It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: THEMROC (1973)

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DIRECTED BY: Claude Faraldo

FEATURING: , Béatrice Romand, Marilù Tolo

PLOT: An unnamed worker rebels against social norms.

Still from "Themroc" (1973)

COMMENTS: The anarchic, sexually liberated atmosphere of the late 1960s and 1970s left a rich cinematic legacy. Many auteurs inspired by the era’s revolutionary ideologies produced subversive masterpieces, bold in every sense of the word, both formally and thematically. Themroc is a product of this environment, even if it is a bit dated and tame in comparison with wilder contemporaries like Sweet Movie (1974) or 120 Days in Sodom (1975).  But it is a decent attempt at 1970s-style taboo-breaking.

The story follows a lonely, horny worker living with his sister and mother. He is alienated and repressed, a dormant beast. The film avoids actual dialogue: the few words spoken are unintelligible gibberish. The characters communicate non-linguistically or just physically, highlighting their animalistic nature.

Our hero constantly coughs, with his coughing sometimes transforming into a roar. He is truly a lion in a cage. His mother shows similar bodily responses, hiccuping when stressed. A female neighbor obsessively sucks her thumb. Later on, touching and moaning will take the lead as the ultimate forms of non-verbal communication.

As the plot develops, a trivial incident at work becomes the catalyst for the protagonist to decide to break free from social and moral conventions. Breaking his room’s outside walls, he transforms it into an alternative public-private space of free love, incest, cannibalism, and so on. It sounds extreme, but it develops like a schematic anti-capitalistic and anti-authoritarian parable, and the most shocking imagery is only implied. Any pretense of realism and in-depth political discourse gives way to naïve escapist fantasy, especially when our hero overcomes problems with law enforcement by employing an orangutan-like power and attitude.

This isn’t an idolization of brute force, nor a revolution of the individual. The whole neighborhood is inspired by this man’s acts, and they establish a collective effort. The tale becomes a touching call for revolution and an ode to the communal spirit, even if it remains simplistic and without clear propositions.

Themroc may be meaningful as an elliptical parable, but it isn’t always the transgressive radical statement it claims to be. A few edgy fun moments prove themselves pretty unmemorable in the long term.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“It’s an oddity to be sure, but it’s one that rewards curiosity through a rich narrative and complex ideas.”–Douglas Davidson, Elements of Madness (Blu-ray)

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Themroc [Blu-ray]

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    Interviews, Pod 366: A Weird Movies Podcast

    POD 366, EP. 186: WE’RE NOT SICK OF CAT SICK BLUES’ DAVE JACKSON

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    Audio link (Spotify)

    YouTube link

    Discussed in this episode:

    Cat Sick Blues (2015): explains his inspirations for this strange slasher about an Internet celebrity whose life revolves around her cat’s viral video performances and a fellow with a fetish for defiling and murdering women while dressed as a cat who meet at a pet-loss support group.

    Bouchra (2024): A lesbian refugee coyote in America reconnects with her mother in Morocco; all the characters are animated anthropomorphic animals, and there’s a talking elevator shaft. Coincidentally, this was recommended in the reader-suggestion box just yesterday; it’s playing in select theaters starting this week. Fortunately, it’s also on Mubi or available to rent on VOD separately. Bouchra official site.

    Fantastic Fest: Austin’s original Alamo Drafthouse hosts the last major festival event of the year. This year there are fewer repeats from Fantasia than in previous years, although they do have at least one repeat from Toronto’s TIFF. Here’s what we’ll be tracking in coming weeks and months.

      • The Face of Horror – ‘s Gothic horror throwback showed out well in Toronto, but might be campy (a term Biller disfavors) rather than weird. She did release a clip:

    Fantastic Fest homepage.

    Ghost in the Shell (1995): Read Gregory J. Smalley’s review. This seminal cyberpunk anime isn’t that weird, but it is essential animation that’s available in theaters this week. Ghost in the Shell at Fandango for theaters and showtimes.

    The Master and Margarita (2024): An adaptation of the popular Mikhail Bulgakov novel about a banned novelist who loses touch with reality while writing his latest work. This film was censored in Russia and has been the subject of litigation here due to another set of filmmakers claiming exclusive rights; a couple of sources say this will nevertheless be in cinemas next week, but no reports as to where. Here’s an article on the film, and a legal dispute, announcing its supposed release.

    WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE:

    No guest scheduled for next week’s Pod 366 (although we do have someone for the following week), but the gang will be back to discuss the week’s weird movie news and releases. In written content, Michael Diamades translates Themroc (1973) for you, Shane Wilson celebrates the late ‘s birthday with a look at a pair of his early experimental shorts, Enar Clarke reports on the restored version of 1994’s Nadja, and Gregory J. Smalley visits the microbudget absurdity Swollen Creek (2026, and already on Tubi if you want to get a head start). Onward and weirdward!

    List Candidates

    APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: SCARLET WARNING 666 (1974)

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    AKA It Happened One Weekend; It Happened on Sunday; Scarlet Love; Love Is Deep Inside; Rockey’s Style (?); Scarlet Love 666

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    DIRECTED BY: Palmer Rockey

    FEATURING: Palmer Rockey

    PLOT: A detective, and his twin, investigate the murder of their sister at the hands of a money-worshiping cult.

    Still from Scarlet Warning 666 (1974)

     

    WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: The eccentric Palmer Rockey exhibits a complete failure to communicate his intentions with the baffling Scarlet Warning 666. Is it a legitimate attempt at an occult thriller, an arty anthem of nonconformity, an avant-garde meta-movie spoof, or just an excuse to cast himself in awkward sex scenes with buxom women? You’ll have no idea. File it with After Last Season as one of those mysterious objects you can’t believe actually exists.

    COMMENTS: Bruce (the good twin) is walking in the park, as he often does when investigating the death of his sister Jackie. Spread out on a yellow napkin, he discovers flowers and feathers covered in sticky stage blood. A clue? But what about the swinging knife? The pirate hat perched on the coffin? The totemic feathered rattle? The spinning plastic skull lit by a flashlight? The belly dancer? The silent topless woman with big “pineapples”? All clues?

    No, the movie does not have a clue. This impenetrable mystery is the magnum opus of one Palmer Rockey. Rockey was not an idiot. He was an army veteran and, surprisingly, he had a Ph.D. and had translated theology books into German. He was also a huckster, a womanizer, and some kind of sui generis madman. The opening of the film brags that Rockey plays 54 different roles—7 in front of the camera, and 47 behind it—but on screen, there are only 2 or 3 (it is often near-impossible to distinguish which character he is portraying). The film did, apparently, did go under 7 different titles, however. After its disastrous reception after its four-walled debut, a devastated but defiant Rockey further tinkered with his masterpiece for two decades, adding narration and reshooting scenes (removing his ex-wife Cookie, the former female lead, whenever possible). He incorporates footage from a student film he shot in the 50s, which is positioned as a nightmare/flashback and has nothing whatsoever to do with the later scenes. Knowing that Rockey added exposition throughout the years in an attempt to make the plot more comprehensible makes you wonder how puzzling the original must have been. His later narration is particularly bizarre, as he engages in dialogue with a falsetto version of himself discussing the movie’s genius, but also disparaging his own actors and deflecting criticism by claiming that the entire movie is a satire of some kind.

    If you like bad acting backed by bad singing (also courtesy of Rockey, naturally), mismatched film stocks, continuity errors, characters who appear without being introduced, randomly edited footage, and jarring sound edits, have I got the movie for you! Despite the added exposition, I doubt the film’s plot can be reconstructed even by the most dedicated scholars. There is an artistic intent here—Rockey depicts himself as a little guy, a nonconformist fighting an evil, greedy cabal—but it’s essentially undecipherable. We will simply note that it all ends on a bare stage with blue walls and a blue floor, which is either the site of a cult ritual or a symbolic psychodrama. A shirtless Rockey poses in front of spinning yellow wheel of justice while impassive bikini-clad women stand around in the background, and later spin in a circle dance. It segues into some kind of trial, followed by an action sequence of some variety with wrestling, gunplay, and a surprise twist reveal. All acted out in front of an idol of a plywood eagle inscribed in magic marker with a dollar sign. And as the credits roll, the audience leaves none the wiser as to what just went on.

    Scarlet Warning 666 (or whatever name the movie was known by) was lost for years, whispered about by and a few lucky others who caught it at its Dallas premiere. The flame was kept burning by obscure record collectors, who treasured Rockey’s supremely awful lounge-rockabilly soundtrack, and wondered in vain about the movie that had inspired such a bizarre artifact. Grindhouse Releasing actually tracked down a copy of the current version of the film and, in 2026, finally put out a Blu-ray for the first time, so everyone could see this astounding monument to one man’s misplaced egotism. The release is filled with interviews, including fans Stang and Dead Kennedys frontman Jello Biafra, alongside contemporaneous witnesses like Rockey’s ex-wife Cookie and actor Ron DeSilva. But the portrait that emerges of the mysterious Rockey remains as inexplicable as Scarlet Warning 666‘s occult plot. The film, and the man, remain oddities of the weirdest stripe.

    WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

    “…a study of storytelling madness that will either test the patience of even the most adventurous cult film explorer or make them dizzy with delight…  if one can make it past the first ten minutes of the film, there’s a chance for some fun to be had, with the movie gradually becoming an alt-universe ‘Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me’ as Rockey attempts to mix vanity, inscrutability, and desperation into a single offering of cinematic puzzling.”–Brian Orndoff, Blu-ray.com (Blu-ray)

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    Palmer Rockey's Scarlet Warning 666

    Palmer Rockey's Scarlet Warning 666

    • Move over, Ed Wood and Tommy Wiseau. Stupefying, incomprehensible, and utterly insane, SCARLET WARNING 666 goes beyond THE ROOM and PLAN 9.

    List Price : 49.95 $

    Offer: 33.32 $

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    It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

    IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: FLESH OF THE VOID (2017)

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    DIRECTED BY: James Florian Quinn

    FEATURING: Man Without a Face, Kmsura, Dead Flesh, Elektriking

    PLOT: The last words of a man on his deathbed are followed by a nihilistic nightmare seemingly representing humanity’s greatest fears.

    COMMENTS: Flesh of the Void is a low-budget, experimental horror film that bagged an award for Best Overall Feature and a few nominations—including Best Cinematography and Best Director—at the Nightmares Film Festival in 2017. The fact that its cast is mostly anonymous should raise no eyebrows, considering that the movie includes sexually explicit material and extremely violent scenes.

    Shot on both Super 8 and 16mm film, James Florian Quinn employs different techniques that give his work a timeless feel, such as black-and-white photography, film grain effects, intertitles, and a creep– and sleep—inducing soundtrack. In that sense, and in its frequent religious imagery, Quinn’s creation inevitably reminds one of ’s (in)famous experimental horror film Begotten (1991), which gives viewers a similar impression of being witness to an old, taboo recording.

    Flesh of the Void has no linear plot or conventional narrative, but it does have a sort of theatrical structure, since it is divided into three acts alongside a prologue, an interlude, and an epilogue. It all begins with a surprisingly lyrical and unsettling monologue whispered by a dying man offscreen (“And it all started, to my dismay, soon to set in the state of decay. What just still was will never be again, as I’m still lying in my bed, breathing my last breath”). Then, chaotic images with occasional voiceover ensue, and the viewer is presented with a parade of grainy images depicting increasingly grotesque scenes.

    At first, there seems to be a preoccupation with industrial, urban landscapes and the sinister occurrences taking place therein. Afterward, however, violent situations and religious imagery feature more prominently, without any clear links between them and the aforementioned urban landscapes—this overall meaninglessness perhaps being part of the movie’s presumably nihilistic message.

    Such haphazard sequences often involve explicit sexual action, and because of these the viewer may get easily sidetracked. At the risk of waxing intellectual, one may regard the combination of sexuality and suffering that the movie presents as the tension between Eros and Thanatos, that is, the two opposing forces that make up human life, with Eros standing for (pro)creation and Thanatos standing for destruction and death. Indeed, whoever decides to watch Flesh of the Void will be assailed by disturbingly brutal situations—including cannibalism and rape—interspersed with numerous masturbatory scenes, often involving the clergy. The latter scenes—which look good on paper as representations of Eros—drag on unnecessarily. They would have greatly benefited from condensing, for their meaning—or lack thereof—is equally impactful after just a glimpse. Such lengthy scenes detract from the overall disquieting atmosphere of the movie and border on the gratuitous.

    Nevertheless, occasional shots are genuinely enjoyable despite the budget limitations, especially at the beginning and the end of the film. There is also some respite from cruelty, sex, and interminable onanism in the interlude (titled “Agony”), which is the most theatrical part of Flesh of the Void, with actors moving in ways reminiscent of Greek tragedy at times. This is the most eeriely intriguing and even—dare I say it—tranquil part of the movie, taking place between two acts that feature a great deal of the above-mentioned perversities.

    Those who relish experimental movies that feel like inexplicable waking nightmares, no matter how low their budget, may be inclined to give Flesh of the Void a shot. Yet, I must give them a heads-up that their patience is going to be tested, and possibly not rewarded, for the movie as a whole frequently meanders. While opinions will surely differ, for me the nihilistic takeaway from Flesh of the Void seems to be that religious systems and promises of an afterlife are hollow, and we should only believe in the reality of human suffering and the void of death. Suitably for this interpretation, the black-and-white cinematography of the movie is maintained until the very end, when blood suddenly gushes in a vivid red. Cheerful stuff!

    WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

    “This film is not for everyone… [Quinn’s] hellishly depraved and nauseating depictions of the macabre were, in a weird way, eerily satisfying. Because when you really stop and think about it, death is no doubt the scariest thing that will ever happen to us,” Jared Letourneau, The Horror Syndicate

    (This movie was nominated for review by Vlad Gligor, who called it “very similar to Begotten.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

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