Next week Alfred Eaker starts off our coverage with William “One Shot” Beaudine‘s bafflingly bad duo of Western horrors, Billy the Kid vs. Dracula and Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter. Pete Trbovich keeps it out west with the reader-suggested Cannibal! The Musical, until Giles Edwards whisks us to 18th century France to investigate rumors of werewolves in Brotherhood of the Wolf (also reader-suggested). Then, it’s off to Japan with G. Smalley for a look at Mamoru Oshii‘s brilliantly bizarre dream hijack of a popular anime comedy: Urusei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer.
Weird search terms are back! For whatever reason (perhaps you guys figured out how to turn off your privacy filters, as we requested) we are now able to see between five and ten percent of all searches (rather than the one percent we were seeing a couple of weeks ago). Although this only gives us a hundred or so search strings to examine—meaning that there’s still quite a lot of weird searches out there hidden from our eyes—we at least have enough material to highlight some for your amusement. For example, there’s “i remember two kids finding a necklace and they end up at a castle with really big furniture! they find a creature and it rides in the backpack,” which sounds like a cool experience—someone should make a movie out of it. Then there’s the startling “movie milk cat to stay alive” (we hope it never comes to that). Our official Weirdest (and Yuckiest) Search Term of the Week, however, is “movie scene where a knight has sex with a dead woman hanging on a door.” We suspect that’s a real movie—maybe it’s from the necrophilia porn parody of the Seventh Seal?
Time for our weekly cut n’ paste disclaimer regarding the reader-suggested review queue below: since we will definitely not be getting to all of these (although we will pick out the occasional title), you can consider this a list of “honorable mentions” for your own perusal and amusement. That out of the way, here’s how the ridiculously-long reader-suggested review queue now stands: Cannibal! the Musical (next week!); Brotherhood of the Wolf (next week!); Continue reading WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE→
As far as next week’s reviews go: we’re expecting a Halloween surprise (trick, or treat?) from Alfred Eaker. Then, it’s on to a couple of low-budget new releases featuring young female protagonists, as Giles Edwards looks at the convent-based horror The Book of Birdie while G. Smalley tackles the post-apocalyptic Molly. We’ll wrap up our reviews by revisiting Pier Paolo Pasolini‘s theoretical Teorema.
Good news and bad news on the weird search term front. The good news is that, for unknown reasons, we saw a huge increase in the number of search terms visible to us (about 100 to pick from). The bad news is that about 50 or more of the searches were some variation of “free incest movie.” (We get the feeling these guys are going to be seriously disappointed by Fire Walk with Me and Society.) Probably the weirdest of that category was the search for “ok ru incest movies.” (C’mon, you may be a disgusting pervert, but set your sights higher than just “ok”!) In non-incest related perversion, the wrongest weirdest we saw was “School girlss xxx rape rageing forest movi.Com” (which, except for the “xxx,” might be a search for this one with a senseless “.Com” stuck on at the end). The upshot is, this is another week where we will not be awarding an official Weirdest Search Term of the Week; but there is hope that, if these numbers of visible searches keep up, we’ll be back on target soon.
Time for our weekly cut n’ paste disclaimer regarding the reader-suggested review queue below: since we will definitely not be getting to all of these (although we will pick out the occasional title), you can consider this a list of “honorable mentions” for your own perusal and amusement. That out of the way, here’s how the ridiculously-long reader-suggested review queue now stands: Genius Party; The Idiots; “Premium” (depending on availability); Spermula; Killer Condom; Sir Henry at Rawlinson End; Moebius (1996); The Continue reading WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE→
Our weekly look at what’s weird in theaters, on hot-off-the-presses DVDs and Blu-rays (and hot off the server VODs), and on more distant horizons…
Trailers of new release movies are generally available at the official site links.
IN THEATERS (LIMITED RELEASE):
Longing (2017): A middle-aged bachelor receives a phone call telling him he has unknowingly been a father since college, and he searches for information about his son. Basically an Israeli arthouse drama, but reviewers describe a couple of dream sequences that may make it worth a look for weirdophiles. Longing Cineuropa entry.
FILM FESTIVALS – New York Film Festival (New York City, NY, Sep.28 – Oct 14):
We’re a little late in reporting on the NYFF. There are not a lot of debuts here, and a number of films overlap with Sitges (covered in a bit more detail below). Notable weird-ish U.S. premieres include Giorgos Lanthimos‘ period piece, The Favourite, and Jean-Luc Godard’s The Image Book.
FILM FESTIVALS – Sitges Film Festival (Sitges, Spain, Oct. 4 – 14):
Although Sitges always offers an excellent slate of fantastic films, they’re more into quantity than exclusivity. We’ve seen many of the choicest offerings— France’s All the Gods in the Sky; Jim Hosking‘s An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn;Quentin Dupieux ‘s Keep an Eye Out; the documentary Blue Velvet Revisited;Cam, Gaspar Noé‘s LSD orgy Climax; the surreal soccer flick Diamantino and Italian arthouse weirdness Happy as Lazzaro (both also at the New York Film Festival this week); the anthology The Field Guide to Evil; Agnieszka Smoczynska‘s amneisac Fugue; Guy Maddin and Evan JohnsonVertigo tribute, The Green Fog; Peter Strickland’s fashion horror In Fabric; the Czech stop-motion Laika; the black metal doc Lords of Chaos;Luz; Mandy; the telepathy horror Murder Me, Monster; Masaaki Yuasa‘s Night is Short, Walk on Girl; Nina Paley‘s sacrilegious animationSeder-Masochism; Top Knot Detective, the 2017 mockumentary about a fake Japanese TV show; Under the Silver Lake; and the Suspiria remake—debuting at other film festivals (and some have even already had theatrical releases). This makes Sitges a kind of “best of” 2018 festival. Among the many revivals are screenings of the restored versions of 2001: A Space Odyssey on Oct. 13th and Hour of the Wolf on Oct. 6. Skipping those, here are a couple of notable films and long shots we noticed:
10 Years Thailand – Four Thai directors, including Apichatpong Weerasethakul, imagine the future in this omnibus film screening on 10/8.
Luciferina – A novice nun learns the secret behind her psychic powers. Oct. 10.
“Pan’s Labyrinth: The Labyrinth of the Faun” (Jul 2019): Not a movie but a novelization of the Certified Weird classic, co-authored by Guillermo del Toro and fantasy author Cornelia Funke and illustrated by Allen Williams. Del Toro’s active participation ensures it will be canonical. Announced at the Bookseller.
BOOKS:
“True Indie: Life and Death in Filmmaking”: Three-time Certified Weird director Don Coscarelli reflects on his 30+ years as an independent filmmaker. Coscarelli is touring heavily to promote the book, often in conjunction with screenings of his cult films Phantasm or Bubba Ho-Tep, so be on the lookout for a book signing in your town (and check our repertory screenings list below). Buy “True Indie: Life and Death in Filmmaking.”
NEW ON HOME VIDEO:
Housewife (2017): A housewife with a disturbed past gets sucked into a cult called “the Umbrella of Love & Mind.” The sophomore film from Turkish horror upstart Can Evrenol, folks are using the “w word” to describe it. DVD or VOD. Buy Housewife.
Giorgio Moroder presents Metropolis (1927/1984): Read our review. A divisive, restored and re-tinted version of Fritz Lang‘s seminal urban dystopia, with a cheesy New Wave pop score from then-popular acts like Loverboy, Billy Squier and Pat Benetar. Once the best-looking version of the film available, it’s now a curiosity of cinema history. Watch Giorgio Moroder presents Metropolis free on Tubi.tv.
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.
As far as next week’s content goes… well, no hosting outages are planned, at least. We apologize about our web host’s catastrophic failure that took down this site (and thousands of others) for four days last week. Because of that unexpected contngency, next week’s slate will partly be a replay of what was originally scheduled for last week: the second half of Alfred Eaker‘s survey of Bela Lugosi’s Poverty Row works dubbed the “Monogram Nine” (Part 1 here), followed by El Rob Hubbard‘s review of Felidae, the 1994 German animated film about a feline detective pursuing a serial killer of cats. As far as previously unannounced fare goes, we’ll also bring you a review of the strange arthouse resort experiment All You Can Eat Buddha alongside Anthony Quinn‘s fitting swan song—Seven Servants, about a dying man who hires a multiracial crew of shirtless men to plug up his orifices (!)
Our attempts to highlight weird search terms used to locate the site were already seriously hampered by the pervasive use of privacy filters; taking an involuntary four days off last week didn’t help things. We noticed a search for “366 weird movies where has it gone,” but that was depressing rather than weird. Given our lack of a full slate this week, we won’t be anointing an official Weirdest Search Term of the Week this week. We’ll simply throw out a couple of incomprehensibly perverted English-as-a-second-language finds—“incent movies and sextual related chines movies” and “adolt star kili luc mms”—and leave it at that.
Time for our weekly cut n’ paste disclaimer regarding the reader-suggested review queue below: since we will definitely not be getting to all of these (although we will pick out the occasional title, as you’ll see this week), you can consider this a list of “honorable mentions” for your own perusal and amusement. That out of the way, here’s how the ridiculously-long reader-suggested review queue now stands: Felidae (next week!); Genius Party; The Idiots; “Premium” (depending on availability); Spermula; Killer Condom; Sir Henry at Continue reading WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE→
Our weekly look at what’s weird in theaters, on hot-off-the-presses DVDs and Blu-rays (and hot off the server VODs), and on more distant horizons…
Trailers of new release movies are generally available at the official site links.
FILM FESTIVALS – Beyond Fest (Los Angeles, 9/26-10/9):
LA’s Beyond Fest features revivals of classic genre fare (which we’ve listed in our “repertory screenings” section) mixed in with recent hits from other festivals like Anna and the Apocalypse, Jim Hosking‘s An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn, and Luz. Best of all, many screenings are free. Although they rarely land debuts, this year they do have one item of some interest:
Best F(r)iendsVol. 2 – Tommy Wiseau and Greg Sestero reunite for a followup to The Room; Vol. 2 is said to be weirder than last year’s Vol. 1 (which we confess we still haven’t seen). The world debut is tonight, Friday 9/28, at 7:30 PST, so it’s probably too late to get out there, but we’ll continue keeping an eye out for it.
The Baby (1973): Read our review. This drive-in style item about an adult baby kept as a pet is more popular with audiences then it was with us; thus, Arrow Video’s super-deluxe Blu-ray special edition with a commentary track and numerous featurettes. Buy The Baby.
Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977): Read our review. Trust the unpredictable John Boorman to make a truly absurd and deranged sequel to the original horror classic; Shout! Factory gives it a super-duper 2 Blu-ray release, with director’s and theatrical cuts each getting their own commentary tracks (from Boorman and “The Projection Booth”‘s Mike White, respectively). Buy Exorcist II: The Heretic.
Molly (2017): A pit-fighting gang hunts a girl with mysterious powers in a post-apocalytptic world. Probably a stretch for “weird,” but it’s piling up “good-considering-the-budget” reviews, and we have to admit we’re intrigued. It skipped theaters for a DVD/Blu-ray/VOD debut. Buy Molly.
Scarlet Diva (2000): Asia (daughter of Dario) Argento directs and stars as herself in this tawdry, self-indulgent, but “weirdly fascinating” (The New York Times) biopic about a lonely Italian actresses and her druggy sex life. There’s no longer any doubt that the rapist producer in the film is Harvey Weinstein, making this Blu-ray (with two Argento commentary tracks, from 2002 and 2018) a timely item. Buy Scarlet Diva.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1994): Reboot/remake/rehash of the 1974 horror classic, but with Leatherface now a transvestite, and Illuminati connections. It has a poor reputation even among horror-comedy fans, but one Amazon reviewer does say it’s “soo damned weird that I find myself watching it every so often and enjoying it every time.” New to Blu-ray. Buy Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation.
Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995): Black, black comedy about an obnoxious, bullied 7th grade girl. It’s in our reader-suggested review queue, and now on Blu-ray, too. Buy Welcome to the Dollhouse.
PODCASTS:
“What’s the Frequency?”: A fully-voiced “psychedelic noir” AM-radio-style audio drama set in 1940s Los Angeles, with new episodes once or twice a month. Creator James Oliva is a fan of ours, so we’re returning the favor. We recommend listening at podchaser, but you have lots of options to catch it. “What’s the Frequency? blog (with links and transcripts).
Los Angeles, CA, 9/30 – The Fly (1986) with Naked Lunch (1991)(double feature), with a panel discussion with director David Cronenberg and other crew between films. Sold out, standby only. At the Egyptian Theater.
Our weekly look at what’s weird in theaters, on hot-off-the-presses DVDs and Blu-rays (and hot off the server VODs), and on more distant horizons…
Trailers of new release movies are generally available at the official site links.
FILM FESTIVALS – Fantastic Fest (Austin, TX, 9/20-9/27):
The Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, TX may be America’s coolest movie theater. Their brand has grown so big that now they have franchised Drafthouses, and even distribute their own (generally weird) movies. One of the Alamo’s hippest projects is Fantastic Fest, going into its thirteenth year. As per usual, there is a fantastic slate of weird movies and some neato revivals here; this year, they are adding satellite screenings of select features in their Denver, Brooklyn and San Francisco locations. Coming at the tail end of the film festival season, much of the movies are retreads, but the Drafthouse folks always find a way to save some surprise debuts. Giles Edwards reported on Cam, Chained for Life, Luz, One Cut of the Dead, Under the Silver Lake and Violence Voyager for his Fantasia Festival 2018 coverage. We noted Gaspar Noé‘s LSD orgy Climax, Jim Hosking‘s “romantic comedy” An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn, Peter Strickland’s fashion horror In Fabric, and Terry Gilliam‘s long-awaited The Man Who Killed Don Quixote at earlier festivals. Here are the new-to-us films we’ll be tracking:
All the Gods in the Sky – A man waits for aliens to come and save him and his disabled sister. Screening Sep. 23 & 25.
Angel – An Argentine teen turns into a violent criminal, but sees his crimes as fantasy sequences. Sep. 25.
Between Worlds – Mandy isn’t Nicolas Cage‘s only strange and over-the-top role of the year; there’s also this one, where he must defend himself from the ghost of his wife, who’s jealous of his new relationship with a medium. See it Sep. 25.
Blood Lake (1987) – A slasher movie made by a cast of Oklahoman amateurs during summer vacation at a lake, it’s supposedly so bad it’s weird. Sep 23, with the director in attendance.
Deadwax – This story about a possessed record that drives people mad was shown on Shudder in 15 minute episodes; it’s presented as a full movie here. From Graham Reznick (who will be at the screening on Sep 23), so you know it will be weird.
Dog – French black comedy about a man who thinks he’s turning into a dog. Sep. 21 & 24.
Fugue – Agnieszka Smoczynska‘s followup to her Certified Weird The Lure is about a woman with total memory loss. Don’t forget to check it out on Sep 21 or 27.
Keep an Eye Out – Quentin Dupieux returns with a comedy set during an all-night interrogation. Sep. 27.
Ladyworld – Eight teenage girls are trapped in a house by an earthquake in a surreal distaff take on “Lord of the Flies.” Sep. 24.
Laika – Stop-motion Czech musical positing that a dog the Soviets shot into space in 1957 actually landed on an alien planet. Sep. 26.
Lords of Chaos – The true story of the infamous Norwegian black metal band Mayhem, but with dream sequences. Screens Sep. 27.
Madame Yankelova’s Fine Literature Club – An aging temptress is ordered to bring one final date to her feminist cannibal club, but starts to fall for her prey. Sep. 24.
May the Devil Take You – The Devil comes to claim the father of an estranged daughter in this Indonesian horror. Sep. 23 & 25.
Murder Me, Monster – The chief suspect in a series of decapitations claims he’s in telepathic contact with the monster who is the real killer. Sep. 23 & 26.
Starfish – Things go from bad to worse for young Aubrey when her best friend dies, and then the apocalypse arrives soon after. On Sep. 27.
Strike, Dear Mistress, and Cure His Heart – Surreal microbudget drama based on Bergman’s Autumn Sonata, and recommended to connoisseurs of the “strange and unusual.” Sep. 25.
When the Trees Fall – Ukrainian tale of young lovers and a life of crime, with bursts of magical realism. Sep-23-24.
White Fire (1984) – Oddity about a gang of diamond smugglers after a massive jewel that burns anyone who touches it. The Sep 20 screening may be the first time anyone’s seen it in 34 years.
The Wolf House [La Casa Lobo] – Disturbing stop-motion feature about a girl who’s punished by being forced to spend 100 nights alone in a cabin in the woods.
Cabin Boy (1994): A “fancy lad” takes a job as a cabin boy on a fishing ship. This absurdist comedy from Chris Elliot (of the David Letterman show) went way over the heads of 1994 audiences and flopped like a mackerel, but it’s gained a cult following sense. Now on DVD and Blu-ray with many extras including a commentary track from Elliot and director Adam Resnick. Buy Cabin Boy.
Damsel (2018): A cowboy (Robert Pattinson) journeys across the frontier, miniature horse in tow, to join his strong-willed bride-to-be (Mia Wasikowska). This somewhat bizarre Western died quietly at the box office and now is out in bare-bones DVD or VOD (no Blu-ray, sorry). Buy Damsel.
Horrors of Malformed Men (1969): An escaped mental patient assumes the identity of his own doppelganger and winds up on a mad doctor’s island. Teruo Ishii devised this macabre tale by merging several Edogawa Rampo stories, now restored and out in a deluxe edition from Arrow Video (the Criterion Collection of schlock film). Buy Horrors of Malformed Men.
Next week, Alfred Eaker gets an early jump on Halloween with coverage of Bela Lugosi‘s sad poverty row days (the “Monogram Nine”), in the first of a two-part series. We also promise a look at that very strange Finnish samurai, Samurai Rauni Reposaarelainen, and of Sergei Parajanov‘s hallucinatory Ukrainian folk tale, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1964). We’ll throw another review in there too, but it’s a surprise (that means we don’t yet know for sure what it will be—be sure to tune in to find out!)
It’s time once more for our weekly survey of the weirdest search terms used to locate the site this week—and, in a twist, this week we actually have odd items to report on, despite Google’s privacy settings hiding 95% of all queries from our prying eyes. First off, we have to ask whether “BoNPX6Hmaey7u_h8dRDy5DIhZ_aqR4wroUYV-gM_0Qp_5dE9sNsWrmCOZbYf7Y1iCAnsRHwYUVmG3mIqQ2sS3nmmunwjYkLTDFcVZanLp-l_4as_NGEmhMsS1fsC9ZBwfhPt9owSOYw8gsg8K-a_ZDSPxAOIDffKiw9EUS71Qn9erCLIu1bv8yJVIoWDJ92DufrXi_iteVklP0wlp3BgSV1mlkPx50HZcgXI2XND5WMc6LIoMBV8p_S2g0lUof-YoAjfxiS3KgnleA6-64Ljt3aLdSVUo0whpvqP6041nzOjOdYPwF6e96PrlB5XdUyFBEEpRhw9cfmRYy7ADxMBtg” counts as an actual weird search term, or is it just a bizarre blip in Google Analytics? We’re decided to pass on it, because we also have “sex doll from hell“—which could be either a description of a fun horror movie, or a customer complaint. There’s also “movie – man removes one limb at a tme time from a woman until she is limitless” (I think that’s the wrong word there at the end) and “guy pulls ring from girl’s stomach blue blood movie.” But we think “1980 movie about a hotel. octopus in moccie” is the weirdest search term we saw this week. It was a surprising revival of weirdness in searches this week—let’s hope drunken ESL Googlers keep this trend going over the next seven days and for the foreseeable future!
Time for our weekly cut n’ paste disclaimer regarding the reader-suggested review queue below: since we will definitely not be getting to all of these (although we will pick out the occasional title, as you’ll see this week), you can consider this a list of “honorable mentions” for your own perusal and amusement. That out of the way, here’s how the ridiculously-long reader-suggested review queue now stands: Samurai Rauni Reposaarelainen (next week!); Genius Party; The Idiots; “Premium” (depending on availability); Spermula; Continue reading WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE→
Celebrating the cinematically surreal, bizarre, cult, oddball, fantastique, strange, psychedelic, and the just plain WEIRD!
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