if you look closely, you’ll notice that he’s driving on the left side of the road. This was probably accomplished by reversing the film in post, but however they did it, it adds a subtle note of unease that was desperately needed.

And, of course, Tommy‘s weirdest choice is to use none of the Who’s original music at all. A bold gambit, for sure, but one I can’t say I entirely agree with.

Still, despite those meager surrealist touches, the entire thing is a slapdash slap in the face to Who fans. Who can believe Pete Townshed and (who made such an impression as Franz Liszt) would have allowed their psychedelic phantasmagoria to be turned into what is little more than a YouTube short, a “Tommy” adaptation in name only? The pinballcentric material is inherently strange enough that it could have produced a really weird movie, in the right hands. Maybe Hollywood can do a proper reboot someday? I’m not sure who would be capable of helming such an effort;  the late would have been perfect. But as it stands, this Tommy is not only deaf, dumb and blind—but also lame.

Tommy recently came out in a 4K UHD edition from Shout! Factory—are these guys desperate enough to release anything?—despite the fact that you can watch it for free (split into two parts) on YouTube (see below). I seriously doubt that you’ll see anything different on that disc, but if you’re foolish enough to spend good money on it, be our guest!

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…doesn’t give a damn about the material he started with…”–Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times (contemporaneous)

Tommy - 50th Anniversary Edition 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray [4K UHD]

Tommy - 50th Anniversary Edition 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray [4K UHD]
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List Candidates

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: MYTH OF MAN (2025)

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Recommended

DIRECTED BY: Jamin Winans

FEATURING: Laura Rauch, Anthony Nuccio, Ian Hinton, Martin Angerbauer, Sidney Edwards

PLOT: Ella desperately seeks information which might lead her to god before she succumbs to death from a brush with an incendiary fog.

Still from Myth of Man (2025)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Winans’ world, characters, score, and all that work so well together as a unit that the Myth of Man feels completely natural. But—this is a dialogue-free adventure quest set in a cotton-candy dystopia featuring neat gizmos and unconventional physics whose heroine is a deaf and mute messiah seeking an interstellar artist-creator-god. This strangeness cannot be overlooked merely because it is so credibly conveyed by the filmmakers.

COMMENTS: The first thing which catches your eye is the glowing rectangle on Ella’s shoulder. It pulses a soft green color as she looks about her train car. An unkempt youth enters the carriage, his indicator flickering red. Shunned by the others—all of whom feature blinking green—Ella is struck by the tragedy, and goes over to the sickly boy. He dies soon thereafter, but not before Ella hands him an odd, humanoid figurine of wire; on his passing she clasps his hand, and feels something, nearly seeing it.

Our first brush with Myth of Man lays out much of the groundwork. Not only do we understand the odd “HUD” system in place, but plenty of other things: this is a visual world, as necessitated by the protagonist’s circumstances. Ella’s eyes wander constantly (typically accompanied by a subtle smile), as she takes in the ambient wonders of her day-to-day existence. Great machines whir in the background and foreground; cybernetic telepathy enhancements summon a dazzling animation of a Creator; black-market medicine extracts the incipient humors of death; and warning systems blare scarlet at the approach of the frequent death clouds that descend upon the metropolis.

Jamin Winans’ latest film continues his tradition of low-cost, high-impact marvels. With nods to City of Lost Children‘s technological elements, as well as the defiant triumph of humanity lurking under the surface in Brazil, he paints us a picture of a futuristic society existing under the omnipresence of cindering doom (the effects of the gas are unlike anything I’d seen before) in a society which manifests as something of a reluctant police state. Eye-popping visuals abound, and Ella’s cryptic forays into the afterlife astound with their windswept vistas of photographs and assembled flip-book recollections. The enchantment worms its way quickly into the viewer, so once the inevitable tragedy falls, the whole exercise feels not only satisfying, but rational; even though we’ve just undergone a strange and fabulous dream.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Part animated, part live action, part surrealism, and 100% without dialogue, Myth of Man is unlike anything you’ve seen before.”–Avi Offer, NYC Movie Guru (contemporaneous)

Pod 366: A Weird Movies Podcast

POD 366, EP. 111: THE 10TH TWILIGHT MYTH OF THE ANTIVIRAL DELICATESSEN OF MADNESS

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Discussed in this episode:

The 10th Victim (1965): Read Shane Wilson’s review. Ursula Andress and Marcello Mastroianni fall in love while pitted against each other in a future reality show where contestants compete to assassinate their rivals. Kino Lorber re-releases it with a new commentary track from a pair of film historians.  Buy The 10th Victim.

Antiviral (2012): Read Gregory J. Smalley’s List Candidate review. ‘s sick debut satire gets a 4K UHD release from Severin, with new special features including Brandon’s short film “Broken Tulips.” Buy Antiviral.

Delicatessen (1991): Read the Canonically Weird review! A new 4K UHD disc from Severin with new and vintage special features. Buy Delicatessen.

The Mansion of Madness [AKA Dr. Tarr’s Torture Dungeon] (1972): Read Enar Clarke’s Apocrypha Candidate review. This horror-tinged Surrealist adaptation, originally released in the US under the hilariously inappropriate title Dr. Tarr’s Torture Dungeon, is by a disciple of and has not been recently available on home video until this welcome Blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome. Buy The Mansion of Madness.

Myth of Man (2025): A dialogue-free, steampunk-influenced mythological fantasia from . This is a true independent release with no studio backing—on VOD or a self-published Blu-ray. Buy Myth of Man.

The Twilight World (202?): At 82 years old, will attempt his first animated film: an adaptation of his own novel about a Japanese WWII veteran who refuses to believe the war is over. assists on the “dreamlike and expressionistic” screenplay.  Read more at Variety.

WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE: No guest scheduled for next week’s Pod 366, but Greg and Giles will return with their look at the week’s upcoming news and new releases. In written reviews, Shane Wilson slips into In Fabric, Gregory J. Smalley finally gets around to the long-overlooked Tommy, Enar Clarke reports on the “lost” film Arcana, and Giles Edwards investigates The Myth of Man (see above). Onward and weirdward!

Capsules

CAPSULE: ASH (2025)

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Eiza González, Aaron Paul

PLOT: An astronaut finds herself stranded on an outpost on an alien planet with the rest of the crew missing or dead, and no memory of what happened.

Still from Ash (2025)

COMMENTS: Eight years ago, when we first heard that trippy electrojazz musician Flying Lotus (AKA Steven Ellison) would be trying his hand out at filmmaking, we were excited for multiple reasons. His experimental Afrofuturist aesthetic made it unlikely he would go down a conventional cinematic path; we expected his movies to be as weird as his beats (and his cosmic album covers). There was the hope he would extend the psychedelic lineage of his great aunt Alice Coltrane. And another African-American presence on the weird movie scene would be welcome; it’s a bit embarrassing that weird is so white. So when the first trailer for his debut feature Kuso dropped—with its colorful fuzzy aliens with TV monitor faces, George Clinton as a hip physician, and what looked like an uncooked Thanksgiving turkey flying through the Los Angeles sky—anticipation ramped up into the stratosphere.

But Kuso, which turned out to be more with an NC-17 rating than with a ian spin, arrived as a major letdown. Juvenile, scatological, and borderline undistributable, it quickly and quietly sank out of most weirdophiles’ subconsciousnesses, despite a few collages and images that worked as standalone surrealist stills. An installment in the fifth installment of the long-spent V/H/S horror anthology franchise kept Lotus’ name alive as a filmmaker, but suggested little redemption. Still, when it was announced in 2022 that Neil Blomkamp was backing Lotus in making a relatively large budgeted sci-fi feature (originally to star Tessa Thompson and ), hope sprung up again that he would realize his promise.

The fact that I’ve opened this review by spending so much time on Lotus’ career, rather than his new movie, may clue you in to the main conclusion about Ash: it’s OK. It’s neither good enough nor bad enough to earn much in the way of analysis, or even to be the lede in its own review. Let’s stress this: Ash isn’t bad, and it has its own pleasures, entirely sensory rather than intellectual. The acting by the two leads is good. The ambiance is great: the spacecraft interiors have that fluorescent Alien light, but mostly served up through red (sometimes blue and green) filters. The expressionism in the lighting is influenced by Suspiria, and even more so , whom Lotus consulted for advice. The extraterrestrial planet’s design comes from the “Yes”-album-cover-come-to-life school of sci-fi mise en scène, complete with floating rocks in the sky and a swirling pink mandala. The film’s best sci-fi doodad is the Japanese-speaking medical bot that performs surgeries or autopsies with equal, and sometimes inappropriate, cheerfulness. The music, surprisingly, is generic science fiction ambiance, functional but tending to fade into the background. (It would be interesting to hear Lotus’ original score, which he wrote first and then discarded when he decided it didn’t fit with the movie’s tone.)

The script is, at best, a medium for the visuals. Astronaut alone in a planetary outpost with amnesia, rest of crew appear to be victims of foul play, another astronaut arrives to investigate… it pretty much writes itself. The opening is strong enough, but soon it bogs down, with a second act that fails to generate meaningful paranoia between Eiza’s character and Paul’s (or between Eiza’s character and herself), stumbling into a third act that’s overstuffed with violence and a complete explanation of the story’s rather mild mysteries. You’re unlikely to be surprised by the story’s resolution, but like most other things about the movie it’s… satisfactory.

In a post-Ash “Variety” interview, Flying Lotus says “I would love to do another film soon if the right thing happens, but I’m definitely not in a hurry to get back into it.” He remains a musician first; he doesn’t have a burning passion to make films. This feels like a film that was made by someone with skill, but without a burning passion.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“The film’s seductive and trippy aesthetics help mask the overall dullness of this two-person chamber drama.”–Lovia Gyarkye, The Hollywood Reporter (contemporaneous)

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