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.

There’s nothing weird in theaters this week (not really a surprise there).

NEW ON DVD:

Daydream Nation: A love triangle between a teen girl, an age-appropriate boyfriend, and their English teacher.  The press release calls it a “mash-up of the bizarre and the beautiful” and two separate reviewers have compared it to Donnie Darko.  Buy Daydream Nation.

Deep Red [Profundo Rosso] (1975): Dario Argento‘s Deep Red, about a jazz pianist caught in a web of murder, is more a standard, suspenseful giallo than a bizarre film, but it shows early traces of the extreme stylization and atmosphere he would expand on to create the Certified Weird Suspiria two years later.  This re-issue is reputed to be the director’s preferred cut; at 105 minutes, it’s longer than the 98 minute “R-rated” version that originally played in US theaters, but faster paced than the 126-minute “uncensored” cut.  Note that only the director’s cut is on the DVD, but the “full” 126 minute version is also included on the Blu-ray (below).  Buy Deep Red.

“Tim & Eric Awesome Show Great Job: Season 5” (2011): Absurdist sketch comedy from the Cartoon Network. Contains the episode “Lucky,” which had been removed from digital distribution for unstated reasons. An entire season fits on one 110 minute DVD. Buy “Tim & Eric Awesome Show Great Job: Season 5”.

Vanishing on 7th Street (2010):  Read our capsule review.  An unexplained plague of darkness falls over Detroit in this mystical horror from director Brad Anderson. Buy Vanishing on 7th Street.

Year of the Fish (2007): Here’s a movie idea you don’t see everyday: a rotoscoped adult retelling of “Cinderella,” with the lead role taken by a Chinese immigrant woman forced to work in a “happy-ending” massage parlor and befriended by a magical goldfish.  Previously available only on DVD-R, Fish is now available in a respectable DVD reissue complete with commentary tracks. Buy Year of the Fish.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Deep Red [Profundo Rosso] (1975): See entry in DVD above.  Note that the Blu-ray contains both the 105 minute director’s cut and the 126 minute “uncensored” version. Buy Deep Red [Blu-ray].

FREE MOVIES ON THE WEB:

Diseaster [Paashat] (2011): Dutch carrot farmers are terrorized by a killer Easter bunny.  This 30 minute horror/comedy features Easter eggs filled with blood, a rapping narrator with Down syndrome, crossbows that shoot sharpened carrots, and scary/ridiculous killer bunny puppets; it’s like a more professional, European version of Thankskilling.  With blood and guts and mild nudity and sexuality, but the only thing that might offend is that Down syndrome character.  Watch Diseaster for free at the official site.

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.

Upcoming reviews for next week: we’ll hit a couple of recent releases with Vanishing on 7th Street (2010), Brad (The Machinist) Anderson’s latest, about a plague of darkness inexplicably sweeping over Detroit, and Rubber (2010), the first and finest film ever made on the subject of tire serial killers with telekinetic powers.  We’ll dig into the reader-suggested review queue for a look at the unique mindbender The Nines (2007).  And we’ll take a gander at the experimental opus Currently Untitled (2010), which aims to be the no-budget version of 8 1/2.

It’s another tough week for weird search terms.  We found “schizophrenic movie spiders” notable to demonstrate how simply changing a singular noun into a plural can transform a quite reasonable search for this into a quest for info on a class of cinema critters that doesn’t exist.   We also considered “weird alien tongue movie lady has sex with tongue,” but ultimately passed over it (too obvious) in favor of this week’s inscrutable winner, “movie fast cicatrisation graal.”  You have to admire the fact that this search query includes a very obscure word, a non-word, and two common words that add absolutely no sense to the complete phrase.  Well done!

Here’s how the reader-suggested review queue currently stacks up (many, many more requested titles after the break): The Nines (coming next week!); Perfume: The Story of a Murderer; Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets (this appears to be unavailable at present, actually); The Pillow Book; Final Flesh; Lunacy [Sílení]; Inmortel (2004); Tetsuo; Dead 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):

The Big Bang: Antonio Banderas stars as a hard-boiled private eye encountering seedy LA weirdos while searching for missing diamonds in a case that turns out to be more than it appears.  Critics are branding it “Lynchian,” but they’re also denouncing director Tony Krantz (Sublime) as a surrealist hack; this looks like a big weird flop from Anchor Bay.  Playing New York and Los Angeles this week, appearing on DVD and Blu-ray May 24.  The Big Bang official site.

Hesher: A sociopathic arsonist and anarchist takes up residence in a family’s garage after the mother dies in a car accident; is he real, or just a symbol of discord?  Starring Joseph Gordon Levitt, Devin Brcohu, Rainn Wilson, Piper Laurie and Natalie Portman (who also produced).  Hesher official site.

True Legend: Kung-fu fantasy with elaborate, impossibly staged fight scenes pitting “Five Venom Fist” style against “Drunken Fist” style.  From action choreographer Yuen Woo Ping (The Matrix, Kill Bill).  Playing in NYC, Austin, TX., Honolulu and San Francisco all next week.  True Legend official site.

SCREENINGS (Louisville, KY.; Wed. May 18, 10 PM):

Night of the Living Dead (1968): OK, so everyone knows George Romero’s seminal zombie apocalypse survival feature isn’t really weird, except to the squarest of the squares. We only mention it because the reclusive 366 himself will be putting in an appearance at the screening. 366 will only be putting in an appearance because they are offering him beer. Playing at Rave Motion Pictures Preston Crossings 16, Wednesday May 18, at 10 PM.

IN DEVELOPMENT:

Dali 3D (est. Summer 2012): Salvador Dalí lies on his sickbed and dreams a movie where he travels through time with his wife Gala and meets Freud, Walt Disney, and the Mona Lisa, among others.  Alan Cuming stars as Dalí and weird favorite Judy Davis plays Gala, with Phillipe (Howling II… Your Sister Is a Werewolf) Mora to direct.  As per the title, to be filmed in eye-popping 3D.  This Canadian effort will attempt to make it to the screen before a planned big budget biopic starring Antonio Banderas (which is also aiming for a 2012 release).  This is not a joke, repeat, this is not a joke, but rather a glorious opportunity they better not screw up.  Dali 3D official page.

NEW ON DVD:

Dahmer vs. Gacy (2011): The government is trying to create a super-killer using DNA from two notorious serial killers, but their experiments escape and terrorize the nation. Ninjas also figure into the plot. Could this be the ultimate bad taste horror/comedy premise? Buy Dahmer Vs. Gacy.

Sledgehammer (1983):  A novel spin on the 1980s slasher genre; the killer doesn’t slash his victims at all, but rather pounds on them with a large, heavy hammer.  This shot-on-video feature is undoubtedly terrible, but the marketing team gets props for trying to play up its weirdness, calling it “85 minutes of fever-dream depravity” and a “nightmare-logic shocker.” Buy Sledgehammer.

Slime City Massacre (2010): In a near-future NYC wasteland homeless people turn into slime creatures who are then possessed by the spirits of cultists who died by their own hands (or something like that). It’s a long-delayed sequel to 1988’s minor cult hit Slime City. Buy Slime City Massacre.

The Violent Kind (2010): A movie about drug-dealing outlaw bikers and their encounter with the supernatural and weird colors in the sky. At Sundance, it was self-described as “gleeful, insane exploitation”; we’ve been keeping an eye out for the DVD release ever since. Buy The Violent Kind.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

The Lickerish Quartet (1970):  This classy seventies softcore erotic feature from the stylish Radley Metzger features uncertain identities and surrealistic sex scenes, such as the one where a couple make love on a floor covered with dictionary entries.  The Blu-ray comes hot on the heels of last week’s DVD release, but a word of warning: according to an Amazon reviewer the quality of the original print may not justify the hi-def presentation. Buy The Lickerish Quartet [Blu-ray].

FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON YOUTUBE:

Alice in Wonderland (1949):  This British/French co-production mixes live action and puppetry, and like the 1933 “all star” version of Alice it benefits from some unintentionally creepy puppet designs.  Looking at some of the stop-animation, we wouldn’t be shocked to find out Jan Svankmejer watched this version before creating his own Alice.  Watch Alice in Wonderland (1949) free on YouTube.

Viy (1967): Read our capsule review.  Mosfilm has very quietly put some subtitled Soviet classics on YouTube for free, including this unforgettable horror film about a young priest conducting a vigil over a witches casket.  Watch Viy on YouTube for free.

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.

First off, a very happy and disturbingly bizarre Mother’s Day to all the weird moms out there!

Next week on 366 Weird Movies you can look forward to the following reviews: The Attic Expeditions (2001), a mindbending mix of occultism and psychiatric experimentation, and just plain B-movie battiness; the upcoming Catechism Cataclysm (2011), a road trip movie for the lapsed Catholic in all of us; Maelstrom (2000), a Quebecois drama of extreme guilt narrated by a dying fish; and Tod Browning’s White Tiger (1923), whose plot involves a jewelry heist, incest, and a mechanical chess player.  There’s always a possibility we’ll throw a bonus mystery review into the mix, as well.

Frankly, we found the past week to be a letdown when it came to weird search terms used to locate the site.  We considered nominating “cuckold is pushed too far and pulls gun on wifes bull” as our weirdest search term of the week, until we learned that this phrase actually has a perfectly sensible meaning meaning with the cuckold fetish community (are we the only ones who find it depressing that cuckold fetish communities even exist?)  We briefly considered “american movie with a weird conversation on a mole” just because we like the mental image it conjures.  Things were so bleak that we finally threw up our hands and went with the prosaic “animated alien head for penis” as our weirdest search term of the week.  Try to step up the bizarrity next week, will you, Google searchers?

Here’s how the reader-suggested review queue stands (more titles after the break, as always): The Attic Expeditions (restored review coming next week); Perfume: The Story of a Murderer; Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets (this appears to be unavailable at present, actually); The Nines; The Pillow Book; Final Flesh; Lunacy [Sílení]; Inmortel (2004); 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):

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.  Playing at the IFC Center in Manhattan this week, no information on other screenings.  Caterpillar at IFC Center.

Daydream Nation: A love triangle between a teen girl, an age-appropriate boyfriend, and their English teacher.  The press release calls it a “mash-up of the bizarre and the beautiful” and two separate reviewers have compared it to Donnie Darko; whatever weirdness might lurk within, cautious producers are keeping it out of the trailer.  Daydream Nation official site.

Hobo With a Shotgun: Hobo Rutger Hauer grabs a shotgun and sweeps scum off the street in this long-awaited (in some quarters) 1970s exploitation tribute.  Like last year’s Machete, it’s not a weird movie per se, but it has impeccable cult credentials: the project originated as the winner of the fake trailer contest to promote Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez‘ Grindhouse.  Hobo With a Shotgun official site.

I’m Not Jesus Mommy: There’s a title for you, and apparently it actually describes the plot: a young boy is cloned from blood from the Shroud of Turin (!) and the Tribulation starts around the time of his birth.  Is it an inspirational horror movie, or someone’s idea of a joke?  Playing Minneapolis, with a showing in Duluth to follow.  I’m Not Jesus Mommy official site.

Passion Play (2010):  Fantasy fairy-tale starring Mickey Rourke as a jazz musician and Megan Fox as a “Bird Woman,” also with Bill Murray and a grown-up midnight movie teen idol Bud Cort.  It flopped at the Toronto International Film Festival and currently holds a remarkable 0% at Rotten Tomatoes, but if there’s really something wrong with it, we’d like to see for ourselves.  Playing New York and Los Angeles only (look for the DVD soon).  Passion Play official site.

IN DEVELOPMENT:

The Power of the Dark Crystal (est. 2011):  We’d be remiss if we didn’t mention this sequel (of sorts) to the 1982 cult puppet movie Dark Crystal (read our review), which now involves a girl made of fire (?) using a shard of the titular crystal to save a planet’s dying sun.  (We’d also be remiss if we didn’t mention that a reader, Jocko, reminded us about the project).  In 3D (of course); Jim Henson is involved, Frank Oz is not.  Power of the Dark Crystal fan blog.   

NEW ON DVD:

The Lickerish Quartet (1970): This classy seventies softcore erotic feature from the stylish Radley Metzger features uncertain identities and surrealistic sex scenes, such as the one where a couple make love on a floor covered with dictionary entries. This is a recently restored relic from the era of arty dirty movies, just before hardcore porn killed off erotica.  Buy The Lickerish Quartet.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

What Dreams May Come (1998):  Based on a novel by Richard (“The Box“) Matheson, the story sends Robin Williams through the afterlife (both Heaven and Hell) in search of his wife.  The film won an Oscar for “Best Visual Effects” and is currently in our reader-suggested review queue.  Buy What Dreams May Come [Blu-ray].

FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON YOUTUBE:

The Nines (2007): The stories of a self-destructive actor under house arrest, a writer trying to get a pilot made into a series, and a video game designer lost in the woods converge in a strange way in this oddly conceived metaphysical mystery that coincidentally happens to be coming up soon in our reader-suggested review queue.  Watch The Nines 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.