The July contest is finished: congrats to the winners!

Next week, you can expect reviews of the latest macho fantasy from the creators of Sexy Beast—44 Inch Chest (2009); the 2007 psychological horror Spiral; the childishly surreal Belgian stop-motion animation feature A Town Called Panic (2009); the final entry in Alfred Eaker’s survey of B-westerns, the bizarre, silent Hell’s Hinges (1916); and Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly [AKA Girly], a 1970 entry in the “deadly family of weirdos” subgenre.  We’ll also get the early Tim Burton shorts Vincent and Frankenweenie out of the reader-suggested review (with Nightmare Before Christmas to follow shortly thereafter), along with Danger: Diabolik (1968).

Last week was not the greatest week for weird search terms used to locate the site, but this little bit of insane doggerel—“weird coupling in minute to win it”—caught our eye.

Here’s how the reader-suggested review queue stands: Trash Humpers (still waiting for the DVD); Danger: Diabolik (next week); Nightmare Before Christmas/Vincent/Frankenweenie (coming soon); The Science of Sleep; The Attic Expeditions; After Last Season; Getting Any?; Performance; Being John Malkovich; The Apple;  Arizona Dream; Songs From The Second Floor; Singapore Sling; Alice [Neco z Alenky]; Necromentia; Hour of the Wolf; MirrorMask; Possession; Suspiria; Mary and Max; Wild Zero; 4; Nothing (2003); The Peanut Butter Solution; Ninja Scroll; Perfume: The Story of a Murderer;  Faust; Sublime; Battle Royale; Pink Floyd: The Wall; Escanaba In Da Moonlight; Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter; Zardoz; The Films of Suzan Pitt; Toto the Hero [Toto le Héros]; Paprika; The Holy Mountain; Brazil; The Casserole Masters; Dark Crystal; Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets; The Nines;  The Pillow Book; Final Flesh; Lunacy [Sílení]; Inmortel; Tetsuo; Dead Ringers; Kairo [AKA Pulse]; The Guatemalan Handshake; Dead Leaves; The Seventh Seal; Primer; Maniac (1934); Hausu; A Boy and His Dog; 200 Motels; Private Parts (1972); Saddest Music in the World; Mulholland Drive; The American Astronaut; Blood Tea and Red Strings; The Films of Kenneth Anger, Vol. II (for Lucifer Rising, among others); Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory ; The Bride of Frank; La Grande Bouffe; Uzumaki [Spiral]; Hedwig and the Angry Inch; Even Dwarves Started Small; Bunny & the Bull; “I Killed My Lesbian Wife, Hung Her on a Meat Hook, and Now I Have a Three-Picture Deal at Disney” (assuming I can find it); Cinema 16: European Short Films; Freaked; Session 9; Schizopolis; Strings; Dellamorte Dellamore [AKA Cemetery Man]; The Hour-glass Sanatorium [Saanatorium pod klepsidra]; The Addiction; Liquid Sky; The Quiet; Shock Treatment; Tuvalu; “Zombie Jesus” (if we can locate it); 3 Dev Adam; Fantastic Planet; “Twin Peaks” (TV series); Society; May; The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension; Little Otik; Final Programme; Careful; Sweet Movie; The Triplets of Belleville; “Foutaises” (short); Johnny Suede; “Jam” (TV, UK, 2000), The Tale of the Floating World, Un Chien Andalou, Bloodsucking Freaks; Fellini Satyricon; Three Crowns of the Sailor; 8 1/2; Death Race 2000; Dororo; Lost Highway; Valerie and Her Week of Wonders; Dogville; and Julien Donkey-boy; Amelie; The Ten; The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao; 1; Fast, Cheap and Out of Control; Tokyo Gore Police; At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul; The Trial [Le procès) (1962); Marquis; Hell Comes to Frogtown; Hellzapoppin’; Seom [The Isle]; Allegro Non Troppo; Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus; Lust in the Dust; Celine and Julie Go Boating; “Franz Kafka’s It’s a Wonderful Life;” The Magic Christian; Black Cat, White Cat; The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T; Abnormal: The Sinema of Nick Zedd; Robot Monster; Nightdreams; 3 Women; Rubin & Ed; Teeth; Vera; Weirdsville; Prospero’s Books; Inferno; Garden State; Persona; and The Real McCoy; Rat Pfink a Boo Boo; Themroc; Candy (1968); Run Lola Run; Pink Flamingos; Buffalo ’66; Northfork; Weekend; The Room; Glen or Glenda?; Night of the Hunter; The Fox Family; Midnight Skater; Angelus; Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs; Twister (1989); Yokai Monsters, Vol. 1: Spook Warfare [AKA Big Monster War]; Haxan; This Filthy Earth; Conspirators of Pleasure; Piano Tuner of Earthquakes; Clean, Shaven; Bubba Ho-Tep; Sheitan; Innocence; “Chingsao the Clown”; and Léolo.

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.

SCREENINGS (NEW YORK CITY, JULY 30 – AUG 5):

“Russellmania!”: The Film Society of Lincoln Center will be screening early Ken Russell films all next week, with the director himself in attendance.  The lineup consists of Women in Love (1969), The Boy Friend (1971), The Devils (1971), The Music Lovers (1971), Savage Messiah (1972), Mahler (1974), Lisztomania (1975), Tommy (1975), and Valentino (1977).  At least one of these movies will make the List in the future (let the speculation begin)!  Lincoln Center information page for Russellmania!

IN DEVELOPMENT:

The Beast Pageant (post-production): Surreal underground film about a man who is rescued from mundane modern life by a singing cowboy who bursts from his body one day and takes him on a magical adventure.  The stills and trailer look impressively weird. The Beast Pageant official site.

Untitled Kin Dza-Dza sequel: Before we’ve even had a chance to check out the original 1986 cult Russian sci-fi movie Kin Dza-Dza (described by one of our correspondents as “crazy”), we find that there’s already an animated sequel by the same director in the works.   See The Quiet Earth for more details and concept art. We’ll keep an eye out, but this is years away from being available, if it ever comes to pass.

NEW ON DVD:

Home (2008):  When a busy highway opens next to a rural Swiss homestead, the insular family takes increasingly desperate and bizarre measures to block out the intrusion of the outside world.  Starring Isabelle Huppert, this Swiss entry for the 2009 foreign language Academy Award received fantastic reviews; the London Telegraph called it a “bewitching dream.” Buy Home.

Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated (2009): An intriguing idea.  Shades of Waking Life, a team of animators created scenes from the public domain classic Night of the Living Dead in varying styles encompassing “everything from puppet theater to CGI, hand drawn animation to flash, and oil paintings to tattoos.” Buy Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated.

Repo Men (2010): A more serious, action-oriented, Paris Hilton-free, non-musical—in other words, a less weird—treatment of the same idea covered in Repo: The Genetic Opera: a future in which human organs can be bought and are repossessed if their owner fails to meet their payments.  With Jude Law and Forrest Whittaker.  Sank like a stone in theaters, but it has its fans. Buy Repo Men.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000): Asian-American director Ang Lee first brought the wuxia film to the cineplexes with this Tawianese co-production starring Chow Yun-fat and Michelle Yeough as warriors fighting over a stolen sword.  Beautifully filmed and there’s a gorgeous magical realist scene where combatants tiptoe over treetops, but it’s greatest value was in opening American eyes to the grace and pageantry of the modern far East martial arts film.  This Blu-ray edition has been highly anticipated for years. Buy Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon [Blu-ray].

Home (2008): See description in DVD above. Buy Home [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.

It’s the last week to enter the July contest and there are still plenty of chances to get that Donnie Darko stuff. Enter now!

We have another full slate of reviews planned for next week, starting off later today with Pamela’s review of Some Call It a Sling Blade, the short film that Billy Bob Thornton later expanded into the Oscar-winning (Best Adapted Screenplay) feature film. Later in the week you can look forward to a review of the cowboy musical sci-fi serial Stingray Sam (2009), John Waters’ transgressive Female Trouble (1974), and Seijun Suzuki’s sadly underseen surrealist Yakuza film Branded to Kill (1967). We’ll also handle three films from the reader-suggested review queue: 964 Pinocchio, Southland Tales, and David Cronenberg‘s Spider.

There were two good candidates for weirdest search term used to locate the site this week. You have to admire the incredible specificity of someone searching for “a story 366 words long that no-one has ever heared before.” But for the weirdest search term, we’ll select the mangled “weird pants boys are weird picture archive.” Isn’t “weird pants boys are weird” a tautology?

Here’s the reader-suggested review queue, which we’re actually (believe it or not) making a dent in: rash Humpers (waiting for the DVD release);  Southland Tales (next week); Spider (2002) (next week); 964 Pinocchio (next week); Nightmare Before Christmas/Vincent/Frankenweenie; The Science of Sleep; The Attic Expeditions; After Last Season; Getting Any?; Performance; Being John Malkovich; The Apple;  Arizona Dream; Songs From The Second Floor; Singapore Sling; Alice [Neco z Alenky]; Necromentia; Hour of the Wolf; MirrorMask; Possession; Suspiria; Mary and Max; Wild Zero; 4; Nothing (2003); The Peanut Butter Solution; Ninja Scroll; Perfume: The Story of a Murderer; Danger: Diabolik; Faust; Sublime; Battle Royale; Pink Floyd: The Wall; Escanaba In Da Moonlight; Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter; Zardoz; The Films of Suzan Pitt; Toto the Hero [Toto le Héros]; Paprika; The Holy Mountain; Brazil; The Casserole Masters; Dark Crystal; Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets; The Nines;  The Pillow Book; Final Flesh; Lunacy [Sílení]; Inmortel; Tetsuo; Dead Ringers; Kairo [AKA Pulse]; The Guatemalan Handshake; Dead Leaves; The Seventh Seal; Primer; Maniac (1934); Hausu; A Boy and His Dog; 200 Motels; Private Parts (1972); Saddest Music in the World; Mulholland Drive; The American Astronaut; Blood Tea and Red Strings; The Films of Kenneth Anger, Vol. II (for Lucifer Rising, among others); Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory ; The Bride of Frank; La Grande Bouffe; Uzumaki [Spiral]; Hedwig and the Angry Inch; Even Dwarves Started Small; Bunny & the Bull; “I Killed My Lesbian Wife, Hung Her on a Meat Hook, and Now I Have a Three-Picture Deal at Disney” (assuming I can find it); Cinema 16: European Short Films; Freaked; Session 9; Schizopolis; Strings; Dellamorte Dellamore [AKA Cemetery Man]; The Hour-glass Sanatorium [Saanatorium pod klepsidra]; The Addiction; Liquid Sky; The Quiet; Shock Treatment; Tuvalu; “Zombie Jesus” (if we can locate it); 3 Dev Adam; Fantastic Planet; “Twin Peaks” (TV series); Society; May; The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension; Little Otik; Final Programme; Careful; Sweet Movie; The Triplets of Belleville; “Foutaises” (short); Johnny Suede; “Jam” (TV, UK, 2000), The Tale of the Floating World, Un Chien Andalou, Bloodsucking Freaks; Fellini Satyricon; Three Crowns of the Sailor; 8 1/2; Death Race 2000; Dororo; Lost Highway; Valerie and Her Week of Wonders; Dogville; and Julien Donkey-boy; Amelie; The Ten; The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao; 1; Fast, Cheap and Out of Control; Tokyo Gore Police; At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul; The Trial [Le procès) (1962); Marquis; Hell Comes to Frogtown; Hellzapoppin’; Seom [The Isle]; Allegro Non Troppo; Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus; Lust in the Dust; Celine and Julie Go Boating; “Franz Kafka’s It’s a Wonderful Life;” The Magic Christian; Black Cat, White Cat; The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T; Abnormal: The Sinema of Nick Zedd; Robot Monster; Nightdreams; 3 Women; Rubin & Ed; Teeth; Vera; Weirdsville; Prospero’s Books; Inferno; Garden State; Persona; and The Real McCoy; Rat Pfink a Boo Boo; Themroc; Candy (1968); Run Lola Run; Pink Flamingos; Buffalo ’66; Northfork; Weekend; The Room; Glen or Glenda?; Night of the Hunter; The Fox Family; Midnight Skater; Angelus; Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs; Twister (1989); Yokai Monsters, Vol. 1: Spook Warfare [AKA Big Monster War]; Haxan; This Filthy Earth; Conspirators of Pleasure; Piano Tuner of Earthquakes; and Clean, Shaven.

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):

Life During Wartime: Not weird, but of interest, is Todd Solondz’s semi-sequel to his 1998 controversial cult-favorite black comedy Happiness, with different actors in the lead roles.  With Shirley Henderson, Ciarán Hinds, Allison Janney, Charlotte Rampling, and Paul Reubens.  Opening in New York City this week with dates in other major cities in August. Life During Wartime official site.

IN DEVELOPMENT:

Thunder-Sky: Our own Alfred Eaker‘s documentary project about Raymond Thunder-Sky, the outsider artist obsessed with clowns and construction workers. See raw footage, pledge support and follow the project’s progress at the new Thunder-Sky indiegogo page.

NEW ON DVD:

Legends of the Dark Kings: A Fist of the North Star Story (2010):  Fist of the North Star was an influential anime with reportedly weird elements.  This is a Japanese television show; it’s not clear to me exactly what “a Fist of the North Star story” entails, but if you’re in the target market you probably get it. Buy Legends of the Dark King: A Fist of the North Star Story.

A Town Called Panic [Panique au Village] (2009): A stop-motion animated children’s film from Belgium; according to the press release, it “follows the wacky, hilarious and often surreal adventures of three plastic toys named Cowboy, Indian and Horse who share a rambling house in a rural town which never fails to attract the weirdest events.”  Expect a review soon! Buy A Town Called Panic.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Evil Aliens (2005):  Gory would-be cult movie that prefers to compare itself to early Peter Jackson and Sam Raimi rather than to explain what’s unique about this movie.  From the director of Razor Blade Smile (1998).  Buy Evil Aliens [Blu-ray].

Legends of the Dark Kings: A Fist of the North Star Story (2010):  See description in DVD above. Buy Legends of the Dark Kings: Fist of the North Star [Blu-ray].

Tin Man (2007): Nick Willing‘s Emmy-winning SciFi Channel miniseries, a dystopian adult retelling of the Wizard of Oz, hits the Blu-ray ranks this week in a 2-disc edition. Zooey Deschanel stars as Dorothy and Neal McDonough is the Titular Tin Man.  We haven’t seen it, but it was better reviewed than Willing’s followup Alice, which we liked.   Buy Tin Man [Blu-ray].

FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON YOUTUBE:

W the Movie (2009):  Speaking of Alfred Eaker, 366 Distribution is putting W the Movie up on YouTube to watch for free, for a limited time.  We’re describing it, with typical hyperbole, as “a surreal permutation of the Bush years, which could easily have been the Nixon years as well. W the Movie is a nightmare tale straight from the Theater of the absurd, a biblical melodrama told on wrestlemania television, a Greek myth played out on a Christian Broadcast network, the Book of Revelations told as a cheesy 1950’s sci-fi movie.”  If you enjoy it, please consider adding the DVD to your collection.

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.

Still plenty of Donnie Darko posters left… all it will cost you is a comment.

We’ve got a very full week of reviews planned.  We’ll be giving our initial impressions on Inception; the weird movie event of 2010 so far, so be sure to check in and join in the discussion!  We’ll also provide coverage of Vincenzo Natali‘s 2010 sci-fier Splice (still in second run theaters, no word yet on a DVD release date); Love Object, a 2003 entry in the weird “blow-up-sex-toy-comes-to-life” subgenre; the last entry in Alfred’s coverage of B-westerns, the silent Hell’s Hinges (1916); and we’ll knock Nic Roeg‘s Walkabout and Ken Russell‘s Altered States out of the reader suggested review queue.

Our survey of the weirdest search terms used to locate the site brought some interesting inquiries this week. First, there were searches for two movies we don’t know the identities of, but are anxious to see based on the descriptions: “russian mummy horror film egg sex” and “black cat kills baby staircase movie.” (Somehow, it’s much more upsetting to see baby staircases killed onscreen then full-grown staircases). For the person who asked “is tom hardy missing a pinky?,” we’re pretty sure the answer is “no.” But we found “what is unexpected about centipedes?” to be the weirdest query of the week; we can’t even begin to formulate an answer to that one.

Here’s how the reader-suggested review queue stacks up: Trash Humpers (waiting for the DVD release); Altered States (next week); Walkabout (skipping ahead to come out next week); Nightmare Before Christmas/Vincent/Frankenweenie; The Science of Sleep; The Attic Expeditions; After Last Season; Getting Any?; Performance; Being John Malkovich; The Apple; Southland Tales; Arizona Dream; Spider (2002); Songs From The Second Floor; Singapore Sling; Alice [Neco z Alenky]; Necromentia; Hour of the Wolf; MirrorMask; Possession; Suspiria; Mary and Max; Wild Zero; 4; Nothing (2003); The Peanut Butter Solution; Ninja Scroll; Perfume: The Story of a Murderer; Danger: Diabolik; Faust; Sublime; Battle Royale; Pink Floyd: The Wall; Escanaba In Da Moonlight; Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter; Zardoz; The Films of Suzan Pitt; Toto the Hero [Toto le Héros]; Paprika; The Holy Mountain; Brazil; The Casserole Masters; Dark Crystal; Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets; The Nines; 964 Pinocchio; The Pillow Book; Final Flesh; Lunacy [Sílení]; Inmortel; Tetsuo; Dead Ringers; Kairo [AKA Pulse]; The Guatemalan Handshake; Dead Leaves; The Seventh Seal; Primer; Maniac (1934); Hausu; A Boy and His Dog; 200 Motels; Private Parts (1972); Saddest Music in the World; Mulholland Drive; The American Astronaut; Blood Tea and Red Strings; The Films of Kenneth Anger, Vol. II (for Lucifer Rising, among others); Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory ; The Bride of Frank; La Grande Bouffe; Uzumaki [Spiral]; Hedwig and the Angry Inch; Even Dwarves Started Small; Bunny & the Bull; “I Killed My Lesbian Wife, Hung Her on a Meat Hook, and Now I Have a Three-Picture Deal at Disney” (assuming I can find it); Cinema 16: European Short Films; Freaked; Session 9; Schizopolis; Strings; Dellamorte Dellamore [AKA Cemetery Man]; The Hour-glass Sanatorium [Saanatorium pod klepsidra]; The Addiction; Liquid Sky; The Quiet; Shock Treatment; Tuvalu; “Zombie Jesus” (if we can locate it); 3 Dev Adam; Fantastic Planet; “Twin Peaks” (TV series); Society; May; The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension; Little Otik; Final Programme; Careful; Sweet Movie; The Triplets of Belleville; “Foutaises” (short); Johnny Suede; “Jam” (TV, UK, 2000), The Tale of the Floating World, Un Chien Andalou, Bloodsucking Freaks; Fellini Satyricon; Three Crowns of the Sailor; 8 1/2; Death Race 2000; Dororo; Lost Highway; Valerie and Her Week of Wonders; Dogville; and Julien Donkey-boy; Amelie; The Ten; The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao; 1; Fast, Cheap and Out of Control; Tokyo Gore Police; At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul; The Trial [Le procès) (1962); Marquis; Hell Comes to Frogtown; Hellzapoppin’; Seom [The Isle]; Allegro Non Troppo; Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus; Lust in the Dust; Celine and Julie Go Boating; “Franz Kafka’s It’s a Wonderful Life;” The Magic Christian; Black Cat, White Cat; The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T; Abnormal: The Sinema of Nick Zedd; Robot Monster; Nightdreams; 3 Women; Rubin & Ed; Teeth; Vera; Weirdsville; Prospero’s Books; Inferno; Garden State; Persona; and The Real McCoy; Rat Pfink a Boo Boo; Themroc; Candy (1968); Run Lola Run; Pink Flamingos; Buffalo ’66; Northfork; Weekend; The Room; Glen or Glenda?; Night of the Hunter; The Fox Family; Midnight Skater; Angelus; Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs; Twister (1989); Yokai Monsters, Vol. 1: Spook Warfare [AKA Big Monster War]; Haxan; This Filthy Earth; and Conspirators of Pleasure.