Recently, the Library of Congress found and restored a copy of this early Georges Melies short, long believed lost, in which Gugusse beats an automaton clown to death with a hammer.
All posts by Gregory J. Smalley (366weirdmovies)
CAPSULE: A USEFUL GHOST (2025)
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DIRECTED BY: Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke
FEATURING: Davika Hoorne, Witsarut Himmarat, Wanlop Rungkumjad, Wisarut Homhuan, Apasiri Nitibhon, Gandhi Wasuvitchayagit
PLOT: A man falls for a vacuum cleaner possessed by the ghost of his dead wife, despite his family’s insistence on exorcising the interloper.
COMMENTS: An exorcist stands mouth agape as a vacuum cleaner uses its spinning brush attachment on an ecstatic man’s nipples. In the context of A Useful Ghost, what is strange about this scene isn’t the human/machine coupling so much as the exorcist’s reaction. A night duty nurse is barely surprised when the same vacuum asks her for her husband’s room number; she tells it matter-of-factly that visiting hours are over and that, under hospital policy, ghosts cannot qualify as relatives. In this alternate version of contemporary Thailand, ghosts roaming among the populace are taken for granted. The central family’s spotless-but-haunted factory is shut down because, according to the inspector, “A ghost is even less hygienic than a speck of dust.”
The exorcist’s reaction is strange because it challenges the deadpan style first-time director Boonbunchachoke adopts for this tale. Characters in A Useful Ghost do not show any emotion unless and until it is absolutely necessary. Therefore, when this exorcist stands, mouth agape, he does so with no alteration for the duration of the scene, flanked by characters whose faces reveal less visible shock. At first, the anti-naturalistic acting seems contrived, but as the film goes on and the tone turns from ridiculous to sombre, its effect becomes hypnotic, evoking an elegiac, ghostly world where genuine feeling is slowly leeching away into a void.
You see, despite the fact that the premise suggests a whimsical romantic comedy, A Useful Ghost takes a darker turn in its second half after the ghost wife (Nan) proves her worth to her husband’s family though her spectral talent for entering others’ dreams and gathering intelligence about the reasons for their hauntings. This useful talent, and fortuitous connections, give Nan standing in society. Despite the legal impediments of ghosthood, she’s too valuable to be exorcised. But, although Nan is motivated solely by the noble desires of love and duty to family, her persistence in this world is predicated on her utility to those in power. The compromises she must make inevitably stresses her relationship with her principled husband. When the 2010 massacres become a major plot engine, the dynamic shifts from romantic comedy to political screed, and the film raises an unusual question: is it possible for a ghost to be a quisling?
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
SATURDAY SHORT: THE EGGREGORES’ THEORY (2024)
A mysterious word sparks a deadly contagion that cannot be contained. CONTENT WARNING: Contains generative A.I. and sadness.
POD 366, EP. 157: IN THE GUTTER WITH TOM LEE RUTTER OF “POCKET FILM OF SUPERSTITIONS”
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Discussed in this episode:
The Pocket Film of Superstitions (2023): A narrator elucidates various superstitions whilst they are presented onscreen.
Arco (2025): Read Gregory J. Smalley’s review. France’s remarkable (but only kind of weird) sci-fi children’s story about a time-traveling kid in a rainbow suit is now available on VOD for purchase or rental (premium pricing, so purchase is currently the better option). Buy or rent Arco (premium pricing).
Boys Go to Jupiter (2024): Read Giles Edwards’ review. Julian Glander‘s comic animation about a gig economy teen hustler and aliens comes to Blu-ray with a number of neato extras: commentary, music videos, and four Glander shorts. Buy Boys Go to Jupiter.
The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001): A Cold War barber finds himself involved in a blackmail scheme that goes wrong. This existential noir from the Coen Brothers is in our reader-suggested queue, and is now on 4K UHD from the Criterion collection in a new transfer (otherwise the same as the original Criterion Blu-ray). Buy The Man Who Wasn’t There.
Pink Narcissus (1971): Read Enar Clarke’s review. As expected, this groundbreaking homoerotic arthouse experimental feature has finally appeared on Blu-ray after its restoration and rerelease. Buy Pink Narcissus.
Tank Girl (1995): Read Ryan Aarsets review. The 90s feminist post-apocalyptic cult film about a girl and her tank joins the ranks of 4K UHD releases this week. Buy Tank Girl.
Terror Firmer (1999): Read Gregory J. Smalley’s review. Troma rolls out another 4K UHD of one of their catalog “classicks,” as always packed with bonuses. Buy Terror Firmer.
“Your Life is on the Line!: A Joe Christ Anthology”: Five films from a punk DIY 80s-90s filmmaker whose work is unfamiliar to us, but who is compared to early John Waters and Nick Zedd. Buy “Your Life is on the Line!: A Joe Christ Anthology”.
WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE:
No guest scheduled for next week’s Pod 366 (unless you count a pop-in from “Penguin” Pete Trbovich). The week after, we should have Ryan Verrill and Billy Ray Brewton from new boutique distributor Antenna Releasing on to discuss the current state of cult film distribution and other topics of interest to our core audience. At any rate, we’ll bring you all the weird movie news that’s fit to discuss. In written content, Giles Edwards will catch you up on the rest of the SlamDance 2026 slate (shorts and a feature); Micheal Diamades takes another bullet for the rest of the staff and covers the infamous, frequently banned bestiality-themed Belgian feature Vase de Noces (1974); Shane Wilson recommends the only-slightly-less-transgressive and “actually insane” trash talk show satire United Trash [AKA The Slit] (1996); and Gregory J. Smalley tries to find a purpose for Thailand’s reincarnated vacuum cleaner romance A Useful Ghost (2025). Onward and weirdward!
“KRAZEE KIDZ VIDEO PARTY”
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Let’s get this out of the way first: despite containing five “films” (although one is only 25 minutes long and two others are under an hour), “Krazee Kidz Video Party” is not a box set. There’s no box. There’s no booklet. There are no meaningful special features: a few drive-in “snipes,” ads and intermission notices, serve as the sole extra, unless you consider the option to watch all the features end-to-end in “slumber party mode” a bonus. And—get this—all this content—301 minutes—is crammed onto one (1) disc. Forget 4K transfers: these VHS-y resolutions hover closer to the quarter-K level.
Needless to say, this collaborative release from Something Weird and American Genre Film Archives isn’t exactly Criterion Collection quality. That does not mean, however, that it is not recommended—highly recommended, in fact, to the right oddballs, many of whom are regular readers of this site. That is because of the quality (can that be the right word?) of the curiosities on display here. True to the title, it’s children’s entertainment at its most deranged: a treasure trove of the cynical subgenre that has come to be known as children’s grindhouse. Well, at least some of it is. The rest of it is just, well, kinda weird—with one legitimate exotic egg hidden inside this dime-store Easter basket.
That crackerjack isn’t the set’s first offering, 1957’s The Big Bad Wolf [Der Wolf und die sieben jungen Geißlein, AKA The Wolf and the Seven Little Goats], although this opener sports the highest uncanny valley quotient—which is really saying something in this collection. From the first time Mother Goat appears in her Satanist-adjacent horned mask as a talking crow demands the unseen narrator recite the names of her ritual sacrifices cute kids, you’ll wonder if you’ve stumbled into a badly deteriorated, repurposed Kenneth Anger short. Ultimately, this German movie (the dubbing was unobtrusive, thanks to the masks worn by 90% of the cast) is more of a live-action cartoon, of the kind Hanna-Barbera would have executed in a crisp 5 minutes, but stretched out to almost an hour’s running time. Still, there is something endearing about this material being played earnestly by adults in inarticulate fuzzy masks. The cast really commits to the bits: the wolf’s involuntary plummet in a wheelbarrow down a very slight incline, for example, goes hard. There are also a couple of memorable moments where the lupine-headed monster interacts with live actors, ruthlessly bullying a grocer and a flour merchant (who fights back with his trademark good). And it ends with a note of genuine horrifying folk surrealism straight from the Grimm Brothers’ source material: the wolf eats six of the seven kids, then, as he sleeps off his meal, the lone survivor slices open his belly (with scissors, but without anesthetic) to save his kin. Overall, it’s a highly watchable oddity, and a nice way to start your marathon of Continue reading “KRAZEE KIDZ VIDEO PARTY”