Monthly Archives: March 2012

Capsules

CAPSULE: THE HELLSTROM CHRONICLE (1971)

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Must See

DIRECTED BY: Ed Spiegel (Hellstrom sequences), Walon Green (producer and principal photography), David L. Wolper (executive producer)

FEATURING: Lawrence Pressman

PLOT: The fictional Dr. Nils Hellstrom explains the evolutionary advantages of insects and

Still from The Hellstrom Chronicle (1971)

concludes they are biologically superior to humans, leading him to predict dire consequences for the future of our species.

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Documentaries don’t come much weirder than this, but even the orgies of insectoid sex and violence and Dr. Hellstrom’s flaky mad scientist rants about the inherent superiority of spiders, termites and centipedes can’t raise this to the level of the truly bizarre. Despite the fact that it doesn’t have the goods to rank among the weirdest movies of all times, however, it’s still a beautiful abnormality that’s well worth your attention.

COMMENTS: The Hellstrom Chronicle contains a lot of curiosities, but the heart of the movie are the amazing images captured through (then miraculous) micro-photography: a caterpillar developing from a fertilized cell to a larva in the space of a minute, a shot of beetles locked in a death struggle that widens and pans to show a human couple cuddling on the lawn, individual brightly-colored butterfly scales glowing in the sunlight like Lite Brites. As that last image suggests, there is a psychedelic character to much of this parade of fantastical bug-tography, one that the filmmakers play up as they segue from those super-closeups of wings to shaky cam scenes of fields of butterflies flying through a forest, as Lalo Schifrin’s electronic free-jazz symphony soars ecstatically. From sequences like this we realize why this documentary was so popular on college campuses in the 1970s; you can almost see the clouds of pot smoke rising up in front of the five-foot tall black beetles with their jutting horns silhouetted against the sunrise, and hear the low murmurs of “far out, man.”

With its dissonant sitars, electric pianos dithering over waves of cymbals, and waveform synthesizers wavering in the background, Schrifin’s remarkable score evokes not only midnight trips but also conventional sci-fi giant insect cues, which is appropriate because much of the Continue reading CAPSULE: THE HELLSTROM CHRONICLE (1971) →

List Candidates

RECOMMENDED AS WEIRD: RUBBER’S LOVER (1996)

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Norimizu Ameya, Yôta Kawase, Mika Kunihiro, Sosuke Saito

PLOT: In the midst of bizarre and intricate top secret drug research, four mad scientists run

low on test subjects and use one another as guinea pigs. Their equipment malfunctions as the team succumbs to the drug’s psychotic effects. The entire experiment spirals horribly out of control, turning the final test subject into a modern-day Frankenstein’s monster—with a unique twist.

WHY IT SHOULD MAKE THE LIST: The bizarre story, unconventional filming, and shocking imagery in Rubber’s Lover make it a weird viewing experience, even by the standards of the Japanese cyberpunk genre.

COMMENTS: Kinetic editing and dark, shocking images define this unusual, experimental Japanese horror film. In a modern update to the Frankenstein plot, a team of rogue scientists conduct experimental drug, sensory, and mind control research on abducted human subjects in a secret government torture lab. The results are promising, but they can’t seem to get the dose right; the subjects keep dying. (Who might have predicted that?) Worse, they are running out of hard-to-obtain “patients” and time is running out to conclude experimentation. Their horrifying lab is full of eerie black iron devices and electronics, all maddeningly grotesque in appearance.

Threatened with impending shut-down and loss of grants if they don’t achieve viable results soon, the crazy quartet decides to give their last living human guinea pig a mega dose of their weird drug cocktail. His brain explodes, dosing an assistant by spraying blood on him. Now the assistant is instantly addicted, semi-psychotic, and useless for being anything but, you guessed it, the next test subject.

The researchers fight over which of their two drugs they should test on him, as both have developed competing formulas. One decides to test his drug on his partner, turning the hapless associate into a mad sex offender who then marathon-rapes a female executive sent to shut down their lab. To prevent her leaving and making a bad report (why would she want to do that?) Continue reading RECOMMENDED AS WEIRD: RUBBER’S LOVER (1996) →

Miscellanea

MARCH MAD MOVIE MADNESS, ROUND 4: THE ECCENTRIC EIGHT

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64 weird movies entered our March Mad Movie Madness elimination tournament, and we’re down to the eight most eccentric features of all. We won’t tell you who won last round (because we prefer you go to the voting link to see), but we will mention that the possibility of an all David Lynch final is still alive. It only takes a minute or two for you to help select the Freaky Four, so vote now!

Miscellanea

WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE

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Next week look for a review of the weirdest Academy Award winning documentary of all time (and the only one narrated by a fictional mad scientist), The Hellstrom Chronicle (1971). We’ll also take a look at two (count ’em, two!) titles from the reader-suggested review queue: the post-Tetsuo Japanese cyberpunk cycle entry Rubber’s Lover (1996) and the post-apocalyptic British absurd farce The Bed Sitting Room (1969).

Spring fever has struck and more and more people are choosing to spend their time basking in the warm glow of the Earth’s sun rather than in the dim glow of the LCD monitor. What that translates to, for us, is fewer bizarre Google queries to compete in our Weirdest Search Term of the Week contest. Nonetheless, from the trickle of traffic we’ve received this week, we’ve cobbled together a selection of strange searches we hope you will enjoy. First, from the “horny ESL student of the week” category came this oddity: “bone prone tube watch romance film porno prins train atate.” Even weirder, though, was “girls pregnant pushing child with boys hands and dildo sin”—the searcher here seems to have a much better acquaintance with the English language, and therefore much less of an excuse for stringing together such a bizarre series of unrelated nouns. But, despite the fact that it well could just describe a South Park episode we haven’t yet seen, the scenario posed by “depressed garbage can leaves the city and travels to the wood where he meets some strange hippies” was just too far-out for us to pass on naming as our Weirdest Search Term of the Week. Congratulations, and we hope some enterprising Flash animator will bring this deranged story to life!

A brief clean-up of the reader-suggested review queue: we’re removing “Zombie Jesus!” since it’s not available anywhere, and the filmmakers never responded to our emails regarding it. With another one down, that leaves only several hundred of your suggestions for us to deal with. Here’s how the queue now stands: Rubber’s Lover (next week!); The Bed-Sitting Room (next week!); Even Dwarfs Started Small; “My Wrongs 8245-8249 and 117″; Freaked; Strings; Continue reading WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE →