Category Archives: Capsules

Capsules

CAPSULE: WINDS OF CHANGE (1979)

Leave a comment

AKA Metamorphoses

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

DIRECTED BY: Takashi Masunaga

FEATURING:

PLOT: Five tales loosely based on Ovid’s “Metamorphoses.”

Still from Winds of Change (1977)

COMMENTS: Masunaga’s debut is a decent, if somewhat clumsy, attempt at a collaboration with Hollywood’s studios. Even if it plays it by the book—this is a children’s film, after all—it remains a hidden gem, making it of some interest for those loving obscure and long-forgotten cartoons.

This anthology, loosely based on Ovid’s “Metamorphoses”, starts with Peter Ustinov’s pompous voice-over. Ustinov is the only voice in the film—none of the characters speak for themselves. This admittedly cheapens the experience a bit, but in the end it doesn’t prove too distracting. The stories take place in the heaven of Greco-Roman mythology, with a young boy playing a different role in each tale. It may seem unnecessary to have the same character as a different protagonist each time, but works for younger viewers by creating a point of familiarity.

The stories are familiar to older viewers. We have the doomed love affair between Orpheus and Euridice, the campaign of Perseus against Medusa, and the tragedy of Phaethon. Light psychedelia accompanies everything—we are in the seventies, after all —with some segments even recalling “Alice in Wonderland.” With its lush environments full of cute animals, as well as eerie secrets, the art style will appeal to fans of Disney ‘s animated classics. In fact, Fantasia (1940) may be a point of reference for this work, even if Winds of Change remains mild in comparison. We can’t really talk about dream logic or surreal imagery here; instead, we have a magical realist visual feast with a rich soundtrack on top. Anachronistic pop ballads, classical tunes, and a hint of Africa complement the visuals, creating a sense of phantasmagoria.

Let it be noted that the alternate edit titled Metamorphoses from 1977, with songs by Joan Baez and Mick Jagger, is unavailable.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“In Winds of Change, every little detail is explained to death, and Ustinov provides silly character voices for moments with implied synchronized dialogue. To get a sense of the weird tone this creates, consider the moment when a young adventurer stumbles upon the goddess Diana, then ogles her shapely naked backside while she bathes in a waterfall with help from flittering faeries. Upon discovering her unwanted visitor, Diana turns toward the camera and scowls while Ustinov says, ‘Hell hath no fury like a goddess being peeked at!’ And that’s one of the more coherent moments.”–Peter Hanson, Every 70s Movie

Winds of Change - Five Ancient Greek

Winds of Change – Five Ancient Greek Myths (Animated)

    Go to Amazon
    Capsules

    CAPSULE: THE DEGENERATE: THE LIFE AND FILMS OF ANDY MILLIGAN (2025)

    Leave a comment

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

    Recommended

    DIRECTED BY: Josh Johnson, Grayson Tyler Johnson

    FEATURING: Hope Stansbury, Gerald Jacuzzo, John Borske, Jimmy McDonough, Alex DiSanto, Stephen Thrower

    PLOT: The Degenerate recounts the life and film career of “gutter auteur” Andy Milligan through the reminiscences of his collaborators and friends, and insights from film historians.

    Still from The Degenerate: The Life and Films of Andy Milligan (2025)

    COMMENTS: The Degenerate aims to answer the question: how did a man with a promising career as a television actor in the 1950s, who then played a pivotal role in New York’s Off-Off Broadway avant-garde theater scene in the 1960s, end up directing low budget exploitation and horror films for the rest of his life? The short answer seems to be a lack of business acumen and a difficult personality, but the long answer provides a genuinely fascinating and entertaining dive into ‘s uniquely nihilistic world.

    Milligan has been dubbed “the Fassbinder of 42nd Street.” This documentary explores just how he earned that dubious distinction. Born in 1929, Milligan’s life spanned all the major innovations in the American media landscape of the 20th century. He acted in live television in the early ’50s when the medium was brand new, appearing in Kraft Theater and Armstrong Circle Theater productions that also featured Leslie Nielsen and James Dean. He was an instrumental part of the theater community centered around the off-Broadway institutions Caffe Cino and La Mama, writing, directing, and acting in plays, as well as designing stage sets, lighting, and costuming. He would make at least twenty-nine low-budget feature-length films until his death in 1991.

    His creative life changed in the mid-1960s, when he bought a portable Auricon motion picture camera, a model mostly used by news reporters, which records poor quality sound. But Milligan was determined to try his hand at filmmaking, even with second rate equipment. His second film, Vapors, directed in 1965 and originally written as a stage play by friend and fellow Caffe Cino member Hope Stansbury, remains a groundbreaking work of queer cinema.

    Though Vapors portrays the gay bathhouse culture of New York in a sympathetic light, given the subject matter (and a very brief shot of full-frontal male nudity) it also became Milligan’s first exploitation film, playing in the burgeoning grindhouses of NYC and LA. Since most of these theaters were open all night, they were desperate for films to fill the hours and would screen anything considered even remotely racy. This debut was both Milligan’s triumph and tragedy. He would go on to make grindhouse fare for the next twenty years.

    The Degenerate provides a mostly positive view of Milligan’s determination, his creativity, and his sheer chutzpah, while never shying away from the difficulties he faced—many arising from his own surly personality. He developed a method of cranking out elaborate films quickly and on the cheap. With an average budget of ten thousand Continue reading CAPSULE: THE DEGENERATE: THE LIFE AND FILMS OF ANDY MILLIGAN (2025) →

    Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

    IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS (2018)

    1 Comment

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

    Recommended

    DIRECTED BY: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen

    FEATURING: , James Franco, Liam Neeson, , Tom Waits, , Tyne Daly, Brendan Gleeson, Saul Rubinek

    PLOT: Six tales of the Old West, including a singing cowboy, an unlucky bank robber, an impresario and his hobbled talent, a tenacious gold prospector, a prospective bride, and a stagecoach full of tired travelers.

    Still from The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)

    COMMENTS: The Coen Brothers have made a remarkable cinematic career out of a body of work that careens from grim realism to wild stylization, often making unexpected stops along that spectrum. Sometimes, their push in one direction has alienated fans of the other; if you like the harsh satire of Fargo, you probably won’t enjoy the heightened mannerisms of The Hudsucker Proxy, and the metaphysical mysteries of A Serious Man might feel impenetrable to lovers of the stoner wisdom of The Big Lebowski. When they turned their attention to Westerns, it seemed like the demands of the genre pushed them toward a more sober, realistic approach, as typified by the neo-noir charnel house of No Country for Old Men and the gritty pastoral (not to mention corrective) remake of True Grit. For the final film (to date) of their storied collaboration, Joel and Ethan returned to the Old West, but found a way to hit nearly every possible take on the genre along the way.

    At first glance, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs appears to have all the elements to please fans of traditional Westerns: a showdown in an empty street, a wagon train weaving across the plains, a lone man doing battle with an entire tribe of Indian savages, panning for gold, stagecoaches, poker games, and a hangman’s noose. Far from playing to the crowd, however, these six vignettes are haunted by death and regret. There’s at least one fatality in each story, and the survivors come to a reckoning with the actions that have kept them alive. To the extent that any of these needed to be Westerns in the first place, it’s to highlight the harshness and swift cruelty of this place and time. There is a moral code, it’s unforgiving, and it is strictly enforced.

    The opening chapter, which gives the film its name, is by far the most stylized of the set. Nelson does not merely play a cowboy but an archetype, wearing a suit of brilliant white, strumming a guitar and speaking directly to us of his philosophy. It’s cloyingly familiar, until he wields his pistol and reveals himself to be a whirlwind of brutality. What ensues is essentially one joke, but it’s a good one told very well: the fella in the white hat is extremely violent, morally repugnant, and dies quickly and without a trace of heroism. It’s a nose thumbed at Gene Autry and Tom Mix and every Hollywood fantasy of the West. In that regard, it perfectly sets the table for what is to come.

    The next two stories demonstrate a dark humor that suggests sometimes you can’t win for losing. James Franco’s thief immediately finds himself in over his head in what should be a simple bank Continue reading IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS (2018) →

    Capsules

    CAPSULE: CAR CEMETERY (1983)

    1 Comment

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

    DIRECTED BY: Fernando Arrabal

    FEATURING: Alain Bashung, , Micha Bayard

    PLOT: A modern-day Messiah emerges as a prophet and musician amongst a crew of outcasts and weirdos in the post-apocalyptic car cemetery of Babylon.

    Still from car cemetery (1983)

    COMMENTS: Everything feels a bit familiar in the beginning. Voice-over verses from John’s Revelation and shots of a desolate hellscape hint at a typical post-apocalyptic genre affair.  Don’t be fooled, however. The director is legendary post-surrealist , who, along with Alejandro Jodorowsky and , established theater and cinema’s infamous “Panic Movement.” This work, a loose adaptation of a former play of the same name, is admittedly not one of Arrabal’s wildest visions; but it is an accessible introductory point to his personal panic aesthetic in cinema, expressed through the incorporation of violent and often blasphemous imagery, deviant sexuality, and elements of social critique.

    The plot takes place in an automobile graveyard where a variety of outcasts take refuge after a major disaster. Milos, a former pimp, is the boss here, using the facilities as a sort of love hotel. Dila, a prostitute with a pure heart, is in his stable. And then there is Emanou, a prophet and subversive musician with a strong following—as well as many enemies. His miracles and his downfall closely follow the passion of Christ, offering a subversive take on biblical motifs and archetypes.

    Every character here is nothing more than a reinterpretation of the the Divine Drama. Emanou, of course, is Christ: that’s clear from the beginning. Milos the opportunist is Pontius Pilate, and Dila recalls Mary Magdalene. The characters Topé and Fodère represent Judas and Peter. Judas’ portrayal is noteworthy; he is a poet and idealist ready to play a despicable, albeit necessary role, even if than means he will dwell in the latrines of history for all eternity. In other words, he is portrayed as the true savior—food for thought for everyone open to revisionist takes on religion.

    Each of Emanou’s miracles have a New Testament counterpart, but extra symbolic elements are also thrown into the mix. Everyone  longs for a bit of rain and for Emanou’s upcoming punk rock concert, seen a path to salvation. Dramatic staging, lighting, and makeup give the production a theatrical feel, while the decor combines elements of classical painting, still lifes, and even pop-art. Jazz, and the aforementioned punk, plus a hint of Latin music, make up the rich soundtrack. And two narrators that appear at key points in voice-over—one male, one female—remind us of the artificiality and the parablistic nature of everything portrayed here.

    All in all, however, this is not one of Arrabal’s boldest works. There isn’t graphic content like in I Will Walk Like a Crazy Horse (1973). There is a deviant sexuality, but nothing too extreme. Only the most narrow-minded people could consider this movie sacrilegious. But Car Cemetery will appeal to those interested in alternative takes on biblical narratives—Andrej Wajda’s Pilate and Others (1972) comes to mind for a similarly nonconformist take on the Divine Drama.

    WHAT THE CRITICS SAY: 

    “…a showcase for Arrabal’s penchant for the bizarre… it feels like a strange piece of art for art’s sake, but for some that’ll be reason enough.”–Ian Jane, Rock! Shock! Pop! (“The Fernando Arrabal Collection 2 DVD box set)

    Car Cemetery

    Car Cemetery

    • Factory sealed DVD

    New starting from: 8.99 $

    Go to Amazon
    Capsules

    CAPSULE: HEADS OR TAILS? (2025)

    1 Comment

    Testa o croce?

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

    Heads or Tails? is available to purchase on-demand.

    DIRECTED BY: Alessio Rigo de Righi, Matteo Zoppis

    FEATURING: Nadia Tereszkiewicz, Alessandro Borghi,

    PLOT: An Italian cowboy and the wife of a brutal army captain flee into the wilderness after an incident during a bronco-riding contest between Italians and Buffalo Bill’s traveling wild west show, and the captain’s father hires Buffalo Bill himself to track down the refugees.

    Still from Heads or Tails? (2025)

    COMMENTS: If you’re excited to see a Western with beloved character actor John C. Reilly portraying Buffalo Bill Cody—which is how Heads or Tails? pitches itself—prepare for some mild disappointment. Cody does feature in the story, which takes its impetus from a real-life incident where local Italian cowboys (butteri) trounced Bill’s wild west show in an impromptu rodeo. But soon after the results are in, Bill nearly disappears from the story, which instead follows blue-eyed buttero Santino and the intensely-freckled French Rosa as they flee into the wilderness, accused of a terrible crime. Eventually tracked by Bill and others, the pair have mildly diverting adventures that include meeting up with a band of anarchists who want to make Santino into a revolutionary hero.

    More Buffalo Bill would have been great, because the two leads, while attractive (both have piercing blue eyes), lack the chemistry and passion needed to get us invested in their outlaw escapades. The plot moves slowly, with too many scenes involving nothing more than the pair hiking through a swamp or camping out, and contains few true surprises. Their lovemaking looks like they know the camera is watching. Even a jailbreak offers little thrill. About all that we know about Rosa is that wants to move to America to rebuild her life, and stoic Santino has little character at all. Bill, played by Reilly with a showman’s panache, is far too interesting a character to sit on the sidelines for most of the movie while we watch these dull lovebirds instead.

    Stylistically, the film is an appropriate recreation of a 60s-70s Italian western, complete with melodramatic acting (Bill, in particular, seems like he’s always performing even when he’s not on stage) and some humorously obvious dubbing. The Tuscan locations—which include a cool seaside grotto—don’t recreate the American west, but do look appropriately primal on their own. The “surreal” twist hinted at in some reviews is misleading; it’s more of a brief magical-realist bit, attributable to the heroine’s traumatized psyche (although it does suggest an even more feverish take on Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia—more of this, and we might really have had something here). Heads or Tails? also includes a few jabs at colonialism (the expressions on the Indians’ faces as the genocidal Bill brags about their noble culture are priceless) and nods to feminism (Rosa is the central figure and the toughest hombre in the film). But it’s not self-consciously revisionist so much as dedicated to the setting’s historical accuracy. Heads or Tails? comes up as a spaghetti western retread with modest art-house ambitions. But it never really decides which way it wants to go: full-throttle homage or sly postmodern parody. It probably should have settled on either heads or tails, and left out the question mark.

    WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

    “…sometimes failure is more interesting than success, and Heads or Tails? is a beautiful, beautifully acted, weird, sharply funny revisionist western taking on two cinematic traditions with the kind of knives-out bravura that contemporary cinema needs more of.”–Sarah Marrs, Lainey Gossip (contemporaneous)