As we continue to wend our way towards 2012, here’s what we’ll be covering next week: 366 Underground will go on the trail of The Los Angeles Ripper (2011), we’ll take a look at Giorgio Moroder’s recently-released re-imagining of Metropolis (1927/1984) (partially scored to 1980s synth-pop!), we’ll take a second look at Uncle Boonme Who Can Recall His Past Lives (here’s the initial rave to whet your appetite), and Alfred will finish his survey of Flicker Alley’s new “Chaplin at Keystone” set (here’s the first part).
It’s that time you’ve all been waiting for: time to once again run down the candidates in 366 Weird Movies “Weirdest Search Terms of the Week” contest. Our first honorable mention goes to “movie japanese imdb penis grow monkey,” which scores bonus points because the searcher (searchers?) typed this peculiar phrase into search engines at least 11 times last week. (Trying to stuff the ballot box?) The “sex freak of the week award” goes to the horny person looking for “amateur foot sex jobs butchers woman chicken legs sex video” (the incredible specialization of fetishists, the fact that they assume someone out there shares their weird tastes, and the fact that they’re usually right always astound us). We always admire simple, yet crazy, search terms, and so we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention the person out there in cyberspace looking for an “atmospheric weirdo.” But our Weirdest Search Term of the Week goes to “asian horror movie flour overpopulation,” just because we’d never before considered the horrific possibilities of a world with too much milled cereal grain products in it (leave it to the Asians to worry about that stuff).
Here’s the reader-suggested review queue, which we actually will be getting back to covering, we promise: Kairo [AKA Pulse];The American Astronaut; Blood Tea and Red Strings; The Films of Kenneth Anger, Vol. II (for Lucifer Rising, among others); Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Continue reading WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE→
A 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 on the official site links.
IN THEATERS (LIMITED RELEASE):
“Santa’s Cool Holiday Film Festival”: Headlined by Santa Claus Conquers the Martians with a handful of retro Christmas-themed shorts tossed in to pad the running time to a jolly two hours, the ad copy for this Holland releasing production sure makes it sound like the kind of thing our readers would dig: ” a bunch of the very rarest (and sometimes weird) Christmas filmic moments… these mind-boggling artifacts will seem either surreal or cheesy – or both.” It’s got fairly wide distribution with playdates from Dec. 2 to 23, so be sure to check the calendar to see if and when it’s screening near you. Santa’s Cool Holiday Film Festival official site.
IN DEVELOPMENT:
‘Manos’, the Hands of Fate (1966) restoration: Seriously. Ben Solovey (presumably the same Ben Solovey who was an assistant cameraman on Bitch Slap) is spending his free time making a high-definition restoration of the jaw-droppingly awful Manos (read our review) from a work print he bought at an Ebay auction. We’re in the camp that says cleaning up Manos‘ infamously murky look can’t help but hurt the film’s odd appeal (as Joel Hodgson famously observed, “Every frame of this movie looks like somebody’s last known photograph.”) Still, the old muddy, cruddy PD print will still be available for those of us who want to view the movie the way it was meant to be see, so why not restore it for those who think all Manos needs is a new paint job? ‘Manos’ in HD blog.
Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie (2012): The Cartoon Network cult comics get their own billion dollar extravaganza, but blow the entire budget on celebrity cameos by Jeff Goldblum, Zach Galifianakis, and Will Ferrell, among others. The plot has something to do with shrim [sic]. Debuting in theaters March 2, and on video-on-demand in January. Tim and Eric’s homepage.
NEW ON DVD:
A Cadaver Christmas (2011): $7,000, Troma-inspired, faux-grindhouse zom-coms are a dime a dozen. This one, about a janitor fending off the living dead at a university during Christmas break, should have a leg up: it actually got a good review in Variety. That favorable notice apparently didn’t help the makers snag a distribution deal, however, as they’re currently stuck self-distributing the finished product from their website. A Cadaver Christmas official site.
“Elvira’s Movie Macabre: Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964)/Beast from the Haunted Cave (1959)”: Scarily cleavalicious horror hostess Elvira hosts the true-to-its-title seasonal absurdity, with a cheapie Roger Corman creature feature filling out the double bill. Serious question: is that really sexagenarian Cassandra Peterson still tramping around as Elvira, or did they slip a new actress into the role without telling anyone? Buy “Elvira’s Movie Macabre: Santa Claus Conquers the Martians / Beast From Haunted Cave“.
“Found Footage Festival, Vol. 1: Live from Brooklyn” (2006): The folks at Found Footage Festival have been collecting awkward, embarrassing bits of pop-culture effluvia from VHS instructional tapes, public access TV shows, and other moldy sources since 2004. They have released these DVD collections of their finds before this (you can find even more volumes to buy at their website), but this compilation shows up as a new release this week, presumably because they now have a serious distributor in Lorber. Buy “The Found Footage Festival: Volume 1”.
“The Found Footage Festival, Vol. 2” (2007): More zero-budgeted, misbegotten zaniness from the curators of crud. Special note to lonely male 366 readers: this compilation includes the title “How to Seduce Women Through Hypnosis.” Buy “The Found Footage Festival: Volume 2”.
Histoire(s) du Cinéma (1998): Cinephile alert! Jean-Luc Goddard’s decades in the making, 4-part, 266-minute poem/essay on the history of film—told with overlapping images and optical effects as well as the auteur’s own odd reflections—is released on Region 1 for the first time. Thanks Olive Films! Histoire(s) Du Cinema.
Mammuth (2010): To correct a paperwork snafu, a recent retiree played by Gerard Depardieu hops on his motorcycle and treks across modern France to track down his last ten employers in this quirky, satirical comedy that some critics have labeled “absurd” and “surreal.” It didn’t play big screens in the USA, but UK critics praised Depardieu. Buy Mammuth.
Medea (1969): The story of Jason and the Golden Fleece, told Pier Paolo Passolini style, with bloody pagan rituals, Centaurs, and very little dialogue. Opera diva Maria Callas stars (but does not sing) in this long-unavailable art film rescued from oblivion by Entertainment One. Buy Medea.
“Mystery Science Theater, Vol. XXII”: As long as they keep releasing episodes of the hilarious 1990s cult movie-mocking series, we’ll keep buying them. Four more strange and awful movies are “riffed” this time around, including the Japanese Planet of the Apes ripoff Time of the Apes, the Japanese Bond ripoff Mighty Jack, the Ed Wood-scripted girls-gone-wild-(50s-style) juvie flick The Violent Years, and Rondo Hatton as The Brute Man. Buy “Mystery Science Theater 3000: Volume XXII”.
Santa Claus (1959): Santa lives in a castle in the sky, spies on children with a nightmarish eye-on-a-stalk telescope, and fights the Devil in this colorfully bizarre K. Gordon Murray Mexican import. This VCI release is actually a “special edition” complete with a commentary track, deleted scenes and Murray shorts! This one is definitely in our “reader suggested” list (we checked it twice). Buy Santa Claus.
“Ultimate Horror Collection (50 Movies)”: Absolutely not the ultimate horror collection, but these multi-packs of public domain and near public domain films make great stocking stuffers. Notable titles include the Certified Weird Carnival of Souls, public domain poster-child Night of the Living Dead, and Larry Cohen‘s super-odd God Told Me To. 3/50 is not a bad batting average for weirdness. Buy “Ultimate Horror Collection”.
Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971): So-bad-it’s-weird-ness from schlockmeister Al Adamson, featuring John Bloom as a Frankenstein who looks like he has chewed-up wads of toilet paper stuck to his face, the one-and-only Zandor Vorkov (in his one-and-only role) as the screen’s least scary Dracula, and Lon Chaney Jr. and Forrest J. Ackerman hanging around looking embarrassed. A horrible, entertaining movie. Watch Dracula vs. Frankenstein 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.
FEATURING: Tony Watt, Vivita, Amabelle Singson, James Taggart, John Ervin, Angela Faulkner
PLOT: I’m not really sure… see below.
COMMENTS: I’m not at all being snarky in regards to being completely unable to wrangle out an explanation of the plot of Vixen Highway 2006: It Came from Uranus. As far as I can gather, after multiple watchings, there are several strands of story involving (a) the escape of three female prisoners, (b) a female cop/bounty hunter, Divine Otaku (Amabelle Singson) who’s dispatched to capture the fugitives, all of whom have a fixation on (c) Rock legend Bobby Barzell, who’s waiting for a liver transplant to save his life and his ass from (d) Osiris (Tony Watt), an Alien Overlord who struck a bargain with Barzell for fame, money and sex in exchange for Barzell’s soul, and now who’s en route to Earth to collect.
Even more confusing is finding out that this film is an homage/reboot/requel to 2001’s Vixen Highway, written & directed by John Ervin (who co-wrote VH 2006), which apparently is a more straightforward version of the above storyline (probably without the alien overlord, I suspect).
Vixen Highway 2006: It Came from Uranus is a lo-budget, meth-fueled cousin of the NBK (Natural Born Killers) Aesthetic. This movie starts at the level of overkill, and then goes balls out turning everything up to 11. Everything is Too Much: too much on the sound fx, which goes way past cartoonish; the visual tricks, such as wipes, transitions, split screens—I think that all of the plug-ins of the editing program were used at least twice; the homaging and references, which are so thick, it’s like the filmmakers just poured everything from every grindhouse/exploitation/cult/faux-blaxploitation/mondo movie they liked into the pot; andIT’STWO AND A HALF HOURS LONG!!
Some may see these as good things, I realize. Frankenpimp (the director’s previous film) suffers from the same problems, only worse since it’s THREE HOURS LONG!!!VH:2006 at least has that tiny, tiny bit of restraint… But Too Much for Way Too Long feels like you’re being mentally bludgeoned if you try to take it all in at one sitting. The only way I got through both films was to take a little at a time—20-30 minute screenings. The best way to experience the films may be in the background at a party, where you sample the film in bits and pieces and you’re not hammered relentlessly by the constant overkill, and not bothered by the slow movement (or lack of movement) of the narrative.
Last week, we received a DVD from Netflix of a really, really weird flick. Unfortunately, there was a large crack in it that made it unplayable—a flaw far too prominent to have gone unnoticed. Is Netflix now deliberately sabotaging their more obscure and bizarre offerings to prop up rentals of the latest Transformers movie? Or was it a single weird-movie-hating employee, acting alone? Whatever the shadowy force behind this Conspiracy for Conventionality, the miscue forced us to adjust our lineup at the last moment. But have no fear! Next week you can still count on reports on weird and obscure movies, including the return of 366 Underground with coverage of the 2.5 hour B-movie opus Vixen Highway 2006: It Came from Uranus (2010). We’ll also take looks at the Chinese marital ghost story Matrimony (2010) and the unusual (to say the least) hardcore porn documentary Aphrodisiac! The Sexual Secret of Marijuana (1971). Throw in patr 1 of a two-part series on “Chaplin at Keystone,” and that should keep you busy until Netflix gets us replacement weirdness.
When we’re looking for our Weirdest Search Term of the Week, the bizarrely fetishistic porn searcher contingent always leads the way. We’re not sure, however, whether the following contender fits into that group or not: “deaf asian bush in movie.” Most of this week’s other entrants aren’t so ambiguous, such as the fellow who was looking for “sex porn italy between trees” (we tried the search ourselves and could only locate sex porn Italy between people—sorry). Then there are the searchers that are obviously sexual in nature, but were clearly typed in by drunken non-English speakers of sub-normal intelligence. In this category we include both “estonis a vagina bb movie movie” and “best black ninjaz of brug porno.com.” The clear winner Weirdest Search Term of the Week, however, was “hıgh black penısy sex.” The crazed searcher gets bonus points for inventing the peculiar adjective “penisy,” and even more bonus points for somehow replacing the “i” key on his keyboard with the symbol “ı.” That’s thinking outside the box in the field of weird searching!
Here’s the long-neglected reader-suggested review queue for your perusal (if not for the Netflix conspiracy mentioned above we would have knocked a title off this week): Kairo [AKA Pulse];The American Astronaut; Blood Tea and Red Strings; The Films of Kenneth Anger, Vol. II (for Lucifer Rising, among others); Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory; The Bride of Continue reading WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE→
A 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 on the official site links.
IN THEATERS (LIMITED RELEASE):
Sleeping Beauty (2011): From Australia comes this modern folktale that sounds like it has more to do with The House of Sleeping Beauties than with the classic fairy tale. We like writer/director Julia Leigh’s quote: “I’m interested in Wonder Cinema…” On the other hand, we don’t like the reviewers’ quotes, like David Rooney’s “Soporific in every sense.” Not to be confused with Catherine Breillat‘s 2010 The Sleeping Beauty. Sleeping Beauty official site.
Chillerama (2011): A horror/comedy anthology built around the conceit of a drive-in owner screening four outrageous and obscure movies on the theater’s last night of operation. The best fake movie title is The Diary of Anne Frankenstein. Billing itself as “the ultimate midnight movie,” but it looks geared to the Troma crowd. Buy Chillerama (2011).
The Flying Guillotine (1975): Not as famous or notable as its crazed sequel Master of the Flying Guillotine (which is languishing in our reader-suggested review queue), the original tells the story of how the titular distance-decapitation weapon was discovered. The Shaw Brothers produced four movies in the Flying Guillotine series (with Master being the most remembered). Buy The Flying Guillotine (1975).
Flying Guillotine2 (1978): Of the four Shaw Brothers movies with Flying Guillotine in the title, this one (also known as Palace Carnage) is the last chronologically, yet it is the direct sequel to the first. To make things even more confusing, Master, the second movie in the series, was a direct sequel to One Armed Boxer, an otherwise unrelated movie. Buy Flying Guillotine 2 (1978).
Vampires (2010): Belgian mockumentary focusing on the domestic life of a family of vampires, including a rebellious teenage daughter who wants to become human. Offbeat, at least. Buy Vampires (2010).
Zebraman 2: Attack on Zebra City (2010): This sequel sees Zebraman split into good (white, male) and evil (black, female) versions. We never even knew there was a sequel to the crazy original by weird favorite Takashi Miike; we admit we’ll be a bit disappointed if Zebranurse fails to make an appearance. Buy Zebraman 2: Attack on Zebra City (2010) [Blu-ray/DVD Combo].
NEW ON BLU-RAY:
Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010): See description in DVD above. This 2-disc set contains the 3D Blu-ray (which is your only chance to see the film in three dimensions, as intended) as well as a standard disc. Buy Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2011) [Blu-ray 3D/Blu-ray Combo] .
Horror Express (1972): Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing are a pair of archeologists fighting off a train full of zombies and a Cossack Telly Savalas in this Hammer horror classic that’s currently in our reader-suggested review queue. Appearing for the first time on Blu-ray, this release also contains a DVD copy of the movie (which is available separately from several competing sources). It’s supposedly remastered from a print discovered in Mongolia (!), but customer reports disagree on whether the visuals are much improved. Buy Horror Express (1972) [DVD/Blu-ray Combo] .
FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON YOUTUBE:
American Zombie (2008): Since we mentioned the Belgian horror mockumentary Vampire, the equal time rule suggests we must also mention this American mockumentary covering a zombie uprising in Los Angeles, from the standpoint of the misunderstood living dead. Watch American Zombie (2008) 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.
Celebrating the cinematically surreal, bizarre, cult, oddball, fantastique, strange, psychedelic, and the just plain WEIRD!
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Even more confusing is finding out that this film is an homage/reboot/requel to 2001’s Vixen Highway, written & directed by 
Some may see these as good things, I realize. Frankenpimp (the director’s previous film) suffers from the same problems, only worse since it’s THREE HOURS LONG!!! VH:2006 at least has that tiny, tiny bit of restraint… But Too Much for Way Too Long feels like you’re being mentally bludgeoned if you try to take it all in at one sitting. The only way I got through both films was to take a little at a time—20-30 minute screenings. The best way to experience the films may be in the background at a party, where you sample the film in bits and pieces and you’re not hammered relentlessly by the constant overkill, and not bothered by the slow movement (or lack of movement) of the narrative.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.