Next week starts off at the drive-in as Alfred Eaker considers a 1960 double feature of Horror Hotel (with Christopher Lee) matched with Germany’s contribution to the disembodied head genre, the memorably titled The Head. Then, Pete Trbovich sails over Dark Waters to consider the nunnery-set horror of the title. Next, Giles Edwards brings us his first report from 2017’s Fantasia Festival, with possible bonus content to drop unpredictably through the week. Finally G. Smalley takes onFernando Arrabal‘s surreal anti-fascist screed Viva la Muerte! (Long Live Death!) It’s a highly cosmopolitan and international week from the well-traveled (virtually and otherwise) crew here at 366.
Now is the time you wait all week for, when we survey the weirdest search terms that brought visitors to the site this week in a feature we sensibly designate “Weirdest Search Terms of the Week.” We’ll start with one we’ve seen before, which still mystifies us: “friends boring strangers” (we could maybe understand “friends boning strangers,” though that would still be an odd thing to search for). A bit weirder was “french language film bicycle ride policeman vagina.” (We’re guessing the last item on the list is the one the searcher is really interested in). Still, it’s no match for our official Weirdest Search Term of the Week: “while stranded on an island this baby doll bit the head off a lizard and drank the juice.” We especially like that this query is stated so matter-of-factly, as if it came up naturally in conversation over coffee: “say, did you hear about the time…”
Here’s how our ridiculously-long reader-suggested review queue stands: Dark Waters (next week!); Viva la Murete (next week!); Beauty and the Beast [Panna a Netvor] (1978); 1 Day; Black Devil Doll; Vermilion Souls (depending on availability); No Smoking (2007); Gahjini; One Continue reading WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE→
Hard at work at his robotic job, Bob comes into contact with a bio-mechanical parasite. He can’t let it slow him down, either, or he’ll be officially cited.
CONTENT WARNING: This short contains violence and disturbing imagery.
This is the first episode of an ongoing series. The second episode was successfully funded on Kickstarter in February of last year, and was just recently uploaded to Vimeo. It includes a stronger combination of strong violence, sexual content, and language. You may view the short here. Funding for the third episode will likely begin in the near future.
Our weekly 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 at the official site links.
IN THEATERS (LIMITED RELEASE):
Endless Poetry: Alejandro Jodorowsky’s second installment in the psychoautobiographical project that began with the Certified Weird The Dance of Reality, now concerning his experiences as a young bohemian artist in Santiago. We were shocked by how little Jodo had lost when Reality came out after a 21-year hiatus from filmmaking, making us even more excited for this second installment. Endless Poetry Indiegogo page.
The Persian Connection: A “neon-noir fever dream” set in the Persian and Russian gangster underworlds of L.A.. This drug, sex, and violence cocktail was originally titled The Loner when it played the Tribeca Film Festival. The Persian Connection Facebook page.
FILM FESTIVALS – Fantasia Festival (Montreal, Quebec, 7/13-8/2):
As its name implies, Montreal’s Fantasia Festival originally began as a showcase for fantastic films from Asia; it has since morphed into a major event on the genre cinema calendar. Not that they’ve let mainstream success get to their heads; there’s still more rare weirdness to be found at Fantasia than at just about any film festival on the globe. We make watch lists from Fantasia’s programming, and we’re always saddened when less than half of the most daring films find meaningful distribution in the U.S. (We’re still awaiting release of the video-art black comedy She’s Allergic to Cats, never mind the completely bizarre and incomprehensible Atmo HorroX). Because of the large number of entries, we’re highlighting only films here that are debuting at Fantasia or that are totally new to us. We’ll mention that the indie comedy Brigsby Bear, Casey Affleck’s A Ghost Story, Takashi Miike‘s WFT The Mole Song: Hong Kong Capriccio, the surreal Estonian fairy tale November, and the Filipino Town in a Lake are also playing, while Luc Besson‘s big-budget epic Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets gets an early screening at Fantasia. Also of note are revivals of God Told Me To (and other movies from Lifetime Achievement Award honoree Larry Cohen), a rare screening of Rape of the Vampire, and the debut of the restored print of the Certified Weird Suspiria, which will be touring North America in late summer.
Animals – Black comedy/horror about a couple whose vacation becomes a surreal nightmare after their car hits and kills a sheep. Screening July 16 & 18.
Assholes – This incestuous anal sex themed comedy with a butt monster aims to be the grossout ticket of the year. See it Aug 1, if you dare.
The Endless – Bored by life on the outside, two apostates return to the UFO death cult they had abandoned. Screens Aug 1.
The Honor Farm – High school seniors decide to take an after-prom shroom trip in an abandoned prison; bad idea. July 15 & 17.
Infiltration [Le Problème d’Infiltration] – A wealthy reconstructive surgeon’s life falls apart after he is threatened with a malpractice suit. World premiere Aug. 2.
Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Diamond Is Unbreakable – Takashi Miike opens the festival once more with this manga adaptation that pits a hero with bizarre hair against a serial killer. Debuted yesterday, with an encore screening July 23.
The Laplace’s Demon – Eight researchers are trapped in a castle in this retro B&W feature exploring concepts of chance and free will. See it July 21 or 23.
Night Is Short, Walk on Girl – Anime about a college student following his dream girl through a surreal all-night used book store. July 30 & 31.
As a special treat, 366’s own Giles Edwards is in attendance and will be bringing us updates weekly (perhaps more frequently) on the Fest’s biggest and weirdest contenders. Fantasia Festival home page.
NEW ON DVD:
Pulse (2001): Read our review. Arrow Video’s release of Kiyoshi Kurosawa‘s apocalyptic millennial J-horror comes with a ton of extras for fans, including a collectible booklet available with this pressing only. Buy Pulse [Blu-ray/DVD combo.
PLOT: A young man spends his days pinning advertising fliers to residences as a pretext to discover who in the neighborhood is on vacation; he then sneaks into their home and stays for a few days, always cleaning and fixing something around the house as a form of payment. One day he discovers that the residence he’s broken into isn’t empty; a battered woman catches him sleeping in her bed. The two silently connect and, after the intruder assaults the abusive husband with a barrage of golf balls, the wife accompanies him on his break-ins, until the law catches up to them.
BACKGROUND:
Major characters with no dialogue is something of a Ki-duk Kim trademark: his 2000 effort, The Isle, featured a mute heroine, and the male protagonist of 2001’s Bad Guy was almost entirely silent.
This was the first movie Kim made after forming his own production company. To save money, the writer/director did the motorcycle stunt work himself.
INDELIBLE IMAGE: An easy pick. It’s the image chosen for the poster: the husband and wife embracing, while the wife kisses her lover who stands behind her spouse, unseen. To the uninitiated, this shot suggests the movie will be about a love triangle; knowledge of the story imbues the scene with more ambiguity.
THREE WEIRD THINGS: Silent lovers; jailhouse golf; invisibility training
WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: The premise of a man who lives in others’ homes is unusual. The fact that the two lovers never speak to each other, although capable of speech, adds a layer of mystery. In the mystical third act where the protagonist trains himself to be perfectly undetectable, however, 3-Iron opens up into legitimately weird realms.
Here at the Utility Muffin Research Kitchen, our staff is repeatedly faced with a perplexing question: How do you quantify a movie as “weird”? It’s like the old Supreme Court ruling on how to define pornography: “I know it when I see it.” OK, but our mission is to sort out the 366 Weirdest movies, on top of that. Now we’re forced to quantify movies, because some will be on the list and some will not. Given any two movies that appear equally weird, how do you rank them?
It’s an unanswerable question, ultimately. But here, submitted for the consideration of anybody who cares, is the closest thing to an objective system the present author can think of when ranking a movie’s weirdness. It’s the system I partially use when throwing in my vote for yay or nay on whether a movie belongs on the list. Since we even have reader polls once in awhile to vote movies onto the list, perhaps it will do some good to share it. It’s not an iron-clad rule, merely a guide.
What a silly exercise! No doubt Robin Williams from Dead Poets’ Society will charge in here after we’re done and tell us all to rip this page out of the textbook. Have at it, Robin, you’re probably right.
The Weird Movie Ranking System
You can rank a movie’s weirdness in four areas. These axes of ranking are:
Premise – A wild or original idea. The substance.
Presentation – The method, attitude, or approach of storytelling. The style.
Detail – The stuff you see in the “indelible image” and “three weird things” section of list entries.
Passion – The commitment to an individual and original vision imbued by the movie’s creator(s).
The higher we can rank a movie on each of these axes, the weirder it is. This isn’t anything silly like a one-to-ten scale, just a general mark of “high” or “low.” Most movies can’t make it onto the list with a high ranking in only one aspect. But the more boxes we tick on the list, the higher its chances. Now to examine each axis in more depth:
Premise
Premise appears to be the least important metric in measuring a movie’s weirdness. Premise is closely related to plot, but not identical. Some entries, such as Un Chien Andalou, have no plot to speak of. “A girl falls asleep and dreams about a magical fantasy land” can describe both The Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland. The premise doesn’t make the movie weird by itself.
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But it sure helps.