Next week we take a look at a couple of recent releases: we’ll discuss the big time Mickey Rourke/Megan Fox arthouse flop Passion Play (2010), while on the other end of the spectrum 366 Underground uncovers a weird one with the insane micro-budget comedy Frankie in Blunderland (2011).  We’ll also officially inaugurate the winner of the second readers’ choice poll, Pink Floyd the Wall (1982), onto the List of the 366 Best Weird movies ever made.

As the site grows and Google indexes more and more of our peculiar pages, the number of weird search terms we see in the logs piles up and it becomes a chore to slog through them looking for the most bizarre.  Nonetheless, we will gladly report on the strangest of the strange for your amusement.  Pervert searchers are usually good for a chuckle or two, but the guy looking for a “rape man-eating scull necrophilic brain porn video” was a little too creepy even for us.  As odd and disturbingly specialized as his porn fetish is, however, we think he might have more luck than the guy looking for “medieval christian pornography.”  And speaking of perverts, the possible suggestions for the person looking for “weird movies to masterbate to” are only limited by your imagination: My Dinner with Andre? Bambi?  Eraserhead?  We also have to mention the guy who came here searching for “weird drench movies”: we like to think he meant to type “weird French movies,” but these days you never know.  Still, the absolute weirdest search term of the week was, without question, “366′!&-!4%8$,” which sounds  like something Sarge might say if he caught Beetle Bailey reading our site on Army time.

Here’s the ridiculously-long-and-ever growing reader-suggested review queue: Kairo [AKA Pulse]; The Guatemalan Handshake;  The Seventh Seal;  Primer; 200 Motels; Private Parts (1972); Saddest Music in the World; Mulholland  Drive; The American Astronaut; Blood Tea 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):

3-D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy: Well, this is weird.  The world’s first (widely released) 3-D softcore sex movie is a remake of Michael Mak’s surreal 1991 sex comedy Sex and Zen, which featured a bungled horse penis transplant as its comedic centerpiece.  In Hong Kong, 3-D Sex had a record-setting opening and had already outgrossed Titanic and Avatar.  It’s playing Austin, TX at the storied Alamo Drafthouse, but no word on other venues.  3-D Sex and Zen official site (warning: explicit content and annoying music!).

Griff the Invisible: A clerk who moonlights as a masked vigilante meets a girl lost in daydreams in this Australian romantic comedy.  Half the reviewers who’ve seen it use some form of the word “quirk” to describe it (and one even uses a form of “weird”).  Griff the Invisible official site.

The Last Circus [Balada triste de trompeta]:  Read our festival report.  Though we didn’t think Álex de la Iglesia’s allegorical tale of harlequin havoc was quite weird enough to be inaugurated onto the List, we can guarantee many readers are going to make it a point to attend this Circus.  Those of you in New York City will have the chance to catch it this week, while readers in a dozen other US cities will have to keep their eyes out.  The Last Circus official site.

NEW ON DVD:

Cul-de-sac (1966): Roman Polanski‘s followup to Repulsion is another tense, eccentric and psychological tale about a gangster who hides out in a castle and terrorizes (at first) a wimpy Englishman and his French wife.  It’s always cause for celebration when the Criterion Collection restores another neglected Polanski classic. Buy Cul-de-sac [Criterion Collection].

Elvira’s Movie Macabre: The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (1962) /The Manster (1959):  In 2010, horror hostess Elvira relaunched her 1980s franchise show “Movie Macabre” in syndication; this DVD matches up two of the weirder b-horrors she featured.  The Brain That Wouldn’t Die is the incredibly sleazy (by early sixties standards) story of a mad doctor shopping for a body for his decapitated girlfriend; The Manster describes what happens when an American journalist lets a Tokyo scientist experiment on him and grows an extra, evil, head.  Not to spoil anyone’s good clean cleavage-based fun, but you do realize Cassandra Peterson is now your grandmother’s age, don’t you?  Buy Elvira’s Movie Macabre: The Brain That Wouldn’t Die / The Manster.

The Ward (2010): Psychological thriller about a woman who sees a ghost after she’s involuntarily committed to an asylum.  John Carpenter’s first film since 2001’s Ghosts of Mars was not the comeback hit he hoped for, but fans may want to check it out anyway. Buy John Carpenter’s The Ward.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Cul-de-sac (1966): See description in DVD above. Buy Cul-de-sac [Criterion Collection Blu-ray].

The Ward (2010): See description in DVD above. Buy John Carpenter’s The Ward [Blu-ray].

FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON YOUTUBE:

Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959):  OK, perhaps Ed Wood’s opus about aliens who come to Earth to raise the dead so that stupid humans won’t learn how to blow up sunlight isn’t that weird—but you know you want to see it anyway.  It’s a notorious and hilarious anti-masterpiece that everyone needs to see at least once to complete their cinematic education.  Watch Plan 9 from Outer Space 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.

The fourth reader review contest is over, and the winner is: Shane Wilson for The Tingler (read his excellent review here!)  Congratulations Shane!

Next week we’ll be focusing on (relatively) new releases, starting with our latest 366 Underground entry, Race War: The Remake (2011), and following with the star-studded (Megan Fox, Mickey Rourke) fantasy flop Passion Play (2010), and ending with either Miranda July’s sophomore effort The Future (2011) or Antonio Banderas’ shot as an existential hard-boiled private eye in Tony Krantz‘s The Big Bang (2011).  [EDIT: That should have read that we’ll definitely cover The Big Bang and either The Future or Passion Play].  To counteract all that newness, Alfred Eaker will travel back in time to finish off his series on silent Expressionist Paul Leni.

We discovered a theme in our weird search terms of the week: requests for info on movies we hope exist somewhere, but fear don’t.  In the “that’s nice dear” category, we noticed what was either a weird search term or an idle confession: “i saw a movie in the late 70’s it was weird.”  Getting into searches with just a bit more specificity, we tracked people looking for the lowdown on the following fascinating mystery films: “a movie about an alien parasite that likes paprika and has a big sexual appetite,” “late 60s sci fi movie about little orange monkeys,” “movie where people test on spinning machine and explode,” “shipwrecked breastfeeding movie,” and “japanese erotic movie ninja gets frozen.”  Our favorite, however, was “italian horror nuns impaled ape;” at least, we hope that was a search for a movie, and not a headline in the Milano Times.

Here’s what the massive reader-suggested review queue looks like: Kairo [AKA Pulse]; The Guatemalan Handshake;  The Seventh Seal;  Primer; 200 Motels; Private Parts (1972); Saddest Music in the World; Mulholland  Drive; The American Astronaut; Blood Tea and Red 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):

Bobby Yeah (2011):  Robert Morgan (of the crowd-pleasing horror short The Cat with Hands) has a new animated  23-minute short touring film festivals and, based on the trailer below, he’s developing a pleasing penchant for the peculiar.  Though the chances you’ll be able to catch this are slim, we’re happy to know Mr. Morgan is continuing his craft and hopeful he’ll be able to fund a feature some day.  Bobby Yeah official Facebook page.

SCREENINGS (NATIONWIDE):

Rifftrax LIVE: Jack the Giant Killer:  Jack the Giant Killer was a 1962 stop-motion kid-friendly fantasy inspired by Ray Harryhausen’s Sinbad adventures; it’s actually not half bad.  Nonetheless, MST3K alumni Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett will mock the movie mercilessly in this live broadcast simulcast in cinemas across the nation.  The show includes three comic shorts and a url will be revealed to download digital content.  Rifftrax LIVE: Jack the Giant Killer official notice.

NEW ON DVD:

Super (2010):  Read our capsule review.  Average guy becomes masked avenger by night in a sort of indie/alternative version of Kick Ass directed by Tromeo & Juliet screenwriter James Gunn. Buy Super.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Dead Man (1995):  Read our certified weird entry!  This Jim Jarmusch/Johnny Depp weird west fave lands on Blu-ray (not for the first time, however, as there had previously a Region free French release).  Supplemental features appear to be the same as on Miramax’s previous release (a Neil Young video and unused footage), but the image and sound are reportedly great, and the Blu-ray is value priced at under $10 (!) Buy Dead Man [Blu-ray].

Super (2010): See entry in DVD above. Buy Super [Blu-ray].

FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON YOUTUBE:

Bill and Coo (1948):  A villain known as “the Black Menace” arrives in a formerly peaceful town, and it’s up to cab driver Bill to save the burg.  The weird part?  All actors are played by trained parakeets and other birds.  Watch Bill and Coo 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.

Greetings, as 366 Weird Movies broadcasts this week from an undisclosed Caribbean location, as part of an extremely weird tax evasion scene.  The fact that we’ll be sipping on piña coladas from the comfort of an air-conditioned beach (yes, the resort is that exclusive) won’t affect your weird-movie browsing enjoyment, however, as we’ll still be offering a full slate of deranged movie reviews, including with our first contest entry: a reader review of William Castle’s The Tingler (featuring Vincent Price freaking out on acid!)  We’ll also get to a couple of films from the reader-suggested review queue, tackling the magical realist serial killer period piece Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, and we’ll take a look at Jeremy Irons playing twin gynecologists (!) in David Cronenberg‘s creepy psychodrama Dead Ringers.  And more…

Some weeks it’s a struggle to try to find a search term weird enough to deserve the designation “weirdest search term of the week.”  Other weeks (like this one), the searchers worldwide seem to have been struck with a collective dementia, and it’s a struggle to narrow down the weird field.  First, although it wasn’t that bizarre a query, we have to report that we’re extremely proud to be Google’s number one result for the search term “ninja scroll had ‘no scroll.'”  On a slightly weirder and more disturbing note, Alfred Eaker was distressed to find someone searching for “alfred defilement videos.”  We’d like to see the film this guy was searching for—“clones come out of watermelons in a black and white movie”—and we think we might be willing to try some of whatever the guy who made this search was taking—“book of dead zombie lucifer and zombie jesus christ race zombie teeth cross.com.”  (You’d be surprised how many people throw in a generic “.com” at the end of their impossibly, obsessively precise search terms).  But for our winner this week, we select “скачать бесплатно weird sex illustrated sharking animations,” which gets bonus points for switching alphabets mid-search.   Sorry, ” “weird lumpy movie short,” you didn’t make the weirdest search terms this time around, try again next week.

Here’s that aforementioned reader-suggested review queue: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (next week!); Dead Ringers (next week!); Kairo [AKA Pulse]; The Guatemalan Handshake;  The Seventh Seal;  Primer; 200 Motels; Private Parts (1972); Saddest Music in Continue reading WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE →