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DIRECTED BY: Xavier Terhorst
FEATURING: Kevin Ludowitz, Justin Cutler, Alyssa Duarte, Pamela Pace, Michael Vaughn
PLOT: Left behind with the riff-raff after the Rapture, Emo Superstar attempts to leave Sin City behind.
COMMENTS: “There she was: the only innocence let on Earth.” She is a naked woman, mouth pursed in anticipation, and limbs ready to accommodate any bend. Easy to hold, easy to lift, easy to caress, and easy to inflate. Amidst the dregs of humanity, a crude sex doll may be the apex of humanity after the better souls are wrenched from our sick plane. This rapture is shown simply: human silhouettes—dozens, hundreds of them—in still-form floating above the garbage remnants of Las Vegas where the rat-like survivors cling tenuously to an existence of violence and getting high. Emo Superstar (Kevin Ludowitz) wants something more, and with the reluctant acquiescence of his drug boss, Superstar attempts an impossible journey for salvation—or at the very least, something more than the mass damnation where he finds himself.
Early on, Emo Superstar remarks that “[l]ife became colorful when my parents died.” Xavier Terhorst is obviously working through some rough thoughts, and we ride alongside him over the course of My Vegas Eyes. Guerrilla filmmaking and exhaustive editing make for a visually compelling journey. Vegas has rarely looked so depressing, sparsely populated by made-up psychos clinging to a lust for kicks or hope in the Lord. A photorealistic face of a person fills the screen, its eyes carved out to reveal a flickering backdrop of trash and bright lights. Colors saturate and flip as Superstar navigates a dead city and an ominous tunnel guarded by the Trash Man. The protagonist’s thoughts play quietly from time to time, only for us to be jarred back into the harsh now with full-volume shouts from a psychotic matriarch or simpering Mormon preacher.
The experience is rough. Terhorst’s feature debut shows much promise, however, maintaining stylistic coherence and a just-followable-enough narrative, all despite the apparent restraints of him nearly being a one man band. Terhorst slots firmly into the informal collection of “curious what comes next” filmmakers. Putting that potential future aside, though, My Vegas Eyes is an interesting exploration of life after the apocalypse, and how we can still find value in life (or death?) at its worst.
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DIRECTED BY: Joël Rabijns, Yves Sondermeier
FEATURING: Pascal Maetens, Karel Vingerhoets, Celine Verbeeck
PLOT: Marianne loses her child at birth but the placenta miraculously lives, is named and baptized, and grows up to endure scorn and loneliness.
WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE APOCRYPHA: When trying to describe Thingy, you inevitably think of Basket Case, but in doing so you miss the mile-wide streak of pathos that this movie feels for its grotesque hero. Here is a film that dares to place an oozing lump of Silly Putty at its center, and insists on presenting it as a cautionary tale about intolerance. The film sees the obvious joke of this ridiculous premise, but forces you to view it through the saddest possible lens.
COMMENTS: Whenever you think life is handing you the short end of the stick, poor Luke is here to assure you that it could be so, so much worse. Just being a teenager is difficult enough, what with having to navigate the land mines of high school hierarchies, recognizing your elders for the flawed human beings they are, and trying to get a sense of your own personality. It’s infinitely more complicated to look in the mirror and see, looking back at you, an unholy mashup of Grimace, tandoori chicken, and a Pink Pearl eraser.
You could easily be misled by the title into thinking that this is a wild romp through the fields of giddy indecency. It’s a marketing ploy suggesting a level of camp and silliness appropriate to the Troma label. But Luke is never addressed by the title’s demeaning sobriquet, and he never confesses to anything. Curiously enough, the sensationalist approach lends the film a certain credibility, because despite the creepy extremism of the scenario, this is a painfully serious film, a sympathetic plea for tolerance for all the sentient birth membranes out there whom society treats appallingly.
If ever a character manifested his own disappointment into existence, Luke is that hero. He has just one eye, uses what remains of the umbilical cord as his only limb, relies on a toy jeep to get around, and he speaks with a sad, resigned voice that can only be described as Flemish Bud Cort (the actual actor goes uncredited). He’s utterly ridiculous, which is the cue for Rabijns and Sondermeier to keep putting him in the most normal of situations and watching as he completely fails to fit in. At school, at home, at work (as a front-of-the-house order taker at a fast food joint notably called “Hamburger Holocaust”): everywhere Luke goes he meets with derision. It’s just drawn to him, as it would be. He is truly a sad sack.
Even if the movie didn’t have Luke, it still has a collection of parts just as unusual, just as disturbing. Leading the pack is Luke’s mother Marianne, played for no obvious reason by male actor Maetens. She isn’t played for laughs or irony or even to make a point. In fact, the casting becomes completely irrelevant once Marianne fully gives in to her work-out addiction, which consists of exclusively building the muscle of her right arm to ‘roided extremes. (Why only one arm? She explains: “I get what I want with only half the work.”) Less showy but equally strange is Father Gritty, the priest who magnanimously grants the little lump the rites of baptism. It initially feels like a gesture of supreme grace, but it starts to seem like he has no other parishioners, and the man of the cloth has a peculiar interest in his godson’s growth, eagerly asking for details about the legs of a girl Luke is sweet on. Plus, there’s the overall sense that everyone in the film is committed to the fact of Luke’s existence, but equally as certain that he will endure nothing but scorn. The Thingy has the feel of a Weekly World News article transformed into an ABC Afterschool Special.
The Thingy feels peculiarly American, a strange sensation given that this Belgian production barely tries to hide its accents. It’s tempting to look for some trace of satire: the sensationalized news perpetually running on TV, the familiarity of the class-conscious high school, the fact that Marianne has been passing Luke’s father off as having been fighting in Vietnam for seemingly years… it all of it points to a strangely cartoonish view of the States. Even so, the film seemingly has no axes to grind. In fact, it’s only in its final scenes that the movie loses the sheen of its strangeness by descending into an orgy of nihilistic violence. Only here, in pursuit of its final tragic punchline, do the filmmakers run out of story and decide to punctuate the climax with a series of horrible acts. If The Thingy falls apart just short of the finish line, the fact is it remains a singular work, creating an unthinkable situation and treating it with the gravity, sincerity, and honesty that it demands. Poor Luke. There but for the grace of God go you and I.
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DIRECTED BY: Aleksey Fedorchenko
FEATURING: Nadezhda Smirnova, Yana Esipovich, Roman Mishin
PLOT: A series of vignettes depicting aspects of Mari culture, each revolving around a different female figure whose name starts with “O.”
COMMENTS: Aleksey Fedorchenko is perhaps one of the most creative and widely known auteurs in contemporary Russian arthouse cinema. His works Silent Souls (2010), Celestial Wives (2012), and Angels of Revolution (2014) form an atypical trilogy about Russian ethnic minorities, focusing on the Merja, the Mari, and the Khanty, respectively. The ethnographic and folkloristic approach is apparent even from the title.
Celestial Wives is a collection of short tales and micro-fiction written by Russian writer Denis Osokin, a close collaborator of Fedorchenko’s. A short prologue welcomes us to a pagan society where magical thinking governs people’s lives. The following series of vignettes deal with sexuality, our relationship to our bodies, and rituals. Fedorchenko puts women at the forefront, hinting at a matriarchal society; each tale focuses on a different female, her name always starting with “O”—a playful twist on the literary and musical form of the theme and variations. Each chapter takes its title from its homonymous heroine.
“Odocha” and “Onalcha” explore ideas of the sacred and acts of blasphemy. Through ritualistic acts, “Osylay” and “Ormarche” offer glimpses into Mari society’s relationship with Thanatos and Eros. Other segments focus on a destigmatized view of sexuality and the human—especially female—body. And then there are a few chapters that turn away from the purely anthropological, towards magical realist territory.
Here things become somewhat bizarre. Magical realism, often thought of as the mildest form of surrealism, is the most expressive way to translate an animistic worldview into visual language. “Oropti” and “Oshalyak” are the most notable examples of this stylistic shift. Demonic entities and evil curses appear on screen, not only as part of people’s beliefs, but as real phenomena.
All in all, this is ethnographic cinema with elements of magical realism. The short form episodes add an anecdotal style reminiscent of oral narrative traditions, while carefully composed shots enhance the pervasive lyricism. If you love poetic international cinema as a window on different cultures, you will enjoy this experience. But it won’t satiate the hunger for strangeness that hardcore fans of the weird seek.
A heart-shaped scientist discovers that inhaling beetroot extract leads to immortality, but the ungrateful populace considers living forever a mixed blessing.
Don Hertzfeldt on Dropout: The complete works of fiercely independent Academy-Award-nominated animator Don Hertzfeldt (of the Canonically Weird It’s Such a Beautiful Day), which had previously been scattered about, are now available on the independent comedy subscription streaming service Dropout. Dropout is really excited about the acquisition. The Don Hertzfeldt Collection on Dropout.
Tekkonkinreet (2006): Read the Canonically Weird entry! As expected, the restoration and re-release of Tekonkinkreet results in a 4K UHD release (Blu-ray included) of the weird outsider anime set in pan-Asian “Treasure Town.” All extra features appear to be recycled, but the image should be stunning. Buy Tekonkinkreet.
Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF): The Venice Film Festival (Biennale) is running contemporaneously and, although it is older and more historically prestigious, it is far smaller and less important commercially (many films now play both festivals). The Toronto festival is huge—over 400 offerings this year—and a crucial market for upcoming films looking for distributors. Most TIFF films are reliably mainstream, but there will inevitably be some weird ones. Here are the ones we’ll be tracking in the coming months:
Anchors Aweigh -absurdist alt-comedy joint about an artist who decides to live on a sailboat after a breakup; described as “anxiety fester[ing] across a series of increasingly surreal vignettes.”
Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo – Takashi Miike‘s take on the now venerable pseudo-franchise will doubtlessly play up the brutality—and, hopefully, the grindhouse surrealism for which the director is famous. Neon has already scooped it up, so it will be seen, but no Stateside release date as of yet (it plays in Japan in late October).
Bucking Fastard – a surprise new Werner Herzog movie (not his animated The Twilight World, which is still upcoming), but what looks like a magical realist piece about two sisters (Kate and Mara Rooney) who do everything (including speak) in concert. Despite the strange premise (and an uncanny clip) Indiewire says they are “hearing that this is perhaps Herzog’s most commercial title.“
There will, quite naturally, be a screening of the uncut version of The Devils. The unprepared better strap themselves in. Look for it in the US in late October.
The Face of Horror – Another lovely surprise: an Anna Biller technicolor, Hammer-style horror film. Last we heard Biller was having trouble raising funds for her “Bluebeard” adaptation, so she must have quietly pivoted to this campy Gothic project instead. Hopefully it will be strange and not merely a reverent homage, but there is nothing to go on besides a still.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Brian Mulroney – An experimental documentary from the fantastic Matthew Rankin about Canada’s 18the Prime Minister that, according to programmers, “distills historical record through savvy psychedelic abstraction and satirical irreverence.” Nothing else is known, but we are excited for this highly Canadian offering.
No guest officially scheduled for next week’s Pod 366 (though we are trying), but the following week we will talk to Dave Jackson of the sick slasher Cat Sick Blues (which is available free with ads on Tubi, if you want a head start.) In written content, Michael Diamades is wedded to The Celestial Wives of the Meadow Mari (2012), Shane Wilson gives birth to a The Thingy: Confessions of a Teenage Placenta (2013) review, Giles Edwards takes a gamble on the microbudget My Vegas Eyes (2026), and Gregory J. Smalley goes to a late summer Camp (2026) (off brand, not Miasma).
Onward and weirdward!
Celebrating the cinematically surreal, bizarre, cult, oddball, fantastique, strange, psychedelic, and the just plain WEIRD!
