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.

NEW ON DVD:

Big Tits Zombie (2010): Japanese strippers battle zombies, with the usual splatterpunk absurdity. We can’t pass up a title like this, as much as we’d like to. Buy Big Tits Zombie.

“Eclipse Series 37: When Horror Came to Shochiku” (The X from Outer Space/Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell/The Living Skeleton/Genocide): Four films from the award-winning (Tokyo Story) Shochiku Studios short-lived dive into the pulp-horror market, 1967-1968. Vengeful ghosts, killer bugs, and giant alien chickens populate these wild movies; of most interest to us are the alien space vampires of Goke, which we can now officially mark off our out-of-print wishlist. Buy “Eclipse Series 37: When Horror Came to Shochiku”.

Naked Trip: On the Run from the Mafia (2008): A British filmmaker kidnaps an actress and goes on the run from the mafia in what the promotional material describes as a “surreal mix of trash, experimental and art-house cinema.” That part sound encouraging, but we’re a little bit concerned about why this took almost 5 years to make it to DVD. Buy Naked Trip: On The Run From The Mafia.

Slaughter Tales (2012): A 15-year old boy steals a cursed VHS videotape and watches the horror anthology contained therein. The weird part? This tribute to 1980s shot-on-video horrors was directed by 15-year old horror fan Johnny Dickey. Buy Slaughter Tales.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Grave of the Fireflies (1988): Heartbreaking dramatic anime about the fate of two Japanese orphans during World War II. Not entirely realistic, yet something of a stretch for “weird”; it’s still a highly anticipated Blu-ray debut that’s worth taking note of. Buy Grave of the Fireflies [Blu-ray].

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.

2012 is drawing to a close faster than we realize, and it’s time to look for this year’s overlooked weird gems. To that end, next week we’ll be taking a taste of the luscious Chicken with Plums (the live-action romantic fantasy from the makers of Persepolis); investigating Nobody Else But You, the French mystery about a dead cheese model who believed herself to be the reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe; and we’ll take a trip In the Realms of the Unreal, the documentary about outsider artist (and definite weirdo) Henry Darger and his fantasy world where little girl warriors battle evil adult slavers. Alfred will actually look ahead to 2013 as he gives us more inside info on the creation of the upcoming Creeporia. Oh, and on Thursday, we’re going to try and fit in some turkey and football as well… just saying.

Weird search terms used to locate the site this week were more quantity than quality, but at least we have lots of candidates to pick from in our weekly quest to isolate the Weirdest Search Term of the Week. We strongly considered making “super despondent japanese nurses sucking part1” our weirdest search term of the week, but we disqualified the query when we discovered there actually is a video by this exact name (obviously it’s a highly adult material, so don’t search for it—you’ll probably just end up back here, anyway). If super despondent Japanese nurse porn is out there, then you have to feel for the guy asking “where’s the snake midget porn”? Speaking of questions that confound even Google, we can think of no possible advice for the person asking “wherees fur mat thing? lounge on it naked facedown?” Our official Weirdest Search Term of the Week, however, is the ambiguous “wordpress putting a table above midgets.” Are they saying that content management system WordPress values tables more than midgets, or that if you try to insert a midget into your WordPress blog, it automatically inserts a table above it?

Here’s how the ridiculously-long-and-ever-growing reader-suggested review queue now stands: The Hour-glass Sanatorium [Saanatorium pod klepsidra]; Liquid Sky (re-review); Society; Final Programme; “Foutaises”; Bloodsucking Freaks; Lost Highway; Valerie and Her Week of Wonders Continue reading WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE →

Here’s the movies we’ll be examining next week: The Devil’s Carnival, Darren Lynn Bousman‘s latest horror musical; the oddball ventriloquist doc Her Master’s Voice; and Shion Sono‘s Catholic panty-fetish comedy Love Exposure. Moving from Alfred Eaker will give us behind-the-scenes insight into the genesis of a low-budget film project as he discusses the upcoming horror-comedy-soap opera Creeporia.

Some weeks, we struggle to find two or three truly weird search terms to bring to your attention for our “Weirdest Search Term of the Week” contest. Other weeks, we get so many bizarre candidates that we’re turning away searches like “huge rats attack women and pregnant her ( film erotic)” as too normal. If you hadn’t guessed, this is one of the latter types of weeks. We’ll start by mentioning the person looking for the answer to the question, “how many black guys has aline had sex with” (Google suggests they might really want to know how many guys a line has had sex with). The search for “horses anal shaggy” is strange enough that we can’t pass up mentioning it, even though we don’t want to think about what the searcher may have been looking for. In another week the incoherently horny “what is the best time to drink water during eating food from porn naked stars” would be a clear winner for the Weirdest Search Term of the Week, but this week it’s just the runner up to “cartoon weman stomics moving because are full with mansters porn.” Even correcting for spelling, that is a specific (and extremely weird) fetish!

Here’s how the ridiculously-long-and-ever-growing reader-suggested review queue stands: Love Exposure (next week!); The Hour-glass Sanatorium [Saanatorium pod klepsidra]; Liquid Sky (re-review); Society; Final Programme; “Foutaises”; Bloodsucking Freaks; Lost Highway; Valerie and Her 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 DEVELOPMENT:

Wastelander Panda (est 2013): A Panda wanders a post-apocalyptic wasteland in this three-part web-series planned for a 2013 release. The prologue/trailer has already been released and it looks pretty professional. Wastelander Panda official site.

Zombie Lesbian Musical (est. 2013): The title’s a little on the nose, don’t you think? No idea what this is about except that it’s from the producers of Wastelander Panda, it has its own Facebook page with 3600+ likes, and we suspect it’s an official feature length expansion of “Cupcake: A Zombie Lesbian Musical” (if it’s not, look out for a zombie lesbian lawsuit). Zombie Lesbian Musical Facebook page.

NEW ON DVD:

The Day He Arrives [Book chon bang hyang] (2011): A filmmaker goes to Seoul to meet a friend, misses him, gets drunk, goes home with a woman who resembles his old girlfriend… and the next day repeats the same events with slight variations, and again the next day… It appears to be a slightly surreal Korean arthouse variation on Groundhog Day. Buy The Day He Arrives.

“Elvira’s Movie Macabre Mega Movie Marathon”: Twelve terror titles presented by the tit-ular horror hostess. With the exception of the public domain classic Night of the Living Dead, the movies featured here are all pretty bad; sometimes amusingly bad, mostly just plain old bad. From most to least interesting, the movies we’ve reviewed in these pages are The Brain that Wouldn’t Die, The Manster and The Terror. Buy “Elvira’s Movie Macabre Mega Movie Marathon”.

Hospitalité (2010): A visitor with a Caucasian wife imposes himself on a Tokyo family, sowing chaos. Reviewers hint at a subtle strain of surrealism running through this allegory about Japanese xenophobia. Buy Hospitalité.

FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON YOUTUBE:

The Fourth Dimension (2012): A triptych of short films with temporal themes described as “weird, ominous, cool, compelling.” One of the three pieces is from Harmony Korine and stars Val Kilmer as a motivational speaker. Watch The Fourth Dimension 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.

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 (WIDE RELEASE):

The Man with the Iron Fists: This wuxia tribute movie with a generic “human weapon battles warring clans” plot is “presented by” Quentin Tarantino and co-written and directed by rapper RZA, who also appears as the blacksmith. The tagline is “it puts the f-u in kung fu,” so you can’t take it too seriously, but Scott Weinberg encouragingly called it a “joyously bizarre little action movie.” The Man with the Iron Fists official site.

IN THEATERS (LIMITED RELEASE):

Jack and Diane: It’s a teen lesbian romance werewolf movie, and it’s an art film. Reviews have been terrible, but “teen lesbian werewolf romance art film” says “potentially weird” to us, and they did talk the Quay Brothers into providing the animation. Jack and Diane official site.

This Must Be the Place: Here’s a truly odd premise for a comedy: a retired goth-rock star hunts the Nazi who persecuted his father at Auschwitz.  Starring Sean Penn, of all people, as the laconic, androgynous angel of vengeance. This Must Be the Place Facebook site.

IN DEVELOPMENT:

This Film Hates You (est. 2013): According to the filmmakers this hateful movie is “a bizarre, surreal feature film about love, hate, violence, death, sex, aristocrats, bums, skeleton keys, white blood, and bananas….” Looking at the concept trailer, I would add free jazz and nudity to that list. They’ve already met their extremely modest Kickstarter goal, so the project should be a go. This Film Hates You official site.

NEW ON DVD:

The Ballad Of Genesis And Lady Jaye (2011): Documentary on artist-musician Genesis P-Orridge (of Throbbing Gristle) and the series of plastic surgeries he and his lover, Lady Jaye, undertook with the goal of looking identical. A weird couple and a weird subject, for sure. Buy The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye.

Rosemary’s Baby (1968): A young couple move into a New York City apartment and suspect that their neighbors may be dabbling in the occult. Not really a “weird” movie per se, but it has one great dream sequence and it’s part of Roman Polanski‘s unofficial “apartment trilogy” alongside the Certified Weird Repulsion (1965). Buy Rosemary’s Baby (Criterion Collection).

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

“Alfred Hitchcock: The Masterpiece Collection”: A limited edition Blu-ray collection of 15 of Hitchcock’s greatest. Weirdophiles may be disappointed to find Hitch’s most surreal attempt, the Freudian Spellbound, missing, but the subtle strangeness of Vertigo and The Birds alongside classics like North by Northwest and Psycho may help compensate. Buy “Alfred Hitchcock: The Masterpiece Collection” [Limited Edition Blu-ray].

Rosemary’s Baby (1968): See description in DVD above. Buy Rosemary’s Baby (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray].

FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON YOUTUBE:

Zombie Strippers (2008): An experimental virus turns women of loose wardrobes into the titular creatures. It should go without saying that this spoof starring ex-porn star Jenna Jameson is intended for “mature” audiences. Watch Zombie Strippers 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.