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FANTASIA 2025: APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: TAMALA 2030: A PUNK CAT IN DARK (2025)

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Weirdest!

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Voices of Kana Aoi, Daisuke Kasuya, Atsuko Nakata, Sayaka, Kei Taniguchi

PLOT: A missing-persons case steers Tamala and her friend into a world of corporate nefariousness, deep-time conspiracy, and staggering cosmic implications.

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: To quote Fantasia programmer Rubert Bottenberg: “The Japanese kawaii paradigm of Hello Kitty and Hatsune Miku collides with cabalistic capitalism, cataclysmic prophecy, and the ruptured realities of , , and in… a deviously dreamlike, metaphysical mind-melt of high-fructose, retro-futuristic, paranoid pop-art brilliance.”

COMMENTS: Having your eyes bombarded at the end of a long day can be rather refreshing: something to wipe away the accumulated impressions, and leave your perception open to embrace the crazy world anew. This effect was indeed welcome, for as Tamala likes to say: “Another f*cking day is about to begin.” This line, delivered in a childlike, brat-girl, cutey pie kind of way, kicks off the (*deep breath*) Tamala 2030: A Punk Cat in the Dark experience. An experience unlike any other I’ve witnessed on the big screen. An experience, if I may, whose existence hinges on the manifold developments of the past century and a half, and on the strange minds of the enigmatic t.o.L team.

For those unfamiliar with the Tamala phenomenon (as I was, until the screening), she was introduced to the world—at Fantasia, I believe—in 2010. Per her bio, she is “[a] young female cat, born in the Orion Constellation on the Odessa star; cute, but uses much foul language. She was genetically engineered in Cat Year 1869 to always remain a year and a half old, in order to be the immortal mascot of the mega-conglomerate CATTY & Co.” Which should give you the gist of things.

Where the gist may slip from your grasp may depend, but having missed the gist before the Tamala movie screening, I was still a happy viewer as Tamala 2030 washed over me like a wave of strange black and white purréed media. Tamala dances, Tamala curses, Tamala munches on pocky, and all the while the movie spools out impossible amounts of ambient details. Seven cities in seven different prefectures have seen simultaneous disappearances of seven different two-year-old cats. (The fact that one of them handsome spurs Tamala to join her boy-friend’s [?] investigation of the matter.) The specifics clatter on-screen at a blistering pace as Tamala, always boing-boinging in her steps, saunters fearlessly through class riots, cabalistic postal machinations, and onward to her empyrean duel amongst the stars.

t.o.L. manage the difficult hat-trick of fusing several graphic styles into a cohesive—albeit capital-“I”-Incredible—world. Tamala 2030 is a symphony of sight, walking a devilishly narrow through-line of technique where any slight variation would have catastrophically cacophonous results. Echoes of late ’90s screen-saver loops, mid-19th-century advertisement figures and fonts, flash™-y forms, and 3D-celestiality are all here, and all coexist. This film is a dizzying march through time and space, an appropriately epic-length adventure with pathos, frog-licking, reincarnation, cow spotted sports cars, intrigue, graffiti—and more than one explosion of Tamala into swarms of mini-Tamalas.

Oh yes, this will cleanse and flush your mind’s palette, and you’ll feel jumbled and pumped and ready to rock—’cause another f*cking day is about to begin.

Tamala‘s theatrical release date is uncertain, but Deaf Crocodile has acquired the physical media rights and plans to release the film in 2026.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

No other reviews were found at time of publication

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FANTASIA 2025: APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: THE DEVIL’S BRIDE (1974)

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Velnio nuotaka

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DIRECTED BY: Arunas Zebriunas

FEATURING: Gediminas Girdvainis, Vasyl Symchych, Regina Varnaite, Vaiva Mainelyte, Regimantas Adomaitis

PLOT: Cast down from Heaven, minor demon Pinchiukas tricks an Earthly miller into signing away his daughter.

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Featuring a bumbling God, a prancy little devil, and non-stop rock and roll and orchestra, this Cold War relic bubbles over with breezy “what the Hell?” charm.

COMMENTS: I don’t always watch devil-summoned naiads pursue a hunky suitor, but when I do, I prefer them on horseback. At a slightly too-long seventy-five minutes, The Devil’s Bride catches the eye and raises the eyebrow from the start, commencing its cavalcade of song and dance with a gilded frame bounding the Lord and a host of singing cherubim. God dozes on and off, with the angels discovering the temptations of feasting, drinking, and smooching during their brief moments without supervision. Cue the music transition from the classic big blast hymnal choir. At one point, God’s thronal bell loses its clapper, and chaos ensues for just too long while he attempts to fix it. By the time he rings it to restore order, several of the Heavenly host are ripe for a fall: lady angels losing grace in go-go dance outfits, fellow angels done up in full 19th-century foppery. And we meet our anti-hero, Pinchiukas, fallen into a pond, depressed and ready to begin scheming.

Some of my confusion about the plot flow stems certainly from a regrettable lack of knowledge about Lithuanian folklore. (Some, too, doubtless from the punch-drunk mental state I was in after very little sleep the preceding night.) Are gay angels a recognized aspect of Soviet Lithuanian Catholic doctrine? Who is that incessantly aria-ing blonde on the boat who immediately falls for the homely miller? How is it the local swain so swiftly seduces—and is seduced by—the daughter? (Was it his manly-but-romantic chomping of a daisy flower head that clinched the deal)? What is up with that elaborate gold-carved window frame on the mill exterior? How about those disembodied black-elbow-gloved hands at the devil’s beck and call? And why is a devil, but not an angel or God, bound so scrupulously by legal contract verbiage?

This final question is one I have for supernatural folktales more broadly. Suffice to say, the questions raised are as superfluous as any answers that might be furnished by a more illuminated viewer.

Despite stalling out on occasion, and despite the repetitiveness of every one of the songs, The Devil’s Bride is a romp that borders on the madcap, particularly thanks to leading man Gediminas Girdvainis as the little devil. It was pleasant to observe that, confused though I was about the occult mechanics, the portrayal of “evil” was ultimately sympathetic. Ne’er shall I forget his pomp and ridiculousness on the day of his wedding, with fancy chapeau, hunting-red jacket, and his sheer, skin-tight white leggings. Comely daughters and swains the world over, beware the appeal of the devil in tights.

The Devil’s Bride is restored and presented by Deaf Crocodile, available now in a limited edition Blu-ray, with a standard edition scheduled for a mid-September release.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a 78-minute audio-visual barrage of ideas, music, and chaotic storytelling that is not for the faint of heart… feels somehow both like an Eastern Bloc Babes in Toyland style fantasy and also as if Jodorowsky made a musical… I’ll be damned if I’ll ever forget it.”–J. Hurtado, Screen Anarchy (festival screening)

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FANTASIA 2025: APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: REFLECTION IN A DEAD DIAMOND (2025)

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Reflet dans un diamant mort

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DIRECTED BY: ,

FEATURING: Yannick Renier, Céline Camara, ,  Koen De Bouw, Thi-Mai Nguyen,

PLOT: Retired superspy John D. finds his routine of drinking by the seaside interrupted when a lithe body washes ashore, triggering chaotic flashbacks to his days as a secret agent.

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Cattet & Forzani whirl their inspirations in a blender while pushing a cornucopia of sub-genres up to and past the breaking point — including the popular kink, “CMNKWF”. (That’s “Clothed Male, Naked Katana-Wielding Female,” for those not in the loop.)

COMMENTS: There are two early giveaways that Reflection is going to be an oddity of excess. One is the long list of production companies. This is not uncommon for smaller-budget European films, but Cattet’s and Forzani’s film goes a bit beyond that, suggesting the filmmakers needed to scrape around to find brave investors. The second, foreshadowing the coming bombast, also appears in the credits: a blast of hyper-Bondian murder blasts and stabbings, with diamonds erupting from the colorful silhouettes of the victims, before a pleasure boat sinks down behind a growing blood-water column of text. And, as this is a European spy movie, there’s also the early topless scene, wherein a young woman exposes her breasts while tanning in a hotel’s private beach—exposing the diamond piercings that set off our film’s hero’s chain of memories.

And what a hero! Old John D. has the weathered good lucks of an erstwhile man of action, and young John D. has all the panache, pluck, and pizzazz that might reasonably (indeed, perhaps unreasonably) distilled into one superspy. The developments are a little hard to follow at the start, with intercuts of Old and Young John’s adventures. By the third act, we’re facing a massive explosion of double-dealings, glorious gadgetry, and face after face torn and otherwise peeled from John’s ultimate adversary, the manifestly deadly femme known only as “Serpentika”.

Cattet and Forzani exist somewhere above the speed of Ritchie and the grisliness of Tarantino, all while flirting with—and, on occasion, ravishing—the ambiguous meta-cinematic maneuvers of Fellini. With little room to breathe between outlandish capering (at least Old John’s timeline travels at a somewhat staid pace), the combined effect of the various shady machinations is to leave the viewer benumbed with bloody scintillation. Clawing together coherent memories of the chain of events, I can only roughly recall that one of Young John’s charges, an oil mega-baron, was murdered—but not before he kills John’s true love, a dashing young Black woman clad in a high-tech mirror dress, segments of which she leaves behind to allow John to follow her.

Or does the evil oil baron murder her? The narrator’s recollections are as murky as his cocktails. But there are roulette wheel orgasms, pentuplicate ninjas, art-and-murder by oil slick, and an unbelievable parade of increasingly dangerous (and art-house-styled) rogues standing between John and his vengeance. After you watch Reflection in a Dead Diamond, you will clamor for these Belgians to craft the next Bond movie. I’m sure the suits in charge of the franchise will gladly sacrifice the 100% clarity for the 100% boost in oomph and style.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“John’s drifting memories are a dizzying kaleidoscope of surreal free associations, lifted from the clichés and conventions – the cartoonish credits, the casino games, the clandestine meetings, the global players, the masked assassins, the absurd gadgets, the sadomasochistic sex and the kickass fights – not so much of a Bond movie (although Testi does resemble an older Sean Connery), as of the endless European ripoffs that appeared in the wake of Bond… a deep dive into the genre’s established imagery and grammar that goes beyond mere postmodern pastiche into something more artful and abstract, even quintessential, and all sexed up with the filmmakers’ characteristic kink.” — Anton Bitel, Projected Figures (contemporaneous)

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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: POST TENEBRAS LUX (2012)

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Light After Darkness

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DIRECTED BY: Carlos Reygadas

FEATURING: Nathalia Acevedo, Adolfo Jiménez Castro, Willebaldo Torres, Rut Reygadas, Eleazar Reygadas

PLOT: A family moves to a remote area, where the father’s relationships with his wife, his children, and his neighbors steadily fracture.

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE APOCRYPHA: Reygadas’ deeply personal film casts aside linear narrative in favor of a series of scenes that serve as gloves-off introspection. It features startling situations and memorably surreal images driven by what feels like a rich vein of remorse and self-recrimination.

COMMENTS: The opening scenes of Post Tenebras Lux send a clear warning of trouble ahead. We open on a dreamy sequence of a little girl wandering alone through an open field. Initially, she seems delighted by her surroundings, but as she calls in vain for her parents and large animals encroach upon her, our worries for her safety increase exponentially. From here, we retreat to the relatively safe confines of a home late at night, but someone arrives to wake up a young boy: a tall goat man, glowing red, boasting a low-hung package, and carrying a toolbox. Is it a metaphorical demon, retiring for the evening before getting up to do evil once again, or the genuine article? From the look on the boy’s face, the difference scarcely matters.

That both of these terrorized young people are portrayed by director Reygadas’ own children says something about his commitment to the personal aspect of the story, as well as his possible ignorance of the consequences of being so open on the subject. The director’s method makes it impossible to know for sure which scenes are drawn from personal experience and which are merely invention, but he seems determined to explore his life with depth, so the visit by central couple Juan and Nathalia to a French sex club feels just as true as the moments spent watching the rugby team of an English prep school psyche themselves up for battle.

If Juan is Reygadas’ stand-in, then he is unexpectedly candid about the less savory elements of his character. Indictments against him include a savage beating he issues to a dog who displeases him, lame confessions that he offers in private after attending an AA meeting, and flaunting his wealth around the rural community to which he has brought his family. Post Tenebras Lux is frequently reminiscent of All That Jazz, another movie in which a tempestuous filmmaker creates a central character who magnifies all his worst characteristics. Like Joe Gideon, Juan seems regretful, especially after he is gravely injured when he interrupts a home invasion and flashes forward to a future where his wife and now-teenaged children live happy lives without him. To be fair, there’s a lot of awful going on in the small community, including the man who hires someone to chop down a large tree to spite his wife, as well as the rueful assailant who makes amends by tearing his own head clear off his body.

The most notable visual element may hold the key to Reygadas’ intentions. Throughout the film, the frame is surrounded by a blurry circle that resembles the beveled edges of a mirror. Probably a nod to this Mirror, another filmmaker’s jumbled familial reverie. Like Reygadas himself, we view Juan’s life through a dark, cracked looking glass. The result may be a negative fantasy, or possibly an apology. Whatever it is, and the filmmaker is fervently seeking out the light at the end of the tunnel.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…casts a strange and powerful spell… It’s as if we were sometimes in the world of David Lynch, sometimes in the world of Stanley Kubrick and a whole lot of the time in the world of Andrei Tarkovsky, with the complicated social tragedy of Mexico ladled on top.”–Andrew O’Hehir, Salon (contemporaneous)

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

Post Tenebras Lux

Post Tenebras Lux
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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: FURIOUS (1984)

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DIRECTED BY: Tim Everitt, Tom Sartori

FEATURING: Simon Rhee, Phillip Rhee, Arlene Montano

PLOT: After “Mongol” warriors kill his sister, Simon’s karate master summons him to avenge her death—but all is not as it seems.

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: All is literally not as it seems—from its opening credit sequence featuring a black-clad actor’s disembodied hands performing card tricks against a black background, Furious wants to be clever with sleight of hand symbolism, but absurdly unsubtle dialogue then robs the film of any mystery, heavy-handedly spelling out the plot. The result still baffles viewers through what must be the most random appearances of chickens in a movie since Death Laid an Egg.

COMMENTS: Furious seems to have been largely forgotten by mainstream movie culture. Only five people have bothered to write user reviews on IMDB; they either love it for its insane creativity or hate it for its stupidity. Both are valid reactions. Whatever chance Furious had to tap into the ’80s zeitgeist must have been lost forever when the original The Karate Kid was released in the same year. A weird gem kept alive through the devoted efforts of a small cult following, perhaps the time has come for its own resurgence from the astral plane.

Relying on the conventional plotline of a martial artist seeking vengeance for the death of a loved one, Furious manages to be a painfully amateurish effort. Either that, or it’s supposed to be a tongue-in-cheek homage to badly dubbed imported films. If so, the effort falls flat, like a guy falling off a bridge into four inches of water. The many fight scenes feature wooden and uninspired choreography, a cardinal sin in any karate movie. The cheap special effects hardly dazzle, but they occur at such bizarre moments that they still amaze.

In the fifteen minute long dialogue-free introductory sequence, fur-wearing warriors chase Simon’s sister up a mountain and into a “Mongol” cave. A broken tusk guides her way and she discovers a box guarded by a skull. Unfortunately for her, some strange power makes this compass bone spin wildly, and after fighting off all but one of her pursuers, the final warrior kills her and steals the bone. The scene then cuts to Simon lighting candles for her on his family altar. It’s all the backstory we’re going to get.

Shortly thereafter, the “Mongol” warrior arrives at Simon’s house and gives him a card which turns out to be a key to Master Chan’s corporate headquarters/karate dojo. When Simon obeys his summons, Master Chan solemnly tells him he’s “between the hammer and the anvil.” His magician henchman illustrates his predicament with a dove and red and white silk scarves. After a brief test of Simon’s skills, he’s given an amulet and told that if he wants to avenge his sister he must find the man who wears the same symbol.

Outside the building Simon runs into friends who conveniently inform him that the symbol appears in the sign for a restaurant, apparently run by some evil chicken concern. The friends are attacked, and most of them killed, when they try to investigate. Simon later returns to dine and discovers the restaurant specializes in chicken served by masked waiters who perform magic tricks, while shirtless martial artists demonstrate karate with swords and nunchucks.

You’d think seeing the magicians would give Simon pause, especially after the trick they pull on him (and the random chicken wandering around Master Chan’s offices). Just in case this hint didn’t get through, a whispering waterfall warns Simon to “beware” because “traveling in the spiritual void can be dangerous.”

Traveling in the spiritual void can be dangerous. This line repeats multiple times while Simon experiences an agonizing series of flashbacks. Finally, he suspects Master Chan might not be who he seems. The plot proceeds, with the mystic waterfall providing spoilers to the audience along the way.

This consistent balance between what’s wrong and what’s right makes this film so bad it’s weird and so weird it’s good. The directors (a special effects technician and editor) make some very strange choices, but the high degree of WTF-ery proves to be their greatest strength.

The rapid cut editing in the montage sequences adds needed energy when the action starts to flag. A darkly lit office corridor effectively portrays Simon’s descent into the void (where he just happens to overhear his nemesis complaining that Simon is too powerful and must be stopped).

The score begins as typical operatic orchestral stings, but whenever what little suspense builds, synthy electronics pulse underneath. One of many inexplicable scenes reveals the music is coming from a room in Master Chan’s corporate empire where his white jumpsuited lackeys perform in a band. Why does a karate master have a techno band? In this life there are questions without answers, but in Furious all will be revealed (by a pig), so just wait for it. At only 71 minutes of runtime, you won’t have to wait very long.

Simon’s final showdowns against the magician and Master Chan must be seen to be believed. All those lingering close-ups of elderly ladies happily eating chicken in the restaurant while watching karate suddenly make wonderful and terrible sense, and yet in the end, Furious still makes no sense at all.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“To say that continuity and reason go out the window with Furious is an understatement. . .Its nonsensical and ridiculous plot, terrible acting and badly-scripted fight scenes are ripe for riffing. The entertainment value on that alone makes it a recommendation. Anyone looking for anything else will be sorely let down and outright confused at what they’re watching.”–Mike Wilson, Bloody Disgusting

Furious [Visual Vengeance Collector's Edition] [Blu-ray]

Furious [Visual Vengeance Collector's Edition] [Blu-ray]
  • The cult martial arts classic, first time ever on Blu-ray. Mystic aliens from the astral plane fight Kung Fu warriors for control of the universe!
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