Look for a mini-Wonderland theme next week, as we weigh in on Tim Burton’s current version of Alice in Wonderland, and compare and contrast the ScyFy miniseries Alice.  We’ll also look at a non-Alice related feature from out of our queue: Vincent Price’s The Abominable Dr. Phibes.

The masses continue to stumble onto the site by accident while looking for porn.  We thought the weirdest search term used to locate the site this week was “Strange Things tissue free porn movies.”  Why “tissue free”?

We spotlight the weirdest search term each week, but this week I thought we’d give a shout-out to the weirdest backlink of the week.  That honor goes to SuccuWiki, a Wiki site devoted to cataloging all things related to female sex demons, who cited us as a source for Satan Hates You.  Thanks!

The reader-suggested review queue is still growing.  We plan to knock out at least one of these a week, but at that rate we’re still losing ground.  Here it is, updated as of this very morning: The Abominable Dr. Phibes (next week); What? (Diary of Forbidden Dreams); Meatball Machine; Xtro; Basket Case; Suicide Club; O Lucky Man!; Trash Humpers (when/if released); Gozu; Tales of Ordinary Madness; The Wayward Cloud; Kwaidan; Six-String Samurai; Andy Warhol’s Trash; Altered States; Memento; 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]; Necromania (1971, Ed Wood); 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; Frownland; The Seventh Seal; Taxidermia; Primer; Maniac (1934); Hausu; A Boy and His Dog; 200 Motels; Walkabout; Private Parts (1972); and Possession.

A look at what’s weird in theaters, on hot-off-the-presses DVDs, and on more distant horizons…

It’s a very weak week for weirdness. Nothing very unusual debuting in theaters, and the video pickings are slim, so we dug a bit deeper for some strange viewing suggestions.

IN DEVELOPMENT:

Abelcain (2011):  We caught this title listed as “in development” when researching Santa Sangre: a new Alejandro Jodorowsky film!  For years, even before Santa Sangre, Jodorowsky has been looking for financing for a new project (often referred to as Sons of El Topo).  Parallel Media (Autopsy) is involved in the production, which means there is funding, at least.  Plot synopsis: “Upon the death of their mother, Abel and Cain embark on a journey to bury her holy body next to their father’s grave on a forbidden paradise island.  But the island’s treasures attract numerous kidnappers with different plans.”  Just because it’s in development doesn’t mean the film will ever be completed, but there is reason to hope.  Abelcain announcement at Parallel Media.

Heartsnatcher (2012): Per Quiet Earth (an excellent website focusing on post-apocalyptic movies that supplied us with a number of weird leads this week), Hungarian surrealist Pater Sparrow will be adapting the Boris Vian novel about an isolated island society with bizarre customs.  Read the scoop at Quiet Earth.

NEW ON DVD:

Evangelion: 1.11 You Are Not Alone (2007):  “Neon Genesis Evangelion” is a large anime franchise centering around teenagers piloting giant robots to fight off mysterious beings called Angels bent on destroying the world.  As far as we can make out, the original 26 episode television show spawned a feature film, Neon Genesis Evangelion. Then came the feature The End of Evangelion, which created an alternate ending to the TV series and is reportedly a film of interest to weird folk.   This movie, however, is part of a new “rebuild” series to consist of four films; to make things more confusing, this release is an update of the first film in that series (titled Evangelion: 1.0 You Are [Not] Alone) with new scenes and visual enhancements.  An upgrade to the rebuild?  As if that wasn’t bad enough, I’m gathering that this is the second “upgrade” of the first film (the first being version 1.01).  Surely, fans who are interested in this will know what’s going on with all the different versions and where this release fits in. Buy Evangelion: 1.11 You Are Not Alone.

Stingray Sam (2009): From Cory McAbee (The American Astronaut) comes this futuristic musical comedy about a lounge singer from Mars who teams up with the Quasar Kid to rescue a little kidnapped girl.  We just ran across this, but festival reviews were almost universally positive. Variety characterizes it as “‘The Searchers'” meets “‘Eraserhead'” and says it “leaves one begging for more.”  Still screening at festivals, but it’s also available for download or DVD purchase from McAbee’s site.  Stingray Sam official site .

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Evangelion: 1.11 You Are Not Alone (2007): See entry in DVD above. Buy Evangelion: 1.11 You Are Not Alone [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 reviews of the curious based-in-fact 2009 mystery Winter of Frozen Dreams, Alejandro Jodoworsky‘s psychedelic slasher film Santa Sangre, and Robert Altman’s cult comedy  Brewster McCloud, about a boy who dreams of building a pair of wings and taking a flight inside the Houston Astrodome.

As far as weird search terms used to locate the site last week, the perverts were out in force, searching for stuff like “weird sex in humans videos,” “taboo insect porn strange,” “sexy orgiastic party,” and even “sally jesse rafael obsese.”  (By the way, we have nothing against perverts: they’re a valued part of our audience!)  Our favorite of the bunch was “weird sex movies of the 20th and 21st century,” because of its weird qualifiers: why craft your search term to specifically exclude 19th century weird sex movies?

Here’s the reader-suggested review queue as it stands today: Santa Sangre (next week); The Abominable Dr. Phibes; What? (Diary of Forbidden Dreams); Meatball Machine; Xtro; Basket Case; Suicide Club; O Lucky Man!; Trash Humpers (when/if released); Gozu; Tales of Ordinary Madness; The Wayward Cloud; Kwaidan; Six-String Samurai; Andy Warhol’s Trash; Altered States; Memento; Nightmare Before Christmas/Vincent/Frankenweenie; The Science of Sleep; Gothic (jumping in line to come out next week!); 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]; Necromania (1971, Ed Wood); 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; Frownland; The Seventh Seal; Taxidermia; Primer; and Maniac (1934).

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 (WIDE RELEASE):

Alice in Wonderland: Tim Burton reimagines Lewis Carrol’s classic, in sequel form.  Is it personal this time?  Burton and Carrol seemed the perfect marriage, and we were excited about this one until we saw the trailers, which make it look like the director has turned the nonsense narrative into just another fantasy quest to kill the evil queen.  Don’t worry, we’re still going to cover it.  Alice in Wonderland official site.

NEW ON DVD:

Alice (2009): Yet another reimagining of “Alice in Wonderland,” released just in time to capitalize on the Burton movie mania. This version features a butt-kicking adult Alice spirited away to a dystopian Wonderland because the Red Queen wants her magic ring. A 240 minute miniseries that originally aired on SyFy channel.  The same director also made a postmodern Wizard of Oz variation, Tin Man, in the miniseries format.  Buy Alice.

Bitch Slap (2009): Three tough women behave badly while fighting over a fortune in diamonds in this “postmodern parody” of busty bad babe flicks like Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! The trailer indicates there are numerous fantasy sequences, and the press release promises a parallel series of Memento-like flashbacks that reveal the backstory. Critics say they’d like to perform the title act on the producers. Buy Bitch Slap.

Castle in the Sky (two-disc special edition) (1986): To coincide with the release of Ponyo, Disney is releasing several older Hayao Miyazaki features in new dubbed versions. This one involves a boy and a girl searching for a floating castle while being opposed by pirates. Warning: we’re not 100% sure, but from the descriptions it sounds like the second disc in each set contains exactly the same content: featurettes about Miyazaki and Ghibli studios that aren’t specific to the movie being featured. Buy Castle in the Sky: Special Edition – 2 Disc DVD.

Cold Souls (2009): Read our review. This comedy about the illicit trade in human souls was one of the weirder movies of 2009, but our staff split on whether it was weird/good enough to make the List. Buy Cold Souls.

Gentlemen Broncos (2009): From Jared Hess (writer/director of Napoleon Dynamite) comes this gross-out satire about a nerdy amateur fantasy writer whose story is stolen by an established author and turned into an awful movie by a small-town director. Critics hated it (“Gentlemen Broncos doesn’t just visit Planet Quirk, it crash lands upon it.”–Peter Howell). Still, scenes from the film-within-the film, with it’s gay cyclops and flying robotic deer, look at least mildly weird, and it seems anything that almost everyone in the mainstream hates must have something going for it. On the other hand, Armond White liked it, which may justifiably scare you off. Buy Gentlemen Broncos.

Kiki’s Delivery Service (two-disc special edition) (1989): Popular Miyazaki anime about a young witch starting a courier service in the human world. Re-released to coincide with Ponyo. Buy Kiki’s Delivery Service: Special Edition – 2-Disc DVD.

My Neighbor Tortoro (two-disc special edition) (1988): Yet another two-disc Disney special edition of an early Hayao Miyazaki anime, this one involving a girl befriending a forest spirit in Japan in the 1950s. This dubbed version features the voices of the Fanning sisters. Buy My Neighbor Totoro (Two-Disc Special Edition).

Ponyo (Disney dubbed version, 2009): Read our review. A bit weird, but we’re convinced Miyazaki can deliver weirder.  Stylistically, it’s very much aimed at little girls with ages in the single digits. Contains a bonus disc of special features. Buy Ponyo (Two-Disc Edition).

Where the Wild Things Are (2009):  Read our review.  Spike Jonze’s adaptation/realization of the classic children’s book is a treat for adults.  We’d love to see the director’s cut (hint). Buy Where the Wild Things Are.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

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

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

The Neverending Story (1984): This childhood fantasy about a boy who enters a fairytale story and has to save a kingdom from Nothingness is a major nostalgia piece for many. It may not be very weird, but it may have influenced some of us towards imaginative cinema in our youths. Buy The Neverending Story [Blu-ray].

Ponyo (Disney dubbed version, 2009): See description in DVD above. Rather than putting all the extras onto a single Blu-ray, they’re selling it as a two-disc set and including a DVD as well. I guess the idea is that Blu-ray folks won’t feel cheated by getting one less disc than DVD people? Buy Ponyo (Two-Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo).

Where the Wild Things Are (2009): See description in DVD above. The Blu-ray contains some additional features not on the DVD, including a 23 minute short adaptation of another Maurice Sendak children’s story, “Higglety Pigglety Pop! Or There Must Be More to Life.” Buy Where the Wild Things Are [Blu-ray].

FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON YOUTUBE:

The Eternal [AKA Trance] (1998):  Michael Almereyda‘s followup to the vampire movie Nadja features druids, mummies and witches in an arty B-movie brew. No idea how long Lionsgate will keep this up for free, so check it out soon if you’re interested.  Watch The Eternal 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.

Next week, we plan to get out reviews of the mystical French sex film À l’aventure (2009), the currently-in-theaters Shutter Island, and the Coen brothers’ writer’s block nightmare Barton Fink (1991).  Also in the pipeline is a review of the 1990 post-apocalyptic film Hardware.

When selecting the weirdest search term used to locate the site last week, sometimes the search terms are fine, but the phrasing makes us wonder.  Such is the case with this week’s selection, “whilst we are on the subject of weird short films,” we makes it sound like the site was having a discussion with Lord Finklebottom over tea and crumpets.

Some notes on the reader-suggested review queue: we’ve acquired copies of Santa Sangre and The Abominable Dr. Phibes, so reviews should appear in the next couple weeks. We are officially giving up for the time being on Tabu’s Monday, as we haven’t been able to locate an English-language translation. We keep a separate wishlist of out-of-print titles, and we will keep an eye out for a re-release. The rest of the queue looks like this: Barton Fink (next week); Santa Sangre; The Abominable Dr. Phibes; What? (Diary of Forbidden Dreams); Meatball Machine; Xtro; Basket Case; Suicide Club; O Lucky Man!; Trash Humpers (when/if released); Gozu; Tales of Ordinary Madness; The Wayward Cloud; Kwaidan; Six-String Samurai; Andy Warhol’s Trash; Altered States; Memento; Nightmare Before Christmas/Vincent/Frankenweenie; The Science of Sleep; Gothic (jumping in line to come out next week!); 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]; Necromania (1971, Ed Wood); 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; and Dead Leaves.