Monthly Archives: March 2012

Free Online Weird Movies, Miscellanea

WEIRD HORIZON FOR THE WEEK OF 3/23/2012

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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 (WIDE RELEASE):

The Hunger Games: In the anarchic future, teenagers are sent to battle to the death in a televised tournament. Nope, it’s not a remake of Battle Royale, and with lovely and talented but decidedly conventional Jennifer Lawrence headlining and a tween-friendly PG-13 rating (it’s actually aimed at Twilight fans), we’re declaring it (site unseen) unweird. It’s still noteworthy because of its similarity to the cult Japanese film (which, perhaps not at all coincidentally, is seeing a DVD release this week).  The Hunger Games official site.

IN DEVELOPMENT:

The ABC’s of Death (est. 2012): 26 directors each tell a short story about death based on an assigned letter of the alphabet. Some of the mini-auteurs whose work will be featured include and  (Amer),  (Hobo With a Shotgun),  (RoboGeisha), Yoshihiro Nishimura (Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl),  (Deadgirl),  (A Serbian Film), and (Yakuza Weapon). The letter “T” was reserved for a contest winner. Sponsored by the Alamo Drafthouse, fast becoming the world’s coolest theater (like they weren’t before). The ABCs of Death page at Alamo Drafthouse.

NEW ON DVD:

Battle Royale [Batoru Rowaiaru] (2000): Read our capsule review. In the anarchic future, teenagers are sent to battle to the death in a televised tournament. Nope, it’s not Hunger Games. Buy Battle Royale.

Battle Royale: The Complete Collection: True BR fans with deep pockets will want to buy this 4-disc set, which includes the original theatrical cut, the director’s cut, sequel Battle Royale II, and a disc full of supplemental material. Buy Battle Royale: The Complete Collection.

Clown Hunt (2010): In an alternate universe where men hunt clowns in the wild for sport, a rare albino jester turns the tables and stalks them instead. The tagline says, “Clowns, they’re not just for laughing anymore.” Fellini once said, “Today all is temporary, disordered and grotesque. Who can laugh at clowns anymore?” Buy Clown Hunt.

The Devils (1971): Big, big news—but only for those of you living in Europe. Very loosely based on real-life medieval Satanic hysteria in a French nunnery, Ken Russell‘s The Devils is the most insane, pretentious and hallucinatory nunsploitation arthouse feature ever made.The British Film Institute releases a Region 2 DVD this week, but it is not the uncensored version with a pseudo-sex scene between Christ and a nun and Vanessa Redgrave masturbating with a leg bone. Warner Brothers is hopefully saving that complete cut for spectacular Region 1 release any day now—right? Buy The Devils at BFI.

The Dragon Lives Again [AKA Deadly Hands of Kung Fu] (1977): Bruce Lee goes to Hell where he fights James Bond, Zatoichi and Dracula with the help of Popeye the Sailor Man. The box cover advertises, “the strangest martial arts picture you will ever see,” and while Fantasy Mission Force may have something to say about that, we’re willing to give this semi-legendary flick a chance. Buy The Dragon Lives Again.

General Orders No. 9 (2009): An experimental environmental documentary self-described as “one last trip down the rabbit hole before it gets paved over.”  It appears intended in the spirit of Koyaanisqatsi; the cinematography looks fantastic, and for unknown the movie poster features a rabbit smoking a corncob pipe. Buy General Orders No. 9.

“Lexx”: Complete Season 3 (2000): A campy cult sc-fi series that sometimes gets tagged with the label “surreal.” It concerns a security guard, an assassin, a sex slave and a robot head who pilot a stolen giant insect spaceship through a bizarre universe. Buy “Lexx: Complete Season 3”.

“Lexx”: Complete Season 4 (2001-2002): See above. Buy “Lexx: Complete Season 4”. Seasons 3 & 4 are also available together in one set.

Lovelorn (2010): A brother goes to fight Death in a dreamscape to save his sister who’s in a coma but visiting the afterlife searching for her dead boyfriend… sounds trippy. The bad news is this What Dreams May Come-ish British indie holds a pathetic 3.8 rating on IMDB—but maybe it’s “so-bad-it’s-weird”? Buy Lovelorn.

The Museum of Wonders (2010): This is a modern-day Italian remake of Freaks. No word on whether actual deformities were cast in the main roles (we suspect not). Buy Museum Of Wonders.

Season in Hell: Evil Farmhouse Torture (2012?): A farmer who is actually a cult leader with a gateway to Hell in his basement tortures nude women in what the makers call “a surreal psychedelic homage to the 70’s era of horror films.” The (very R-rated) YouTube trailer brags that it was “BANNED from theatres” (it was BANNED from an IMDB listing, too). Buy Season In Hell: Evil Farmhouse Torture.

This Is Not a Movie (2011): Per the ad copy this is a “surreal, psychedelic, apocalyptic quest” undertaken from inside a Las Vegas hotel room. Not to be confused with This Is Not a Film (2010), the celebrated documentary clandestinely made by Iranian director Jafar Panahi while under house arrest. Buy This Is Not a Movie.

What You Don’t See (2009): A teenage boy still coping with his father’s suicide befriends a strange, free-spirited couple while vacationing with his mother and her new boyfriend on the eerie Brittany Coast. This Teutonic psychological thriller did well overseas but failed to find theatrical distribution in the U.S., so it’s basically unknown here. Buy What You Don’t See.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Battle Royale [Batoru Rowaiaru] (2000): See description in DVD above. Buy Battle Royale [Blu-ray].

Battle Royale: The Complete Collection: See description in DVD above. Buy Battle Royale: The Complete Collection [Blu-ray].

General Orders No. 9 (2009): See description in DVD above. Buy General Orders No. 9 [Blu-ray]

This Is Not a Movie (2011): See description in DVD above. Buy This Is Not a Movie [Blu-ray].

FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON YOUTUBE:

Room 6 (2006): A schoolteacher with a fear of hospitals searches for her boyfriend after he’s carted away in an ambulance and finds bizarre medical horrors instead. The user ratings aren’t great, but it’s got lots of hallucinations and hospital-horror completists may want to check it out. Watch Room 6 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.

Alfred Eaker's Fringe Cinema, Director Retrospective

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO EDWARD D. WOOD. JR: THE NEW TESTAMENT

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This is the second half of a two-part overview of the career of Ed Wood, Jr. You can read the first part here.

Before the terms Art Brut, Outsider Art, and Naïve Art were bandied about freely, Ed Wood, Jr. personified those concepts. Of course, Wood himself had to die first before being canonized as one of outsider art’s patron saints. Predictably, with that canonization came an institutional sheen of sorts, and Wood became the proverbial yardstick of “so bad it’s good” filmmaking.

Orgy Of The Dead (1965) was written by Wood and directed by Stephen C. Apostolof (AKA A.C. Stevens). This was Wood’s first of many collaborations with the soft-core porn director. Orgy stars TV-psychic Criswell in what has to be his biggest role. Our lounge lizard clairvoyant serves as a bloated and clearly inebriated host called “the Emperor.” He eccentrically delivers dialogue recycled from Night of the Ghouls (1959) straight off of cue cards: “Once human, now monsters! Monsters to be pitied! Monsters to be despised!” William Bates is horror writer Bob. Bob’s girlfriend, Shirley (Pat Barrington) just has to ask “Why Bob? Why those horror stories?” We’ll never forgive her for asking that after being made to suffer through Bob’s response: “My monsters have done well for me. You think I’d give that up so I could write about trees or dogs or daisies? That’s it! I will write about my creatures pushing up the daises!” Shirley plants a kiss on him. “Your puritan upbringing sure doesn’t hurt your art of kissing.” “My kisses are alive!” (she sure told him!) “Who’s to say my monsters aren’t alive?” Bob and Shirley are looking for an old cemetery so Bob can get inspired when, lo and behold… a car crash! “Aah!”

Still from Orgy of the Dead (1965)As our victims lie unconscious, in the very cemetery they were looking for, Criswell intones: “Time seems to stand still. Not so the ghouls!” Bob and Shirley wake up to the sound of music. But, no, Julie Andrews is not on hand and as Shirley perceptively says, “I can’t believe anything dead is playing that music.” On their way to find the source of the music, they spy a nubile lass doing a lethargic striptease. Bob can’t Continue reading THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO EDWARD D. WOOD. JR: THE NEW TESTAMENT →

Miscellanea

MARCH MAD MOVIE MADNESS, ROUND 3

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64 movies went into our bizarre film elimination tournament, and we’re down to the Strange Sixteen. You’ll have to go vote to see all the winners from last round, but we will mention that the overall #1 seed unexpectedly fell early in a close battle (losing while getting 48% of the vote). Most intriguing 3rd round matchup: Brazil vs. A Clockwork Orange, a battle between two older cult classics that pits Katherine Helmond’s stretched cheeks against Malcolm McDowell’s spread eyelids. Go ahead and vote ( click here if you can’t see the graphic below) and let’s narrow the field down to the Eccentric Eight!

List Candidates

LIST CANDIDATE: TUVALU (1999)

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Tuvalu has been promoted onto the List of the 366 Weirdest Movies Ever Made. Please visit the official Certified Weird entry. Comments on this post are closed.

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , Chulpan Khamatova, Terrence Gillespie, Philippe Clay, Catalina Murgea

PLOT: Can a picturesque but dilapidated Turkish bathhouse pass a government inspection, and can love between a poolboy and a female patron flourish after the girl’s father is killed when a piece of the crumbling ceiling falls on him?

Still from Tuvalu (1999)
WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: Stylized to the T’s and set in a bleak world where crumbling Romanesque baths sit in fields of rubble, Tuvalu shows all the right cinematic influences and has the instinctual organic oddness necessary to be canonized in the halls of weirdness. In fact, it falls short of making the List of the 366 Best Weird Movies on the first ballot by as slim a margin as is possible. Visually, Tuvalu is a stunner; it only falls short of classic status due to a stiff storyline. While it’s hard to imagine 250 or so more impressive weird movies to make the list ahead of this one, we’re going to hold back for the moment and hold out hope we do locate them; if not, we expect Tuvalu will be back to take up the slack.

COMMENTS: Stylistically, Tuvalu takes its cue from the weird world of , in more ways than one. Director Veit Helmer challenges himself to tell the story with the minimum amount of dialogue possible; only names and very occasional words (“no!,” “technology!”) are spoken. Remarkably, from the context, the characters convey almost as much information to us just by saying each others’ names with the proper inflection, and the story is effectively told entirely on the visual level. The color scheme is 1920s monochrome, sepias for indoor scenes and steel gray for exteriors, with a brief explosion of color appearing in the rambunctious storybook hand-tinting of the fantasy scenes. There are ample references to , too, with certain sequences cranked-up Keystone Kops style, and put-upon poolboy Anton (craggy-faced Lavant) constantly scurrying about his family’s Turkish bath putting out fires started by the eccentric denizens of this timeless movie-caricature world. More recent Tuvaluan influences come from famed French fantasists (in the rapturously baroque Continue reading LIST CANDIDATE: TUVALU (1999) →

Miscellanea

366 UNDERGROUND: RAGE (2010)

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DIRECTED BY: Chris Witherspoon

FEATURING: Rick Crawford, Audrey Walker, Chris Witherspoon, Jo Black-Jacob, Richard Topping

PLOT: Dennis Twist (Crawford), an English professor/failed novelist who lives in the suburbs with

his wife Crystal (Walker) goes into Portland for a day to break off a clandestine relationship with his girlfriend, who has an ex-boyfriend just out of prison. A chance encounter with a motorcyclist quickly evolves into a twisted game of cat-and-mouse, and eventually escalates into rape and murder.

COMMENTS: Rage has gotten quite a bit of praise in various festivals over the year, and I’ll admit that it’s quite above average in the type of film that it is. That said, my own reaction to it is a bit less charitable—I feel that it would’ve worked much better as a half hour short, as far as twisting up the suspense level.  At feature length, what is meant to be building suspense just turns into tedious padding, once the set-up is established. There’s also (in my opinion) a fatal misstep in tone at the climax, where a character’s rape that is meant to be ugly and uncomfortable is immediately followed up by a gory murder which is played for laughs. It sort of undermines the ending — which, to me, didn’t come off as shocking as it was meant to be.

Rage worked for a lot of people, many of whom threw out comparisons to Steven Spielberg’s Duel. I wouldn’t go quite THAT far—for me, it worked for about 30 minutes, but the remaining 55 were unnecessary.

Rage official Facebook page

Rage trailer

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…really, really good—a tight, taut indie thriller with enough action, suspense and intrigue to fill three movies and an honest energy that makes you forgive its minibudget limitations… (The biker, incidentally, is essayed by Witherspoon himself. Think Darth Vader meets Ghost Rider meets the “Living Dead” from PSYCHOMANIA.)”–Chris Alexander, Fangoria (contemporaneous)