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366 Underground

366 UNDERGROUND: THE BUNNY GAME (2011)

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Beware

DIRECTED BY: Adam Rehmeier

FEATURING: Rodleen Getsic, Jeff F. Renfro

PLOT: A prostitute is abducted by a trucker for five days.

COMMENTS: My goodness, that was something. Where to begin…

Slapping on the “Beware” label is a step in the right direction—The Bunny Game is a real piece of work. The film starts with super-creep: a female victim suffocating under a white plastic bag on her head. The shot is mere seconds long, but shows the filmmaker’s cards. Rehmeier has some nasty things in store for the viewer. The second shot, much longer—too long, certainly, for comfort—shows the card hiding up his sleeve: some John, viewed at the waist, his erect penis thrust into the mouth of the protagonist, forcefully “encouraging” her to fellate him. This shot goes on, it seems, until the act’s completion.

Events like this unfold for the unnamed woman (dubbed “Bunny” in the credits), going from rather bad to unimaginably worse when she proffers a blow job to a trucker who then abducts her and sexually and psychologically tortures her for five days. Heartbeat foley dominates one scene, where the muffled grunts and screams sound like they are coming through a door whilst a steady thump-thump-thump batters like an amphetamine dirge. Squeals of torsion wrench, as one nightmarish sequence blurs into the next, the timeline skipping between Bunny’s ordeal in high resolution, and a previous victim’s in grainier video. The trucker (dubbed “Hog”) mutters, snorts, smokes—coming across as a miserable, furious wreck of inhumanity as he breaks his victim.

Flash cuts, reverse footage, shaky camera, and other stylization tools simultaneously undercut and enhance the visceral malice. The movie weaves a subtle, but pernicious, electronic score throughout. The two leads obviously give us their all. But to what end? The Bunny Game technically qualifies as a narrative, I suppose: there is at least a through-line of events to follow. However, there is no climax, and no conclusion. As once observed: “If you want to tell stories, be a writer, not a filmmaker.” Rehmeier makes an experience with this film—a journey through malignant refuse, or a distillation of white hot agony.

In the Blu-ray disc extras, Rehmeier explains, “…we tried to maintain this negative energy throughout the production, and I think we were successful.” (And if pretentiousness through understatement is a thing, the filmmaker nails it.) But if The Bunny Game might be written off as pretentious Art-House-Shock-Shlock, at least it spares the viewer any affectations of deeper meaning: what you see is what you get—and what you see is mightily disturbing.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Sort of an unholy merger between extreme performance art and experimental horror film, The Bunny Game essentially dares viewers to sit through it without crying uncle.” — Nathaniel Thompson, Mondo Digital

The Bunny Game [Blu-ray]

The Bunny Game [Blu-ray]
  • A prostitute is abducted by a deranged trucker who subjects her to five days of torture and madness.
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366 UNDERGROUND: IRISH CATHOLIC (2023)

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DIRECTED BY: Katie Madonna Lee, A Great Male Artist

FEATURING: Avalon Rayne and assorted misfit Catholics

PLOT: Shavon rebels against her Irish-Catholic family only to find herself similarly repressed by the gaggle of punks she moves in with.

Still from Irish Catholic (2023)

COMMENTS: Katie Madonna Lee and A Great Male Artist [sic] really hit the nail on the head with this one. Indeed, they hit so many nails on the head that, once her baseball bat has been bolstered by the nails, it’s ready for them to truly wallop something—and boy-howdy do they wallop it. All of it: Catholicism, sisterhood, hypocrisy, the patriarchy, inflexible feminism, shame, conformity, and all manner of other injustices and annoyances of life. Irish Catholic is appropriately staged and shot like a morality play—with tunes!—with young Shavon navigating adversity as she frantically paddles toward self assuredness.

The lights come up, and we open on a bedraggled, middle aged mother praying for a parking space. Her makeup is slapdash, her eyes as keen as an irritated hawk, and her hair is festooned with a bouquet of infant dolls. Shavon and her siblings are crammed in the vehicle space; her sisters pray along, in song, with the mother, and Shavon tries to silence her demanding stomach (which has its own voice credit), ultimately bowing to the temptation of the bag of potato chips being brought to the soup kitchen. Guilt, guilt, guilt. The family serves the poor with guilt, and they sit through a guilt-themed sermon which ends on the hymn line, “Guilty, Forever Guilty.”

Oddly enough, Irish Catholic is also a rather fun, sometimes whimsical experience. Sure, Shavon’s brother is molested by the hot priest, but that’s offset by the smirk-inducing machinations of the sisters as they attempt to out-pray to God (the competition here being just how many starving Africans they hope to save when they grow up). Shavon’s slide from her miserable lower middle class Irish Catholic family existence to bohemian life with a quatro of questionably punk “enlightened” types is tempered by various visitations from (the appropriately credited) Hot Jesus, who at various times pines for Arby’s and is stoned out of his mind. There’s also the special celebrity guest, “the Poop Bucket” (with it’s own musical number), but I won’t get into that.

All told, Irish Catholic has quite a bit to say; much of it about religion. Greenaway came to mind more than once, despite his comparative grisliness; this skewering is far more of a  romp, despite claims of how very dark (very dark) the film is. Young person hates her life, falls in with a seemingly carefree crowd who ultimately prove to be just as controlling and image-conscious as the ostensibly more repressive traditional life she has fled. I’ve seen this, but I was happy to see this spin on it. Life can be frustrating and much too difficult. But as Jesus famously preached, “Your life’s gonna get worse, so you might as well learn to sing and dance. …it worked for the gays.”

At the time of this writing Irish Catholic is available for free on YouTube, courtesy of co-writer/director Lee.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“This peculiar film blends satire and drama in a quest to unravel the complexities of faith and the timeless human yearning for acceptance… [it] exemplifies avant-garde filmmaking.” — Chris Jones, Overly Honest Reviews (contemporaneous)

366 Underground, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue, List Candidates

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: NITWIT (2002)

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Weirdest!

Nitwit is currently available to watch for free on YouTube.

DIRECTED BY: Xan Price

FEATURING: Agnes Ausborn, Daniel Brantley, Wilder Selzer, Philly Abe

PLOT: A couple licks pictures of horses; the woman grows an unusually large blue proboscis. A wig screams and moans, while a baby cries out for a mommy; a man digs up a furry monster named Tongue and agrees to be its mommy and buy it a red dress. Microscopic creatures scheme to implant a baby in the woman so that the ensuing explosive birth will produce an anus; rollicking games of “Hot Damn” and “Damn Slow” are played.

Still from Nitwit (2002)

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE APOCRYPHA: Nitwit checks all the boxes. There are monsters and manipulative babies. The characters are cartoonish and never make any choice you expect. The acting is wildly over-the-top. The filming is amateurish but confident. And the authorial voice is all there on the screen, neither judgmental nor protective. Nitwit is bracingly odd and unashamed. It plays by no rules, and doesn’t even pretend to make sense.

COMMENTS:  Having spent a couple years working my way through the 366 Weird Movies Reader Queue, I’ve been impressed with the perceptiveness of our contributors; even when I didn’t find a movie to be all that weird, I’ve always understood where the suggestion came from, the glimmer of surprise and wonderment that undergirded the suggestion. But when it comes to Nitwit, my immediate reaction was an unwavering, “Oh, yeah, this is the stuff.” The opening vignette, in which a boy and a girl (they are adults chronologically, but emotionally they are definitely children) become so enraptured by a visual encyclopedia of horses that they attempt to taste the pictures, followed by chomping on a piece of steel wool, is but a mere amuse bouche for the full menu of eye-widening surprise this film inspires. There’s something refreshing about a movie that is unmistakably, indisputably weird, and Nitwit is cool, invigorating plunge.

Nitwit plays like a sketch film. There are only a handful of characters, who shift from high to low status as needed, and their stories interweave without ever really connecting. Sometimes these sketches take the form of little dramas, like the way the fresh-faced Minoltuh and her bewigged mama Womma trade off taking care of each other, the sickly one becoming childish and helpless while the healthier of the pair criticizes the patient for being difficult. (When it’s Minoltuh’s turn to be the patient, she grows an enormous azure nose that resembles nothing less than a coiled duct pipe. They do finally manage to cut the appendage off, but when Womma demands to know why the enormous blue schnozz is still in the house, Minoltuh lamely replies, “I was just keeping it, you know… for the memories.”) Other times, the characters engage in random silliness, such as the game Minoltuh and Hootus play in which they climb over each other while lasciviously-but-asexually chanting “hot damn!” to each other. In one of my favorite absurd moments, Hootus meets up with a dog, whom the man says he would love to see dig a hole. Smash cut to both of them, the man and the dog, gleefully pawing at the dirt like the mindless animals they are. 

There are a couple threads that flirt with plot, including Hootus’ encounter with a Davy Crockett cap with dangling tentacles. He brings the strange spider-like creature to his bomb-shelter hovel and nails it to the wall, at which point the beast makes a simple request: it will be the man’s mommy if the man will be its mommy. In the most reasonable statement anyone in this film makes, the man admits that he doesn’t know very much about being a mommy, but the furry thing is undeterred. “Just mash your lips together and spit.” The bargain is made, with the caveat that he can’t call the monster “mommy,” but must instead use its given name, “Tongue.” This is one of the most fully articulated relationships in the entire movie, and it serves as a stark counterpoint to the glowing parasites who are conspiring to put a baby in Minoltuh’s belly in order to force an explosion that will create the anus she currently lacks. Their intent seesaws between charity and cruelty, and it’s only on that emotional spectrum that a character desperately gasping “I’m farting” could be a poignant moment.

Nitwit is an amateurish production, shot on harsh video with novice actors gamely doing every crazy thing Price asks of them in locations like abandoned alleys, empty fields, and somebody’s apartment. But there’s nothing that a gaudier, more professional approach would bring to the material that’s not already here. The film is collected insanity, stuck together like pinned butterflies on display, and the raw presentation only intensifies the surprise of the thing. Nitwit isn’t smart, but it’s content to be exactly what it is, and that’s not dumb.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“A doggedly eccentric whatsit of a movie, Xan Price’s debut feature after 10 years of underground shorts stamps its own distinctive weirdness on ideas influenced by ‘Eraserhead’ and early John Waters.” – Dennis Harvey, Variety (festival screening)

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

366 Underground, Capsules

366 UNDERGROUND: PSYCHO APE: PART II – THE WRATH OF KONG (2024)

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Weirdest!

Psycho Ape 2: The Wrath of Kong Indiegogo page for more information, including ordering

DIRECTED BY: Addison Binek, Greg DeLiso

FEATURING: Bill Weeden, Kansas Bowling, Floyd Cashio

PLOT: During the trial of Psycho Ape, the filmmakers make a sequel to Psycho Ape.

Still from Pyshco Ape Part II: The Wrath of Kong (2024)

COMMENTS:

Good afternoon, reader, we now take you to the Psycho Ape Part II -the Wrath of Kong review, already in progress:

…and that moment when the presenter is challenged to a staring contest with the camera lens and proceeds to gaze at the viewer for  several minutes—all while clips of this, that, and particularly the other spool out on the in-frame—it’s clear that these jokers (by which I mean Binek and Deliso) are really just doing whatever they want. The scattershot approach to this compelling nonsense keeps you on your toes, because who knows what will happen next? Will it be flashback? Complaints from Psycho Ape actors about not being in the sequel? More courtroom shenanigans? Or maybe it will just be a long segment featuring Bill “Doctor ZOOmis” Weeden getting his right ear pierced after avoiding this for decades?

This mash-up of , , and has everything to say, virtually all of it about how this is a sequel to a film, set twenty-five years before, during, or after the original, an original which…

I’m going to have to ask you to hold that thought as we have just received a live-breaking report from our man in the field, Giles Edwards.

 

[ON THE SCENE REMARKS FROM GILES EDWARDS]

Shocking, if true. We now return to Giles in the studio.

…so I’m not sure what more to say. From the nonsensical trial of Psycho Ape, to the odd nod to prey-predator polyamory, to the direct re-creations of classic film scenes (Titanic, The Dark Knight, and The Temple of Doom, among others), to the regular blasts of product placement, this is goofy, meandering, and defiantly pointless—with a degree of self-awareness not usually becoming for a feature film. But it’s always lively, and wraps up well before interest might wane. The talent gathered for this (presumably from a deep well of friends and acquaintances), though mixed in proficiency, is invariably cheerful, with a deep, deep, deep awareness that while they probably shouldn’t bother with this thing of a movie, they Can, and so, boldly, they Do.

Back to you.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“It does not matter if one finds this to be good-bad, bad-bad, or just plain blah; this is an experience that should be had by everyone interested in low-budget and experimental filmmaking.” — Bobby LePire, Film Threat (contemporaneous)

 

366 Underground, Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

366 UNDERGROUND FROM THE READER QUEUE: NICK: THE FEATURE FILM (2013)

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Nick: The Feature Film is currently available to watch for free on YouTube.

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Chris Alex, Nick Alex, Robert Benfer, Jennifer Alex

PLOT: A documentarian decides to devote an entire film to capturing a typical day in the life of unremarkable Nick, but an acquaintance of Nick’s named Chris shows up and proceeds to derail the project with his own demands, attention-stealing actions, and demonstrations of self-proclaimed genius.

Still from nick: the feature films (2013)

COMMENTS: Jason Steele made his name in 2005 with a Flash animation called “Charlie the Unicorn” that unexpectedly went viral. He followed this breakthrough a sequel, and eventually three more, and further a series parodying the first series, and before you knew it, Steele had inadvertently stumbled into a career. His FilmCow studio has been pumping out material ever since. Somewhere along the way, Steele branched out into live-action, creating a second YouTube channel to showcase his collaborations with brothers Chris and Nick Alex. These are mostly shorts, but our subject today is the time they tried to go for more. 

Reportedly, the film was improvised and shot in an entire day. This checks out. The sketches that comprise Nick: The Feature Film display a similar pattern: Fawning documentarian Robert asks Nick to demonstrate some aspect of his plebeian existence, but before Nick can get too far, insane egotist Chris swoops in to tout his superior inventiveness, break some stuff, and leave irritation in his wake. Chris displays all the hallmarks of an improv nightmare, denying the choices of others, hamming it up for the audience to the exclusion of his castmates, and repeating flop jokes under the notion that the funny is in the callback. To be fair, his scene partners are letting him do this, so they clearly believe he’s on to some comic gold. 

So let’s talk about our comic star. Chris presents himself as a genius; he undercuts this assessment every time he opens his mouth. He’s particularly adept at ruining existing things by attempting to “plus” them, such as his self-serving takes on Battle Monopoly or Double Badminton. He invites cult figures into Nick’s house, he tries to fix a car with a shovel, and just generally wanders around Titusville with a bracing and unearned self-confidence. It’s a fully committed performance, but it sucks up all the air in the room. This may be Nick: The Feature Film, but it’s really Chris: The Nonstop Antics. 

The Monopoly scene shows the limits of this kind of thing as improv:  Chris makes up rules at random, like a newfangled version of fizzbin. Nick blithely goes along with whatever Chris says, while Robert’s role is to question the logic like a proper straight man. We don’t learn anything we didn’t already know—Chris is a consummate BS artist, Nick and Robert are different varieties of pushover—and the scene runs for several minutes through its heads-I-win, tails-you-lose scenario, at which point it just ends with Chris declaring victory and everyone else shrugging their shoulders. To be blunt: if only one character gets the chance to do anything, you don’t have a scene. 

I have to confess that I’m immediately taken out of the concept of Nick: The Feature Film long before Chris arrives. There is absolutely nothing compelling about Nick. Inoffensive but bland to the point of invisibility, he has nothing to show and nothing to say. This renders the smitten Robert as either insightful beyond typical human understanding or flatly stupid, which explains why the narrative is interspersed with interludes that tell extraordinary tales of Nick’s rich life. They are sketched out on chalkboards, with only a photograph of Nick’s face to connect with anything real. The Nick of these stories bears zero relation to the one we see in live-action. In illustration, Nick is a near-superhero, saving lives. In person, he’s a bland doofus who has barely prepared for an entry-level job interview. The gleefully absurd tales of Nick’s exploits stand in stark relief to the passive, featureless nobody whom we see onscreen, so you can either try to take the film at face value or you can accept it as an absurd platform for the comic stylings of the FilmCow collective. Neither approach works entirely.

For a home movie shot on the fly, Nick looks pretty good, and there are small pleasures to be had, like the neo-evangelist who shows up at Nick’s door and proceeds to quietly follow Robert around way too closely. (She’s played by another member of the Alex clan, Jennifer.) And it’s fairly amusing that the film ends with Robert refusing to accept the finale that’s right in front of him—Chris finally earns his chops by standing up to a blowhard who insults his friend —instead creating his own take in which Chris receives a series of increasingly giant swords falling from the sky and lodging up his rectum. But these amusements take a back seat to a conundrum and a frustration: the empty shirt we’re supposed to be interested in and the irritating loon who demands our attention instead. 

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

Nick: The Feature Film (mildly NSFW: language, crude humor)