366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.
September 24 marks the 90th anniversary of the birth of Jim Henson, in this writer’s opinion one of the greatest creative artists of the 20th century. Even though we have been without his imagination and humanism for nearly four decades, the loss is still keenly felt.
Although we have never enshrined any of his productions here, Henson’s projects make a legitimate bid for full-fledged weirdness. The vaudevillian surrealism of the Muppets borrows as much from Ernie Kovacs as it does from Kukla, Fran, and Ollie, and The Muppet Movie (1979) is an unexpectedly metatextual work, to the point where Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem come riding to the rescue by virtue of having read the script. And this was no accident. Blessed with a blank check from the success of the Muppets, Henson opted to direct the dark fantasies The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth, At the very least, he’s weird-friendly.
There is another Jim Henson, though, one prone to seeing doom around the corner. You get hints of it in his most popular works, like the way “The Muppet Show” is always just one Gonzo-led stunt away from disaster. It’s likely that this was a holdover from his earliest days in show business, when he was finding different kinds of success, but none that brought stability or security. In the years between his first foray into television, “Sam and Friends,” and his eventual arrival on Sesame Street, Henson was a hustler, grabbing work wherever it might be found. The Muppets were regulars on “The Jimmy Dean Show,” frequent guests on Ed Sullivan, and leading lights in TVadvertising. Amidst all this, Henson was a movie director, and two films from this period represent an inflection point, a moment when Henson could have legitimately become a pessimistic avant-garde filmmaker. Fate intervened, arguably for the betterment of all mankind, but it’s interesting to glance at the road not taken.
PLOT: Dracula’s estranged son and daughter reunite after his final death.
COMMENTS: A remix of Bram Stoker’s original text haunted by the influences of prior adaptations, Nadja is an atmospheric homage to the Universal monster flicks of the 1930s filtered through the East Village art scene with deadpan Brechtian cool. Bela Lugosi portrays Dracula through clips of old footage. For half the film, the image appears distorted by an aura of supernaturalism, thanks to a pixelating camera. The rest of the cinematography is crisp black and white, interiors cloaked in Expressionist shadows, exteriors swathed in shrouds of fog.
When André Breton met the woman who called herself “Nadja,” she had left behind one life and arrived in Paris seeking another. We meet Almereyda’s Nadja in a similar scene, on a date with a random guy who asks her the usual questions. “Do you work?” “No.” Her father provides for her. What does he do? He has money, family money – old money that goes back all the way to Romania. But she left Europe because it’s like a small village, whereas New York City is the world. She talks of how she wants to change her life. She can sense the potential for change but, as Renfield will remind her, changing your life is easier said than done, even when you’re undead.
The guy asks if she wants another drink. A dangerous question to ask a vampire but apparently the old Romanian money didn’t tip him off. He takes Nadja back to his place and she has that second drink, disappearing before he even knows what happened.
But then she feels it: her father is dead. Van Helsing has staked him, and Nadja knows immediately that Dracula is gone for good. She experiences a sense of relief, the impetus for change she’s been looking for. But first, she has to risk a reconciliation with her estranged brother, Edgar, who for unknown reasons, wants to kill her.
Nadja was one of a slew of existential vampire films released in the early to mid-1990s. It makes a perfect double feature with Abel Ferrara‘s The Addiction (1995), which features a similarly impressive cast, set in New York City just before it drowned beneath a tide of Starbucks lattes. But while Ferrara focuses on gritty street reality, Almereyda’s style is more Pictorialist, providing impressions of a city that never seems quite real. It’s all about the atmosphere, the vampire as symbol, as philosopher, though these musings are delivered with tongue-in-cheek humor, preventing the tone from ever becoming too ponderous or heavy. The story follows the basic outline of Stoker’s plot, but Almereyda introduces additional entanglements and family secrets to a pared down cast of characters. Peter Fonda’s Van Helsing is the embarrassing drunk uncle of Jim (Donovan), a Harker-esque character whose marriage to Lucy is on the rocks. When Lucy catches Nadja’s eye in a bar, she unwittingly sets Van Helsing on the trail of Dracula’s children.
The ending sees the characters, somewhat improbably, whisked away to Transylvania, after some of them inexplicably survive an explosion, but don’t expect an action-packed, blood-soaked finale. The always lovely Suzy Amis delivers a moving monologue on humanity’s bereftness in the modern world, and Nadja finds the change she was looking for.
Nadja largely succeeds as arthouse horror through its unusual visual style and subtle surrealism, enhanced by the strengths of its cast. Löwensohn captivates as Nadja, and plentiful shots focus on her unique face framed by the dark folds of a hooded cloak. She and Martin Donovan were regulars in Hal Hartley’s early ’90s films, where both perfected the technique of delivering emotionally resonant lines with minimal modulation of voice and facial expression. Fonda provides much needed energy as a zany and eccentric Van Helsing. For fans of David Lynch, his brief cameo as a morgue security guard is a nice little bonus.
Arbelos Films recently completed a 4K restoration of a director’s cut approved by Michael Almereyda, which has just finished its run in select theaters and will see by a physical media release in mid-October.
PLOT: An unnamed worker rebels against social norms.
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.
Cat Sick Blues (2015): Dave Jackson 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 – Anna Biller‘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:
Full Phil – One of 2 Quentin Dupieux features screening at the festival (as a double feature), this one is about a daughter and father reconciling while watching an old monster movie and features Dupieux’s most marketable cast: Kristen Stewart, Woody Harrelson, Tim Heidecker, and Eric Wareheim.
Roma Elastica – the “incoherent” Bertrand Mandico‘s latest is in English and stars Marion Cotillard as a movie star with cancer cast in a 1980s European film; it will get weird
Roy From Space – in a previous pod we discussed this lost Mexican psychedelic animation; it’s already on Blu-ray, but here it is on the biog screen for a lucky few
Vertiginous – Q. Dupieux’s other movie this year is about a man trying to convince a friend that we’re all living in a simulation
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 Jim Henson‘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!
Celebrating the cinematically surreal, bizarre, cult, oddball, fantastique, strange, psychedelic, and the just plain WEIRD!
Although we have never enshrined any of his productions here, Henson’s projects make a legitimate bid for full-fledged weirdness. The vaudevillian surrealism of the Muppets borrows as much from Ernie Kovacs as it does from Kukla, Fran, and Ollie, and The Muppet Movie (1979) is an unexpectedly metatextual work, to the point where Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem come riding to the rescue by virtue of having read the script. And this was no accident. Blessed with a blank check from the success of the Muppets, Henson opted to direct the dark fantasies The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth, At the very least, he’s weird-friendly.
“Time Piece” has its place in history as the project that earned Henson the only Academy Award nomination of his career. A meticulously planned short film, “Time Piece” features Henson himself (looking, in the words of Boston Phoenix critic David Harris, “like a beatnik posing as an office worker”) as he flits about his imagination Continue reading DIRECTED BY JIM HENSON: TIME PIECE (1965) / THE CUBE (1969) 
