With only 25 spots left open (!) on the List of the 366 Weirdest Movies, last week we opened up nominations for readers to submit movies they could not bear to be left off the List. This is the last chance for readers to directly vote movies onto the List, although as always, we can be moved by bribes. So what you see below is now officially the Ultimate Readers Choice Poll. (There is also a prize involved, but only for those whose nominations were chosen—you can remind yourself of those rules here, if you so desire).

You may vote your favorite from the list below, and you may only vote once per day. We trust you are an honorable bunch so no shenanigans, please. The poll includes a short quote from the reader who nominated the film or seconded the nomination (or from the IMDB if they added no commentary). You are encouraged to continue to campaign for your favorite in the comments on this post. Voting closes on July 29 at midnight, U.S. Eastern Standard time. Enjoy!

Direct voting link (use if you cannot see the poll or if your browser does not support javascript)

The nominations phase is closed!

We’ve already had one final readers’ choice poll, but it was such a success that we’re doing it again. And this time, there’s a prize pack involved, so read on.

We’re coming down to the finish line in what has turned out to be an almost-decade-long countdown of the 366 Weirdest Movies Ever Made. Only 26 spots remain at the time of this writing. In the past, we’ve relied on reader input to help shape the List by running regular polls. Readers are responsible for directly placing Alice [Neco Z Alenky], Visitor Q, Pink Floyd: The Wall, Trash Humpers, The American Astronaut, Dead Ringers, Keyhole, Sweet Movie, Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny, Ninja Champion, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Vampire’s Kiss, Why Don’t You Play in Hell?, and last contest’s winners, Last Year at Marienbad and Under the Skin (2013), into the field of 366. (That’s not even counting reader-suggestions which we reviewed and found worthy.)

Some of those misfit films above surely would have made the List anyway without readers selecting them. But this new poll will be your last (and we mean it this time!) chance to have direct input on the List (at least, until we decide to expand it to 732 movies).

It’s going to work the same way as it did last time (with the added twist of a prize). We’re going to shut down the suggestion box for the time being, and you can post all your suggestions in the comments on this post. You may nominate any movie at all, whether it’s something we’ve never heard of, something that’s been languishing among our List Candidates, something that’s already sitting in the reader-suggested queue, or even something that we’ve already reviewed and rejected. Feel free to nominate the same movie you did last contest (maybe you’ll have better luck this time). The nominations are subject only to a few minimal rules:

1. One official suggestion per reader.
2. Don’t suggest a movie you had a part in creating. If you want us to review your work sent us a note via the contact form.
3. Every movie suggestion will require a “second” from someone else in the comments to become a nominee. (Seconding someone else’s movie choice will not preclude you from forwarding your own nominee).
4. Current contributors to 366 Weird Movies cannot nominate movies; they can second readers’ choices, however.
5. If your nominee appears to be a joke (i.e. E.T. or Mamma Mia!), even a second will not help. But don’t be afraid to make a non-conventional choice for a non-conventional movie—you just have to be more persuasive about why you think it belongs here.
6. The movies should be available for us to screen (legally) somewhere. We may consider some readily-available bootleg films, but not, for example, one of Matthew Barney’s Cremaster films (sorry! We’ll probably create another list of legendary unscreenable weird films someday.)

We will leave the nomination process open for one week. Fifteen titles is the most we’d be willing to deal with, so we’ll shut down the process if we reach that goal.

We’re trusting our readers are sophisticated enough to avoid recency bias and won’t only suggest movies made in the last two or three years (although you may certainly nominate such a film if you want to). Movies currently in theaters or film festivals should be avoided.

After one week, we’ll shut off this post to new comments and create an official one-week poll to officially add one of these movies. (Others from the poll could possibly make the List at the editors’ discretion). At that time, we’ll also reopen the “Suggest a Weird Movie!” page, though using it will be a Hail Mary pass for latecomers only.

Since you’ll need a second to get your nominee on the ballot, you’ll probably want to campaign as persuasively as you can for your choice. Since you can only vote one movie in the end, you can only second one.

Ready? Got to it! Comment away!

Oh, and did we mention a prize? We have a pair of Artsploitation horror anthology discs to give away! First up, it’s the Blu-ray version of the transgressive shock horror outing German Angst (which we have already reviewed favorably, though we didn’t nominate it for the List). We’ll pair that with the new DVD of A Taste of Phobia, wherein fourteen filmmakers fashioning flash fear films from a phobia. To draw this out as long as possible, the person who nominates the film that is eventually chosen to ascend to the List will be awarded the prize. If they are not eligible, the prize will go to the person who nominates the second-highest vote getter, and so on. The usual eligibility rules apply: you must supply a valid e-mail, you must be over the age of 18, and you must have a U.S. mailing address. You also must respond to notification that you have won within 48 hours or we’ll move on to the runner-up.

We’ll list the nominees (whether seconded or not) in the body of this post for clarity.

Final candidates:

The Adolescence of Utena

Arrebato [Rapture]

Big Man Japan (2007)

Celine and Julie Go Boating

Fruit of Paradise (1970)

The Idiots

Jigoku (1960)

Jubilee

The Last Movie

Mind Game

Multiple Maniacs (1970)

The Ornithologist

Peau d’âne [Donkey Skin]

Putney Swope

R100

Singapore Sling

Symbol (2009)

Talking Head

Tusk

Also nominated:

Aaaaaaaah! (2015)

The Addams Family

Essex Spacebin

Juliet of the Spirits

L’ange (1982)

Oldboy

See You in Hell My Darling

Slaughterhouse-Five (1972)

Sorry to Bother You (2018)

The Spirit (2008)

Tales from the Gimli Hospital

The Voices (2014)

Waiting for Godot (assuming 2001 version unless James says different)

Wet Hot American Summer

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):

Poor Boy (2016): Two redneck sons of a rodeo clown (played by Michael Shannon) try to marry a Native American woman so they can move to California in this scuzzily surreal experiment. Variety‘s Nick Schager inadvertently tries his best to sell it to our readers, complaining that it “has a strung-out, sunburnt feverishness that makes it seem, at any moment, poised to tip into outright insanity… tries too hard to be weird.” No official site located.

FILM FESTIVALS – Fantasia International Film Festival (Montreal, Canada, July 12 – Aug. 2):

As its name implies, Montreal’s Fantasia Festival originally began as a showcase for fantastic films from Asia; it has since morphed into a major event on the genre cinema calendar. Not that they’ve let mainstream success get to their heads; there’s still more rare weirdness to be found at Fantasia than at just about any film festival on the globe. We make watch lists from Fantasia’s programming, and we’re always saddened when less than half of the most daring films find meaningful distribution in the U.S. Because of the large number of entries, we’re highlighting only the most promising offerings here; it goes without saying that there will be new films by Takashi Miike and Shion Sono splashed across the screens. 366’s own Giles Edwards is in attendance and will be bringing us updates weekly (perhaps more frequently) on the Fest’s biggest and weirdest contenders. While realizing that surprise favorites always pop up, here are the top contenders for the throne of strangeness we took note of:

• Cam – A camgirl finds an exact duplicate of herself writhing onscreen, but transgressing her personal and professional boundaries; described as a “relentlessly tense surrealistic thriller.” Screens July 18 & 20.
• Chained for Life – The title is a reference to a 1952 exploitation film starring conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton (Freaks); the scenario involves “freaks” cast in a movie who “swipe the film’s camera equipment after-hours and make their own film”; the source is Aaron Schimberg, whose praised but little-seen debut Go Down Death earned comparisons to the work of Guy Maddin. Screening July 18 & 24.
• Hanagatami – Hausu‘s Nobuhiko Obayashi returns to realize his unfilmed first script (written in the 1970s), an eve-of-WWII tale of incestuous desire that The Telegraph called “avant-garde in the extreme” and “like nothing else around.” July 14 or 19.
• Mandy – Not just a Fantasia highlight, but one of the buzziest films of the year: Panos Cosmatos puts Nicolas Cage into a surreal supernatural revenge drama. Closing the festival on Aug 1, and already sold out.
  

Say “hi” to Giles if you see him. Fantasia Festival home page.

NEW ON HOME VIDEO:

Godmonster of Indian Flats (1973): Read the Certified Weird entry! From American Film Genre Archives (AFGA) comes this  special edition (!) of Fredric Hobbs’ strange modern Western/mutant sheep monster mashup that’s actually mainly about real estate shenanigans and staged dog funerals. The disc comes with exploitation shorts and a bonus feature, 1975’s The Legend of Bigfoot, on, uh, Blu-ray? Buy Godmonster of Indian Flats.

Yellow Submarine (1968): Read the Certified Weird entry! If you’ve been watching our “Repertory Screening” column, you’ve probably figured out that a restored version of The Beatles‘ psychedelic cartoon about the saffron submersible has been touring the country this summer in a 4K restored version. What has received less fanfare is the fact that (as of today’s writing) it’s available to stream free for subscribers on Amazon Prime; and, perhaps even more surprising, so is the soundtrack. We suspect both offerings will be up for a limited time.

CERTIFIED WEIRD (AND OTHER) REPERTORY SCREENINGS:

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975). We won’t list all the screenings of this audience-participation classic separately. You can use this page to find a screening near you.

• Chicago, IL, 7/13-15 – Yellow Submarine (1968). At Music Box Theater.
• Columbus, OH, 7/13-14, 17, 19 – A Clockwork Orange (1971). At Gateway Film Center.
• Columbus, OH, 7/13-7/14 – Yellow Submarine (1968). At Gateway Film Center.
• Dallas, TX, 7/13-7/14 – Yellow Submarine (1968). At the Texas Theater.
• Dallas, TX, 714 – Dead Man (1995). With live local bands after (separate purchase required).
• Los Angeles, CA, 7/13 – Donnie Darko (2001) with Evil Dead (1981) (double feature). At the Aero Theater.
• Los Angeles, CA, 7/15 – Eraserhead (1977) with Being John Malkovich (1999) (double feature). At the Aero Theater.
• Memphis, TN, 7/13-7/14 (midnights) – El Topo (1970). At Malco Studio on the Square.
• Nashville, TN, 7/14-7/15 – Belle de Jour (1967). At the Belcourt Theater.
• New York City, NY, 7/13-7/14 (midnights) – El Topo (1970). At the Nitehawk Theater.
• New York City, NY, 7/13-7/14 (midnights) – A Field in England (2013). At the Nitehawk Theater.
• New York City, NY, 7/13-7/14 (midnights) – Blue Velvet (1986). At IFC Center.
• New York City, NY, 7/13-7/14 (midnights) – Suspiria (1977). At IFC Center.
• New York City, NY, 7/14 – The Woman in the Dunes (1964). At the Metrograph.
• New York City, NY, 7/13-7/19 – Yellow Submarine (1968). At IFC Center.
• Tuscon, AZ, 7/13-7/19 – Yellow Submarine (1968). At the Loft.
• Vancouver, BC, Canada – The City of Lost Children [La cité des enfants perdus] (1995). At the Rio.
• Yonkers, NY, 7/14-7/15 – Yellow Submarine (1968). At the Alamo Drafthouse.

NEPOTISM CORNER:

“Crest”: Longtime readers will know that shorts czar Cameron Jorgensen moonlights as the bassist of SLC-based progressive/hard rock group Visitors. After an EP release last year, their debut album drops today, 7/13/2018. Cameron describes it as “a concept record about a girl who falls in love, but begins to question if her love interest is real or a product of her mental illness” adding, mysteriously, “we recorded these songs two years ago in Portland, where I was bitten by a vampire while walking to a convenience store.” He hopes “a handful of people out there don’t hate it.” A local music writer didn’t hate it, at least, saying the band “sounds like Glassjaw and Letlive had a love-triangle baby with Chino Moreno, then that baby grew up on prog rock and had an obsession with reverse evolution.”

Here’s the opening tune, “Pollyana”:

You can tell that Cameron has been paying attention to the experimental shorts he’s been posting, since he also collaborated on the music video.

Visit Visitors’ Bandcamp page to purchase the album.

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):

Sorry to Bother You (2018): A telemarketer discovers he has a magical sales power that catapults him up the corporate ladder and into a “macabre universe.” We’ve been eagerly awaiting the wider release of this weird, satirical festival hit, the debut of rapper Boots Riley. Sorry to Bother You official site.

Under the Tree [Undir trénu] (2017): Neighbors argue over the fate of an old tree; the dispute turns absurdly violent. In fact, the main complaint from detractors of this Icelandic black comedy seems to be the depth of violence the director is willing to go to. Under the Tree Facebook page.

IN DEVELOPMENT (websites):

byNWRcom: This is a strange new item. Nicolas Winding Refn announces that he will be opening a website to screen some exploitation films from his private collection which he has restored. Among the offerings are Night Tide and Ron Ormond‘s The Burning Hell (restored!), along with some even rarer ones (nudie westerns and unclassifiable outsider exploitation), all linked by a common denominator of “bad taste.” Refn offers this treasure trove of oddities as an antidote to Trumpism in a politico-artitsic manifesto for The Guardian. The site is not streaming yet (it says “coming this month”) but you may want to bookmark it.

NEW ON HOME VIDEO:

“Dietrich and von Sternberg in Hollywood”: Read Alfred Eaker’s reviews of Blonde Venus and The Scarlet Empress. This Criterion Collection box set includes Morocco, Dishonored, Shanghai Express, Blonde Venus, and The Devil Is a Woman, but buy it for the Expressionistic Catherine the Great biopic Scarlet Empress. Buy “Dietrich and von Sternberg in Hollywood”.

CERTIFIED WEIRD (AND OTHER) REPERTORY SCREENINGS:

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975). We won’t list all the screenings of this audience-participation classic separately. You can use this page to find a screening near you.

• Columbus, OH, 7/6-7/12 – Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971). At Gateway Film Center.
• Columbus, OH, 7/8-7/12 –  Yellow Submarine (1968). At Gateway Film Center.
• Dallas, TX, 7/12 – Yellow Submarine (1968). At the Texas Theater.
• Denver, CO, 7/10 – The Godmonster of Indian Flats (1973). At the Alamo Drafthouse.
• Los Angeles, CA, 7/6 (midnight) – Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010). At the Nuart Theater.
• Los Angeles, CA, 7/7 – Dark City (1998) and Cube (1997) (double feature). Dark City screenwriter David Goyer will lead a discussion during the intermission. At the Egyptian Theater.
• Los Angeles, CA, 7/8 – Labyrinth (1986) and Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) (double feature). At the Egyptian Theater.
• Nashville, TN, 7/8-7/12 – Yellow Submarine (1968). At the Belcourt Theater.
• Nashville, TN, 7/9 – Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971). At the Belcourt Theater.
• New York City, NY 7/6-7/7 (midnights)- Holy Motors (2012). At Nitehawk Theater.
• New York City, NY, 7/6-7/7 – The Holy Mountain (1973). At IFC Center.
• New York City, 7/6-7/7 – Suspiria (1977). At IFC Center.
• New York City, NY, 7/6-7/7 (midnights) – Blue Velvet (1986). At IFC Center.
• New York City, 7/8 – The Woman in the Dunes (1964). At the Metrograph.
• New York City, NY, 7/9-7/12 – Yellow Submarine (1968). At IFC Center.
• Silver Spring, MD, 7/6-7/12 – 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). At AFI Silver Theater.
• Toronto, ONT, Canada, 7/10 – Hour of the Wolf [Vargtimmen] (1968). At the Royal Theater.
• Tuscon, AZ, 7/8 – Yellow Submarine (1968). At the Loft.
• Vancouver, BC, Canada, 7/7 – Akira (1988). At the Rio.
• Vancouver, BC, Canada, 7/8 – Stalker (1979). At the Rio.
• Yonkers, NY, 7/8 – Yellow Submarine (1968). At the Alamo Drafthouse.

FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON TUBI.TV:

Jacob’s Ladder (1990): Read the Certified Weird entry! A Vietnam vet sees demons everywhere: was he the victim of an Army experiment with weaponized hallucinogens? Listed as “leaving soon” on Tubi. Watch Jacob’s Ladder 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.