All posts by Gregory J. Smalley (366weirdmovies)

Gregory J. Smalley founded 366 Weird Movies in 2008 and has served as editor-in-chief since that time. He is a member of the Online Film Critics Society, and his film writing has appeared online in Pop Matters and The Spool.
List Candidates

LIST CANDIDATE: R100 (2013)

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , Lindsay Hayward

PLOT: A Japanese furniture salesman pays a secret bondage society so that dominatrixes will attack him at random times in public, but things go too far when they start showing up at his work and home.

Still from R100 (2013)
WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: By the end, after a relatively conventional beginning, R100 has gone from a one-joke lashing to full-fledged absurdist pummeling. This black sex comedy is demented enough to make the List, but we do wonder whether one of Matsumoto’s other movies might better represent his weird movie legacy.

COMMENTS:The first half of R100 is rather ordinary. Relatively so: most people would consider a movie where a man’s date kicks him in the face at dinner, and where a dominatrix stands beside him and smashes each course of sushi the mortified chef places before him, very strange indeed. R100 begins its life almost as a drama, doling out hints of backstory about our masochistic salaryman, who struggles as a single parent of a young boy with a wife in a coma. The movie eschews the chance to explore his psychology, however; we never gain any insight as to how ritualized pain and humiliation helps him deal with his problems. Instead, R100 spirals off into crazier and crazier directions, as the dominatrix attacks he’s contracted for intensify, start to interrupt his normal life, and threaten the one thing he loves more than a good beating from a merciless leather-clad mistress: his child.

The public attacks on our hero get repetitive, as if R100 doesn’t know how it wants to develop its premise. Then, in the middle of the film, Matsumoto springs a number of oddities and radical tone shifts. There are metamovie interludes which explain the movie’s title: we are watching the work of a 100-year-old director who considers this material inappropriate for anyone younger than himself (thus R100—restricted to those over 100 years of age). The main narrative takes a turn into B-movie territory when our hero is forced to turn against the bondage club after an botched session with the “Queen of Saliva.” You know the movie is completely off the rails by the time the ridiculous “Queen of Gobbling” shows up (and when the film’s producers debate cutting her out of the movie). The climax, which features our formerly meek hero lobbing grenades at an army of dominatrices commanded by a foul-mouthed blond Amazon stuffed into a tight rubber teddy, seems like it could have been choreographed by a team consisting of , and Mel Brooks. And the coda takes the weirdness to the next generation.

The way R100 starts out off-kilter and slides into greater and greater absurdity will thrill many who view the film as a simple comedy. It’s enjoyable enough on that level, but there were hints of depth in the character and themes that were never explored, and this is something of a missed opportunity. Masochism is easily stated as a philosophy—from pain comes pleasure—but it’s nearly impossible for an outsider to comprehend this most counterintuitive of fetishes. Maybe that’s why Matsumoto depicts it as an incomprehensible enigma. Or maybe you just have to reach the century mark to get it.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…connoisseurs of weird, twisted sex comedy will revel in its transgressive, audacious mischief.“–Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star-Tribune (contemporaneous)

(This movie was nominated for review by purplefig, who said it was “weird in that wonderfully insightful weird way only japanese cinema can deliver..” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

Miscellanea

WEIRD HORIZON FOR THE WEEK OF 5/29/2015

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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 on the official site links.

SCREENINGS – (Cinefamily, Los Angeles, CA, Fri. 5/29):

The City of Lost Children (1995): Read the Certified Weird entry! This presentation of the classic about a madman who steals children’s dreams in a steampunk city is kicks off a new French film series at Cinefamily called “La Collectionneuse.” City screens with unspecified shorts (the team made a few of these in the 1980s before garduating to their first feature, 1991’s Certified Weird Delicatessen). The City of Lost Children at Cinefamily.

SCREENINGS – (Cinefamily, Los Angeles, CA, Wed. 6/3):

Bronson (2008): Read the Certified Weird entry! That’s right, this Cinefamily joint is screening a second Certified Weird feature this summer, sticking a bizarre cinematic thorn into the very paw of Hollywood’s blockbuster season. No wonder they’re our favorite cult movie organization in the U.S.A. This screening celebrates the release of the full Bronson soundtrack on vinyl, with director on hand to sign copies of the LP. Bronson at Cinefamily.

NEW ON DVD:

Da Sweet Blood of Jesus (2014): A professor becomes a vampire-like creature, then strikes up a romantic relationship with a woman. The background to this movie may be stranger than the actual film: this is Spike Lee’s crowdfunded remake of the minor 1970s black vampire romance cult film Ganja and Hess. Buy Da Sweet Blood of Jesus.

The Escapees (1981): Two girls escape from a mental institution and drift across the French countryside. This is a minor film from , with no vampires and less surrealism and less nudity than usual (what’s left in a Rollin film when you take out the vampires, surrealism and nudity?) Redemption already released this on DVD in 2009 in a copy struck from a visually murky print, but this re-release is remastered. Buy The Escapees.

Island of Death (1976): See description in Blu-ray below. Buy Island of Death [Blu-ray/DVD combo].

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Da Sweet Blood of Jesus (2014): See description in DVD above. Buy Da Sweet Blood of Jesus [Blu-ray].

The Escapees (1981): See description in DVD above. Buy The Escapees [Blu-ray]

Island of Death (1976): Two British vigilantes take it upon themselves to slaughter local degenerates while on vacation on a Greek island. Seldom-seen Greek exploitation film that was infamously banned in Britain as a “video nasty.” Available on a DVD/Blu-ray combo, with extra features, from Arrow Video. Buy Island of Death [Blu-ray/DVD combo].

Touch of Evil (1958):  Orson Welles’ overheated noir about a Mexican lawman (Charlton Heston!) who uncovers border town corruption, embodied in the massive, commanding personality of bad cop Hank Quinlan (Welles). For a long time Touch of Evil was unavailable on home video; in the last decade, Universal seems to be re-packaging it every few years. This Blu-ray contains three cuts of the film (the theatrical version, the reconstructed version and the “preview version”) and hopefully will stand as the final word on this classic. Buy Touch of Evil [Blu-ray].

FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON YOUTUBE:

Kung Fury (2015): After the partner of 1980s karate cop Kung Fury is killed by time-traveling assassin Adolph Hitler, Kung decides to go back in time to kill Der Führer, but miscalculates and winds up in Viking times instead. Kung Fury raised over $600,000 on Kickstarter, which was not enough to make the planned feature film; however, they did produce this thirty minute short and release it for free, so who’s complaining? Unrated, but contains cartoonish violence and profanity. Watch Kung Fury 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.

Canonically Weird (The List), Shorts

204. DESTINO (2003)

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“A magical display of the problem of life in the labyrinth of time.”– describing Destino

“A simple story about a young girl in search of true love .”– describing Destino

Must SeeWeirdest!

DIRECTED BY: Dominique Monfery

FEATURING: Vocals of Dora Luz

PLOT: Essentially plotless, but the loose narrative involves a nude woman wandering the desert who comes upon a pyramidal statue with a male figure embedded in it. A bird bursts from the statue and it comes to life. The woman and man try to approach each other but walls and other surreal obstacles constantly grow between them, until the woman is transformed into a ballerina with a dandelion head, and then into a bell housed in a tower.

Still from Destino (1946/2003)
BACKGROUND:

  • After making the (flop) Fantasia, was still looking for opportunities to incorporate high culture into his animated projects. In the 1940s visited Hollywood frequently; fascinated by stars and by filmmaking, and constantly promoting himself, the Spanish eccentric struck up friendships with many Tinseltown luminaries, including Disney. The two men hit it off and conceived the idea of a collaboration on a short film (which would be part of an anthology feature film similar to Fantasia). Dalí worked closely with Disney animator John Hench,  who translated many of the Spaniard’s sketches and ideas into ready-to-film animation cels. The project was begun in 1945 and continued for eight months, but only 17 seconds of footage was actually created before it was scrapped.
  • Secondary sources report that the male statue is Chronos (presumably the god of time) while the female character is named “Dahlia” (a feminization of the artist’s name).
  • The official explanation for Disney’s decision to shelve the project was that the wartime vogue for “package pictures” had passed, and Disney’s distributors were requesting full-length features. The documentary Dalí & Disney: A Date with Destino suggests that Walt may have found the film too “bananas,” citing a report that he blew up one afternoon after seeing that Dalí had stopped painting pictures of ballerinas and had begun drawing baseball players instead.
  • Roy E. Disney, Walt Disney’s nephew and a Disney senior executive, was looking for material to provide extras for the DVD release of Fantasia 2000 when he discovered the unused material for Destino in a moldy corporate storeroom. He decided to reconstruct the film from the existing storyboards and leftover concept art, largely so that the Disney Company would gain property rights in the underlying artwork. Fortunately, John Hench was still alive at the time to provide guidance for the reconstruction.
  • This was animator Dominique Monfery’s first work as a director.
  • The short briefly played theaters as an unlikely introduction to the comedy Calendar Girls.
  • Destino was nominated for an Academy Award for best short animated film in 2004, but—incredibly, given its provenance and historical value—it did not win. (‘s excellent Harvie Krumpet got the nod instead).

INDELIBLE IMAGE: The most impressive of many gloriously hallucinatory moments is the seventeen second sequence that John Hench animated to try to convince a faltering Walt Disney to go ahead with the project. Two grotesque faces, with bulging eyeballs and tattered skin pulled taut and held in place by crutches, are perched upon two turtles who slowly bear them together. In the negative space formed when their noses touch, a perfect, pearly ballerina appears.

THREE WEIRD THINGS: Dandelion-headed dancer; baguette-wearing bicyclists; ballerina-head baseball

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Destino is Salvador Dalí’s only moving canvas. A slight breeze from Walt Disney Studios nudges it ever so slightly off its already tilted axis. This dream of a Disney princess trapped in Dalí’s delirious desert is something we will not see the likes of again in our lifetimes.


Promotional clip about Destino from the Dalí Museum (in Spanish and English)

COMMENTS: Salvador Dalí was a genius. This fact may seem Continue reading 204. DESTINO (2003) →

Capsules

CAPSULE: ID (2005)

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Weirdest!

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Kimihiko Hasegawa, Kei Fujiwara

PLOT: A man awakens in a woods and wanders into an urban pig farm where he observes examples of human cruelty and perversion.

Still from Id (2005)
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: The confusing presentation and slapstick black comedy undercuts Id‘s serious spiritual themes. Id goes totally nutso at the end, even by its own loose standards of sanity, and the movie doesn’t hang together even by the forgiving parameters of its own weirdness.

COMMENTS: Id‘s confusing, fractured storyline may take more than one viewing to work out (and you’ll probably never be 100% satisfied). On the other hand, the movie seems to have a clear thematic purpose, though it’s developed in a sloppy fashion. The movie’s theme is stated up front and seems simple and noble: “Amida Buddha’s sacred vow is that all be granted salvation… not only the good and wise but even those most depraved by sin and lust will be shown compassion.” There is a complication, however; to take advantage of Amida Buddha’s offer, you must invoke his name. Beasts, being dumb and mute, can’t do this; and neither can our protagonist, a nameless and (initially) mute man we meet see waking up in a forest, listening to dueling voiceovers. This man grabs a harmonica and wanders onto a nearby urban pig farm where he observes absurd examples of “most depraved sin and lust.”

So far, so good; it seems like a clean enough setup for a story of sin and salvation, a meditation on the thin line between the human and the bestial. Of course, things get far more confused than that. Soon enough we are introduced to another, similarly lost, character, a raggedy detective searching for the “master of murder” who may be responsible for local serial killings. The pig farm and its nearby environs supply plenty of subplots, including three slapstick farmhands who jerk about the farm like Keystone Kops, a bullied nine-year-old boy (played by an adult), and a cult proselytizer who miraculously survived a family massacre. The already odd vignettes are further peppered with hallucinations, including some very crude stop-motion animation and shots of a papier-mache pig’s head spouting blood. Somehow, by the end we descend into a hellish slaughterhouse hung with bloody plastic sheeting for a long and gory confrontation with a transformed “humanhog.” And what are we to make of the frequent references to the “id well,” an idea seemingly taken from Freudian psychology that has only a strained connection to the film’s Buddhist ideology?

The idea that “those most depraved by sin and lust will be shown compassion” provides an excuse to show graphic examples of sin and lust, which test our capacity for compassion to its fullest. Among other immoral sights, we get an entire chapter devoted to Peeping Toms (who pull on metallic springs in the place of genitals) and a “comic” transvestite rape. The absurdist elements of the salacious scenes seem to work against the movie’s main theme, however; if Amida Buddha forgives the worst human transgressions, then why the need to make them funny? If he would forgive real Peeping Toms, why does Id feel compelled to make their crimes look silly? It’s symptomatic of the movie’s unsure tone. Id won’t commit to being a black comedy, a serious psycho-spiritual rumination, or a surreal nightmare, but keeps changing its strategy every few minutes, hoping something will stick. It’s a shame, because there seems to be the seed of a promising idea buried somewhere in this film, if only the director could decide how to cultivate it.

Writer/director Kei Fujiwara collaborated with on 1989’s Certified Weird classic Tetsuo: The Iron Man, where she played the female lead as well as providing the costume design and assisting in the camerawork. Id is her second feature in a proposed trilogy; the first, Organ, appeared in 1996, so the third installment is due about now, if it’s ever going to be made.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“A lot of viewers might not even finish it, let alone desire a second (or third) serving of the outrageously weird, spicy dish.”–Dejan Ognjanovic, Temple of Ghoul (DVD)

(This movie was nominated for review by “Radu.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)