List Candidates

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: DEMONIA (1990)

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Meg Register, Brett Halsey, Lucio Fulci, Lino Salemme

PLOT: An archeological dig unleashes vengeful ghosts. Still from Demonia (1990) WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE APOCRYPHA: It’s a matter of balance with Fulci: do the weird parts outweigh the boring parts? Consider Un Chien Andalou. That movie has a razor blade slicing an eyeball. Fulci (famous eye assassin, apparently settling a score from childhood where optometrists beat him and took his lunch money) has a cat jump up onto a woman’s face and chomp her eyeball out and eat it, amid a screaming swarm of clawing kitties. This, in a film that would play well next to a ade, complete with otherworldly dream logic and characters that act like anything but normal human beings with brains. Fulci is oft-capsuled in our pages, but never listed. One Fulci madhouse or another should ultimately claim the throne of weirdest, and we just as well might pick this one, if not The Beyond.

COMMENTS: Demonia is chock full of images you don’t see everyday. Fulci outdoes himself in his notoriously over-the-top death scenes. One notable flashback has a nun collect a fresh-born baby swaddled in blankets and then unceremoniously toss it into a flaming altar to burn. In a super-imposed effects shot, we see the baby’s arm amid crackling flames sticking out of the blankets as it uncurls its fist into a very distinct middle finger salute. So, there’s no shortage of off-the-wall death scenes. You could also pick the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it scene where a naked cultist nun ghost materializes brandishing a ghost-harpoon-gun, only to fire a very physical harpoon into some guy’s gut and quickly vanish.

The trouble with this title is the parts between the deaths: talky, boring, slow-paced, sloppily written. Fulci released Cat in the Brain, a parody with the director playing himself as a director who gets Hollywood hallucination fits after his sanity is taxed by directing endless gore scenes (a plot ripped off in Evil Ed) in the same year. Just sayin’. Fulci wasn’t exactly swinging for the pro leagues in 1990. In Demonia, Fulci is so low-effort between gore scenes that he might as well carry around a margarita to sip as he plays a police inspector who fruitlessly tries to solve these ghost murders.

What holds this movie back and divides Fulci fans? The acting is atrocious all around, the characters make no sense and are all dumb as cheese, the dialog is flat, the plot might as well be steered by dartboard, the low budget production makes everything look cheap and dirty, and Fulci phones in a performance of himself phoning it in. The first half hour’s slow pace almost kills it, but this is largely just set-up for characters that will later die to the ghost-nun rampage like so many roaches writhing in bug spray fumes. The second two-thirds grinds to the film’s advantage as the craziness starts to pile up. How many ways can we kill a person? How about tie this guy’s legs to two different trees so when you trigger the trap, they split him in two? The non-murder parts also have quirky details worth mentioning, Continue reading APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: DEMONIA (1990) →

It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: A BOMB WAS STOLEN (1962)

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AKA They Stole the Bomb

DIRECTED BY: Ion Popescu-Gopo

FEATURING: Iurie Darie, Liliana Tomescu, Haralambie Boros

PLOT: An everyday man finds himself in the midst of conflicts between opposing factions for the possession of a small nuclear bomb.

Still from A Bomb Was Stolen (1962)

COMMENTS: The Cold War nuclear annihilation paranoia that raged from the late 1940s to the 1980s left a lasting impact on global cinema. ‘s nihilistic political satire Dr. Strangelove (1964) is perhaps the most iconic work on the subject.  And who can forget the ominous haunting animation When the Wind Blows (1986)?

The cinema of the former Eastern Bloc followed a slightly different, more didactic approach, however; it tried to offer constructive arguments. Even Krakatit (1948), a Czechoslovakian film following a dreamlike logic, offers a moral lesson towards the end. Romania’s A Bomb Was Stolen, despite stylistic differences, is a product of the same ideological line. The plot follows an everyday man finding himself amidst a chaos of conflicts for the possession of a small stolen nuclear bomb. By pure chance, he comes into possession of a valise containing nuclear explosives, without the slightest idea of its contents. While wandering around town trying to find the bag’s owners, he finds love with a beautiful girl working in the tramways.

The first few moments of this film establishes long shots of deserted landscapes, showcasing a formalist geometrical austerity in the composition, but this aesthetic won’t be sustained for the film. Instead, variety shows and silent era slapstick cinema are the main influences. Silent cinema in fact dictates the style, since dialogue is completely absent. What we have is exaggerated, hysterical acting and a plethora of visual gags—from typical food fights to the most bizarre (an inventive method of assassination). Add in futuristic imagery from a 1950’s sci-fi B-movie and a few stop-motion animated effects and the result is a playful overall tone.

Our protagonist remains an everyday man ignorant of the bigger events surrounding him; but not in a Kafkaesque sense. He is never in real danger, always having a sense of control and agency. In the end, along with his newfound girlfriend (an exemplary representative of the working class) he even have constructive propositions to suggest, contributing to positive social change.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…starts and ends with satire and comical surrealism, and presents a fun farce with slapstick in between.”–Zev Toledano, The Worldwide Celluloid Massacre

I think this movie is weirder than average
I think this movie is better than average

Pod 366: A Weird Movies Podcast

POD 366, EP. 187: THE FIRST ACCIDENTAL SCREEN SHARE OF AUTUMN AND AN ABUNDANCE OF STRANGE CINEMA

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Audio link (Spotify)

YouTube link

Discussed in this episode:

Angel’s Egg (1985): Read Symon Hyslop’s Apocrypha Candidate review! The hoped-for US edition of the legendary mystical anime has arrived! Currently only available direct from GKids, but a standard edition to follow seems likely (maybe in time for Christmas?) And we note that the movie also available for streaming on, of all things, HBO Max. Buy Angel’s Egg Collector’s Edition directly from GKids.

Begotten (1991) restoration: Read the Canonically Weird review! This legendary experimental feature, about nothing less than the suicide of God and creation of matter, is restored and finally available again! Opens Oct. 1 at IFC center with creator in attendance, future dates and physical media possibilities probable but unconfirmed. Begotten restoration at IFC Center.

The Bubble (1966): A young couple find themselves trapped in a town of nearly catatonic residents, covered by a glass dome. Unmemorably lampooned by MST3K in 2022, but it was in the reader-suggested queue, and we’ll have a review as soon as next week. Buy The Bubble.

ChaO (2025): Read Giles Edwards’ Apocrypha Candidate review. A Japanese anime take on “the little mermaid” (that’s not Ponyo.) Now on Blu-ray from Shout! Factory. Buy ChaO.

Careful (1992): Read the Canonically Weird entry! Kino/Zeitgeist puts Guy Maddin‘s wild Alpine incest melodrama on Blu-ray for the first time, with archival extras you missed if you never bought the DVD. Buy Careful.

I Love Boosters (2026): Read Gregory J. Smalley’s Apocrypha Candidate review. Surreal science-fictiony agitprop about a group of LA shoplifters, made to piss off MAGA. This 4K UHD/Blu-ray combo includes a making-of featurette and commentary track from . Buy I Love Boosters.

My Only Friend’s a Corpse (2025): A young man finds a corpse, who takes him on a road trip with the ultimate intent of killing God. Certainly a bold idea for a debuting filmmaker. Also debuting on VOD. Buy My Only Friend’s a Corpse.

Sleepy Hollow (1999): Read Giles Edwards’ capsule review. Just in time for spooky season, a 4K UHD of Tim Burton‘s creepy dawn-of-the-millennium effort. Buy Sleepy Hollow.

Video Visions: Normally, the launch of another new physical media label wouldn’t be considered worth mentioning here, but when you look at the lineup of acquisitions you’ll see why this one grabs us: Hundreds of Beavers, a new restoration of Prometheus’ Garden, and obscure festival weirdos like Dead Lover, F*** My Son!, Dog of God, and ‘s The Hyperboreans, Dance Freak, and who knows what else in the future? Check ’em out at Video Visions home page.

WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE:

Our guest on next week’s Pod 366 will be of Cuddly Toys; the following week we’ll have of My Vegas Eyes. In written content next week, it’s Michael Diamades with the 1962 Eastern Block nuclear satire A Bomb Was Stolen, Pete Trbovich makes his case for listing with Demonia (1990),Enar Clarke pops in for The Bubble (see above), and Shane Wilson starts off his Halloween choices from the reader-suggested queue with Hysteria. Onward and weirdward!

366 Underground

366 UNDERGROUND: SWOLLEN CREEK (2026)

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Beware

DIRECTED BY: Dominic Martella

FEATURING: Mandy Lahey

PLOT: A woman with a conjoined twin in her torso seeks romance, but runs into an evil insect queen and her fly-headed, dung-harvesting assistant instead.

Still from swollen creek (2025)

COMMENTS: Once upon a time, making a feature film required commitment: cameras were expensive, technical expertise was rare, and even film stock cost money and reshoots were costly. Even the most cynical exploitation pictures had to reach a certain level of skill and resources before they could proceed, and if you actually persevered and made your movie, you’d need to find a distributor with knowledge and contacts to get the finished work in front of an audience. And although today serious films still have those requirements, the advent of iPhones, free software editing suites, and YouTube uploads have meant that the only commitment required of anyone wanting to make their own movie today is time and friends who will work for free. This has unleashed a wave of vibrant creativity on the world. It has unleashed a much larger wave of dreck that never could have seen the light of day in a gatekept era.

The taxonomy of these no-budget movies, which now find ready homes on Tubi, YouTube, and similar non-to-lightly curated venues, is more fascinating  than the vast majority of films themselves. Why were these things made? Some are by young film students more interested in learning the craft than creating a marketable project. Some are experimental films from artistically-oriented filmmakers with no resources at their disposal (the majority of films covered on this site fall into that category). Some moviemakers just hope to make a few meager bucks while having a good time on set. A few are made by delusional folk who, inspired by the legend of ‘ $5000 hit El Mariachi, believe that their stories are so compelling that they can compete for eyeballs with Hollywood (or at least budgeted indie) productions. And some movies are just made as a goof, to amuse the filmmakers themselves, with no serious intent of appealing to a wider audience.

I suspect the last is the category Swollen Creek falls into. Though pitched as a surreal anthology, it’s a complete narrative, not an anthology at all. And it’s “surreal” in only the most bastardized sense: the tone could charitably be described as absurd, although ridiculous and goofy are even better fits. Almost everyone in this movie, even disposable victims, wears an ill-fitting rubber mask. Rubber flies are pulled by strings with no attempt made to hide them. The protagonist has a Siamese twin in her belly—which I’m guessing is a blow-up doll—but the character never has any payoff. The film is congested by pounds of poop and fart humor. The moral seems to be that romance isn’t for freaks, and you should trust your controlling, repressive mother when she says the external world is full of nothing but cruel normies who will try to kill you. Swollen Creek seems like the kind of movie that would be made by teenagers in their back yards over the course of a few weekends, but the only unmasked actor we see—Mandy Lahey, who gamely plays 3 roles—is middle-aged. It’s all less amusing than it sounds, although it’s clear the cast had a blast. And somehow they got to show up for five minutes, either under a mask or providing voiceover for a stand-in under a mask.

I bear no ill will to the makers of Swollen Creek, but I must conclude it is not intended for an audience beyond friends and family. If you’re a non-professional and you’re tempted to try one of those obscure little movies with weird amateurish box cover art on Tubi, I recommend you don’t try it—not even once.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Will SWOLLEN CREEK win many awards or grace the screens of thousands of people’s home televisions? Probably not. Is this one for people who love the truly bizarre and things that are so in left field that you are left scratching your head in the end? Absolutely and 100%, Yes!”–K. Sellers, Sound View

I think this movie is weirder than average
I think this movie is better than average

 

Swollen Creek

Swollen Creek

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