FEATURING: Aleksey Kravechenko, Olga Mironova, Liubomiras Laucevicius
PLOT: Florya, a boy of about 14, digs in a field with a playmate, hoping to find a buried rifle so he can join the Belorussian partisans fighting against occupying Nazis. He finds one, and is soon roughly whisked away by soldiers to the forest campground, leaving his sobbing mother behind. When the troops go on patrol he is left alone to guard the camp, but after the Luftwaffe bomb the area he and a female companion return to Florya’s village, where he finds the war has devastated everything his once knew.
BACKGROUND:
Based on a memoir of a teenage Belarussian partisan, Come and See was commissioned to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory over the Nazis.
Director Elem Klimov, still a relatively young man at 52 when he completed Come and See, chose to retire from filmmaking after its release, saying that he could not top this achievement.
INDELIBLE IMAGE: It could be the closeup of Aleksey Kravechenko’s prematurely aged face at the end. Or the S.S. skull-on-a-stick the refugees turn into an effigy of Hitler. For me, however, the most surprising and unforgettable image was the nightmare of Florya and Glasha sloshing through a muddy bog in desperation, fleeing from a horror they will never be able to outrun.
THREE WEIRD THINGS: Forest Charleston; cow in a firefight; kill baby Hitler?
WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Come and See’s flirtations with surrealism nudge it into the “weird” category, and then its sheer grueling intensity carries it to “must see” status. That recommendation should perhaps come with a warning that, despite containing nothing particularly graphic, this movie’s sheer aura of evil is likely to disturb you on a deep level. This is not a shock-for-shock’s-sake experience, however, but an honest, unflinching dip into the subconscious of an adolescent boy thrust into a horrific situation initially beyond his comprehension—one which he tragically comes to understand all too well.
DVD trailer for Come and See
COMMENTS: Come and See is war movie as horror movie. It is notable for its immersive intensity. It unrelentingly assaults your sensibilities, as sadistically eager to strip away your innocence as it is to Continue reading 360. COME AND SEE (1985)→
Our weekly look at what’s weird in theaters, on hot-off-the-presses DVDs and Blu-rays (and hot off the server VODs), and on more distant horizons…
Trailers of new release movies are generally available at the official site links.
IN THEATERS (LIMITED RELEASE):
Fury of the Fist and the Golden Fleece (2018): An ex-porn star becomes a kickboxing avenger in this 80s action throwback. The trailer makes it look desperately over-camped, but check out the cameos: Danny Trejo, kickboxer Cynthia Rothrock, kickboxer offspring Bianca Brigitte VanDamme, wrestlers Bill Goldberg and Tiny Lister, Last Dragon Taimak, and of course, Ron Jeremy. Fury of the First and the Golden Fleece official site.
The Misandrists (2017): A fugitive male hides out at a lesbian separatist boarding school. This is the widest release we’ve ever seen for a Bruce LaBruce movie (the director started out making underground gay porn movies and has gradually moved into slightly more mainstream transgressions). The Misandrists official site.
NEW ON HOME VIDEO:
Death Smiles on a Murderer (1973): An ancient Incan ritual turns a dead woman into an avenging angel. Arrow Video is pitching this supernatural giallo as “surreal,” but just the fact that it’s sleazemaestro Joe D’Amato directing Ewa Aulin and Klaus Kinski would make it worth our notice. On Blu-ray only. Buy Death Smiles on a Murderer.
Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985): An expressionistic portrait of the life of the Japanese author, told in flashbacks and stylized recreations of his fiction. This Criterion Collection Blu-ray upgrade may give us an excuse to knock this one out of our reader-suggested queue. Buy Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters.
Sequence Break (2017): Read Giles Edwards’ review. The Cronenbeg-ish story of a young man absorbed (literally) by a mysterious video game. Streaming exclusively (for the time being, at least) on Shudder beginning on May 24.
New York City, NY, 5/25 – 5/26 (midnights) – Eraserhead (1977). With random giveaways of advance copies of David Lynch‘s upcoming memoir “Room to Dream” at the Friday 5/25 showing only. At Nitehawk Cinema.
Our weekly look at what’s weird in theaters, on hot-off-the-presses DVDs and Blu-rays (and hot off the server VODs), and on more distant horizons…
Trailers of new release movies are generally available at the official site links.
NEW ON HOME VIDEO:
Dead Man (1995): Read the Certified Weird review! Jim Jarmusch‘s moody western about Nobody and William Blake gets the Criterion Collection treatment, with a host of new interviews, features, behind the scenes Neil Young performances, and deleted scenes for uberfans. On DVD and Blu-ray. Buy Dead Man.
Moon Child (1989): A parapsychological cult believes they may have found the prophesied “moon child” in a 12-year old orphan. From Agustí Villaronga, with a score by Dead Can Dance. Blu-ray/DVD combo pack from Cult Epics. Review coming soon. Buy Moon Child.
Chicago, IL, 4/27-4/28 – Vertigo (1958). Buy a ticket and get a discounted ticket to Guy Maddin‘s new Vertigo-based visual essay The Green Fog (and vice-versa). At the Gene Siskel Film Center.
The 50 Worst Movies Ever Made: A glorified YouTube upload posing as a one-hour feature film, but an interesting set of clips, nevertheless. At least three of these selections are Certified Weird, many others are reviewed here, and, as is usually the case with these kinds of lists, not all of them are actually bad—just beyond the curator’s expectations of what a movie “should” be. Watch The 50 Worst Movies Ever Made free on Tubi.TV.
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.
Our weekly look at what’s weird in theaters, on hot-off-the-presses DVDs and Blu-rays (and hot off the server VODs), and on more distant horizons…
Trailers of new release movies are generally available at the official site links.
IN THEATERS (LIMITED RELEASE):
Sign Gene (2017): Like the X-Men, but all the mutants are deaf and get their superpowers through using sign language. A Deafula for our times? No word if it comes with subtitles for the hearing. Sign Gene official site.
Bubba Ho-Tep (2002): Read the Certified Weird review. Elvis and the black JFK fight a mummy who’s infiltrated their retirement home. You read that right. Watch Bubba Ho-Tep free on Tubi.TV.
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.
FILM FESTIVALS – Pittsburgh Japanese Film Festival (Pittsburgh, PA, Apr. 6-19):
There aren’t a lot of new releases debuting here, but you can catch at least one film of recent interest: Shion Sono‘s deconstructed pink movie, Antiporno. Other cool viewings include the rock and roll zombie apaocalypse cult movie Wild Zero, the intriguing sub-weird anime Your Name, and a pair of classic Kurosawa samurai flicks: Yojimbo (1961) (the basis for Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars) and its sequel Sanjuro (1961). Add a screening of the original Godzilla and cap it all off with tentacle-porn pioneer Urotsukidoji: The Legend of the Overfiend and you can scrape together quite a week of Japanese oddness.
FILM FESTIVALS – San Francisco International Film Festival (Sam Francisco, ,CPA, Apr. 4-17):
The much-anticipated Sorry to Bother You is the “centerpiece” film in a festival that also features a Guy Maddin lecture (though he’s not bringing along his latest film, The Velvet Fog, unless it’s the “secret screening”), There are also a few familiar fest names, like the African-set magical realism of I Am Not a Witch, Denmark’s bleak Winter Brothers, and the Cannes alien comedy flop How to Talk to Girls at Parties (with director John Cameron Mitchell and writer Neil Gaiman dropping by to explain it). Here are some newbies we spotted:
Cacrcasse – Without context, people are seen puttering around ruins raising livestock; it’s possibly a post-apocalyptic scenario… From Iceland and screening Apr. 15,
“A Celebration of Oddball Films with Marc Capelle’s Red Rook Orchestra” – An avant-garde orchestra plays danceable tunes to accompany a series of industrial shorts and other odd ephemeral films. Happening Apr. 9.
“Deep Astronomy and the Romantic Sciences” – Cory McAbee‘s one-man show and performance art piece where he pretends to be a singing motivational speaker touting New Age philosophies. See it Friday, Apr. 13.
Godard, Mon Amour– Bopic of Jean-Luc Godard‘s tempestuous affair with hi leading actress while filming La Chinoise. Not weird, but of interest to Godardists (who might be offended, or not, by the aurteur’s portrayal as an egotist.) Screens Arp 14-15.
IN DEVELOPMENT (post-production):
The Man Who Killed Don Qioxite (2018?): An advertising executive (Adam Driver) is cast back in time and meets a man claiming to be Don Quixoite (Jonathan Pryce, taking over the role from the late John Hurt). Terry Gilliam‘s 20-year struggle to bring this story to the big screen has been the stiff of Quixotic legend, even inspiring the 2002 documentary Lost in La Mancha, and the journey may not even be over yet: an investor (who never provided any funds) is suing to stop the release, according the the Playlist. Sometimes it seems like Gilliam’s Quixote must be the longest running publicity stunt in the history of film. But we do finally have a trailer, so the majority of windmills have been tilted.
John Waters is hosting his second annual summer camp for adults at Camp Getaway in Kent, CT. Besides screenings of his puke classicks, attendees can expect to participate in sports, outdoor activities, yoga, massages, Improv, beer pong, and scotch and cigar sessions. Camp counselors? Mink Stole and Traci Lords, of course. Unfortunately, it soens’t look like registration is open yet for the Sep. 14-6 date on the Club Getaway site, but we expect it to sell out fast.
FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON YOUTUBE:
Romance Bizzaro (2018): This twenty-minute two-hander comes from the twisted mind of Carlos Atanes, so you know it’ll be weird. A wheelchair-bound man and a younger woman meet for a secret tryst, but a revelation puts their affair into a context that makes it seem less sleazy—or perhaps much, much sleazier. Contains adult situations and brief bad language. Watch Romance Bizarro 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.
PLOT: A man sketches a face on a canvas; when he sees the mouth he has drawn beginning to move, he smudges it out, but finds that the orifice has affixed itself to his hand. He eventually gets rid of it by wiping it onto the face of a statue; the statue comes to life and sends him through a mirror into a strange hotel where he spies on surreal scenarios through keyholes. Returning through the mirror, he smashes the statue, is transformed into one himself, then finds himself playing a card game and shoots himself in the head when he realizes he cannot win.
BACKGROUND:
Jean Cocteau was already an established playwright, artist and novelist before creating this, his first film.
Le sang d’un poète was financed by Vicomte Charles de Noailles, who also produced L’Age d’Or. They were both filmed in 1930, but first public screening of Blood of a Poet was delayed for over a year until the scandal caused by Luis Buñuel‘s sacrilegious film had died down. (This history explains why the Blood of a Poet‘s date is sometimes given as 1930, its date of production, and sometimes 1932, based on when it was first screened.)
De Noailles and his wife and friends originally appeared in the film as members of the audience, but they did not know what they were supposed to be reacting to. When the Vicomte discovered they were applauding a suicide he demanded the scene be cut. Cocteau re-shot it with a different audience composed of his friends, among whom was the female impersonator and acrobat Barbette, an underground Parisian celebrity.
Elizabeth Lee Miller, who plays the statue, was the student and lover of Surrealist artist Man Ray. She later became a successful photographer in her own right and never again appeared onscreen.
Blood of a Poet is the first in Cocteau’s loose “Orphic” trilogy, followed by Orpheus (1950) and concluding with The Testament of Orpheus (1960).
INDELIBLE IMAGE: Cocteau recommended that we view his movie as if it were an enigmatic painting, which leaves us with a plethora of surrealistic frames to consider. We picked a particularly bizarre composition: the “desperate hermaphrodite” in Room 23. The scene begins with a chaise lounge with a spinning hypno-wheel, and with a periodic drum roll new elements are added: a pancake makeup face, line-drawn breasts, a white fright wig, stars and various pieces of clothing strewn about the scene. In a final gesture he/she pulls off a black cloth to reveal the words “danger de mort” (“danger of death”) labeling his/her crotch region.
THREE WEIRD THINGS: Collapsing tower; hand mouth; desperate hermaphrodite
WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Blood of a Poet is Jean Cocteau’s initial attempt to translate poetry—or rather to place one inside the trancelike state enjoyed and suffered by the poet—on film. Simultaneously quaint and avant-garde, it’s raw, primitive opium-dream weirdness; pioneering in its day, but still capable of startling today’s viewers with its irrational exhuberances.
Trailer for The Blood of a Poet made for a 2010 screening with a new score by DJ Spooky
Our weekly look at what’s weird in theaters, on hot-off-the-presses DVDs and Blu-rays (and hot off the server VODs), and on more distant horizons…
Trailers of new release movies are generally available at the official site links.
IN DEVELOPMENT (in production):
The Missing Films: Documentary about two-time Certified Weird director Lars von Trier, with footage shot by his collaborators as he worked on his latest, the serial killer story The House That Jack Built. Preliminary footage was shown at a Danish industry forum, to positive buzz. Read more at Screen Daily.
Unicorn Wars: Birdboy is barely out, and Alberto Vázquez is already at work on his next feature film, which will be an expansion of his short “Unicorn Blood,” about a bloody fantasy war between unicorns and teddy bears. We’re adorably excited. Watch “Unicorn Blood” again and get excited too.
NEW ON HOME VIDEO:
Ichi the Killer (2001): A masochistic yakuza hitman discovers a mysterious sadist while searching for his latest target in this ultraviolent hit from Takashi Miike. In our reader-suggested review queue, and now on Blu-ray in a remastered, uncut and “definitive” release from Arrow Academy. Buy Ichi the Killer.
Images (1972): A pregnant children’s author goes insane while wondering if her husband is having an affair in this pyschodrama from Robert Altman‘s brief 1970s “weird” period. Arrow Academy’s restored Blu-ray is full of the usual extensive extras, including an expert commentary track. Buy Images.
Paradox (2018): The Man in the Black Hat hides out with Jail Time and the Particle Kid in this western/musical/fantasy starring Neil Young and directed by—Daryl Hannah?? A quick turnaround from its March debut at SWSX film festival to an exclusive Netflix contract (it is also screening a few dates in New York and Chicago).
Welcome the Stranger (2018): Alice visits her estranged brother, his strange girlfriend shows up, hallucinations ensue. Direct to video-on-demand is the new direct-to-video. Buy or rent Welcome the Stranger on-demand.
Miracles for Sale: David Kalat cited Alfred Eaker‘s Miracles for Sale article as a source for his latest essay for Turner Classic Movies (the Tod Browning classic will be featured on the channel in May). Unfortunately, he misspelled Alfred’s last name and forgot to make the link clickable. This is how you do it, guys.
” and tied for 30th (among directors) and 154th (among critics) in “Sight and Sound”‘s 2012 Greatest Movie poll, among other accolades and honors.
” and tied for 30th (among directors) and 154th (among critics) in 
.
