Amateur acting, low-budget special effects, and an post-apocalyptic plot? Yeah, it’s got all of that. Although it will likely draw mixed reviews, we find this short oddly fascinating.
Monthly Archives: May 2011
WEIRD HORIZON FOR THE WEEK OF 5/6/2011
A look at what’s weird in theaters, on hot-off-the-presses DVDs, and on more distant horizons…
Trailers of new release movies are generally available on the official site links.
IN THEATERS (LIMITED RELEASE):
Caterpillar (2010): The Japanese emperor declares a deaf-mute quadruple amputee a Sino-Japanese war hero and orders his wife to take care of him—including sexually. Not so surreal, but certainly unusual, and the scenario recalls the weird anti-war classic Johnny Got His Gun. Playing at the IFC Center in Manhattan this week, no information on other screenings. Caterpillar at IFC Center.
Daydream Nation: A love triangle between a teen girl, an age-appropriate boyfriend, and their English teacher. The press release calls it a “mash-up of the bizarre and the beautiful” and two separate reviewers have compared it to Donnie Darko; whatever weirdness might lurk within, cautious producers are keeping it out of the trailer. Daydream Nation official site.
Hobo With a Shotgun: Hobo Rutger Hauer grabs a shotgun and sweeps scum off the street in this long-awaited (in some quarters) 1970s exploitation tribute. Like last year’s Machete, it’s not a weird movie per se, but it has impeccable cult credentials: the project originated as the winner of the fake trailer contest to promote Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez‘ Grindhouse. Hobo With a Shotgun official site.
I’m Not Jesus Mommy: There’s a title for you, and apparently it actually describes the plot: a young boy is cloned from blood from the Shroud of Turin (!) and the Tribulation starts around the time of his birth. Is it an inspirational horror movie, or someone’s idea of a joke? Playing Minneapolis, with a showing in Duluth to follow. I’m Not Jesus Mommy official site.
Passion Play (2010): Fantasy fairy-tale starring Mickey Rourke as a jazz musician and Megan Fox as a “Bird Woman,” also with Bill Murray and a grown-up midnight movie teen idol Bud Cort. It flopped at the Toronto International Film Festival and currently holds a remarkable 0% at Rotten Tomatoes, but if there’s really something wrong with it, we’d like to see for ourselves. Playing New York and Los Angeles only (look for the DVD soon). Passion Play official site.
IN DEVELOPMENT:
The Power of the Dark Crystal (est. 2011): We’d be remiss if we didn’t mention this sequel (of sorts) to the 1982 cult puppet movie Dark Crystal (read our review), which now involves a girl made of fire (?) using a shard of the titular crystal to save a planet’s dying sun. (We’d also be remiss if we didn’t mention that a reader, Jocko, reminded us about the project). In 3D (of course); Jim Henson is involved, Frank Oz is not. Power of the Dark Crystal fan blog.
NEW ON DVD:
The Lickerish Quartet (1970): This classy seventies softcore erotic feature from the stylish Radley Metzger features uncertain identities and surrealistic sex scenes, such as the one where a couple make love on a floor covered with dictionary entries. This is a recently restored relic from the era of arty dirty movies, just before hardcore porn killed off erotica. Buy The Lickerish Quartet
NEW ON BLU-RAY:
What Dreams May Come (1998): Based on a novel by Richard (“The Box“) Matheson, the story sends Robin Williams through the afterlife (both Heaven and Hell) in search of his wife. The film won an Oscar for “Best Visual Effects” and is currently in our reader-suggested review queue. Buy What Dreams May Come [Blu-ray]
FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON YOUTUBE:
The Nines (2007): The stories of a self-destructive actor under house arrest, a writer trying to get a pilot made into a series, and a video game designer lost in the woods converge in a strange way in this oddly conceived metaphysical mystery that coincidentally happens to be coming up soon in our reader-suggested review queue. Watch The Nines free on YouTube.
What are you looking forward to? If you have any weird movie leads that I have overlooked, feel free to leave them in the COMMENTS section.
TOD BROWNING’S THE DEVIL DOLL (1936)
In his next to last film, Tod Browning revisits the same territory as The Unholy Three (1925), with a surreal twist. The Devil Doll (1936) is based on Abraham Merritt’s novel “Burn, Witch, Burn,” with a screenplay by Guy Endore, Erich von Stroheim, and Browning. Lionel Barrymore, who had a long collaborative history with Browning, stars as escaped convict Paul Lavond.
17 years earlier, Lavond had been sent to prison after being framed by three banking partners. Lavond has escaped with a fellow convict, Marcel (Henry Walthall, another Browning regular) who just happens to be a mad scientist. Together, they make it to Marcel’s home and wife, Malita (the hammy Rafaela Ottiano), who also is, conveniently, a mad scientist. Marcel dies, but not before showing Lavond the scientific discovery that he and Malita have been working on for years. They are able to shrink animals and people to a sixth of their normal size. Considering all the problems with world food shortage, anyone could see the value of this discovery (!). Anyone except Lavond, that is, who is a bit leery when he finds out the shrinking process wipes out memory cells and the subject’s willpower.
The three bankers who betrayed him are a new Unholy Three, a reprehensible trinity driven by love of money. Lavond, Malita and Marcel are three societal outcasts who are despised and rejected. Browning is committed to making sure we root for the underdog; quite the reversal of contemporary, evolved reality shows that deify the affluent top dogs.
Seeing a new potential vehicle for his revenge, Lavond is accompanied by Malita with a case full of shrunken critters in hand. Lavond sets out on a Count of Monte Cristo mission, but considering this is a Tod Browning production, Lavond hardly dons a chivalrous persona like Robert Donat in the 1934 film. Rather, he gets in old lady drag (a la Lon Chaney in The Unholy Three) and takes on the identity of Madame Mandilip, proprietress.
With a couple of six inch Tweedledees, Lavond, in his best Sweeney Todd fashion, opens up a doll shop (rather than a parrot shop or pie shop), exacts revenge, steals jewelery (which he hides in a toy, just like in Unholy Three) and sets out to find the holy child: his long lost daughter, Lorraine ( Maureen O’ Sullivan, aka Tarzan’s Jane). This is yet another frequently used Browning subplot of a severed father/daughter relationship.
What makes The Devil Doll unique is the science fiction angle and a female mad scientist in Ottiano (who has an Elsa Lanchester like streak in her hair). By the time of The Devil Doll, Browning was comfortable with the sound medium and the film benefits from this newfound familiarity, fluid camera work, and the charmingly rudimentary FX for the incredible shrunken people.
As Lavond, Barrymore delivers a subdued, controlled performance. In drag, Barrymore raises the ham meter considerably. Although a sympathetic character, Barrymore conveys genuine creepiness in the revenge scenes as he enforces his will through the dolls by intense concentration.
Ironically, to proves his innocence, Lavond must again go into exile at the film’s end and must forever forsake his daughter. The Devil Doll is a surrealist delight in its sheer lunacy.
LIST CANDIDATE: CODEX ATANICUS (1995/1996/1999)
DIRECTED BY: Carlos Atanes
FEATURING: Carlos Atanes, Arantxa Peña, Diana de Guzman, Antonio Vladimir Fuenzalida, Manuel Solas, Scott Fitzpatrick
PLOT: Three short films: a man seeks to collect a debt in a bar with strong S&M overtones;
the director struggles to complete the film we’re watching while a fawning actress tries to keep him from hanging himself in despair; and a man returns to Spain from the U.S., only to find himself trapped in an orgy/melee on a staircase.
WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: It’s weirdness is unquestionable; in these perverse short films, Carlos Atanes illustrates a profound understanding of the theory of surrealism—including its ability to piss off not only the average audience member, but the average critic as well. But, although the various casts and crews appear enthusiastic, the technical constraints of low-budget filmmaking hold these three pieces back from cinematic magnificence. It’s probably a matter of individual taste as to whether the rough edges should rule Codex off of the List of the Best Weird Movies Ever Made, or whether the unpolished underground grit adds a charm that works in the compilation’s favor.
COMMENTS: Though born in Paris, Surrealist cinema was conceived in Spain, the love-child of Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí. If either patriarch had lived to see the mirror succubi, the crab-armed women and the staircase orgies of Codex Atanicus, they’d be proud to claim Carlos Atanes as their offspring. Today, when pure surrealism has been almost abandoned in movies, it’s refreshing to see someone who remains dedicated to probing the mysterious subconscious and carrying on the tradition of Continental Surrealism, despite lack of funding and public indifference. The three films that comprise Codex Atanicus showa a passion for the irrational and a knack for nailing down the way dream concepts follow their own logic, morphing into new entities and images. Like his spiritual grandfather Dalí, Atanes is unabashedly egotistical to the point of self-parody, coining the adjective “Atanic” to describe his own movies; he’s also unafraid to tap into his Continue reading LIST CANDIDATE: CODEX ATANICUS (1995/1996/1999)
CAPSULE: THE DARK CRYSTAL (1982)
DIRECTED BY: Jim Henson, Frank Oz
FEATURING: Jim Henson, Frank Oz (puppeteering); Stephen Garlick, Lisa Maxwell, Billie Whitelaw (voice acting)
PLOT: A meek Gelfling sets out on a journey to fulfill the prophecy that he will heal the Dark
Crystal.
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: With its advanced puppetry and dazzling color, The Dark Crystal is a visually spectacular movie. The standard-issue quest story, however, is nothing unusual; just recycled Tolkien, watered down for kids.
COMMENTS: The Dark Crystal may be the most elaborate puppet show ever staged. There are no human actors in the film, and the sets—from the spiny castle rising from a bleak landscape to the twisted interior corridors of the Skeksis’ lair to the forests of walking plants—are all fairy tale artifice, storybook illustrations adapted into three-dimensional scenery. A menagerie of imaginatively designed creatures parade in front of these beautifully textured backdrops. Most impressive are the evil Skeksis, hunched bipeds who simultaneously resemble reptiles, dinosaurs and birds of prey. They are opposed by the gentle Mystics, four armed, droning sloths with kind wizardly faces, and Gelflings, the “human” characters, who look like an experiment in breeding J.R.R. Tolkien’s elves with chimpanzees from The Planet of the Apes. The meticulously molded puppets–each turkey-faced Skeksis’ beak is individually gnarled—have expressive eyes, and their jaws move when they speak. The rest of the puppet faces, however, are immobile; so despite the minute detailing, the mix of animatronics with static features makes the creatures overall appearance unreal and somewhat uncanny—maybe even “weird.” (The fact that the puppets move at about three-quarters the speed of a human actor, while seriously hampering the action sequences, also adds to the movie’s artificial reality). The simplistic, muted emotions conveyed by the creatures’ features aren’t terribly jarring, however, because their puppet shells are inhabited by one-dimensional characters. Lack of character depth isn’t a problem for the villainous Continue reading CAPSULE: THE DARK CRYSTAL (1982)