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.

IN THEATERS (LIMITED RELEASE):

The Human Race (2012): Random American citizens are whisked away to a netherworld to participate in a brutal death race; two of them are deaf, and the main character has only one leg. The Facebook page lists it as opening June 13th, but doesn’t say where. The Human Race official Facebook page.

Witching and Bitching (2103): Alex de la Iglesia’s latest sounds like From Dusk Till Dawn with witches; bank robbers fleeing a heist run into a coven in the woods. The Village Voice says it’s “the rare wannabe cult hit that smears the screen in grade-A craziness.” Playing at IFC Center in Manhattan this week; no word on future dates or venues. Witching and Bitching official site.

NEW ON DVD:

Bushido Man: Seven Deadly Battles [AKA Bushido Man] (2013): A martial arts student goes on a quest to defeat the legendary masters of seven different weapons, and provides a detailed report on the meal his opponent ate before each battle. It’s the first samurai flick for foodies. Buy Bushido Man: Seven Deadly Battles.

Hide and Seek (2013): A man’s search for his missing brother leads him to a strange apartment complex with mysterious symbols scrawled everywhere. Fearnet’s Scott Weinberg promises that this Korean mystery/horror “gets pretty weird.” Buy Hide and Seek.

Visitors (2013): Godfrey Reggio (Koyaanisqatsi) again teams up with composer Philip Glass for a wordless, minimalist documentary parade of images, this time themed around man’s relationship to technology. Guaranteed to be a not-for-everyone experience! Buy Visitors.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Bushido Man: Seven Deadly Battles (2013): See description in DVD above. Buy Bushido Man: Seven Deadly Battles [Blu-ray].

Visitors (2013): See description in DVD above. A Blu-ray/DVD combo pack. Buy Visitors [Blu-ray/DVD combo].

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.

We’ll promise to bring you the following reviews next week: James Harben shares the The Company of Wolves (1984); G. Smalley gets a hankering to cover the urban alienation of Crave (2012); Alfred Eaker takes on another Summer Blockbuster as he tries to put Amazing Spiderman 2 in its place; and L. Rob Hubbard (and friends) can’t escape yet another tilt at last year’s surreal Disney satire Escape from Tomorrow.

It was another lean week for weird search terms used to locate the site, but we’ll bring you the oddest searches we found in our logs for the popular feature we like to call “Weirdest Search Term of the Week.” First off is “women get naked by plant ghost movie”: we love the concept of ghost plants that remove women’s clothes! (To be fair, we love the concept of anything that removes women’s clothes). Similar in spirit is “movie 22 giant woman vs octopus xvideo” (if we were betting men, we’d put our money on the 22 giant women). The previous entry might have won our Weirdest Search Term of the Week contest, except for the fact that it returns legitimate Google results, which can’t be said about our actual winner: “horror movie where woman takes pills and grows horse penis.” We’re sure someone will identify the horse-penis pill movie, though, and then where will that leave us?

Here’s how the ridiculously-long-and-ever-growing reader-suggested review queue currently stands: Abnormal: The Sinema of Nick Zedd; Rubin & Ed; The Real McCoy; Themroc; Candy (1968); Night of the Hunter; The Fox Family; Midnight Skater; Angelus; Cloudy with a Chance of  Meatballs; Yokai Continue reading WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE →

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.

IN THEATERS (LIMITED RELEASE):

Borgman (2013): Strange things happen when a rich woman harbors a mysterious fugitive. From the intriguing Dutchman Alex van Warmerdam, who says it is his darkest movie yet. Drafthouse Films opens Borgman in New York this week with scattered U.S. screenings to follow throughout the summer. Borgman official site.

SCREENINGS – (Cinefamily, Los Angeles, Jun. 6-9):

“Welcome, Space Brothers: The Films of the Unarius Academy of Science”: It seems that last week’s screening of the public access films of Ruth E. Norman’s Los Angeles-based UFO cult (see last week’s Weird Horizon for more info and a trailer) proved so popular that they’ve scheduled additional screenings of “The Arrival” starting this weekend. No new past-life regression workshops, however; maybe you can attend one in your next life?  “Welcome, Space Brothers” at Cinefamily.

SCREENINGS – (Cinefamily, Los Angeles,Jun. 9 & 11):

The Hourglass Sanitorium (1973): Read our review. In more serious fare, Cinefamily presents Wojciech Has‘ rarely-screened Surrealist masterpiece about a time-bending sanitarium as part of Martin Scorsese‘s “Masterpieces of Polish Cinema” series. More information, screening times and a new trailer at the Cinefamily Hourglass Sanitorium page.

NEW ON DVD:

Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction (2012): A documentary portrait of the oddball cult actor (who sings two folk songs in the movie). Our readers will best know Stanton from his appearances in the Certified Weird INLAND EMPIRE (2006) and Repo Man (1984). Buy Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction.

“Video Nasties: The Definitive Guide”: Here’s an interesting three-disc set. Disc one contains the 2010 documentary Video Nasties: Moral Panic, Videotape, and Censorship, about the infamous list of 72 horror films the British government deemed too vile and depraved to be shown in the United Kingdom (although ultimately many of these movies successfully beat obscenity prosecutions, or were released with a few minutes cut out). Discs 2 & 3 contain trailers for each of the nasties, with some additional commentary by film historians. For years, the video nasty list was used as a source by extreme horror fans looking for “quality” entertainment. Although none of the movies on the Directory of Public Prosecutions list has (yet) been Certified Weird by us, Dario Argento‘s Inferno (1980) and Andrzej Zulawski’s Possession (1981) are official List Candidates (a “nasty” citation for the critically acclaimed, award-winning Possession proved a particular embarrassment for the British Board of Film Censors). Buy “Video Nasties: The Definitive Guide”.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Death Bed: The Bed That Eats (1977): Read our review! It’s hard to believe this ultra-low budget 1977 amateur outsider horror movie would benefit from hi-def remastering, but the draw in this Cult Epics Blu is the special features that were not present on the bare-bones DVD release, particularly the commentary track by director George Barry. Buy Death Bed: The Bed That Eats [Blu-ray].

What are you looking forward to? If you have any weird movie leads that we have overlooked, feel free to leave them in the COMMENTS section.

Here’s what’s coming up in next week’s reviews: James Harben will sample Frank Henenlotter‘s addictive 1988 black comedy, Brain Damage; we’ll take a look at Quentin Dupieux‘s latest absurdist comedy caper, Wrong Cops, and we’ll venture into the depravity of 2005’s cult classic Sin City (whetting your appetite for the release of the noirish sequel on August 22).

Unusual sex and unusual food dominated the list of the weirdest search terms that brought people to 366 Weird Movies last week. Sexy queries like “1980’s movie about zombies having sex” and “octopus sex movies” were common. (We should also mention the person who was searching for “whats the name of the movie with the yellow monster pervert”—they may have been a week early with that search). On the culinary side, “movie about a girl asked to eat a leader of a cult” caught our eye. Our official Weirdest Search Term of the Week combines our readers’ preoccupations with sex and food: “black and white horror movie where son michal eat womans breast.”  Yum!

Since New Yorker Films’ promised release of Celine and Julie Go Boating has yet to materialize (a year and waiting now), we’re officially moving Jacques Rivette’s playfully surreal farce to our out-of-print holding pen (see bottom of this post). With that alteration, here’s how the ridiculously-long-and-ever-growing reader-suggested review queue currently stands: Brain Damage (next week!); Abnormal: The Sinema of Nick Zedd; Rubin & Ed; The Real McCoy; Themroc; Candy (1968); Night of the Hunter; The Fox Family; Midnight Skater; Angelus; Cloudy with a Chance of  Meatballs; Continue reading WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE →