Category Archives: Miscellanea

WEIRD HORIZON FOR THE WEEK OF 8/4/2017

Our weekly look at what’s weird in theaters, on hot-off-the-presses DVDs, and on more distant horizons…

Trailers of new release movies are generally available at the official site links.

IN THEATERS (LIMITED RELEASE):

68 Kill: Bad-taste caper black comedy about a lowlife and his girlfriend who decides to steal cash from her sugar daddy. Reviews were generally impressed by its cult movie aspirations, although our own Giles Edwards was unimpressed (“it fails more often than not“). 68 Kill at Snowfort Pictures.

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NEW ON DVD:

Colossal (2016): An alcoholic woman (Anne Hathaway) discovers that the appearance of a giant monster in Seoul coincides perfectly with her blackouts in this absurd allegory. We missed it in theaters, but now is the perfect chance to get caught up. Buy Colossus.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Colossal (2016): See description in DVD above. Buy Colossus [Blu-ray].

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.

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.

2017 FANTASIA FESTIVAL: MOVIES & MAYHEM IN MONTREAL, VOL. 3

7/26 : Throwback Thursday …I Mean, Wednesday

Still from Eternal Evil (AKA The Blue Man)Tucked far out of the way of anything else at the Fantasia Festival is the “Cinematheque Quebecoise” theater. After forty minutes of searching and using the secret knock to get through the door, I was finally able to get seated for Eternal Evil (AKA The Blue Man). Directed in the mid-’80s by George Mihalka, Eternal Evil tells a dark tale of murder and astral projection. Our hero Paul Sharpe spends a lot of time with his shirt unbuttoned, and wonders why those close to him keep ending up dead. The answer stems from an interview he did with an elderly couple who claimed to achieve immortality by shifting to new bodies when their current vessels had worn out. A cult hit in its native Canada, the ’80s cheesiness was fortunately outweighed by the interesting story and clever premise. Not really something to Certify, though.

Poster for God Tole Me To (1976)That honor might go to ‘s 1976 cop-drama/alien-abduction picture, God Told Me To. A series of mass murders take place in downtown New York City, only connected by one thing: the perpetrators informing a policeman after the fact that they did because “God told [them] to.” Police detective Peter Nicholas is convinced there’s something to their confessions and digs deeper, discovering both an ominous entity at the heart of the matter as well as some strange truth about his own nature. Quite Certifiable, with one of the “Three Weird Things” necessarily being “glowing furnace-room messiah.”

7/27 : “Well, all the movies can’t be good. You’ve got to expect that once in a while.”

I suppose I really shouldn’t complain. It took over two weeks for Fantasia to give me a swing-and-a-miss evening out. I had high hopes for the Filipino Town in a Lake, Jet Leyco’s (ever-so-slightly) bizarre crime drama concerning the murder of one girl and the concurrent disappearance of another. The first hour is a humdrum, if capable, drama surrounding the mystery: reporters rush to the small town as the news “trends”, politicians work hard to take advantage of the tragedy, and, as is so often the case, the police have no real leads. It takes over an hour for something weird to happen—and right on its heels, the movie ends with a “twist”. An out-of-the-blue, confounding, and not terribly inspired “twist”. Though my goal here is to find new movies that are out of the ordinary, I can’t help but think that Town in a Lake would have been better as a straight-up procedural. As it stands, it’s as if got particularly lazy and, in Continue reading 2017 FANTASIA FESTIVAL: MOVIES & MAYHEM IN MONTREAL, VOL. 3 →

2017 FANTASIA FESTIVAL: MOVIES & MAYHEM IN MONTREAL, VOL. 2

7/19 & 7/20 : Preparing for another Long Weekend

Although it may come back to haunt me, I did not brave the swarms of fan-boys and girls that flocked to ‘s new space epic Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets Wednesday evening. I did, however, stay out late to catch Ufuk Genç’s German-language martial-arts movie, Plan B. It was truly “a mix of action und comedy”, but unlike Rainier Wolfcastle’s mediocre McBain: Let’s Get Silly!, Plan B has no shortage of hilarity (and, indeed, action). A trio of wannabe kung fu movie stars are trapped doing dirty work for a gang of vicious criminals and have constant run-ins with another gang of vicious criminals. Police detective Robert Kopp looms in the background wondering what these idiots could possibly be up to.

Still from Free and Easy (2017)On Thursday night, just one feature—a weird one. Geng Jun’s Free and Easy plays like it was shot from a screenplay whipped up by when he was doing his post-college backpacking trip around Northeast China. (Note: there is no record of Beckett back-packing around Northeast China). In a ghost town of some dozen people, around half of the inhabitants seem to be con-men; two bored policemen encounter victims of knock-out soap (literally). Free and Easy had a fair number of laughs, but as the screen darkened, the normally clapping crowd was silent, not quite knowing what to do: there was one clap, then silence during the incongruous Mandarin rap song that played over the credits.

7/21 : Triple Feature; All Hail “NongShim”

Technically it’s 7/22: just returned from the final film of a triple feature this evening, and I feel like my brain should be soaked in a cool bucket of ice. Things started around 7 o’clock with the Cambodian jailhouse action extravaganza Jailbreak. Very martial arts, not very weird, but those who like well choreographed (and non-hyper-edited) combat should check it out.

On the heels of this violence was some more violence—of less quantity, but far more grisly. Lowlife is looking to be the high point of the Festival, and I’ll remark more on it later once I’ve had a chance to shut down. Suffice it to say, I think America has a new go-to director for unsettling violence fused with smart script-writing and quirky wit. Lowlife also gives us one of the nastiest bad guys to come out on film in a long while.

Rounding out the evening was the hyper-bizarre, hyper-violent, and ultimately tender movie, Kudoku Meatball Machine. This film introduced me to the creativity of , whom I will have the pleasure of interviewing in under ten hours. I’ll provide details on the last two later this weekend. Now, though, I’m signing off and passing out.

7/22 : Laid-back Conversations

On Saturday-proper, I had intended to watch three movies: Dead Continue reading 2017 FANTASIA FESTIVAL: MOVIES & MAYHEM IN MONTREAL, VOL. 2 →

WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE

It’s a somewhat funky week upcoming on 366 Weird Movies. Alfred Eaker starts us off with a castle-themed 1964 drive-in double feature of Horror Castle and Castle of the Living Dead. Giles Edwards is busy at the Fantasia Film Festival and will be bringing us his weekly check-in, plus a bonus review and interview (or two). Finally, G. Smalley brings in the promised funk with reviews of the blaxploitation parody/soft porn feature Black Devil Doll and, on a more positive note, Melvin Van Peebles’ extravagant 1971 experiment Sweet Sweetback’s  Baadasssss Song.

Speaking of funky, it’s time for our survey of the weirdest search terms that brought people to the site this week, a feature we call “Weirdest Search Terms of the Week.” First off, we think it’s obvious that the guy who searched for “(((incest drama))) online” early in the week and the guy looking for “((incest film))) 1979 mubi” on the weekend are the same person. Right? Or is putting incest search terms inside multiple parentheses a thing now? (((Maybe he thinks it’s like whispering on the Internet?))) [Ed. Apparently “triple parenthesis” are a “thing”; see the comments section.] We also noted other perverts with bad spelling searching for “japanes house keeper with ownar lebens sex .com”. But we’ll give the official award for Weirdest Search Term of the Week to “sex parody hit femors movies.com,” which we like to think is a search for x-rated parodies of hit movies about femurs.

Here’s how our ridiculously-long reader-suggested review queue stands: Black Devil Doll (next week!); Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (next week!); Beauty and the Beast [Panna a Netvor] (1978); 1 Continue reading WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE →

WEIRD HORIZON FOR THE WEEK OF 7/21/2017

Our weekly look at what’s weird in theaters, on hot-off-the-presses DVDs, and on more distant horizons…

Trailers of new release movies are generally available at the official site links.

IN THEATERS (WIDE RELEASE):

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017): Two space operatives investigate a mystery in a city that serves as a galactic cultural crossroads. ‘s latest attempt to crack the U.S. blockbuster market has gotten mixed reviews, but also drawn some complaints/plaudits for its “trippiness.” Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets official site.

IN THEATERS (LIMITED RELEASE):

The Girl Without Hands [Le Jeune Fille sans Mains] (2016): Animated version of the Grimm fairy tale about a girl who loses her hands to the Devil. Looking more like a series of overlapping art canvases than a traditional animated film, this one is drawing universal praise. The Girl Without Hands U.S. distributor site.

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Kuso (2017): It looks like a psychedelic cable access variety show set in the aftermath of an L.A. earthquake. The grotesque bodily fluid imagery mixed with narrative incomprehensibility inspired many a walkout during its not-quite-succès de scandale debut at Sundance. Kuso official site.

The Untamed (2016): Erotic Mexican horror about an unhappy marriage and some sort of creature in the woods. It made enough of a splash on the festival circuit to earn a limited release; we hope it’s not too tame. The Untamed official site.

NEW ON DVD:

Buster’s Mal Heart (2017): Read Alex Kittle’s review. A hermit ranting about “the Inversion” has a couple of other possible identities in this mindbender. Buy Buster’s Mal Heart.

Stalker (1979): Read the Certified Weird review! The Criterion Collection releases ‘s newly-restored, mesmerizingly ambiguous sci-fi feature; special features (mostly interviews) are on a second disc. Buy Stalker.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Buster’s Mal Heart (2017): See description in DVD above. Buy Buster’s Mal Heart [Blu-ray].

Stalker (1979): See description in DVD above. The movie and bonus content fit on one Blu-ray. Buy Stalker [Blu-ray].

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.

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.