Next week we’ll have a (re)-review of the one man Rambo adaptation, Flooding with Love for the Kid (2010), we’ll dig into the queue to check out Roy Andersson‘s melancholy, weird arthouse hit Songs from the Second Floor (2000), and Alfred will continue his review of Terence Fisher‘s Hammer horror  résumé with The Curse of the Werewolf (1961).  We’ll also give you our cynical take on the Academy Award nominees, and offer a weirder set of candidates.

There weren’t that many weird search terms used to locate the site this week—either that, or we’re getting so jaded looking through the bizarre server logs that a search for “zombie dominatrix” doesn’t seem so odd anymore.  Nonetheless, we were impressed by the tortured perversity of stuff like “free movies with most extremely high orgasm in the world of women.”  In the “we can’t believe that domain name’s still available!” category, the clear winner was  “coommon jender sunbatheo of the worldmovies. com.”  But our weirdest search term of the week is the one that mixes leftist politics with quantum physics: “the oppressed peoples of schrodingers dead cats.”  Keep em coming—we know you weirdos can do better next week!

OK, here’s our weekly posting of that extremely lengthy and ever-growing reader-suggested review queue for you to ponder:  Songs From The Second Floor (next week!); Possession; Wild Zero; Nothing (2003); The Peanut Butter Solution; Perfume: The Story of a Murderer; Faust; Sublime;  Pink Floyd: The Wall; Zardoz; The Films of Suzan Pitt; Toto the Hero [Toto le Héros]; 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…

This is a monster week in terms of DVD/Blu-ray releases, with improved editions of two Certified Weird movies, plus the home video release of our weirdest movie of 2010, among other treasures.  We advise you to stay home this weekend and catch up on some weirdness.

IN THEATERS (LIMITED RELEASE):

Kaboom (2010): Little Gregg Araki is growing up.  The 53-year-old has graduated from making movies about horny high schoolers to making movies about horny college students.  This one involves a hunky bisexual protagonist,  hallucinogenic cookies, and a murdered dream girl, and is also described as “a sci-fi story centered on the sexual awakening of a group of college students.”  As with other films distributed by IFC, Kaboom will also be simultaneously available on many cable systems’ “on demand” feature for those who can’t catch it in theaters. Kaboom official site.

Scream of the Banshee (2011): The official press release explains that the story describes what happens when the titular folkloric creature’s “scream begins to haunt all that heard it in strange and surreal ways.”  The press release also reveals what we suspect has to be the strangest and most surreal incident in the movie: “she and her students hear a horrifying scream belonging to that of a bloodthirsty banshee. They think nothing of it…” (emphasis ours).  Hopefully they took as much care writing the script as they did the ad copy.  With Lance Henriksen, from After Dark Originals, co-produced by SyFy.  Rotten Tomatoes seems to think it’s being released theatrically; we suspect they’ve been had.   Scream of the Banshee Facebook page.

NEW ON DVD:

Dogtooth [Kynodontas] (2009): Read Kevyn Knox’s review. Bizarre Greek black comedy about kids raised on an estate and kept completely apart from the world with their own unique language. Buy Dogtooth.

Enter the Void (2010):  Read our review.  DVD release makes our early choice for weirdest movie of 2010, about a hallucinating ghost in Tokyo, officially eligible to join the List. Buy Enter the Void.

Santa Sangre (1989):  Read our certified weird entry!  This is the first official American release of Jodorowsky‘s weird mix of surrealism and serial killers, replacing the old “Singapore” version which contained the documentary The Constellation Jodorowsky.  This two-disc release from Severin Films contains 5 hours (!) of bonus material, and also includes a commentary track from Jodorowsky and journalist Alan Jones.  Big news indeed. Buy Santa Sangre.

Violent Blue (2010): From Gregory Hatanaka, director of the intriguing but unseen Mad Cowgirl, comes this story of a composer whose ex-husband locks her in a cage. It’s the baffling “WTF?” trailer (below) that caught our attention. Buy Violent Blue.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

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

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004): Read Eric Young’s certified weird entry!  Writer Charlie Kaufman and director Michel Gondry team up for this mindbending speculative romantic comedy about memory erasure that’s a favorite of sentimental weirdos everywhere.  A quick scan of Universal’s planned special features doesn’t reveal anything significant that hasn’t appeared on previous releases. Buy Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind [Blu-ray].

Santa Sangre (1989):  See entry in DVD above. Buy Santa Sangre [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.

Next week, we’ll be revisiting the surreal Hungarian subway thriller Kontroll (2003), and we’ll also take a look at a couple of movies from the reader-suggested review queue: Estonia’s The Temptation of St. Tony, which will be released on DVD in about a month, and the 2001 cult comedy Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter.

In regards to weird search terms actual Googlers used to locate the site, what this week lacked in quantity, it made up for in quality.  First off, though not the weirdest search term we’ve seen, we proud to announce that 366 Weird Movies comes up as Google’s #1 result for a search on the phrase “inexplicably topless” (with quotes).  We were stunned by the question “”why is chorus line such a weird movie” (if the searcher thinks A Chorus Line is a weird movie, our listings will scramble their brains), and also by the person searching for “terence fisher nude” (if you’ve ever seen a picture of director Terence Fisher, who’s a dead ringer for Henry Kissinger in the right light, you’ll understand why this request shocked us).  We found “japanese porn director uses meditation to bring mass orgasim” to be a pretty weird search, as well; but the one that disturbed us the most, and wins our vote for weirdest search term of the week, is “charles bronson child panty.”  There are just so many ways to interpret that phrase—none of them good (we immediately pictured a line of girl’s underwear an image from Death Wish printed on them).

Here’s the ridiculously long reader-suggested review queue (more after the break): Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter (next week!); The Temptation of St. Tony (next week!); Songs From The Second Floor; Possession; Wild Zero; Nothing (2003); The Peanut Butter Solution; Perfume: The Story of a Murderer; Faust; Sublime;  Pink Floyd: The Wall; Zardoz; The Films of Suzan 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):

Evangelion 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance (2009):  The second part of the planned Evangelion remake trilogy reaches these shores, featuring more mysticism, more demonic Angels, more Eva pilots, and more spectacle and confusion.  Read our review of Evangelion 1.11 here for an idea of what it’s all about.  It’s showing sporadically across the country.  Evangelion 2.0 official website.

Zenith (2010): Sci-fi conspiracy mindbender with a cool premise: in the future everyone has been genetically altered to feel perpetual happiness, so an entrepreneur makes a living pushing drugs that cause people to feel sad. Even cooler: Slant’s Glenn Heath Jr. says “the indescribably odd ending only sends the viewer off more confused.” Sounds good, but distribution is predictably weak: check your local listings. Zenith official site.

IN DEVELOPMENT:

1884: Yesterday’s Future (est. 2012): How’s this for a twisty concept: it’s a film made in 1848 (before the invention of film) about a “futuristic” steampunk 1884 in which Britain has colonized the moon. We’re not happy to see that it’s animated and campy, because we think the idea would look much cooler if it reinvented “actual” movie techniques from the fake period, but it still sounds more “out there” than anything Hollywood’s come up with lately. Oh, and it’s being made by Terry Gilliam‘s godson. 1884: Yesterday’s Future official site.

Werewolf Hunters of the Midwest (est. 2011-2012): Cory McAlbee and the Billy Nayer Show’s latest project; no idea on the plot, but the title pretty much tells all, doesn’t it? The band’s working on the soundtrack first, filming to start later this year. Werewolf Hunters of the Midwest Facebook page.

“The Wholly Family”: Speaking of Terry Gilliam, he’s been commissioned to make a 15-minute short film for the Italian pasta company Garofalo. No idea what the subject might be except that it involves the city of Naples, and Gilliam apparently was advertising for extras with circus skills. More from Bleeding Cool.

NEW ON DVD:

“Explosive Cinema – 12 Movie Collection”: Those cheap Mill Creek multi-packs full of guilty pleasures are a guilty pleasure of mine, and they should be a guilty pleasure of yours. This one supposedly features drive-in style action films, although as usual some of Mill Creek’s selections defy their genre. The most interesting film here is the wacky Nine Deaths of the Ninja (1985), with its wheelchair bound Nazis, evil lesbians and attack midgets; also along for the ride is The Skydivers (1963), Coleman Francis‘ dour and awful attempt to mix film noir with skydiving. The Hostage, Iron Angel, Killpoint, Low Blow, The Patriot, Scorpion, The Silencer, Terror in the Jungle, Top Cop and Van Nuys Blvd. round out the set. Also featuring a dude who sort of looks like Chuck Norris if you squint real hard on the cover. Buy “Explosive Cinema – 12 Movie Collection”.

The Naked Kiss (1964): The Criterion Collection continues to shock with releases that sometimes seem more cult-oriented than arthouse-oriented. This odd Sam Fuller melodrama, shocking in its day, famously opens with a scene of a bald prostitute beating her pimp with a shoe. Not extremely weird, but Fuller certainly followed the beat of his own drummer. Buy The Naked Kiss (Criterion Collection).

Shock Corridor (1963): An even more shocking (rim shot) choice for Criterion treatment is Fuller’s 1963 expose of mental health malpractice, as a journalist goes undercover in an insane asylum and finds that it’s harder to get out than it was to get in. This one is a little bit weird, yeah. “Nymphos!” Buy Shock Corridor (Criteron Collection).

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Cold Dog Soup (1990): A black-comedy in the vein of After Hours that was so obscure even we’d never heard of it until it showed up on Blu-ray this week. The scenario involves Randy Quaid as a taxi driver who drives NYC all night meeting bizarre characters as he tries to rid himself of a dog’s corpse. Buy Cold Dog Soup [Blu-ray].

The Naked Kiss (1964): See entry in DVD above. Buy The Naked Kiss (Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray].

Shock Corridor (1963): See entry in DVD above. Buy Shock Corridor (Criterion Collection) [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.

Next week look for a full writeup of the second reader’s choice Certified Weird movie, Jan Svankmajer‘s amazing stop-motion animated Alice [Neco Z Alenky] (1988).  We’ll also review a couple of items from the reader-suggested review queue: the Japanese cult action movie Battle Royale (2000), and the extra-quirky Jeff Daniels deer-hunting comedy, Escanaba in da Moonlight (2001).

Lots of weird search terms rolled in this week.  Before we run down the weirdest, we have to give a special award to “wierd eel sex” (and variations) for turning up time and time again in our server logs.  We had no idea people were so hungry for information on this topic, or why they think we would know anything about it.  As for this week’s nominees, we got some doozies, including “mini skirts and snickers visible video” (hungry and horny? Grab a mini skirt and a snickers!)  In the “questions we can’t really answer” file we find “what is a weird omnivore” and “was john wayne murdered by us. psychotronic weapons” (although we’d be willing to bet “no” on the last one).  Every week, at least one term shows up that makes us hope we don’t accidentally walk by this guy’s computer when he’s doing an image search; this week’s winner was “rex the wonder horse penis.”  But in a very competitive week for weird search terms, the one that stands out above the crowd is “three teenage sex drugs lesbian weirdo on the inside or weirdo on the out side” (it was the extra “or weirdo on the out side” that put it over the top).

Here’s how the reader-suggested review queue stands: Battle Royale (next week!); Escanaba In Da Moonlight (next week!); Songs From The Second Floor; Possession; Wild Zero; Nothing (2003); The Peanut Butter Solution; Perfume: The Story of a Murderer; Faust; Continue reading WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE →