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It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: HARLEQUIN (1980)

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AKA Deadly Forces, The Minister’s Magician

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DIRECTED BY: Simon Wincer

FEATURING: , , Carmen Duncan, Broderick Crawford

PLOT: Senator Rast’s cancer-stricken son is healed by a stranger with supernatural abilities, but the magician’s presence in the politician’s household leads to friction with behind-the-scenes malefactors.

COMMENTS: The modern Western world is no place for honest magic, but is instead a morally murky landscape riddled with assassinations, machinations, trysts, twists—and deadly medicine. This is the world of Nick and Sandra Rast; the former a prominent politician, the latter a wealthy daughter of an ambassador. Despite their luck and luxury, they are cursed with a leukemia-stricken son, one who is soon to leave this world despite his father’s power, his mother’s care, and endless blasts of radiation. Th birthday party for the wheelchair bound boy, hairless from chemotherapy, is glum. But a the party clown brings laughter, and summons thunder with the prick of an invisible needle.

The boy’s survival is only in question for the film’s first ten minutes or so, as director Simon Wincer conjures a miracle (the first of many) in the form of Gregory Wolfe, faith-healer, probable sorcerer, and donner of flamboyant costumes. Harlequin is a flashy story which unfolds deliberately, as all manner of tricks springing forth from Gregory (who may well be a charlatan) are met with skepticism and underhanded calibrations. The countervailing forces—or, to un-mince words, forces of evil—work under the close direction of “Doc” Wheelan (a grubbily dangerous Broderick Crawford), who have conspired for some years to launch, maintain, and advance Nick’s career. There are a none-too-subtle undertones of ancient versus modern and belief versus technology, but Wincer raises enough doubts about Wheelan to make the viewer suspect that he, too, may be more than his collection of cryptic remarks, pitch-black sedans, and well-armed thugs. Even beyond all the mischievous shenanigans from Gregory, I became deadly curious what angle “Doc” was coming from.

Harlequin magically dodges the fate of being judged merely by what it could have been. (It could have been a feature starring and , who were originally attached to the project.) But Simon Wincer’s mystical oddity is the kind of political thriller I have not seen before: a (then) contemporary suspense ride which takes the prospect of true magic seriously and in stride. Robert Powell’s performance falls somewhere between ‘s immortally cynical Withnail and ‘s immortally flamboyant Frank-n-Furter—generally for the best, but not always. And the film shows its age at times: the hairstyles (often) and the score (occasionally) scream vintage “soap opera.” But is never sloppy. By the finish I found myself talking to Nicholas Rask on-screen as he pondered a fateful decision. And I feel no shame having become wrapped up in this intermittently hokey ride. By the time I realized who this film was actually about, I also realized the dark and whimsical interlayering of good and evil had enchanted me.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“A bizarre mix of rambling theology and mysticism mixed up with modern day political nastiness, Harlequin is an interesting and multi-layered film that will probably alienate as many as it will captivate. It’s a genuinely odd film.” — Ian Jane, Rock! Shock! Pop! (Blu-ray)

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

Harlequin (US Limited Edition Blu-Ray)

Harlequin (US Limited Edition Blu-Ray)
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Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

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

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DIRECTED BY: Mark Romanek

FEATURING: Keith Gordon, Amanda Plummer, Bob Gunton, Lily Knight

PLOT: A quiet young man in a small Western town believes he has invented a machine with life-changing potential, if only he could find someone else who could see it operate successfully.

Still from Static (1985)

COMMENTS: Throughout the summer of 2001, buzz was building over a mysterious new invention codenamed “Ginger.” Mastermind Dean Kamen had impeccable credentials as an innovator, and his creation was being touted by some of the biggest names in business, but Kamen held details of the project in such secrecy that supposition and rumor ruled the day. A hoverboard, some speculated, or some other anti-gravity device. Or some suggested it was some new hydrogen-fueled form of transportation. The mystery and the hype fueled each other in an escalating cycle, so perhaps disappointment was inevitable when the true nature of Ginger was revealed: the Segway.

Ernie Blick (Gordon) is also an inventor with a secret, but despite lacking any of Kamen’s advantages, everyone feels his widely discussed invention is certainly real and likely to be a big success. In a way, he has none of the narcissistic personality issues we often associate with creators: he’s unassuming and unfailingly nice, good-natured despite the recent loss of both parents, deferential to others, outwardly humble, and unflappable even when being laid off from his job at the town crucifix factory. (It’s hard to imagine a more perfect locale for a film featured on this website than a crucifix assembly line.) He’d be just another one of those quiet guys in a loudly quirky town were it not for the amazing thing he claims to have invented.

Commencing spoilers: what Ernie has invented is a TV that relays images of heaven. Ernie knows this has the potential to change the world; he imagines Q&As with excited reporters that bandy about talk of Nobel Prizes. Ah, but here’s the rub: no one else can see the live reports from the great beyond. They get the same thing we do: the titular snow and hiss. Reaction is poor, Ernie is understandably crushed, and we’re left to wonder why anyone thought such an invention might be in his skillset.

Up to this point, Static has been a rather charming accumulation of surprises and quirks. Ernie’s possible girlfriend Julia (Plummer, in an uncharacteristically straightlaced role) is a disillusioned rock keyboardist—just because. Ernie’s cousin Frank (Gunton, charming in his gracelessness) is a doomsday prepper and a hostile street evangelist—just because. (He’s also terrible at small talk. Upon meeting Julia, he wishes her well by saying, “I hope your death is painless.”) Everyone’s a little offbeat like this, and it’s okay because that’s just the kind of town it is. But once the heavenly cable box is revealed and no one can see what Ernie sees, we’re confronted with the question of what it all means, and that’s when things go careening wildly off the rails.

Static is right on the edge of asking some interesting questions about the nature of faith versus proof, about the role of artists and creators in society, about tolerance for ideas outside the mainstream. But instead, the movie lurches into a scenario wherein Ernie takes a busload of senior citizens hostage in order to generate publicity for his invention. Admittedly, Ernie is just as affable a kidnapper as he is a diner customer, and the standoff has the humor and light satire we might expect from a British sitcom. But it ends just as terribly as you could expect, with bullets fired, everyone dead, and not a single lesson learned. It’s a bold choice, sure, but a cheap and cynical one.

Director Romanek has reportedly disowned the film as juvenalia, which seems unfair. The movie looks good and is well acted. It just has absolutely no idea what it wants to say, and therefore ends up saying nothing. Static serves as an interesting collection of “wouldn’t it be cool” notions, but ask yourself what happens during the time between when Plummer comes rolling into town and when she heads back out. It may look like there’s a lot going on, but cut through the snow and the noise and all you really get is a fancy scooter.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“It’s always tempting to find a strange cult film all the more alluring if it’s hard to get to see it in the first place… Static serves up a near-surreal helping of small-town America just before Lynch himself had got to Blue Velvet, let alone Twin Peaks.” – Andy Murray, We Are Cult

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

Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: “THE END OF THE WORLD IN FOUR SEASONS” (1995) AND THE CANADIAN FILMS OF PAUL DRIESSEN

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DIRECTED BY: Paul Driessen

PLOT: In “The End of the World in Four Seasons” small, repeating vignettes of life in each season play out in eight separate-but-interconnected frames; each ends with some sort of destruction, but by winter, all the settings are wiped out.

Still from The End of the World in Four Seasons" (1995)

COMMENTS: Paul Driessen first appears in the weird movie connoisseur’s consciousness as a hired hand; the Dutchman was enlisted to storyboard and animate on Yellow Submarine. But rather than trying to move up the ladder to features, he has resolutely stuck with his self-created shorts, establishing a personal style and inspiring plenty of others. Two movies created by Driessen’s students have won Academy Awards, while his own “The Killing of an Egg” allegedly inspired marine biologist Stephen Hillenburg to try his hand at animation. (Hillenburg would go on to create the cartoon juggernaut SpongeBob SquarePants.) 

In the early 1970s, the fabled patron of animation the National Film Board of Canada enlisted Driessen to come and work on the other side of the Atlantic, resulting in a series of unusual and subversive works. Six of these shorts were collected in an anthology entitled “Des histoires pas comme les autres” (“Stories Unlike Any Others”), and while we’re focused on one of those today, a quick glance at the full set can be instructive in assessing Driessen’s style and development.

Consider “Air” (1972), which presents multiple relationships with the title subject in less than two minutes. Flowers, fish, birds, and finally a being who seems to be in sheer terror of clouds all struggle to take in enough air to breathe. Of note is Driessen’s facility with the line, which does most of the work to define the space, transforming from the earthen bed of the flowers to the still surface of the sea in the space of a breath.

“Cat’s Cradle”(1974) goes deeper into the idea of transformations, with objects consistently scaling up and shifting from predator to prey. The design here hearkens back to Yellow Submarine with its large, toothy creatures and optical illusions. The French title, “Au bout du fil,” is also a hidden commentary; it means “on the line”, which of course is Driessen’s whole M.O.

In 1975’s “An Old Box”, we get our first look at Driessen’s fondness for simultaneous narratives, as the title object unfolds and refolds itself to reveal changing tableaux on its sides. We also get some of his dark whimsy, such as a garbage truck that licks its lips after gulping down a healthy chunk of refuse.

So now we come to “The End of the World in Four Seasons,” which indulges Driessen’s penchant for minimal animation by making it minuscule. The screen is populated with eight tiny screens, each of which displays its own tiny repeating vignette, sometimes connecting across the gaps. The film cleverly demands repeat viewings to take in everything that’s going on. (With a new set for each season, there are about 30 stories to take in.) Driessen also demonstrates a slapstick master’s gift for stretching out a joke as far as it can reach; for example, a skier hurtles incessantly downhill for nearly three minutes until Driessen suddenly moves his camera and the athlete slams into the side of the frame. But that cleverness points to the biggest shortcoming of “The End of the World”: it’s not much more than its joke. Actions repeat until they don’t, creatures behave grotesquely until they meet grotesque fates themselves. The shifting of the seasons changes the milieu but not the method. And crucially, the film has no real point it wants to get across. The end of each world–by fire or by crumbling–isn’t instigated by the actions or behaviors of the characters within them. It’s just time to move on. Of all the movies in the Canadian collection, “The End of the World” is the most ambitious in its technique, but surprisingly empty when it comes to generating any sense of Driessen’s feelings about his creations.

This is decidedly not a problem in the next work, a movie Driessen would later call his favorite.  2000’s “The Boy Who Saw the Iceberg” is the Walter Mitty-like tale of a boy who dreams of a more interesting life. The twinned layout has fun juxtaposing fantasy against reality, right up until the moment when reality becomes far more intense. It owes a lot to the narratives of “An Old Box” and “The End of the World” with the way attention gently shifts between two competing storylines, but is far more mature in its content and tone. The gimmick is simpler, but allows for more focus on the details that lead to the haunting outcome.

The most recent film in the collection, 2003’s “2D or Not 2D”, begins in a rush of color and movement that looks positively decadent compared to his previous films, but hinges on the discovery of a bizarre two-dimensional barrier which feels solid and impenetrable until the camera pivots slightly along the z-axis, turning the barrier into doorways, trees, or even one of the protagonists. In other words, Driessen has come back to the line, only now it has far more depth and nuance.

All told, the collection of Driessen’s output for his Canadian producers provides an excellent snapshot of the filmmaker’s styles and mindsets. While “The End of the World” does capture him at his most adventurous, it also helps define the arc of  his career, marking the moment when mastery of technique became a means more than an end.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“This is a bizarre cartoon…  I found this cartoon to be weird, slightly disturbing, and not entertaining in the least. But hey, I’m not complaining that they included it. The more the merrier.” – David Blair, DVD Talk (from a review of the IMAX feature Seasons, which includes “The End of the World in Four Seasons” as a DVD extra)

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

Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: BOXING HELENA (1993)

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Beware

DIRECTED BY: (credited as Jennifer Chambers Lynch)

FEATURING: Julian Sands, , Bill Paxton, Kurtwood Smith, , Betsy Clark

PLOT: Unable to cope with his recent breakup with the temperamental Helena, surgeon Nick Cavanaugh finds himself caring for her at his house after a car accident.

Still from Boxing Helena (1993)

COMMENTS: I honestly don’t recall which was the bigger source of discussion when Boxing Helena hit theaters. Was it David Lynch’s daughter helming her first feature? Or was it the prospect of so much sexiness revolving around “Twin Peaks” bad girl Fenn? Some of it was probably the titillatingly taboo premise of a man so infatuated with a woman that he hacks off all her limbs and puts her in a box. (Spoiler: there is exactly one box in this movie, and it does not contain Helena.) But the bulk of the attention circled around the fact that Kim Basinger had to pony up nearly $4 million as recompense for breaking her contract to appear in the title role (and that was after Madonna had rejected it outright). Many of the negative contemporary reviews congratulated Basinger on getting the better end of the deal—and with 30 years distance, watching the film with clearer eyes, we discover that those critics were absolutely right.

We learn at the outset that Nick has been emotionally scarred from his youth, with a slutty mom who rejected him and left him hungry for love. So maybe it’s easy to understand what he sees in Helena: the apathy, the dismissiveness, the belittling condescension… who could turn that down? What’s not at all clear is what she ever saw in him. Within two minutes of arriving at Nick’s party, she’s stripped down to her negligee and cavorting in the fountain. It’s hard to argue that she leaves anything on the table.

One of our most iconic weird actors, Julian Sands, is either terribly miscast or horribly directed. This beautiful, suave man flounces about like an emasculated mockery of masculinity, whining and pining for a lost love that it’s not clear he ever had. But as pathetic as he makes Nick, Lynch goes to great pains to make him more so, with mournful closeups as he jogs and his puppy-dog fawning over her. Later, when Helena mocks his poor bedroom skills, his defensive retort is, “If you were a real woman, you’d lie to me about our sex.” It’s hard to know if Sands is in on the joke or just fully committed to Nick’s painful lack of self-awareness, but his despairing cry of “she’s leaving?” actually left me in hysterical laughter.

Fenn, meanwhile, has almost nothing to do. She begins the film peevish; the loss of her legs makes her angry, the loss of her arms moreso. Her shift to a needier, more empathetic character is motivated not by any change in her but rather as a means of bringing about a change in Nick, an especially odd choice given that a massive plot twist essentially undoes all of the “learning” we’ve witnessed. So this movie about handicapping and torturing a beautiful woman in order to satisfy a broken male ego can’t even commit to its own questionable choices.

Once you establish that the whole thing is an elaborate melodrama with no real point, you can start to embrace it as unintentional comedy, with ridiculous situations, thudding dialogue, and overheated acting. This is best exemplified by the amazingly entertaining Bill Paxton, who shows up as Helena’s occasional boytoy in a Nigel Tufnel hairdo, mesh T-shirt, and leather pants, as cocksure as a 12-year-old trying to buy liquor. The movie may believe in him (when he busts out a Benjamin in payment for information, it cracks on the soundtrack with a snap), but there’s no reason we should. Bragging about his manhood one moment, hiding in the bushes like a Peeping Tom the next, he’s always absurd. The moment late in the third act when he sees what has become of Helena is a masterful double-take, a magnificent piece of comic idiocy.

Boxing Helena could have used a lot more of that, because it is resolutely dumb but lacks the wisdom to recognize it. Young Ms. Lynch seems to think she’s created something bold and erotic and profound. That is an impulse that should be cut off.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“I am probably prevented by some unwritten law from divulging the end of Boxing Helena. I can only say that, instead of adding an extra twist to this bizarre tale, it deprives it of what little point it had.”–Quentin Crisp, Christopher Street (contemporaneous)

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

It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue, List Candidates

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: SOMETHING WEIRD (1967)

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DIRECTED BY: Herschell Gordon Lewis

FEATURING: Tony McCabe, Elizabeth Lee, William Brooker, Mudite Arums

PLOT: Electrical worker Mitch is horribly disfigured in an accident, acquires psychic powers, and is blackmailed by a hideous hag who promises to restore his looks in exchange for becoming her lover.

Still from Something Weird (1967)

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE APOCRYPHA: It is honestly surprising that we haven’t yet found a way to include the Godfather of Gore among our honorees, although it would be amusing if the movie that did so failed to feature any of his trademark bloodshed or exposed skin. Still, it says a lot that the man responsible for such no-room-for-nuance titles as Blood Feast and Two Thousand Maniacs chose to call this one Something Weird. The combination of ESP, LSD, and witchcraft ladled with heavy doses of terrible acting, barely decorated sets, and herky-jerky editing make Lewis’ titular assessment feel pretty spot-on.

COMMENTS: Before I’ve watched a frame, this movie has me at a disadvantage. Look at that title, practically daring me to leave it off our list. Think you can do my job for me, do you, movie? Well, I’ll be judging whether you’re truly something weird, thank you very much.

It does seem like they’re on to something, though. The first few minutes make a strong case for its peculiarity, with dramatic swings in tone and a schizophrenic mix of characters and locations. The opening credits share the screen with a murder-in-progress. (The interruptions are a mercy, as Lewis offers a credit to seemingly every actor in the film, and possibly a few that aren’t.) This is immediately followed by a karate demonstration in which one untalented black belt lectures another even-less-talented black belt. Their sparring gives way to a different kind of wrestling, in which a couple’s heavy petting leads to the woman’s to declare, “You’re electrifying!,” which gleefully segues into an actual electrocution. Even at this point, there’s room for a quick educational voiceover about the fascinating and totally real world of extrasensory perception before our story can truly begin. It’s a dizzying kickoff.

The actual tale threatens to be a major letdown, as our hero is the newly scarred, newly psychic Mitch (an insufferably smug McCabe). He’s immediately unlikeable, assaulting a nurse, bemoaning his fate, and barely concealing his contempt for the clients who visit his fortune-telling parlor. Fortunately, he meets his match in a hideous crone resembling a “Laugh-In” dancer whose makeup was done by a 5-year-old and whose laughter is so forced that it manages to go past sarcastic and come all the way back around to creepy. We don’t see it happen, but Mitch and his mysterious companion Ellen (the unnamed harridan now in disguise as a beautiful young woman who can’t act) quickly become the toast of the town with their incredible abilities.

Somehow, the story still hasn’t gotten started at this point, because Lewis seems unsure where the focus belongs. Is it Mitch trying to Continue reading APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: SOMETHING WEIRD (1967) →