Things are returning to normal here as we recover from the Great Server Crash of 2010.  Next week we will cover two movie from the reader-suggested review queue: the notorious amateur horror snoozer Manos, the Hands of Fate and our long- awaited review of Harmony Korine‘s latest provocation, Trash Humpers.  (Korine fans will be happy to learn that Netflix has changed their stance and agreed to carry Trash Humpers.  Lesson learned: public whining by the distributor works!)

We’d like to note that we’re coming up on our 72nd Certified Weird review: that represents about 20% of the List completed.  Check in Tuesday for a “special event” commemorating that benchmark.

As traffic starts to flood back to 366 after our involuntary week-long break, we’re starting to notice those weird search terms popping up again.  Although we liked the courteous request for advice on “what did george melies do with his life and how can we thank him today?,” our favorite weird search term of the week was a bit more vulgar: “b-movie farts review.”

We’re making a tiny bit of progress on that reader-suggested review queue, but it’s still ridiculously long.  See for yourself: Manos: the Hands of Fate (next week); Trash Humpers (next week); Songs From The Second Floor; Possession; Wild Zero; Nothing (2003); The Peanut Butter Solution; Perfume: The Story of a Murderer; Faust; Sublime; Battle Royale; Pink Floyd: The Wall; Escanaba In Da Moonlight; Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter; Zardoz; The Films of Suzan Pitt; Toto the Hero [Toto le Héros]; Paprika; The Holy Mountain; Brazil; The Casserole Masters; Dark Crystal; Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets; The Nines; The Pillow Book; Final Flesh; Lunacy [Sílení]; Inmortel (2004); Tetsuo; Dead Ringers; Kairo [AKA Pulse]; The Guatemalan Handshake; Dead Leaves; The Seventh Seal; Primer;  A Boy and His Dog; 200 Motels; Private Parts (1972); Saddest Music in the World; Mulholland Drive; 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 Frank; La Grande Bouffe; Hedwig and the Angry Inch; Even Dwarves Started Small; Bunny & the Bull; “I Killed My Lesbian Wife, Hung Her on a Meat Hook, and Now I Have a Three-Picture Deal at Disney” (assuming I can find it); Cinema 16: European Short Films; Freaked; Session 9; Schizopolis; Strings; Dellamorte Dellamore [AKA Cemetery Man]; The Hour-glass Sanatorium [Saanatorium pod klepsidra]; Liquid Sky; The Quiet; Shock Treatment; Tuvalu; “Zombie Jesus” (if we can locate it); The Bed-Sitting Room; 3 Dev Adam; Fantastic Planet; “Twin Peaks” (TV series); Society; May; The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension; Little Otik; Final Programme; Careful; Sweet Movie; The Triplets of Belleville; “Foutaises” (short); Johnny Suede; “Jam” (TV, UK, 2000), The Tale of the Floating World, Un Chien Andalou, Bloodsucking Freaks; Fellini Satyricon; Three Crowns of the Sailor; 8 1/2; Dororo; Lost Highway; Valerie and Her Week of Wonders; Dogville; Julien Donkey-boy; Amelie; The Ten; The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao; 1; Fast, Cheap and Out of Control; Tokyo Gore Police; At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul; The Trial [Le procès) (1962); Marquis; Hell Comes to Frogtown; Hellzapoppin’; Seom [The Isle]; Allegro Non Troppo; Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus; Lust in the Dust; Celine and Julie Go Boating; “Franz Kafka’s It’s a Wonderful Life;” The Magic Christian; Black Cat, White Cat; The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T; Abnormal: The Sinema of Nick Zedd; Robot Monster; Nightdreams; 3 Women; “To Oblivion”; Rubin & Ed; Teeth; Vera; Weirdsville; Prospero’s Books; Inferno; Garden State; Persona; The Real McCoy; Rat Pfink a Boo Boo; Themroc; Candy (1968); Run Lola Run; Pink Flamingos; Buffalo ’66; Northfork; Weekend; The Room; Glen or Glenda?; Night of the Hunter; The Fox Family; Midnight Skater; Angelus; Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs; Twister (1989); Yokai Monsters, Vol. 1: Spook Warfare [AKA Big Monster War]; Britannia Hospital; This Filthy Earth; Conspirators of Pleasure; Piano Tuner of Earthquakes; Clean, Shaven; Bubba Ho-Tep; Sheitan; Innocence; “Chingsao the Clown”; Léolo; 2001: A Space Odyssey; Blue Velvet; ID (2005); Master of the Flying Guillotine; Yesterday Was a Lie; The Ninth Configuration; Love Me If You Dare; Forbidden Zone; The Cell; My Dinner with Andre; The Illustrated Man; The Man Who Fell to Earth; Fando y Lis; Rampo Noir; Head; Christmas on Mars; “Broken Glass”; Videodrome; Air Doll; The Ossuary and Other Tales; Arrebato; Symbol; Wicked City (1992 live action); Barbarella; Picnic at Hanging Rock; The Cars that Ate Paris; The Boxer’s Omen [aka Mo]; Solyaris (1972); Portrait of Jennie; Salo, the 120 Days of Sodom; The Last Sunset (1961); Orpheus (1950); A Scanner Darkly; Safe; The Atrocity Exhibition; Gainsbourg (Vie héroïque); Slacker; Goke, Body Snatcher From Hell; Color of Pomegranates; Horror Express; Noroi; A Serbian Film (if ever released on DVD, which seems questionable at this point); Cutie Honey; The Shape of Things; On the Silver Globe; Monty Python and the Holy Grail; Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band; 2012 Aficionado DVD Zine Issue #0; The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle; What Dreams May Come; The Last Days of Planet Earth; “Charleston Parade”; Tales from the Quadead Zone; A Snake of June; The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover; The Neverending Story; Cat Soup; Jack and the Beanstalk (1974, Japan); Drowning by Numbers; Fudge 44; From Beyond; The Saragossa Manuscript; The Drifting Classroom; Brain Dead; Uncle Meat; and Meet the Hollowheads.

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):

The Nutcracker in 3D:  This is a bit curious: a version of the Nutcracker re-imagined as a sci-fi-styled quest to restore the deposed Nutcracker to his throne usurped by the Rat King.  This looks to dumb down Tchaikovsky for kids the way Tim Burton’s latest did for Lewis Carrol, except this one looks even dumber.  Still, out of the nearly universally negative reviews, the one that caught our attention was the following: “Imagine watching Tchaikovsky’s ballet after taking a handful of peyote…” (Peter Hartlaub, San Francisco Chronicle).  From the extremely uneven Andrei Konchalovsky (who wrote Andrei Rublev and nearly erased that accomplishment by directing Tango & Cash), starring Elle Fanning, Nathan Lane and John Turturro.  The Nutcracker in 3D official site.

Undertow [Contracorriente]:  We’re going to let The Guardian‘s Steve Rose sum this one up for us: “...if you only see one gay Peruvian fisherman ghost story this year…“ It’s south-of-the-equator magical realism, natch, and Peru’s official selection for foreign film Oscar consideration.  Undertow [Contracorriente] official site (in Spanish).

IN DEVELOPMENT:

Melancholia (upcoming 2011):  Lars von Trier’s post-Antichrist feature is also inspired by depression.  It’s described as a “psychological disaster film” about the end of the world, and the tagline promises “no more happy endings.”  Shooting is complete and they are in the process of editing.  Lars von Trier’s Melancholia Facebook page.

The Theater Bizarre (upcoming 2011): Upcoming omnibus horror film, with directors granted “total creative freedom” so long as their segments are “inspired by the term Grand Guignol.” The six directors are Douglas Buck, Buddy Giovinazzo (Combat Shock), David Gregory, Karim Hussain , Tom Savini, and (most notably to us) South Africa’s Richard Stanley (Hardware).  The Theater Bizarre press release.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

America Lost and Found: The BBS Story: A Criterion Collection box set of the six revolutionary movies made between 1968 and 1972 by BBS Productions (the letters stood for Bob Rafelson, Bert Schneider, and Steve Blauner).  The titles include the widely acknowledged American classics Easy Rider (with its influentially weird cemetery acid trip scene), Five Easy Pieces, and The Last Picture Show, along with the slightly less heralded gems Drive She Said, A Safe Place, and The King of Marvin Gardens.  Most important for our purposes is the Monkee’s pop-surreal trip Head (1968), the weirdest (if not the best) of the lot and the movie that kicked off BBS.  Head and Easy Rider (at least) include new supplemental material from Criterion. A Christmas idea for the cinephile in your life. Buy America Lost and Found: The BBS Story (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray].

Angel Heart (1987) / Johnny Handsome (1989): Read our capsule review of Angel Heart.  Mixing Alan Parker’s weirdish/noirish metaphysical thriller with a relatively ordinary crime/revenge tale strikes us as thoughtless, callow marketing, but casual Mickey Rourke fans may be interested, and it offers a discount alternative to purchasing Angel Heart on a single Blu-ray (at the time of this writing, buying the two-pack was actually cheaper than buying the single disc version—we can’t guarantee any extras have been ported over from the single disc, though). Buy Angel Heart / Johnny Handsome (Two-Pack) [Blu-ray].

Terminator II: Judgment Day (1991) / Total Recall (1990): Stretch your definition of weird far enough and you may be able to fit in Total Recall, the blockbuster psychological thriller starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as a construction worker who takes a virtual reality trip to Mars (bizarre bonus points granted for being an adaptation of a Phillip K. Dick story). It’s paired with the ordinary but crowd-pleasing sci-fi actioner Terminator II from doubtable James Cameron for another bargain stocking stuffer. Buy Terminator 2: Judgment Day / Total Recall (Two-Pack) [Blu-ray].

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.

Look, we’re just happy to be here.

For those of you who don’t know, the site crashed Sunday night of last week, and we had to find new hosting. I’ve spent all week trying to restore the site. By now, we have all the posts restored from the very first one to September 20, 2010. Images are in the process of being re-uploaded. Posts from September 20 on were not backed up automatically, but are saved and will be restored eventually over the next few weeks (with the exception of one or two, which were truncated and can only be partially recovered).

I apologize, but all of your comments made after 9/20/2010 have disappeared into the ether.   Even the clever ones.

In 366 history, Sunday, September 14 will forever go down as Black Sunday, the day of the great server crash of 2010.

As for what we will be working on for next week, we left off with a promise to do Walt Disney’s 1951 version of Alice in Wonderland, and that’s where we plan to start from. Other than that we’re making no promises for the upcoming week; like I said, we’re just glad to be here at this point. There’s a lot of work I need to do behind the scenes to get back to where we were at this time last week.

You’ll understand if we have no weird search terms for the week.  We can only imagine Google fielded lots of “WTF happened to 366 Weird Movies?” queries last week.

We did save the reader-suggested review queue, and you guys can start expanding it again.  Here goes:  Hausu (soon); Trash Humpers (soon); Manos: the Hands of Fate; Songs From The Second Floor; Possession; Wild Zero; Nothing (2003); The Peanut Butter Solution;  Perfume: The Story of a Murderer; Faust; Sublime; Battle Royale; Pink Floyd: The Wall; Escanaba In Da Moonlight; Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter; Zardoz; The Films of Suzan Pitt; Toto the Hero [Toto le Héros]; Paprika; The Holy Mountain; Brazil; The Casserole Masters; Dark Crystal; Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets; The Nines; The Pillow Book; Final Flesh; Lunacy [Sílení]; Inmortel (2004); Tetsuo; Dead Ringers; Kairo [AKA Pulse]; The Guatemalan Handshake; Dead Leaves; The Seventh Seal; Primer;  A Boy and His Dog; 200 Motels; Private Parts (1972); Saddest Music in the World; Mulholland Drive; 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 Frank; La Grande Bouffe; Hedwig and the Angry Inch; Even Dwarves Started Small; Bunny & the Bull; “I Killed My Lesbian Wife, Hung Her on a Meat Hook, and Now I Have a Three-Picture Deal at Disney” (assuming I can find it); Cinema 16: European Short Films; Freaked; Session 9; Schizopolis; Strings; Dellamorte Dellamore [AKA Cemetery Man]; The Hour-glass Sanatorium [Saanatorium pod klepsidra]; Liquid Sky; The Quiet; Shock Treatment; Tuvalu; “Zombie Jesus” (if we can locate it); The Bed-Sitting Room; 3 Dev Adam; Fantastic Planet; “Twin Peaks” (TV series); Society; May; The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension; Little Otik; Final Programme; Careful; Sweet Movie; The Triplets of Belleville; “Foutaises” (short); Johnny Suede; “Jam” (TV, UK, 2000), The Tale of the Floating World, Un Chien Andalou, Bloodsucking Freaks; Fellini Satyricon; Three Crowns of the Sailor; 8 1/2; Dororo; Lost Highway; Valerie and Her Week of Wonders; Dogville; Julien Donkey-boy; Amelie; The Ten; The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao; 1; Fast, Cheap and Out of Control; Tokyo Gore Police; At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul; The Trial [Le procès) (1962); Marquis; Hell Comes to Frogtown; Hellzapoppin’; Seom [The Isle]; Allegro Non Troppo; Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus; Lust in the Dust; Celine and Julie Go Boating; “Franz Kafka’s It’s a Wonderful Life;” The Magic Christian; Black Cat, White Cat; The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T; Abnormal: The Sinema of Nick Zedd; Robot Monster; Nightdreams; 3 Women; “To Oblivion”; Rubin & Ed; Teeth; Vera; Weirdsville; Prospero’s Books; Inferno; Garden State; Persona; The Real McCoy; Rat Pfink a Boo Boo; Themroc; Candy (1968); Run Lola Run; Pink Flamingos; Buffalo ’66; Northfork; Weekend; The Room; Glen or Glenda?; Night of the Hunter; The Fox Family; Midnight Skater; Angelus; Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs; Twister (1989); Yokai Monsters, Vol. 1: Spook Warfare [AKA Big Monster War]; Britannia Hospital; Haxan; This Filthy Earth; Conspirators of Pleasure; Piano Tuner of Earthquakes; Clean, Shaven; Bubba Ho-Tep; Sheitan; Innocence; “Chingsao the Clown”; Léolo; 2001: A Space Odyssey; Blue Velvet; ID (2005); Master of the Flying Guillotine; Yesterday Was a Lie; The Ninth Configuration; Love Me If You Dare; Forbidden Zone; The Cell; My Dinner with Andre; The Illustrated Man; The Man Who Fell to Earth; Fando y Lis; Rampo Noir; Head; Christmas on Mars; “Broken Glass”; Videodrome; Air Doll; The Ossuary and Other Tales; Arrebato; Symbol; Wicked City (1992 live action); Barbarella; Picnic at Hanging Rock; The Cars that Ate Paris; The Boxer’s Omen [aka Mo]; Solyaris (1972); Portrait of Jennie; Salo, the 120 Days of Sodom; The Last Sunset (1961); Orpheus (1950); A Scanner Darkly; Safe; The Atrocity Exhibition; Gainsbourg (Vie héroïque); Slacker; Goke, Body Snatcher From Hell; Color of Pomegranates; Horror Express; Noroi; A Serbian Film; Cutie Honey; The Shape of Things; On the Silver Globe; Monty Python and the Holy Grail; Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band; 2012 Aficionado DVD Zine Issue #0; The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle; What Dreams May Come; The Last Days of Planet Earth; “Charleston Parade”; Tales from the Quadead Zone; A Snake of June; The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover; The Neverending Story; Cat Soup; Jack and the Beanstalk (1974, Japan); Drowning by Numbers; Fudge 44; From Beyond; The Saragossa Manuscript; The Drifting Classroom; Brain Dead; Uncle Meat; and Meet the Hollowheads.

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):

Heartless: Philip Ridley (writer/director of the Certified Weird The Reflecting Skin) is back after a fourteen year hiatus from filmmaking with this arthouse horror starring Jim (Across the Universe) Sturgess as a photographer with a disfiguring birthmark who makes a Faustian bargain in a hellish modern London. Ridley’s return would be notable even if the film wasn’t being well-reviewed; as it is, it won “Best Independent Feature” at the Toronto After Dark festival. Heartless official site.

NEW ON DVD:

Best Worst Movie (2010): This documentary on an unlikely subject—the making of the laughably inept 1980s horror Troll 2, a movie featuring vegetarian goblins—became an even more improbable critical favorite. Buy Best Worst Movie.

The Complete Metropolis (1927/restored 2010): Kino’s restoration of the mystical, visionary science-fiction masterpiece finally arrives on DVD! From our own Alex Kittle’s review of the theatrical version: “While its story is standard allegorical fare and the performances are often melodramatic, the sheer inventiveness and visual splendor of Metropolis warrants its status as quintessential science fiction. It set the standard for a host of weird films that came after it and has several iconically bizarre scenes and characters.” Buy The Complete Metropolis.

Don’t Look Back [Ne te pas] (2009): French psychological thriller starring two beauties—Sophie Marceau and Monica Belluci—and a confusion of their identities. From weirdstress Marina de Van (In My Skin). Buy Don’t Look Back.

The Extra Man (2010): Eccentric tale of an aspiring playwright and cross-dresser who rents a room an educated, aging gigolo (played by Kevin Kline). This didn’t get more than a token theatrical release; the reason may be that it was too literary for cineplexes, or it may be because it just wasn’t very good. Buy The Extra Man.

Night of the Hunter (1955) [Criterion Collection]: Robert Mitchum gives an unforgettable performance as the deranged, misogynistic preacher who marries widows and kills them for their money; darker than the blackest film noir and expressionistic to the point of being dreamlike, this movie was way too much for 1955 audiences to handle, but has since been acknowledged as a classic. This is already in our reader-suggested review queue, so this Criterion Collection release can only speed it along. Buy The Night of the Hunter (Criterion Collection).

Sherlock Jr. (1924)/Three Ages (1923): Also from Kino this week comes this restoration of two Buster Keaton silent comedies: Sherlock Jr., a fantasy about a projectionist who enters into the film he’s watching, is the weirder one; Three Ages tells the tale of romance in the Stone Age, Roman times, and the modern era. Buy Sherlock Jr. / Three Ages .

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

The Complete Metropolis (1927/restored 2010): See entry in DVD above. Buy The Complete Metropolis [Blu-ray].

Crowley [AKA Chemical Wedding]: Read our capsule review. This occult/science ficition/fantasy hybrid about Aleister Crowley in modern times is from Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson; our staff agreed on its weirdness, but disagreed on the quality of the filmmaking displayed. Buy Crowley [Blu-ray].

The Extra Man (2010): See entry in DVD above. Buy The Extra Man [Blu-ray].

Night of the Hunter (1955) [Criterion Collection]: See entry in DVD above. Buy The Night of the Hunter (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray].

Sherlock Jr. (1924)/Three Ages (1923): See entry in DVD above. Buy Sherlock Jr. / Three Ages [Blu-ray].