All posts by Shane Wilson

Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: FELIX THE CAT: THE MOVIE (1988)

1 Comment

366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.

DIRECTED BY: Tibor Hernádi

FEATURING THE VOICES OF: David Kolin, Chris Phillips, Maureen O’Connell, Peter Newman, Alice Playten

PLOT: When Princess Oriana is kidnapped by the sinister Duke of Zill, only Felix the Cat and his magical bag of tricks can save the day—so long as his arch-frenemy The Professor doesn’t interfere.

COMMENTS: It’s fun to imagine a Sunset Boulevard scenario wherein Felix the Cat hearkens back to better times, angrily reminding anyone who will listen that, back in his heyday, he was bigger than Mickey Mouse. He’d go on about how he moved so much merchandise in the silent era, but faltered when talkies came in. How he got his groove back when television snapped him up, jump-starting his career with a voice, new supporting characters, the introduction of his iconic bag of tricks, and an insidiously infectious theme song. How the lack of a deep-pocketed studio to protect him and dust him off every so often (like that infernal mouse had) left him floundering, and how his chief animator and owner of his copyright, Joe Oriolo (and later Joe’s son Don), struggled to keep Felix in the game with ever-growing levels of desperation, including a bizarre misguided attempt at a live-action series and even a Baby Felix cartoon made exclusively for Japanese television. And here’s where Felix would ball up his fist and pound it on the table, lamenting that if anyone knows him at all today, it’s as a clock.

Maybe that can be the scenario for Felix’s next feature. For now, we’re stuck with this one, probably his thirstiest bid at a revival. Felix is a simple character, a monochromatic feline with a classic stretch-and-squash movement and a seeming immunity to misfortune. But to wring 80 minutes out of him, it’s essential to complicate, complicate, complicate, first with a prologue presenting a proto-CG version of Felix’s disembodied head, then by launching an elaborate plot to save a fairy-tale kingdom from an evil overlord, with a panoply of odd characters including a heavily rotoscoped princess, a gun-toting yokel, a host of psychedelic wildlife, and an army of robot trash cans led by what appears to be an ape with a bubble for a head.

The animation, from Hungary’s Pannonia Studio, is wildly erratic, veering from elaborately detailed landscapes and imaginative creature designs to obvious looped animations and jumpy movement. Case in point: Princess Oriana is sometimes shown in the kind of fine detail one associates with the Disney Renaissance, but then is seen in a herky-jerky, poorly drawn style one associates with direct-to-truck-stop mockbusters. But even at its best, the animators’ work is undercut by a script that spends inordinate amounts of time on exposition and setup, forcing the artists to vamp to fill time. In fact, Felix the Movie is almost allergic to anything that stays focused on the plot. The vile Duke is supposedly seeking to conquer the kingdom as revenge against the Princess, but instead of showing us his schemes, we watch him make her do interpretive dance. Numerous scenes are dedicated solely to watching one cartoon beast or another go about their business, even while we’re aware of an impending danger happening somewhere way offscreen. Even the musical numbers seem completely separate from the proceedings, such as a showcase for a family of foxes who have nothing to do with anything, or an extended dance break for a pair of rat/lizard hybrids. (This latter sequence lasts for more than two minutes, almost 3% of the film’s runtime.)

Adding to the muddle is the decision to include two of Felix’s foes from the TV series, the nefarious Professor and his hyper-nerdy nephew Poindexter. They have the potential to throw another obstacle in Felix’s path, but they spend most of the film trailing behind their quarry and end up helping once they finally catch up. One presumes they represent the movie’s attempt to cater to Felix nostalgists, but they’re meaningless to the young, adventure-hungry kids who are the most likely audience for this kind of thing. The movie aims for everyone and hits no one.

Given how uninterested it is in anything logical and linear, it’s fitting that the movie just sort of stops, with Felix saving the day by throwing a book at a giant robot. (That’s literally the whole solution. Deus ex libro. He doesn’t even use the bag of tricks.) Felix the Cat: The Movie should have been a chance for the once-famous feline to get his groove back, but the film never finds a way to let him be the hero he once was, and it doesn’t have a solid idea of what it wants to do instead. So somebody buy the old guy another drink and let him rant and rave about his cruel fate. He deserves another shot at the big time, and this ain’t it.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“The original Felix cartoons were always surreal in some way, but not in a studied manner, more of an organic, natural development out of the character’s quirks and goodnatured ingenuity. Here, however, there is an attempt to plonk him down into a world that is already weird, almost a post-apocalyptic version of a fairytale land that suffers too many digressions into strangeness for its own sake without furthering the plot… You can see it entertaining the very young who are not aware of Felix’s history, but as a tribute to him it falls flat when it really could have been any generic character starring here: he doesn’t even take off his tail and use it as a cane.” Graeme Clark, The Spinning Image

(This movie was nominated for review by Jayzon. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.) 

FELIX THE CAT The Movie DVD (USA Format) 2003

FELIX THE CAT The Movie DVD (USA Format) 2003
  •  
Check Price
It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: GRIMM LOVE (2006)

Leave a comment

aka Rohtenburg; Butterfly: A Grimm Love Story

366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.

DIRECTED BY: Martin Weisz

FEATURING: , Keri Russell, Thomas Huber

PLOT: An American student delves into the mysterious case of a German man who killed and ate a willing victim.

COMMENTS: In his book Popular Crime, Bill James writes, “Most of us who read crime books, I would argue, do so out of a desire to better understand the fraying edges of society. That is not unhealthy, and we are not titillated by these events.” It’s a reassuring sentiment, one that absolves us of guilt over our fascination with the grisly and sometimes perverse ways in which one of us harms another. So maybe that’s the permission we’re seeking to feel okay about wanting to look closer, as Grimm Love does, at the case of Armin Meiwes: to understand the mystery of the man who ate a willing victim before said victim was quite done dying.

Grimm Love understands our discomfort, which is why it provides a character representing both our curiosities and our qualms. Our stand-in, Katie, is well chosen, since we feel confident that the post-“Felicity”, pre-“The Americans” Keri Russell wouldn’t lead us anywhere that it wouldn’t be worthwhile to go. Her investigation is part of her post-graduate studies in Germany, after all, and if she has a compulsion, it must be because there is something to learn. (At no point does she even hint at what her thesis could possibly be.) Sure, maybe the school principal is going to be offended at the mere suggestion of the awful crime, but that nice lady out on her lawn seems to understand, and so she’ll bemusedly point the way to the murderer’s dilapidated house. People are just interested in these things, you know.

Grimm Love actually presents two parallel stories: a dramatization of the lives of the killer and his victim (here renamed Oliver and Simon, and played as adults with brooding intensity by Kretschmann and Huber) paired with the inquisitive Katie’s linear investigation after the fact. This structure accomplishes two important goals: it gives us a character we can feel less squicky about following, and it pads out the length of the film, because a movie that only focuses on the cannibalistic principals doesn’t have a whole lot to say. From the standpoint of basic historical knowledge, there’s nothing for us to learn, since Katie’s roommate recaps the entire story for us in the opening minutes. We’re left to try and discern just what is so compelling about this story for ourselves, and the answer is wanting. Yes, Oliver has a troubled childhood, abandoned by his father and brother to be left alone with a mentally ill mother. He doesn’t fit in at school, he’s exposed to the slaughtering and butchering of animals, and he has access to illicit content on the internet. But why did he succumb to depravity, in contrast to so many others? No one can say. Meanwhile, Simon suffers an accident when young, then copes with loneliness and develops a desire to mix intense pain with intense pleasure. But at the time he agrees to serve himself up to Oliver, he is in a committed relationship, and he seems to regret the pain he’s about to cause his lover. Why does he remain irrevocably unfulfilled? No one can say.

Russell can shed no light on the subject, either. Her narration repeatedly refers to an irresistible drive, an urge to go deeper, but it’s not because she’s gleaning important facts about the human condition. She’s not taking notes or interrogating witnesses, and she never articulates an insight or a discovery resulting from her research. She’s just drawn to the macabre, tempted to touch the forbidden. She’s a looky-loo. The only questions answered here are mundane: He bit off what? Cooked it and served it to him? How’d he clean up the mess? Grimm Love pretentiously suggests that it has something significant to say, but Katie’s in-the-moment reaction when she finally gets to glimpse the terrible scene for herself gives the game away. And that’s where we end the film: Simon is dead, Katie is utterly repulsed and regretful, and Oliver? Well, he’s just out of meat. End credits. The film has toyed with casting him as a tragic figure, bereft of love at home yet intensely kind and considerate to his prospective food. But his aims are ultimately selfish: he’s killed before, and he hopes to kill again. What we already knew, we now know with matching visuals. It’s not revelatory. It’s just ugly.

It’s okay to be intrigued by the deeds that bad men do. But while sometimes there’s a lesson to be learned about the nature of our society and the monsters that it can produce, it’s also true that  sometimes the monsters should be slain and left to rot. The only message Grimm Love has is that it has no message. If you just want to see inhumanity personified, it’ll do. If you want to learn something, best to do your looking elsewhere.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“It’s an accomplished offering, but there are a few problems with the pacing and what I imagine are directorial choices (a back-and-forth plot devices, a dual narrative, plus flashbacks and imaginary moments).… Sort of a Hansel & Gretel meet Hannibal Lecter mish mash of psychology and horror, Grimm Love may not be perfect — but it’s pretty unforgettable.” – Stacy Layne Wilson, Horror.com

(This movie was nominated for review by Celluloid. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)     

Grimm Love (Fangoria Frightfest)

Grimm Love (Fangoria Frightfest)
  • Factory sealed DVD
Check Price
Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: SUBWAY (1985)

Leave a comment

366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.

DIRECTED BY: Luc Besson

FEATURING: Isabelle Adjani, , , Michel Galabru, Jean-Hugues Anglade, Jean Reno

PLOT: Fred, a free-spirited thief, absconds with valuable papers belonging to Héléna, the kept wife of a powerful criminal, and escapes into the underground world of the Paris Métro, where he enlists the help of an entire community living off the grid.

COMMENTS: Subway gets started with a truly satisfying kick. We meet Fred in media res, tuxedo-clad and barreling down a Parisian highway in a cheap car with a load of similarly attired muscle in hot pursuit. But he even knows that the chase doesn’t really begin until he’s got the proper music, and so he ignores the impending threat just long enough to give him the chance to slam in a cassette tape and queue up Eric Serra’s punchy synth-funk beat. Once that roars in, we’ve got ourselves a bona fide chase.

It’s a very Luc Besson kind of joke that, once Fred (Lambert, only a year after being introduced to English-speaking audiences as Tarzan) eludes his pursuers in the underground, we’ll never see him in the sun again, and we definitely won’t have another thrill ride. Instead, we’ll join Fred in discovering the very different way of life taking place in the tunnels of the Métro. It may seem familiar, with commerce and law enforcement and entertainment, but it’s a very different attitude down there. It’s a laid-back, “que sera, sera” kind of vibe, and Fred adapts to it quickly; in his first night, he meets friends who give him food, new clothes, and a place to sleep; he makes the acquaintance of an incredibly strong man who can pry open handcuffs with his bare hands; and he pops into an impromptu party where he immediately starts making friends. If Fred is a natural fit for subway life, Héléna, the gangster’s wife who Fred is both smitten with and cheekily blackmailing, is a more surprising addition to the community. Adjani is stunning in a series of terrifically 80s outfits, but she is possibly most striking in a scene where she returns to her above-ground life and realizes that she can’t stomach it. She gently ingratiates herself into the Métro culture, because that’s what the good guys do in Subway.  

Subway is one of the pivotal entries in the French movement known as “cinéma du look,” in which Besson and fellow directors like Jean-Jacques Beineix and Leos Carax cast aside distractions like narrative in favor of maximum style. Subway has style to burn. Indeed, logic is not anyone’s top priority. One thing may be important at one moment and forgotten the next. Sure, Fred is on the run from zealous policemen and vengeful gangsters, but that’s no reason he can’t take a quick time-out to rehearse the amazing new band he’s assembled out of the various buskers hanging out in the underground. There’s even time for him to team up with the well-connected flower salesman for a quick payroll robbery. Things just happen in Subway because it would be nice if they did. If you’re spending time wondering where Fred finds the explosives to blast open an office safe, or where the band comes up with their matching safari outfits, your head’s in the wrong place.

What’s most fascinating about Subway is how little it cares for the basics of story construction. There are a host of characters, all interesting but defined by the fewest possible characteristics, from the hard-bitten police detective who despises his junior officers, to the friendly purse thief whose primary trait is wearing roller skates, to the bemused drummer played by Jean Reno who hardly utters three sentences but still seems cooler and more relaxed than in any other role in his career. There’s a romance, but it’s conducted almost entirely smoldering looks and chill dialogue. There’s even a climactic collision of passion and violence that is tempered by a happy song to such a degree that even a corpse can’t help but nod along. It doesn’t make sense, and it’s not supposed to. Subway is made of pleasant little moments, and like the people they depict, we just take them as they come.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“There’s nothing that’s ever boring in this one, but it is definitely paced differently than many may be used to.  It is less about the Plot directly and more about the ambiance of the area…  Getting the balance between ‘weird, slice of life Story’ and Plot-driven Film is tricky.  Thankfully, this one balances it quite well… The Ending is a bit odd, but, you know, French.” Alec Pridgen, Mondo Bizzaro

(This movie was nominated for review by Gary Simanton. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)         

Apocryphally Weird

58*. GOD TOLD ME TO (1976)

4 Comments

366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.

AKA Demon; God Told Me To Kill

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.” – Proverbs 3:5-6

DIRECTED BY: Larry Cohen

FEATURING: Tony Lo Bianco, Deborah Raffin, Sandy Dennis, Sylvia Sidney, Sam Levene, Mike Kellin, Richard Lynch

PLOT: NYPD detective Peter Nicholas investigates a series of spree killings in which the perpetrators all seem to act with no provocation or explanation, each justifying their actions by saying “God told me to.” Nicholas, a devout Catholic, is infuriated by this claim, but equally plagued by their certainty and his shame over his own sins and infidelities. His investigation leads him to an unearthly suspect, an individual with stories of alien abduction, virgin birth, and Nicholas’ own family history.

Still from God Told Me To (1976)

BACKGROUND:

  • Cohen was a genre chameleon whose c.v. includes the blaxploitation gangster flick Black Caesar, the giant-beast-in-New-York movie Q: The Winged Serpent, and the consumerism horror-satire The Stuff, and his previous film It’s Alive, the tale of a monstrous baby that our own Alfred Eaker called “one of the best horror films of the decade.”
  • Cohen planned to engage Bernard Herrmann, who provided the music for It’s Alive, to compose the score for the new film. According to Cohen, Herrmann watched a rough cut and afterwards discussed his plans with the director over dinner. Unfortunately, Herrmann passed away in his sleep that night. (The film is dedicated to the composer.) Cohen’s next choice, Miklós Rózsa, turned down the job, saying, “God told me not to.” Frank Cordell eventually scored the film.
  • Cohen first cast Robert Forster in the role of the detective. Forster worked on the film for several days before tiring of the director’s methods and leaving the production.
  • The policeman who goes on a shooting rampage at the St. Patrick’s Day parade is portrayed by Andy Kaufman, in his film debut. Cohen crashed the actual parade to film without a permit, and said later that he had to intervene with onlookers to protect Kaufman when the comedian taunted them.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: In their final showdown, the glowing, androgynous Bernard tempts Nicholas to join forces and spawn a new race of beings on earth. As proof of his bonafides, Philip pulls up his tunic to reveal a pulsing vagina located squarely in the left side of his chest. It’s a startling sight (and a curious location at that), but it clears the bar for shock value, and ensures that Nicholas is definitively unconvinced to join the cause.

TWO WEIRD THINGS: Abstract alien abduction; ribcage vagina

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: God Told Me To builds upon the intriguing decision to take the rantings of homicidal lunatics seriously, and to consider the possibility that God really is commanding the insane to do their horrible deeds. Upon this simple subversion, Cohen piles up a child’s treasury of conspiracy theories and paranoid tropes, including shadowy cabals of power, police corruption, ancient astronauts, hermaphroditism, mind control, and angel/devil dichotomies. It’s a mad melange of wild ideas and outlandish plot twists that guarantees you never quite get your footing.

Original trailer for God Told Me To (1976)

COMMENTS: “It’s based on a true story!” Larry Cohen told the Village Voice about God Told Me To in 2018. “No, seriously, it’s a picture about religion, and the violence people do in the name of religion — which feels really relevant today.” Of course, Cohen was far Continue reading 58*. GOD TOLD ME TO (1976) →

Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: IMPOLEX (2009)

1 Comment

366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.

DIRECTED BY: Alex Ross Perry

FEATURING: Riley O’Bryan, Kate Lyn Sheil, Bruno Meyrick Jones, voice of Eugene Mirman

PLOT: A lone soldier trudges through the forest in search of a pair of V-2 rockets, but consistently loses his way thanks to a combination of tiredness, apathy, and a series of hallucinated distractions.

Still from Impolex (2009)

COMMENTS: Like many filmmakers before him, Alex Ross Perry broke in with a microbudgeted, limited cast, one-set, single-premise film to demonstrate his talent. These “calling cards” can provide a fascinating peek into an extraordinary career poised to explode. (I have reviewed one such example on this very site.) Perry’s introduction keeps things pretty simple, from a production standpoint. It’s as a storyteller that he shows an unusually high level of ambition, given that he’s decided that his debut feature is the right place to attempt an unsanctioned adaptation of ’s “Gravity’s Rainbow.” No quickie horror film for him.

Having never attempted the literary Everest that is Pynchon’s most acclaimed work myself, I take it on faith that shared character names, common elements (missile numbers, octopi, bananas), and a similarly surreal milieu speak to the faithfulness of Perry’s covert adaptation. The secretive author has only been officially translated to the screen once, but since Perry includes the novel amongst several nonfiction works in an end-credits bibliography, we can stipulate its influence here. What suffers in the translation to a visual medium is the nature of its central character, a feckless fellow who may seem introspective on the page, but comes across as lethargic or even clueless on the screen. Tyrone (Riley O’Bryan) stumbles around the forest in no particular direction, mumbling in a grand display of Gen Z-style elocution. His ostensible goal is to collect two precious German rockets as part of a secret military operation (although his targets are mere models rather than the actual four-story missile that paved the way for modern rocketry), but having located one of the pair, he seems to have no prospects for finding the second rocket, and has a hard enough time keeping hold of the first. When he’s not toting or spooning the wayward projectile, he’s fending off the intrusions of people who categorically cannot be there, including a one-eyed Australian who gives off Raoul Duke vibes, an old colleague who is also evidently an escaped criminal, and an octopus who shows up just for the hang. And so he wanders, going nowhere and fending off plot development like a mystery box TV show with no definitive end date.

There’s strong reason to believe that we’re watching the dream—or possibly the Jacob’s Ladder-style final moments—of our hero, possibly moments after perusing Pynchon’s novel while eating too much spicy food. Aside from Tyrone, no one dresses in period garb. At one point, he reads from the secret files which dictate his mission, but when it comes time to identify the superiors who have sent him on this assignment, he formally reports, “I cannot say, I’m afraid. That would be telling.” He describes himself as having unique abilities for the task at hand, but never demonstrates that he has any skills at all. He doesn’t have a compass, his orders contain maps of Scandinavia and irrelevant photographs, and he never comes across the slightest trace of the wider world beyond the forest. Tyrone is perpetually on his own with no direction home, and he displays very little interest in improving his lot.

The most frequent interruption in his wanderings is the repeated intrusion of Katje, the girlfriend he left behind and whose biggest contribution seems to be as a nagging harpy throwing cold water on his efforts. But Katje finally gets her turn in a nine-minute sequence near the film’s end where she lays bare his cruelties. It’s a crucial shift in perspective, as it provides her only opportunity to speak her mind as a real human instead of a wet blanket. It also calls into question the very nature of Tyrone’s mission, as the flashback appears to take place in the now rather than in the ostensible World War II-era setting we expect. When Katje returns one last time to try and advise Tyrone, she appears as a protector instead of a critic. But this is the story’s last new element before it stumbles toward the closing credits, and it reads as a twist rather than as a legitimate pathway. In any event, Tyrone pays her no heed. His fate is fixed. The forest is the end. 

Perry’s Pynchonesque journey benefits from uniqueness, as there aren’t too many narratives where the hero actively goes nowhere and does nothing. But there’s not really any reward for coming along for the ride. Without a central character to be interested in, an objective to be achieved, or intriguing visuals or occurrences to capture a viewer’s attention, Impolex is aimless and dull. We are all Katje, fruitlessly waiting all night for someone to come home. 

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Reveling in its provocative absurdity, ‘Impolex’ is a madly uncommercial head-scratcher that will strike a dream-logic chord in some viewers and leave others in a ‘My kid could do better than that’ mood… a nine-minute single-take closeup of a woman (Kate Lyn Sheil), delivering a weirdly revelatory monologue, unexpectedly catapults the film to another level, breaking viewers’ otherwise understandable alienation.” – Ronnie Scheib, Variety (contemporaneous)

(This movie was nominated for review by Dwarf Oscar. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)