An adult and a teenager take a break from their journey to trespass in a motel pool. Who they are and where they’re going becomes more mysterious when they’re caught by the motel clerk. This short has since been made into a full-length film under the same name.
Content Warning: This short contains adult subject matter.
Erodium Thunk (2018) was made for an event honoring Micheal Snow’s short film A to Z (1956). In it, segments of old commercials are cut into pieces and cleverly pasted together. The result is a comedic social commentary that’s too weird and disconnected to be self-righteous.
“Late one night, down in my parents’ split level suburban basement, channel-surfing the old-fashioned way, I hit my first taste of Quay— like an electric shock—like nothing I’d ever seen. The mystery of the Quay Brothers got its hooks into me. I spent two years wondering what the hell I’d seen.”–Christopher Nolan on his first viewing of “Street of Crocodiles”
DIRECTED BY: Stephen Quay, Timothy Quay
FEATURING: Feliks Stawinski
PLOT: Eerie reminiscences unfold when a gaunt man is brought to life after a globule of spittle activates a machine. He explores dusty, encrusted back streets and shop fronts teeming with rusted machines while being followed by a young boy. At length, a quartet of funereal tailors offers him a refashioning of uncertain merit.
BACKGROUND:
) by Bruno Schulz. It was financed by the British Film Institute, which produced and distributed the Quay’s early works. The BFI insisted that the film be based on a literary source as a condition for funding.INDELIBLE IMAGE: During the twenty-one minutes of the film, the only “disposable” image is perhaps that of the live actor entering the opening frame and counting some unseen items on the ceiling. Virtually everything else sticks out like a rusty thumb. Forced as I am to choose, I’ll plump for the “memory inducement” sequence during which everything goes backwards as the protagonist (played by a marionette) peers through a square peephole. Ice cubes rise from a trapdoor, having un-melted; whispering seeds of a ripe dandelion reassemble into their fragile orb; and even the pointless workings of the rubber-band “Bachelor Machine”[efn_note]The Quay Brothers employed many futilely active machines in their short films; the term stems from Duchamp’s sculpture, The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even.[/efn_note] flip into reverse.
THREE WEIRD THINGS: Life-giving luminescence; skittering screws; meat map, mapped meat
WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Street of Crocodiles checks off a lot of boxes for a general “weird” survey: creepy visuals, stop-motion, dissonant score, defiantly vague plot-line, and pirouetting tailors. It’s hard to put it in words, as you might have guessed, but this is a Weird one. If you’ve seen anything like it since you first watched it, it’s probably because you just re-watched it.
COMMENTS: The difficult task of capturing a memory becomes Continue reading 337. STREET OF CROCODILES (1986)
Abstract clones of various sizes interact with each other in this dialog-free short.
While Gloria is waiting for the psychedelic drugs to kick in, her and her friends are flagged down by a Border Patrol officer.
Content Warning: This short contains strong language, adult situations and substance abuse.