A 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 Theater Bizarre:  A six-film horror anthology from directors Douglas Buck, Buddy Giovinazzo, David Gregory, Karim Hussain, Jeremy Kasten, Tom Savini, and Richard Stanley.  Apparently Hussain’s segment is surreal.  The Theater Bizarre official Facebook page.

The Wicker Tree:  Two missionaries travel to a remote Scottish town where the villagers still worship the old pagan gods in this re-make/boot/hash of the Certified Weird The Wicker Man (1973).  It’s from original director Robin Hardy and brings back star Christopher Lee for a cameo, but early reviews suggest Hardy should have left the old gods sleeping.  We’ll probably check it out anyway: could it be worse than the infamous 2006 remake with Nicolas Cage?  The Wicker Tree official site.

VIDEO-ON-DEMAND:

Tim & Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie:  The Cartoon Network cult comics get their own billion dollar extravaganza, but blow the entire budget on celebrity cameos by Jeff Goldblum, Zach Galifianakis, and Will Ferrell, among others.  The plot has something to do with shrim [sic].  This will be released to theaters in early March, but you can rent the movie now. Rent Tim & Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie on Video-on-Demand.

The Wholly Family:  Terry Gilliam‘s much anticipated short film is set in Naples and involves Fellini-esque clowns and the director’s typically visionary visuals.  It was commissioned by a pasta company and is believed to run around 15 minutes; it’s available for a $3 rental from Gilliam’s official site.  Rent The Wholly Family at Terry Gilliam’s official site.

NEW ON DVD:

Fascination (1979):  This week, Redemption Video is remastering and re-releasing five of the seldom-seen, dreamlike erotic vampire films of the infamous Jean Rollin (a box set would have been nice, but we’ll take what we can get).  Fascination, the most recent of this bunch, features ex-porn star Brigitte Lahaie as a bisexual vampire aristocrat with a scythe, and is one of the director’s most popular and well-received movies.  Buy Fascination.

The Iron Rose [AKA Rose of Iron] (1973):  A couple wander into a cemetery and can’t find their way out.  There’s a vampire, Gothic atmosphere, and a clown delivering flowers to a grave. Buy The Iron Rose.

Lips of Blood (1975):  An amnesiac man is reminded of his life as a vampire after seeing a his family castle on a poster. Rollins was nearly killed making this film when he dived into the sea to try to save a coffin prop and was struck on the head and knocked unconscious. Buy Lips of Blood.

The Nude Vampire (1970): This is the immediate followup to Rollin’s Rape of the Vampire (1968), the movie that kicked off the director’s mildly surrealistic, exploitative erotic vampire fetish formula.  This one throws in interdimensional portals and a stag-headed man alongside the marquee vampire(s).  Buy The Nude Vampire.

Shiver of the Vampires [AKA Strange Things Happen at Night] (1971):  A honeymooning couple stay in a castle run by vampires.  The usual nonsensical atmosphere and nude women Rollin fans crave. Buy Shiver of the Vampires.

Sister Mary (2011): We’re going entirely off the plot synopsis here, but this does sound weird: a homophobic cop teams up with a flamboyantly gay partner to stop a serial killing nun, and they end up uncovering a conspiracy by the Catholic Church.  So it’s a homoerotic blasphemous comedy thriller; oh, and it’s listed as a musical, too.  Starring Judy Tenuda (remember her?) as the serial Sister. Buy Sister Mary.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Annie Hall (1977): Read our capsule review.  Not a weird movie per se, but a classic fourth wall breaker. Buy Annie Hall [Blu-ray].

Fascination (1979):  See description in DVD above.  Buy Fascination [Blu-ray].

The Iron Rose [AKA Rose of Iron] (1973): See description in DVD above. Buy The Iron Rose [Blu-ray].

Lips of Blood (1975): See description in DVD above. Buy Lips of Blood [Blu-ray].

The Nude Vampire (1970): See description in DVD above. Buy The Nude Vampire [Blu-ray].

Restless (2011):  In Gus van Sant’s latest, a boy obsessed with funerals (a la Harold in Harold and Maude) romances a girl with terminal cancer.  Also, his best friend is the ghost of a Japanese kamikaze pilot.  We chose to skip this bit of sentimental quirky magical realism when it briefly played in theaters, but it might make for an OK rental.  This offering is a DVD/Blu-ray combo pack. Buy Restless (Two-Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo).

Shiver of the Vampires [Strange Things Happen at Night] (1971): See description in DVD above. Buy Shiver of the Vampires [Blu-ray].

Spellbound (1945):  The new psychiatrist (Gregory Peck) at a mental hospital has amnesia and may actually be crazier then any of the patients; a glacial female doctor (Ingrid Bergman) helps him work though his repressed memories to discover a horrifying secret.  So may of Hitchcock’s great movies tease us with near-weirdness; this flirtation is the director’s most serious, as Hitch actually hired Salvador Dalí to prepare the dream sequences. Buy Spellbound [Blu-ray].

FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON YOUTUBE:

Star Wars Uncut (2012): You may remember this project.  Hundreds of amateurs and semi-professionals were invited to recreate scenes from Star Wars: A New Hope (1977).  The resulting pastiche switches styles from one submission to another every 15 seconds, turning the completed movie into a disorientingly hilarious experience.  Contributions range from relatively sophisticated animations to textspeak iPhone transcripts to people acting out the scenes using their pets, and it features more hairy guys playing Princess Leia in drag than you’d ever want to see in one lifetime. Worth a watch.  Watch Star Wars Uncut 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.

Now that we’ve certified over 100 movies weird, we’ll be kicking off next week by taking a second pass at our semi-official “top 10 weird movies” list.  I know this will be a rehash for you long-time 366 veterans, but it’s a useful service for new visitors who want a best-of-the-best primer to start off with; and, you would not believe how much Googlers love top 10 lists!  Don’t worry, though, we’ll still be adding new reviews to the database, including our take on Jean-Luc Goddard’s divisive latest movie essay, Film Socialisme (2010), and, from the reader-suggested review queue, we’ll break down the bizarre stop-motion fairy tale Blood Tea and Red String (2006).

We’re getting more and more search engine traffic—over 1000 unique queries most days.  This is making it harder, not easier, to find a Weirdest Search Terms of the Week, as we’re forced to scan the server logs with a quicker eye to keep the project from eating up our little bit of free time.  Nonetheless, we’ll continue to point out the strange noises we do find amidst the massive signal.  First, we’re proud (though a bit confused) that we continue to hold a top 5 ranking for the term “saxyshat.”  Also, we are now going to be on the lookout for “an alien movie that made some womens boobs grow” (personally, if I can find it, I think it would be worth a shot to show this one to my girlfriend).  We’re less enthused about the “movie where pregnant goat moves to woman,” and “monsther minds perverted wit tens ladys porno movies” is just outside our area of expertise. Our weirdest search term of the week, however, goes to ‘illuminati face “skinning” children.’  We knew the Illuminati worked in mysterious ways, but for God’s sake, can’t they leave the children out of it?

Here’s the massive, ever-growing reader-suggested review queue: Blood Tea and Red Strings (next week!); Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory; The Bride of Frank; La Grande Bouffe; Hedwig and the Angry Inch; Even Dwarves Started Small;  “My Wrongs 8245-8249 and 117″; Continue reading WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE →

A 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):

Fullmetal Alchemist: The Sacred Star of Milos (2011):  The heroes of the long running anime series find themselves embroiled in a rebellion.  This is being released in the original Japanese with English subtitles to please purists.  It’s playing all over the U.S. and Canada, but for one day only in some locales, so schedule accordingly if you want to catch it.  Fullmetal Alchemist: The Sacred Star of Milos official Facebook page.

FILM FESTIVALS – SUNDANCE (Park City, Utah, Jan 19-29):

It’s that time again: time for Sundance, the make-or-break festival for American indies.  If last year’s slate is a predictor, about a third of the movies listed here will fail to find a distributor and virtually disappear, another third will struggle hard to earn only a limited release, and of the remainder one or two will become minor hits.  Nonetheless, it’s still our earliest indicator for what we’ll be anointing as “weird” in 2012.  Sundance festival home page.

• Beasts of the Southern Wild – A six-year old girl named Hushpuppy contracts a fever, which seems to usher in the apocalypse and a plague of prehistoric creatures called aurochs. Screening Jan 20-24, 26.
• Bobby Yeah – We don’t usual spotlight shorts, but this 23-minute film by the talented and macabre Robert Morgan is an exception.  Watch the trailer to see why. Jan 20, 21, 24 & 27.
• Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared –  We’re breaking our rule of not mentioning short films for a second time, but this time it’s because we scooped Sundance by featuring this creepy kids song about creativity gone too far way back in August.  If  you must see it on the big screen, then you can catch it screening before the indie drama Kid-Thing Jan 23-24 or 26-28.
• Elena – Modern Russian class-struggle drama about an aging woman maneuvering to secure her husband’s inheritance.  Yawn, Sundance, we already reviewed this one.  Give us something new.  Jan 21-22, 24, 27-28.
• Excision – Horror film about a spooky, morbid teen girl who decides to lose her virginity and then, per the synopsis, “the weirdness really begins.”  Not much is known about this one except that it’s playing in the “Midnight” category and it features both Traci Lords and the man who gave disgraced Traci her “big” break— John Waters.  Jan 21, 25, 27-28.
• Grabbers – Irish monster movie where potential victims discover they can dissuade alien invaders from snacking on them by raising their blood alcohol levels. A “Midnight” feature.  Jan 23, 25-27.
• It’s Such a Beautiful Day – Once again, we don’t focus on festival shorts, but we’ll make a third exception for Don Hertzfeldt‘s latest, since it’s the third installment of the stick-figure psychodrama Everything Will Be OK, which we first embedded way back in May.  See it Jan. 21, 23, or 27-28, screened in the animated shorts program.
• John Dies in the End – Cult director Don Coscarelli adapts a popular webseries about two losers saving the world from a psychedelic drug being used by aliens to take over the planet.  In the “Midnight” category, natch.  Jan 23, 25-26, 28.
• L – A man lives in his car and delivers honey to a narcoleptic for a living in this “willfully bizarre,” bear-obsessed Greek feature.  Co-written by the co-writer of Dogtooth, so it starts with weird Hellenic cred.  Jan 23-25, 27-28.
• Oversimplification of Her Beauty – An impressionistic, experimental, partially animated portrait of a young artist and his desire for a beautiful woman.  Part of the “New Frontier” series.  Jan 21, 23-24, 28.
• Room 237 – Documentary about a phenomenon I didn’t realize existed, but am not at all surprised by: people who believe that Stanley Kubrick‘s The Shining contains hidden messages revealing vast international conspiracies.  One loony theorizes that the entire movie is Kubrick’s coded confession that he helped fake the footage of Americans landing on the moon.  Jan 23-24, 26, 28.
• 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. Jan. 21-22, 25, 28.
• Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie – The Cartoon Network cult comics get their own billion dollar extravaganza, but blow the entire budget on celebrity cameos by Jeff Goldblum, Zach Galifianakis, and Will Ferrell, among others.  The plot has something to do with shrim [sic]. Jan 20-21, 24, 27-28.
• V/H/S – A horror anthology wherein burglars are hired to break in to a home to steal a rare VHS tape, but find that every cassette they watch is stranger and more disturbing than the last one.  Playing at Midnight.  Jan 22-24, 28.
• whiteonwhite:algorithmicnoir – Here’s something you’ll probably never see on home video.  If I’ve understood the synopsis correctly, this black and white dystopian noir selects, semi-randomly and in real time, a combination of film clips, voiceover dialogue, and background music to create an experience that’s different with every showing.  Catch it Jan. 22, 24-25.
• Wrong – A man looking for his lost dog encounters bizarre characters and risks losing his sanity.  This is director Quentin Dupieux ‘s followup to his weird hit Rubber, and per the synopsis this one is “equally bizarre.”  Jan 21-22, 24, 26-27.

NEW ON DVD:

Belle de Jour (1967): Catherine Deneuve is a housewife by day, hooker by night in this masochistic, surrealistic erotic fantasy from Luis Buñuel.  At one point she’s tied up and splattered with shovelfuls of mud while workers insult her; strong stuff for a 1967 art film.  The Criterion disc comes with 30 minutes of supplemental material.  Buy Belle de Jour (Criterion Collection).

Bombay Beach (2011):  Footage of three residents of the decaying Salton Sea region—a bipolar boy, a high school athlete fleeing gang violence, and a retired oil-rig worker—is mixed with musical montages from Beirut and Bob Dylan to create what the makers describe as a “slightly surreal documentary experience.” Buy Bombay Beach.

Caterpillar (2010):  The Japanese emperor declares a deaf-mute quadruple amputee a Sino-Japanese war hero and orders his wife to take care of him—including sexually.  Not so surreal, but certainly unusual, and the scenario recalls the weird anti-war classic Johnny Got His Gun. Buy Caterpillar.

Cold Sweat (2010):  An elderly couple abduct women, strip them to their underwear, and douse them in liquid nitroglycerin to force their obedience in this odd low-budget Argentinian horror-thriller.  The consensus seems to be its utterly ludicrous but shamelessly fun. Buy Cold Sweat.

The Overcoat [Il Cappotto] (1952): A lowly bureaucrat buys, then loses, a fancy overcoat, then returns from the dead to look for it.  No idea how strange this seldom-seen Italian adaptation of Nicolai Gogol’s short story is, but the original tale was odd enough that Vladmir Nabokov gave a famous lecture on it in which he concluded “great literature skirts the irrational.” Buy The Overcoat [Il Cappotto].

The Platinum Pussycat (1968)/The Sexploiters (1965):  We mention this Retro-Seduction Cinema double-feature release for Pussycat [AKA The Losers]; it’s a gangster sexploitation/action feature, and simultaneously a silent film with tinted footage.  It may not be good, but at least it’s sure to be bad in a different way.  Less is known about The Sexploiters. Buy Platinum Pussycat/The Sexploiters.

Redline (2009): An anime about a futuristic race, and a rebel who tries to win it while foregoing the customary arsenal of weaponry.  It sounds like an animated Japanese version of Death Race 2000, from a director who worked as an animator on Ninja Scroll and Funky Forest.  Buy Redline.

Simon (1980): A psychology professor is brainwashed into thinking he’s a space alien, and winds up living with a hippie cult who worship TV Guide.  Starring Alan Arkin and Madelaine Kahn, we had to mention this long-forgotten satire based on the plot synopsis.  On DVD-R from Warner Archive.  Buy Simon.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Belle de Jour (1967):  See description in DVD above. Buy Belle de Jour (Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray].

Redline (2009): See description in DVD above. Buy Redline [Blu-ray].

NEW ON VIDEO ON DEMAND:

The Oregonian (2011):  Read our capsule review.  Many readers have asked about the availability of this movie (which debuted at Sundance last year). Here’s your chance to see what the fuss is about.  We’ll keep an eye out for a DVD release. Rent The Oregonian on Video on Demand.

FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON YOUTUBE:

Flatliners (1990):  Medical students experiment with inducing near-death experiences by deliberately stopping their own hearts; they have postmortem hallucinations.  The cast features then up-and-comers Julia Roberts, Kiefer Sutherland, and Kevin Bacon; it’s somewhat mainstream, but hey, it’s free.  Watch Flatliners 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.

It’s 2001: A Weird Movie Odyssey next week at 366 Weird Movies, as by pure coincidence all three of the reader-suggested movies we’ll be checking out were products of the first year of the millennium: Cory McAbee‘s absurdist-space-western-musical The American Astronaut,  Kiyoshi Kurosawa‘s lonely ghost apocalypse outing Pulse [aka Kairo], and Brad Anderson‘s haunted mental asylum psychohorror Session 9.  If you get tired of that particular period in weirdness, we’ll also flashback to a 1964 offering: the dreadful Face of the Screaming Werewolf (starring Lon Chaney Jr. as a “mummified werewolf”!)

We’re faced with a ragtag bunch of questionable queries, but rest assured we’ll find something to nominate as our Weirdest Search Term of the Week.  First off, as a public service announcement, we’d like to advise people who don’t speak English not to try to search for porn in this language.  You can hardly query Google for something innocuous like “best coffeemaker reviews” without half the suggestions directing you to a some site specializing in big busted drunk horny Asian cheerleaders, yet bizarre phrases like “free videos of girls bended worsely for sex” and “rassian old women and men foucing videos” completely confound the search engine—and send them to our site instead.  Now, nrmally, a term like “beard ninja rapes stone game” would win the weirdest award hands down, but we had to subtract points because this refers to something that actually exists (though after watching it, we still don’t know what the hell it is).  That leaves us going with the simple and subtle option for our Weirdest Search Term of the Week: “pants in the movies.”  We like to think the searcher is in the opening research stages of writing his master’s thesis for a dual degree in film studies/men’s fashion.

Here’s the reader-suggested review queue, which, as long as it is, is still filling up faster than we can knock out reviews: The American Astronaut (next week!); Kairo [AKA Pulse] (next week!); Session 9 (next week!); Blood Tea and Red Strings; Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory; The Bride of Frank; La Grande Bouffe; Hedwig and the Angry Inch; Even Dwarves Continue reading WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE →