Category Archives: Apocryphally Weird

Apocryphally Weird

53*. IF FOOTMEN TIRE YOU, WHAT WILL HORSES DO? (1971)

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“I see strange people coming to churches across the land.”–Reverend Estus W. Pirkle, “If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?”

“Many pastors have destroyed my vineyard,
they have trodden my portion under foot,
they have made my pleasant portion a desolate wilderness.”–Jeremiah 12:10

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Estus W. Pirkle, Judy Creech, Cecil Scaiffe

PLOT: The Reverend Estus W. Pirkle gives a sermon on the dangers of the imminent Communist takeover of America, dramatized by actors who demonstrate the coming persecution of Christians. Young Judy arrives at church late, telling her boyfriend she’s only going to keep up appearances. Initially, she’s bored by Pirkle’s sermon, but at the end she becomes moved enough to approach the altar and give her soul to Jesus.

Still from if footmen tire you, what will horses do? (1971)

BACKGROUND:

  • “If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?” began as a sermon Estus Prikle preached, beginning in 1968, in evangelical revivals across the southern U.S. The preacher became so fond of it that he published the sermon as a pamphlet. When Pirkle met former exploitation filmmaker turned born-again-Christian Ron Ormond, he conceived the idea of turning “Footmen” into a movie to reach a wider audience. It would prove to be the first of three collaborations between Pirkle and Ormond.
  • Samples from If Footmen Tire You… were used in Negativland’s provocative 1987 single “Christianity is Stupid“; it was the first exposure for many people outside of evangelical circles to Pirkle’s work.
  • For many years Pirkle would not allow the film to be released on VHS or DVD, insisting it only to be screened in person on 16mm film in a church so that there would be a pastor there to lead people to Christ after the movie concluded. This led to the film being largely unseen for many years, especially after 16mm projectors became rare; it circulated in the underground through bootleg editions, keeping its legend alive.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: Though many will fixate on the unexpected gore, the most significant recurring image is the leering face of pseudo-Cuban commissar Cecil Scaiffe, whose bushy sideburns remind you more of the rockabilly promoter he actually was than of a diehard Commie. Ormond loves to focus on a tight closeup of Scaiffe’s grinning, greasy face as he and his flunkies commit the most unspeakable atrocities against Christians.

TWO WEIRD THINGS: Candy-throwing Commie; bamboo ear torture makes kid vomit

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Completely sincere, completely wrong, and completely bonkers: this attempt to use exploitation filmmaking techniques to preach the Gospel is pure hallucinatory propaganda.

Short clip from If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?

COMMENTS: Let’s not be cunning and subtle about this: the main Continue reading 53*. IF FOOTMEN TIRE YOU, WHAT WILL HORSES DO? (1971) →

Apocryphally Weird

52*. ONCE WITHIN A TIME (2022)

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DIRECTED BY: Godfrey Reggio, Jon Kane                                                   

FEATURING: Sussan Deyhim, Apollo Garcia Orellana, Tara Starling Khozein, John Flax, Brian Bellot, Mike Tyson

PLOT: The Kindergarten of Eden, a pastoral playground populated by children and watched over by a majestic singing tree, is invaded by a devilish serpent in the form of technology. A technomage captures the attention of twins wearing wicker space helmets, and the quiet paradise is soon overrun with unpleasant imagery and mindless distraction. The children are encouraged to fight for their innocence and escape the fallen world with the help of a kindly mentor.

Still from once within a time (2022)

BACKGROUND:

  • Reggio is best known for directing the experimental landmark Koyaanisqatsi and its two sequels. Co-director Jon Kane was editor on Naqoyqatsi, the third in the series, as well as Reggio’s previous feature, Visitors (2013). Once Within a Time marks the 83-year-old director’s first foray into (sort of) narrative cinema.
  • The fifth feature collaboration between Reggio and composer Philip Glass.
  • The film was shot entirely at a soundstage in Brooklyn. Many of the sets are miniatures built by leading Broadway production designers Scott Pask and Frank McCullough, who found themselves sidelined from their usual stagework during the pandemic.
  • Although the movie relies heavily on digital technology, there is no 3D CGI animation. Digital rotoscoping was accomplished by human effects artists frame-by-frame.
  • The costumes designed by Machine Dazzle were included the artist’s first museum show at the Museum of Arts and Design in 2022.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: One of the first images in the film–Sussan Deyhim’s mother tree singing to the peaceful residents of her youthful utopia–is among its most memorable, but there’s a tableau that repeats throughout the movie to signal the world’s decline. In the center of this park sits a merry-go-round, and as the garden slips deeper into despair, new icons hover over the spinning wheel, most potently a syringe in which children swim about in an endless swirl.

TWO WEIRD THINGS: Commedia dell’emoji; The Mentor’s lesson in a boxing ring

 WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: In finally choosing to create his own images instead of merely assembling them, Reggio does not disappoint. He takes the same green-screen and compositing technology used to create comic book blockbusters and makes the film that Georges Méliès (who gets a visual shout-out) undoubtedly would have produced, if given the tools. The result is a philosophical tone poem that blends a didactic lament for the world with a heartfelt embrace of handmade craft. It’s a mystifying wonder.

Original trailer for Once Within a Time

COMMENTS: At 52 minutes (which includes a lengthy endcrawl), Continue reading 52*. ONCE WITHIN A TIME (2022) →

Apocryphally Weird

51*. HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS (2022)

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 “We had the spirit of Jean Nicolet and Werner Herzog with us as we were attempting to make the greatest Wisconsin film of all time. Hopefully.” ― Mike Cheslik

 DIRECTED BY: Mike Cheslik                                                                                      

FEATURING: Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, Olivia Graves, Doug Mancheski, Luis Rico, Wes Tank

PLOT: Following the destruction of his home and factory, applejack purveyor Jean Kayak attempts, and fails, to outwit a variety of woodland creatures in his quest to find food and shelter. Thanks to the tutelage of a master trapper, he learns the fur trade, and his exploits catch the eye of a pretty furrier; however, her merchant father demands that he bring in hundreds of dead beavers to obtain her hand in marriage. Jean sets out to fulfill this request – under the watchful eye of a pair of bucktoothed detectives – whereupon he stumbles upon a massive supervillainous plot.

Still from Hundreds of Beavers (2022)

BACKGROUND:

  • High school best friends Cheslik and Tews worked together previously on Apocrypha candidate Lake Michigan Monster. The idea for Hundreds of Beavers was concocted at a bar during the 2018 Milwaukee Film Festival, where Lake Michigan Monster was screening.
  • The film was shot near small towns in Wisconsin and Michigan over the course of 12 weeks, spread across two winters in 2019 and 2020.
  • Some of the cast have found fame outside of film acting. Graves (the Furrier) has earned renown under the name The Witch of Wonderlust as a folk magician, travel blogger, and pole dancing instructor (the latter talent of which she demonstrates to great effect in a surprising moment in the film), while Tank (the Master Trapper) gained viral fame for his mid-pandemic video series featuring rap performances of Dr. Seuss books.
  • Cheslik and producer Kurt Ravenwood put the total budget at $150,000, with a full $10,000 allotted to the purchase of the mascot costumes. All told, the filmmakers purchased 6 beavers, 5 dogs, 2 rabbits, one raccoon, one wolf and one skunk. (The horse costume, such as it is, is bespoke.) The vast number of woodland creatures on screen at any given time were courtesy of the film’s 1,500 visual effects, all composed in Adobe After Effects.
  • Recognizing that selling the film to a traditional distributor would likely result in a cursory release before being dumped on video, the producers retained the exhibition rights and commenced a roadshow tour of festivals across North America, complete with live wrestling battles between Tews and a beaver mascot. They report that more than half of the $500,000 in box office receipts came after the film became available through video-on-demand.
  • The film’s poster is modeled after the one-sheet for It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
  • Named to multiple “Best of 2024” lists, including the Boston Globe and the Los Angeles Times. The movie took the prize for Best Narrative Film at the Kansas International Film Festival, while Cheslik was named Best Director at the 2023 Phoenix Film Festival. The film also claimed both of those awards at that year’s Wyoming Film Festival.
  • The consensus pick by the writers of this site as the Best Weird Movie of 2024.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: From start to finish, Hundreds of Beavers is almost nothing but indelible images. After the zany animated prologue, there’s the silly running gag of surprise holes in the ice that turn out to be integral to the plot; every single appearance of an animal costume, including gay rabbits, overfed raccoons, and dogs playing poker; mascot guts; ice pond pinball; and so many groups of beavers that take the form of construction crews, a police force, and even a jury. There are no wrong answers. But nothing sums it all up quite like the sight of Jean Kayak on the run from the eponymous horde, his absurd raccoon hat flying off his head while innumerable human-sized Castor canadensis give chase. It’s an intentional borrow from Buster Keaton, solidifying the connection with the glory days of silent comedy and making good on the promise of the provocative title.

TWO WEIRD THINGS: The unhittable spittoon; Elementary, my dear Beaver

 WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: For a film that looks and feels like it should be a two-reeler from a hundred years ago, Hundreds of Beavers pulls off the astounding trick of using current-day, commercially available technology to assemble vintage styles and hoary-chestnut jokes into something new and entirely unexpected. Between Cheslik’s endlessly inventive microbudget solutions that result in an action film to rival a Fast and Furious entry (at .03% of the bankroll) and Tews’ gloriously full-bodied, rubber-faced performance, the elements are in place to build a tale of ever-escalating silliness and absurdity. Most of the time, you can’t really predict what’s going to happen next, and even in those moments where you might anticipate what is to come, it is accomplished with grin-inducing surprise and wit.

Trailer for Hundreds of Beavers (2022)

COMMENTS: Jean Kayak’s applejack distillery is called “Acme.” That Continue reading 51*. HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS (2022) →

Apocryphally Weird

50*. TOBY DAMMIT (1968)

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“I am always displeased by circumstances for which I cannot
account. Mysteries force a man to think, and so injure his
health.”–Edgar Allan Poe, “Never Bet the Devil Your Head”

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING:

PLOT: Toby Dammit, a once famous actor whose career is in jeopardy because of alcoholism, accepts a role in a “Catholic Western” to be shot in Italy, on condition that he be given a Ferrari. Drinking throughout the evening of his arrival in Rome and increasingly incoherent, Dammit bumbles his way through a television interview and an appearance as guest speaker at an awards ceremony. Finally, he jumps into the sports car and races through the deserted streets of Rome, but becomes lost in an increasingly unreal city.

Still from Toby Dammit (1968)

BACKGROUND:

  • “Toby Dammit” was originally filmed as an entry in Spirits of the Dead, an anthology based on Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories.  ‘s version of “William Wilson” and ‘s “Metzengerstein” were the other entries. “Dammit” is inspired by Poe’s “Never Bet the Devil Your Head,”  an unusually comic outing for the macabre author, but takes almost nothing from the short story’s plot.
  • Terence Stamp traveled to Italy to make this film with Fellini, and stayed for several years afterwards. His very next film project was the lead role as the mysterious seductive stranger in Pasolini‘s Teorema.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: In Poe’s story, the Devil was an old man, but Fellini chose to recast Old Scratch as a young girl (the actress was actually 22, but appears much younger). Fellini said he felt that Toby’s personal devil should represent his own immaturity. Fellini again demonstrates his genius with faces, as the pallid, mysteriously grinning girl is as devilish and chilling as waifs come.

TWO WEIRD THINGS: Bouncy-ball escalator game; waxwork chef run down by sports car

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Fellini and Poe are an unexpected combination, but the Italian director takes to the American writer’s gloominess like a libertine takes to laudanum.  Fellini’s carnivalesque portraiture easily bends towards the ghastly. The director never tried his hand at another outright horror movie, but “Dammit” makes you wonder what might have been.

Trailer for Spirits of the Dead (1968) with “Toby Dammit” clips

COMMENTS: “Toby Dammit” is an interstitial work which Fellini Continue reading 50*. TOBY DAMMIT (1968) →

Apocryphally Weird

49*. BEAU IS AFRAID (2023)

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“It’s like a Jewish ‘Lord of the Rings,’ but he’s just going to his mom’s house.”― Ari Aster

DIRECTED BY: Ari Aster

FEATURING: Joaquin Phoenix, Patti LuPone, Amy Ryan, Nathan Lane, Parker Posey, Armen Nahapetian

PLOT: On the anniversary of his father’s death, Beau Wasserman misses his flight to visit his mother; his guilt is magnified by his mother’s surprise death by falling chandelier. He attempts to attend the funeral (to be held immediately in accordance with Jewish tradition), but he is waylaid crime in his anarchic neighborhood, an accident that leaves him in the care of a couple who seem to be using him to replace their dead son, and a wandering theater troupe that spurs thoughts of another possible life. When he finally arrives at his mother’s house, he is surprised by both the appearance of a lost flame from his youth and by a revelation about his mother’s fate that calls into question every aspect of his existence.

Still from beau is afriad (2023)

BACKGROUND:

  • Following his successes in the horror genre with Hereditary and Midsommar, Aster determined that his next project would be a comedy. This is that film.
  • The feature is massively expanded from a short Aster made in 2011.
  • Among Aster’s descriptions of the picture: a “nightmare comedy,” a “Freudian Odyssey,” and “if you pumped a 10-year-old full of Zoloft, and [had] him get your groceries.” Co-star Lane called it “the Jewish Everything Everywhere All at Once.”
  • The animation was created by Cristobal Leon and Joaquin Cociña, whose work Aster discovered in their Apocryphally-enshrined film The Wolf House.
  • The logo for Mona’s corporation appears among the vanity production cards at the start of the movie. Some have suggested this means she is controlling the very film you are watching.
  • Winner of two 2023 Weirdcademy Awards, including Weirdest Picture and Weirdest Scene for what we chose to call “Phallic Attic.” Phoenix also grabbed a nomination for Weirdest Actor.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: Well, this site’s readers didn’t declare it the year’s weirdest movie for nothing. When Beau’s mother coerces him into her attic, he is confronted with three terrifying visions: an emaciated creature chained in the dark who might be a lost twin or an alternate version of himself, the homicidal mercenary who has been chasing him across the country, and (most shockingly) enormous, grotesque monolithic male genitals that throb and scream and kill like the brain bug in Starship Troopers. Beau has been emotionally neutered his whole life, and this is the moment that suggests where his lost manhood may have been this whole time.

TWO WEIRD THINGS: Crossing Hell Street; phallic attic

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Beau’s very existence is a nightmare, from the moment that he is born with a wail-inducing smack, and even dating back to the moment of conception that stopped his father’s weak heart. What unspools here is three hours of the intense and unrelenting discomfort that Beau endures just by virtue of being alive. He manages to be both the most luckless man who ever lived and a person who is thoroughly incapable of coping with misfortune. Aster concocts the most elaborate Jewish-mother joke ever told, and he never relents in demonstrating just how awful things can get, and how they can still manage to get worse.

Original trailer for Beau is Afraid (2023)

COMMENTS: Beau Wasserman’s life is governed by a few simple Continue reading 49*. BEAU IS AFRAID (2023) →