Category Archives: Apocryphally Weird

Apocryphally Weird

57*. HALLUCINATIONS OF A DERANGED MIND (1978)

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Delírios de um Anormal

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“…there’s this spiritist center in Bahia that summons an Exu, or Zé do Caixão spirit. I’ve been to these places, incognito of course, wearing sunglasses, hiding my nails, the whole deal. And then someone channels Zé do Caixão, claiming it’s me. There’s this narrative that Zé do Caixão was already a spirit and I just summoned him. I pay them homage in this film. I leave it up to the viewers to decide for themselves. Is he real?”– on the commentary track to Hallucinations of a Deranged Mind

DIRECTED BY: José Mojica Marins

FEATURING: José Mojica Marins, Jorge Peres, Magna Miller

PLOT: Psychiatrist Hamilton has terrible nightmares where he believes Coffin Joe is coming to take his wife away to use her to breed his offspring. His concerned colleagues call in José Mojica Marins, the creator of the Coffin Joe character, to convince him that the character is fictional and all in his imagination. The cure works; or does it?

hallucinations of a deranged mind (1978) still

BACKGROUND:

  • Zé do Caixão (Anglicized as “Coffin Joe”) was a character created and portrayed by low-budget Brazilian filmmaker José Mojica Marins. Beginning in the late 60s, Coffin Joe appeared in a trilogy of canonical feature films, also appearing in Marins’ work in dream sequences, host segments, personal appearances, his own line of comic books, and so on. The character is sadistic, but ultimately more amoral than evil; he disdains religion and the supernatural, and quests eternally to find the perfect “superior” woman to breed with so he can sire superhuman progeny. Joe was known for his black top hat and cloak, his monobrow, and, most notably, for his uncut fingernails, which Marins grew to over 9 inches in length. Though nearly unknown outside of Brazil during the height of his popularity, within that country Coffin Joe was a homegrown bogeyman of superstar status, roughly equivalent to Freddy Kruger.
  • Hallucinations of a Deranged Mind was created from repurposed and unused footage from This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse, The Strange World of Coffin Joe, The Awakening of the Beast, and others, mixed with newly shot scenes (there is approximately 35 minutes of new footage in the 86-minute movie). Some of the reused scenes had previously been nixed by censors.
  • The Bloody Exorcism of Coffin Joe (1974) used a similar premise of director Marins facing off against his own character.
  • Marins says that the inspiration for this film came from a real life request from a psychiatrist. The doctor’s wife was obsessed with Marins’ Coffin Joe character, and seemed to believe he existed independently. Marins visited the couple and watched one of his films with them on a midnight TV broadcast; during the screening, he reminisced how he suffered from diarrhea and painful corns during the shooting of certain scenes. The spell was broken and the woman no longer believed in Coffin Joe.
  • Editor Nilcemar Leyart estimates that the final film contains more than 4,700 cuts.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: There are so many garage-surrealist possibilities here it boggles the mind—the woman-headed spider, the magic-markered buttocks, the human staircase—but ultimately the dominating figure is, appropriately, Coffin Joe himself: the dark, dagger-fingered nightmare undertaker who orchestrates this parade of Boschian delights.

TWO WEIRD THINGS: Faces on asses; multi-headed torture blob

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: A circus of the damned crawling out of a cinematic scrapheap, Hallucinations of a Deranged Mind is the distilled essence of Coffin Joe at his most irrational and insistent.


Clip from Hallucinations of a Deranged Mind

COMMENTS: A man circles a bikini babe while beating a bongo; after each circuit he stops and a new set of female legs pop into the Continue reading 57*. HALLUCINATIONS OF A DERANGED MIND (1978) →

Apocryphally Weird

56*. TOMMY (1975)

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“The Old Testament teems with prophecies of the Messiah, but nowhere is it intimated that that Messiah is to stand as a God to be worshiped. He is to bring peace on earth, to build up the waste places–to comfort the broken-hearted, but nowhere is he spoken of as a deity.”—Olympia Brown

DIRECTED BY: Ken Russell

FEATURING: Roger Daltrey, Ann-Margret, Oliver Reed, , , Jack Nicholson, Eric Clapton, Elton John, Barry Winch

PLOT: Tommy witnesses the murder of his WWII fighter-pilot father at the hands of his mother and step-father, who demand silence. The boy obliges, becoming wholly unresponsive to stimuli, aside from touch. When Tommy happens upon a pinball machine in a junkyard, he soon rockets to fame and messianic adulation from rebellious youths countrywide.

Still from Tommy (1975)

BACKGROUND:

  • The Who’s Tommy hit number two on the UK charts, going Gold within four months. Ken Russell did not care much for the music, but was intrigued by the ideas explored in the double album.
  • Russell’s Tommy was a box-office smash, garnering two Academy Award nominations (for Best Actress and Best Score).
  • George Lucas was slated to direct Tommy but opted instead to develop his own film, American Graffiti.
  • Every pinball machine featured in the film predates the original album’s release date of 1969.
  • Elton John refused the role of “Pinball Wizard” until he was promised the oversized Doc Marten boots worn by the character.
  • Mick Jagger, Tiny Tim, and were considered for the role of the Acid Queen before Tina Turner was signed on.
  • Every actor performs their own vocals—some more capably than others.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: At the height of his powers—and that would include the year of Tommy‘s release—Ken Russell made nothing but indelible images. But for stylistic and thematic reasons (not to mention sheer poetic excess), Tommy’s ordeal as he is installed within a syringe-imbued iron maiden during Tina Turner’s blow-out performance takes at least as much of the cake as any of the other wonders blaring on the screen.

TWO WEIRD THINGS: Chrome-twinkling sex drug and rock ‘n’ roll body cage; a flood of beans fit for a queen

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: The Who provide the blaring wall of sound, Ken Russell’s crew manifest the blazing visuals, and a crack squad of heavy-hitter, top-of-their-game actors provide impressively calibrated bombastic characters, making for an audio-visual adventure that giddily drags you through a bonanza of immoderation. All somehow within the bounds of a “PG” rating.

Trailer for Tommy (1975)

COMMENTS: When you have a narrative that is as flimsy as it is outlandish, one way to make it work is cover it with lights, champagne, Continue reading 56*. TOMMY (1975) →

Apocryphally Weird

55*. IN FABRIC (2018)

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“The idea came from shopping really, specifically at second hand stores. You’re immediately aware of death. There is a haunting there; you can find stains on clothing, sometimes you can smell the areas of outfits. It’s a weird thing because you’ll never really know what that person looked like. It activates the imagination and it lent into things I wanted to explore through these visceral reactions whether it be body dysmorphia or fetishism.”–Peter Strickland

“Nothing attracts attention like a little red dress.”–Laura Bush

DIRECTED BY: Peter Strickland

FEATURING: Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Fatma Mohamed, Leo Bill, Hayley Squires, Julian Barratt, Steve Oram, Richard Bremmer, Jaygann Ayeh, Gwendoline Christie

Still from In fabric (2018)

PLOT: Sheila, a divorced bank teller, gets ready for her first newly single dating experience by visiting the local department store and splurging on a red dress; a series of unusual, life-threatening occurrences ensue, all seemingly related to the dress. While attempting to return the outfit to the store, she learns that the model who wore the dress for a promotional catalogue was later killed in a traffic accident. Later, the frock finds its way to meek appliance repairman Reg and then his assertive fiancée Babs, both of whom have strange encounters with a mysterious sales clerk and a pair of inappropriately nosy bank managers.

BACKGROUND:

  • In Fabric was Strickland’s fourth narrative feature. We have previously reviewed two of those, The Duke of Burgundy and Berberian Sound Studio, as well as the follow-up, Flux Gourmet. Mohamed has appeared in all of his movies.
  • An early draft of the script featured six people receiving the fateful dress and facing the consequences. Strickland realized this would require a six-hour film to give each character their due. In order to secure studio support, he trimmed the screenplay accordingly.
  • The setting of Thames-Valley-upon-Thames is modeled after Strickland’s hometown of Reading. The fictional Dentley and Soper’s department store was inspired by Jacksons, a Reading retail mainstay for more than 130 years until it closed in 2013.
  • Winner of the 2019 Méliès d’Or, awarded for outstanding achievement in European science fiction, fantasy, and horror films.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: Strickland successfully dodges the silliness factor associated with trying to showcase a demon-possessed piece of clothing. As it flutters in the rafters, creeps under doors, and swirls about in erotic delight, the dress reads as dramatic rather than laughable. But when it comes to outrageousness, the garment takes a back seat to the craziness going on at the store that sold it. After the doors close for the evening, the saleswomen begin the delicate process of bringing the mannequins to the back of the house, removing the clothes, and gently bathing the dummies with sponges and tongues. The intensity ramps up as the fake human is revealed to have a very realistic pubic mound, and eventually it begins to menstruate. It’s a sight that moves the proprietor to indulge in full self-gratification. One does wonder what goes on in the store’s sporting goods department.

TWO WEIRD THINGS: Prepping the mannequin; the erotic power of washing machine maintenance

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: We are always up for a movie about a homicidal haunted object. A haunted house, a haunted bed, even a haunted tire have all earned a spot in our august halls. (Haunted bulldozers and motorcycles, not so much.) So a haunted dress is totally welcome to join the party, but it has to bring something extra. In Fabric delivers two such elements. One is the bizarrely creepy department store that is a portal to hell, watching over its customers with an attitude that is both patronizing and carnivorous. The other is an earnest sympathy toward its characters, neither of whom have class  privilege or easy socialization, and who turn to retail to give them a lift. In Fabric knows that these are decent folks looking for a break, and turns their exploitation by retail and advertising into a horror show.

Original trailer for In Fabric

COMMENTS: Sheila could use a win. Her ex-husband has taken up Continue reading 55*. IN FABRIC (2018) →

Apocryphally Weird

54*. FANDO AND LIS (1968)

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Fando y Lis

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“…tragedy and Grand-Guignol, poetry and vulgarity, comedy and melodrama, love and eroticism, happenings and set theory, bad taste and aesthetic refinement, the sacrilegious and the sacred, ritual death and the exaltation of life, the sordid and the sublime…”–‘s recipe for Panic drama

Weirdest!

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Sergio Kleiner, Diana Mariscal

PLOT: Sometime after an apocalypse, Fando and the paraplegic Lis leave a ruins to search for the legendary city of Tar, wheeling Lis on a cart along with their only possessions, a phonograph and a drum. They meet many strange characters on the road, including an androgynous Pope and a doctor who drinks Lis’ blood. Finally, Fando gets fed up with carting Lis about and kills her.

Still from Fando y Lis (1968)

BACKGROUND:

  • Alejandro Jodorowsky directed the movie without a script, just a one page outline, working from his memory of fellow Panic society member Fernando Arrabal‘s play of the same title (which Jodorowsky had previously directed many times).
  • The movie’s premier at the 1968 Acapulco Film Festival caused a scandal: viewers rioted, and Mexican director Emilio Fernandez swore he would kill Jodorowsky. After one more screening in Mexico City, the film was banned in Mexico, and had only a few unsuccessful international screenings thereafter.
  • Never released on VHS, Fando y Lis remained virtually unknown until ABKCO restored and re-released it in 2009 as part of their major Jodorowsky revival.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: Fando and Lis painting their names on each others’ half-naked bodies, and then on the bare white walls of their dwelling, before dousing everything in sight (including each other) in buckets of black ink. It’s hippies having a blast, a groovy south-of-the-border happening, Panic-style.

TWO WEIRD THINGS: Flaming piano; syringe-using vampire

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: If you’ve ever seen a Jodorowsky movie before, you know what to expect. Fando y Lis is a parade of fantastical, shocking imagery, including snakes that penetrate a baby doll and a man who begs for blood (he extracts a donation with a syringe and drinks it from a brandy snifter). It’s not as polished and conceptually grand as later Jodorowosky masterpieces, but the basis of his style and major preoccupations can be seen along the dusty road to Tar.


Restoration trailer for Fando y Lis (1968)

COMMENTS: Fando y Lis is Alejandro Jodorowsky’s most Surrealist movie (the black and white cinematography reinforces the connection)—although not necessarily his most surreal movie Continue reading 54*. FANDO AND LIS (1968) →

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) →