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.
366 Underground

366 UNDERGROUND: YOUR LIFE IS ON THE LINE! A JOE CHRIST ANTHOLOGY, VOL. 1

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Beware

You have to feel sympathy for the poor microbudget filmmaker. There is almost nothing they can do that the Hollywood filmmaker cannot do better. The easiest option to stand out is to give viewers something that Hollywood can’t. This could be a non-clichéd storyline or avant-garde aesthetics; but those paths require hard work and talent. There is one fairly easy avenue to notoriety open to anyone brave and shameless enough to take it: show the audience something taboo. This path probably won’t get you rich, but it may at least get you noticed.

has repeatedly said, “It’s easy to be shocking. It is much harder to be witty at the same time.” Generations of underground filmmakers have been proving that adage true ever since Pink Flamingos spat in America’s face with its vision of smug, gleefully villainous drag queen coprophagia. Waters’ outcasts and gays weren’t sissies to be kicked around: they were powerful, they would cut you. And they would make you laugh, often against your better judgement. But ever since Waters blazed the path, punks, outsiders, and weirdos everywhere have spat out their own attempts at scandalizing the bourgeois, aping Waters’ shocks despite not possessing his wit or purpose, to diminishing returns. Few returns are as diminished as the 1980s-90s direct-to-VHS atrocities of one Joe Christ, punk musician turned garbage auteur. Now, VHS and early DVD revivalists Saturn’s Core have shoveled the collected refuse of Christ’s movie attempts from 1988-1995—God forbid, there’s a volume 2 coming!— into a trash bin of a Blu-ray. Here are the 5 short films included:

“Communion in Room 410” (1988): Joe literally cuts a woman with a razor on the arm and breasts, then he and another woman drink the blood. They also eat Wonder bread dipped in blood in mockery of communion. Joe’s irritating, badly recorded music plays in the background. This goes on for 20 minutes, with all the artistry of “2 Girls, 1 Cup.” Hard to watch; I suggest not watching it.

“Speed Freaks with Guns” (1991): Joe delivers a paranoid, methed-up monologue, then shows some home videos of him and 2 female cronies murdering random women, then steals a car and leaves New York. This mess does contain one interesting scene: a priest randomly pukes communion wafers on Joe as he passes by. It’s the one of a very few attempts at humor on the entire disc. It’s also, revealingly, the only scene where Christ depicts himself as a victim rather than the bully.

Still from Crippled

“Crippled”: A paralyzed woman is cruelly abused by her caretakers. This is actually a surprisingly trenchant critique of… naw, just kidding, it’s more crap.

Still from acid is groovy kill the pigs

“Acid is Groovy Kill the Pigs”: A meth addict buys acid because his dealer has no meth, eats the entire blotter, then goes on a killing spree and interviews the numerous other acid-chewing serial killers he knows. The “pigs” of the title aren’t cops; they’re everyone who isn’t a serial killer themselves. The only halfway good scene is death by puppy, another rare attempt at comedy. “Acid” shows improvement over the last 3 Christ films, in little details like title cards and music that’s properly recorded, but it’s still the cinematic equivalent of soap scum you find clinging to the grout in your shower.

Continue reading 366 UNDERGROUND: YOUR LIFE IS ON THE LINE! A JOE CHRIST ANTHOLOGY, VOL. 1 →
Miscellanea

AN UNPRODUCED DAVID LYNCH PROJECT??

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famously died with many projects abandoned or left incomplete: the comedy “One Saliva Bubble” with Steve Martin and Martin Short; a highly-unlikely Eraserhead sequel that would continue Henry’s adventures (which Mel Brooks farcically claimed would be titled “Eraserhead: The Terrible Twos”); the animated “Snootworld” (canceled by Netflix); “Unrecorded Night” (code named “Wisteria”) (also canceled by Netflix); and, perhaps most infamously, “Ronnie Rocket.”

Lynch was known to extensively storyboard his ideas with sketches and/or doodles before embarking on a script proper. This is where our story starts. This reddit poster claims to have found this a this drawing at the bottom of a box of papers and trinkets labeled “memorabilia” purchased at a recent L.A. estate sale for $50. On the back (the poster did not upload an image) was written “DL-3/6/26.” The poster theorizes that is an authentic Lynch sketch, made in his final days, for an unproduced project, many of which were rumored to still be brewing in Lynch’s always-busy brain. Horizontal streaking near the bottom of the image suggests it might have been transferred from a video source—or deliberately crafted to look as if it had?

A sketch from an unproduced David Lynch project?

To be skeptical, the style is only pseudo-Lynchian. The crosshatching at the bottom is similar to, but less aggressive, than Lynch’s usual pencil style. The rabbit definitely fits the auteur’s preoccupations. But “grey aliens” are not a typical feature of Lynch’s work (Lynch prefers his aliens more like pillars of steam arising from some baroque samovar apparatus), and the floating fish and eyeball in the doorway seem like they were tacked on by someone trying to be “weird.” It actually seems too “regular” for Lynch.

OK, it’s probably not from an unproduced Lynch project: but what could it be? Are the numbers at the bottom some kind of timecode, or a title? What plot or symbolism could it hide? And what does it mean?

Capsules

CAPSULE: ALPHA (2025)

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 Alpha is available to rent or purchase on-demand.

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Mélissa Boros, , Tahar Rahim

PLOT: Young teenager Alpha gets a homemade tattoo, and her doctor mother obsesses over the possibility that she may have contacted a disease that will turn her into a statue; meanwhile, her heroin-addicted uncle comes to crash in their small Parisian flat.

Still from alpha (2025)

COMMENTS: Alpha, the movie, is sick with contagion and addiction. In this diseased alternate-reality Paris, an Arab single-mom doctor tries to protect her improbably-named daughter Alpha from the dangers of the outside world. When the girl experiments with her limited teen freedom, getting a rustic homemade “A” tattoo on her arm at a party while intoxicated, her mother freaks out: where did the needle come from? Was it properly sterilized? Because, you see, there is a blood-borne disease going around which slowly turns those infected into statues. It primarily affects homosexuals and intravenous drug users, but unsanitary tattoo needles are also a disease vector. Fear that she may be deathly ill, and ostracism from her schoolmates once the rumors start circulating, aren’t the only stresses in Alpha’s life; her emaciated, estranged, heroin-addicted uncle, who is a stranger to her, has also moved into the small flat as he tries to get clean after a lifetime of relapses. At school, Alpha also keeps inconveniently (and humiliatingly) bleeding from her slow-to-heal tattoo wound; curious, although also seemingly tangential to the film’s main theme.

Despite the magical-realist plague and some confusing flashbacks, Alpha essentially plays out as a coming-of-age family drama. The three principals all do fine work, with Rahim (whose visible ribs suggest must have laid off baguettes for months in preparing for his junkie role) a particular standout. Cinematography is crisp, and needle drops from Portishead and Nick Cave add an undeniable (if possibly anachronistic) coolness factor.

Despite mostly eschewing the horror elements this time to focus on familial drama and teen anxiety, Ducournau retains her talent for conceiving scenes that are, on the surface, completely innocent, but which hint at deep perversions: in this case, a bit where Alpha’s jittery uncle white-knuckles his way through opiate withdrawal, while the anxious Alpha tries to fall sleep in bed next to him in their shared bedroom. The dreadful atmosphere of rising pandemic feeds into Alpha’s developmental worries. Growing independence, annoyance with lame and overprotective adults, and awkward liaisons with hormonal boys hardly override fears of death and an unstable adult roommate constantly on the verge of fatal overdose.

Alpha is well-written, well-acted, well-shot, well-scored, and has an serious emotional core… and yet, for some reason I can’t find it in my stony heart to unconditionally recommend it. The problem here is that, while Titane succeeded because it was a weird movie that slowly developed a deep emotional appeal, Alpha underwhelms because it starts as a humanist drama and then tacks on unnecessary surreal accoutrements. While Ducournau’s two previous efforts were weird movies that provided accommodations for art-house patrons, this one is an art-house movie offering accommodations for fans expecting something strange. Other than allowing an excuse for some cool makeup, the marbelizing symptom of the central disease adds little to the movie’s emotional or aesthetic effect. Had Ducournau made a standard drama, she might have gained a more appreciative audience… though at the cost of her reputation as one of the few provocateurs willing to ignore the inconvenient blah-ness of reality. Still, even if Alpha is not entirely a success, it’s a good film, and we’re happy to note Ducournau hasn’t sold out to the commercial allure of realist cinema. Let’s hope this is a temporary retreat, and she’ll relocate the bloody pulse of deep, dark weirdness for her next project.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Strident, oppressive, incoherent and weirdly pointless from first to last … Julia Ducournau’s new film Alpha has to be the most bewildering disappointment of this year’s Cannes competition; even an honest lead performance from Mélissa Boros can’t retrieve it.”–Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian (festival screening)

Alpha [Blu-Ray]

Alpha [Blu-Ray]

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