Three-time (and counting) Certified Weird director Ken Russell died yesterday at the age of 84. No cause of death was reported, but the auteur was known to have recently suffered a series a strokes and was not in good health.
The Ken Russell films that this site has already certified as among the best weird movies of all time are Altered States, Gothic, and The Lair of the White Worm. Alfred Eaker has also paid tribute to Russell with a review of the mad maestro’s Mahler (1974). A large legacy of Russell movies remain for us to cover, including The Devils (1971) and Tommy (1975).
Whether bringing nun orgies, seven-horned crucified lambs, or breasts with eyes to the screen, Ken Russell was never afraid of going over-the-top. In fact, he was afraid of not going over the top. Where others saw a ceiling, he saw a floor. We were all privileged to witness his madness, and he will be missed by the weird movie community.
With December about to dawn, we continue our look at weirdness in 2011 with coverage of Lars von Trier‘s latest, Melancholia, about clinical depression and a giant planet named “Melancholia” that’s set to collide with Earth (metaphor anyone?); and we’ll take a trip with gonzo documentarian Werner Herzog into the Cave of Forgotten Dreams. Those who follow 366 very closely will be surprised at the third 2011 movie we cover this week, and at what we do with it. In bonus coverage, Alfred will give us the lowdown on another operatic Alban Berg atrocity when he gives Calixto Bieto’s Wozzeck a spin.
Even with Google’s new privacy measures now making almost 10% 0f all queries invisible to us, there are plenty of bizarre keyword strings to consider for our Weirdest Search Term of the Week contest. We start off with the befuddling “scram 1980 scram,” before moving on to the more conventionally weird, holiday-themed “movie with old st. nicholas lady oinks like pig.” We also have to mention “placenta encapsulation vermilion.” Now, we know placenta encapsulation is a great innovation for moms who are grossed out by eating raw placenta, but come on, it’s still weird—and the “vermillion” part doesn’t make it any less strange. Still, for our Weirdest Search Term of the Week we once again turn to the sick world of human sexual perversion—or we assume we do, although maybe the phrase actually comes from the world of antique railroad enthusiasts?—for our winner, “geriatric steam train porn.”
Here’s that ridiculously long list of reader-suggested titles for review (more titles after the break—seriously, you won’t believe how long this list goes on): Kairo [AKA Pulse];The American Astronaut; Blood Tea and Red Strings; The Films of Kenneth Anger, Vol. II (for Lucifer Rising, 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.
The holiday/awards season is here, which means that you can forget about seeing anything outstandingly weird in theaters for a while.
IN THEATERS (LIMITED RELEASE):
House of Pleasures: The story of a Parisian bordello circa 1899, told in a deliberately anachronistic style (a 1960s soundtrack, split screens, etc.) David Fear of Time Out gave it a good review, while admitting it’s “occasionally WTF hilarious” (to us, as to him, a big plus). Playing NYC this week, other dates unknown. House of Pleasures official site.
IN DEVELOPMENT:
Emmanuelle in Wonderland (completed 2011): We mentioned this erotic musical thingee in passing last week, but after coming across this—um, “interesting”—YouTube footage, the title bears repeating. Emmanuelle in Wonderland is part of an “Emmanuelle” reboot(y) series from director Rolfe Kanefsky, featuring many actors and actresses from the porn world stretching their chops. We can’t discern anything about distribution for this movie (it appears aimed at the Skinemax market) but surely something this—um, “special?”—will show up on DVD soon? Emmanuelle in Wonderland Facebook page.
NEW ON DVD:
Darkroom (2008): Another “what is real and what is fantasy” movie, this time revolving around a crime scene photographer. Not much information on this one to be found. Buy Darkroom.
An Evening with the Residents: Bimbo’s [Talking Light] (2011): If you’re as much a fan of weird music as of weird movies, you know of The Residents, the avant-garde music collective known for performing in tuxedos and giant eyeball head masks. This is a live recording of their album/spoken word piece “Talking Light,” which revolves around ghost stories and the paranormal (and features a trio lineup and new costumes). Buy An Evening with Residents – Bimbo’s.
Helldriver (2010): The team behind Tokyo Gore Police and Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl is back with another wild one featuring ninjas, zombies, cannibalism, a sexy samurai babe with a chainsaw blade, and of course, splatter. An Amazon reviewer offers the advice “save yourselves from the sheer fatuous inanity of this drivel,” which could be seen as a warning, a perverse endorsement, or a dare. Buy Helldriver.
Saki the Killer (2011): The synopsis suggests something about a female art teacher who battles yakuza demons with the power of her paintbrush. Direct to video and unreviewed elsewhere, yet something about the premise strikes us as noteworthy. Buy Saki The Killer.
Crowley [AKA Chemical Wedding] (2008): Read our capsule review. Aleister Crowley is reincarnated with an assist from pseudoscience. Intentionally campy occult parody, or Bruce Dickinson vanity project gone awry? You can only decide by watching. Watch Crowley [Chemical Wedding] 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.
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.
NEW ON DVD:
Bellflower (2011): Read our capsule review. Two hard-drinking slackers who build post-apocalyptic vehicles in their spare time experience love, loss, and non-linear narrative. Side note: the marketers have removed the word “weird” from the critical quote they selected for the cover. Buy Bellflower.
Evil Dead 2 (1987): Read the Certified Weird entry! All three of Sam Raimi ‘s Evil Dead moves are constantly being reissued in new packages. Rights to 2 have switched hands from Anchor Bay to Lions Gate, and this “25th Anniversary” re-release promises an improved picture (although some reviewers have said the difference isn’t very noticeable) and a mix of old and new featurettes (the commentary track is old). Buy Evil Dead 2 (25th Anniversary Edition).
Futurist Life Redux (2009): Viva Futurista is a lost film, created as a series of linked shorts by eleven founding members of the Futurist art movement in 1916. Futurist Life Redux is an experimental, loose and modernized reconstruction of what that original movie may have looked like, re-imagined for the 21st century from the original creators notes and a few surviving stills. Most of the directors come from the performance art world, with George (Sins of the Fleshapoids) Kuchar a noteworthy exception. If the clip below is representative, then these are weird, yeah. Buy Futurist Life Redux.
Giorgio Moroder Presents Metropolis (1927/1984): In 1984 composer Giorgi Moroder restored Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, and in a controversial decision, colorized the movie and gave it a pop-music score by the likes of Billy Squier, John Anderson, Freddy Mercury, Pat Benetar, and so on. At the time Moroder was fresh off an Academy Award for writing the song “What a Feeling” for Flashdance. Buy Giorgio Moroder Presents Metropolis.
Griff the Invisible (2010): A clerk who moonlights as a masked vigilante meets a girl lost in daydreams in this Australian romantic comedy. Half the reviewers who’ve seen it use some form of the word “quirk” to describe it (and one even uses a form of “weird”). Buy Griff the Invisible.
“Half Pint Brawlers, Season 1” (2010): We never caught it on its brief Spike TV run, but the packaging (“WARNING: X-treme and Absurd!”), caught our eye. It’s a reality show about a traveling troupe of wrestling little people led by a character who calls himself “Puppet the Psycho Dwarf.” The performers call themselves “midgets,” which got them in trouble with the Little People of America. As an aside, your editor sincerely hopes the word “midget” makes a comeback; it sounds far less demeaning than “little person.” Buy “Half Pint Brawlers: Season 1”.
“Neverwhere” (1996): This 180-minute BBC miniseries concerns a chap who finds himself trapped in a fantastic underground world of demons and magic dubbed “London Below.” Co-scripted by fantasy author Neil Gaiman, it has a cult reputation and special effects on the level of a “Dr. Who” episode. Gaimain later turned the screenplay into a novel. Buy “Neverwhere”.
The Tree (2011): An eight-year old girl becomes convinced that her dead father’s spirit inhabits a giant tree growing near the house. Life-affirming Australian magical realism starring the always-odd Charlotte Gainsbourg. Buy The Tree.
The Weird World of Blowfly (2011): Documentary focusing on Clarence Reid, better known as his alter-ego Blowfly, the proto-rapper and x-rated auteur of 1970s “party albums” packed with brilliantly brain-dead song parodies like “Spermy Night In Georgia” and “My Baby Keeps Farting In My Face.” Hey, it’s got “weird” right there in the title, of course we’re going to mention it! Buy The Weird World Of Blowfly.
Despair (1978): A chocolate magnate goes mad; he watches himself making love to his wife and believes a laborer is his doppelgänger. Rainer Werner Fassbinder directs Dirk Bogarde in Tom Stoppard’s adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov’s novel (is that enough name-dropping for one sentence?). Buy Despair [Blu-ray].
The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (1962): This tale of a mad-scientist who keeps his decapitated fiancée’s head alive while he searches for a stripper’s body to slap it on is one of the sleazier, and stranger, artifacts of its era. “I’m just a head… and you’re whatever you are… but together, we’re strong!” Watch The Brain That Wouldn’t Die 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.
When November and December roll around, we rush to catch up on all the weird stuff you may have missed in 2011. To that end, we’ll be looking at another quartet of new releases this upcoming week, starting off with this sick ‘n weird patricide pic Father’s Day (2011). Next we’ll check out what happens when Nazi action figures led by Hitler in an evening gown invade London in the animated alternate history comedy Jackboots on Whitehall (2010), then ogle Machete Maidens Unleashed! (2010), an exploitation doc/clip show in the American Grindhouse vein, but focused on WTF Filipino flicks of the 1970s. And just to remind you that “new release” doesn’t always mean something made in the last year or two, Alfred Eaker will give you the skinny on Warner Archive’s long-awaited DVD-R of Erich von Stroheim’s classic silent melodrama The Merry Widow (1925).
We are distressed at the deadening normality of the search terms that passed through our server logs this week. We are contractually obligated to pick a Weirdest Search Term of the Week, however, so we will do our best with what we have. A search for “hitler magic porno video” might look weird if you’re running a website devoted to pictures of cute kitties in baseball caps, but for us it’s just par for the course: if there actually were Hitler magic porno videos, we like to think we would be the ones covering them. A little bit weirder is “hollywood old movies black and white village saxy shat”: again, if such films only existed, we would be the ones bringing you the old Hollywood movies with the saxiest shat. We’ll go in a different direction and give this week’s Weirdest award to “seeex aanal poooorn.” The suggestion that more vowels = hotter pr0n search results is bizarre enough to squeak by in a weak field.
We’re neglecting covering titles in the vast reader-suggested review queue, but you guys haven’t slowed down making your suggestions, meaning the list is growing to truly embarrassing proportions. Check it out and see what we’re talking about: Kairo [AKA Pulse];The American Astronaut; Blood Tea and Red Strings; The Films of Kenneth Anger, Vol. II (for Lucifer Rising, Continue reading WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE→
Celebrating the cinematically surreal, bizarre, cult, oddball, fantastique, strange, psychedelic, and the just plain WEIRD!
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