This post will be a little “inside baseball” for the casual reader of 366 Weird Movies, but it gives at least a little bit of insight into the behind-the-scenes maneuvering that a movie takes on its journey from hopeful new release to Certified entry in the weird movie canon. Bribe amounts are not disclosed in this post: producers who wish to spend your way onto the List, please contact us for a quote. Those who remain curious as to what this masturbatory nonsense is all about may read on.
Those of you who follow this site even casually understand that the backbone and purpose of this entire enterprise is to create a List of the 366 Best Weird Movies of all time. Those who follow us a little more closely will note that we have already certified 179 movies for that List, and those who follow the site closely and are good at math will realize that this means 48.9% of the List is filled in—in other words, we are rapidly approaching the halfway mark, the point of no turning back.
In celebration of reaching the midpoint, soon (before the end of the year, at the very least) we will open up our irregularly scheduled “readers choice” poll to allow you, the 366 Weird Movies fan, to pick which of the movies we’ve designated as “List Candidates” will be officially called up onto the List. Before we do that, I thought that I would go through the List Candidate section and prune off some of the dead weight, movies which were rashly designated as Candidates but which have no realistic shot at making the List. In the interest of transparency and engagement, here are the changes we’re making to the List Candidate section. Note that until a movie is officially Certified for the List nothing is set in stone and its status can move back and forth between Candidate and non-Candidaye, so your feedback here is welcome—I’d be more than happy to reverse myself in the face of a groundswell of opinion.
This morning I counted 161 movies on the roster of List Candidates. Using conservative criteria and choosing to leave a movie on the Candidate list if I thought it was a close call, I came up with 19 titles I thought could safely have their candidacy revoked. In the interest of fairness, I also looked at movies that we had not nominated as List Candidates that probably deserved to be elevated to that status. I discovered 19 movies deserving of such a promotion. This was a complete weird accident, but it defeated the purpose of pruning the Candidate list. With some soul searching I found one additional title to remove so that, after all this reshuffling, the new list of Candidates is exactly one title shorter than it was this morning.
(Note: there are a few movies that are “hidden List Candidates” which aren’t being added to this census because they have re-reviews scheduled).
Let’s start out on a positive note with the roster of movies going up from the ranks of the unrecognized to List Candidate status:
MOVED TO LIST CANDIDATE STATUS: Why did we not consider these in the first place?
Amer (2009) – It seems that back in 2009 we were not routinely marking guest reviews (from reviewers who have since become contributors) as “List Candidate” status. We’re correcting that now.
The Cremator [Spalovac Mrtvol] (1969)
Decasia (2002) – The same explanation as above goes for movies that were only reviewed as part of Alfred Eaker’s Fringe Cinema.
Flooding With Love for the Kid (2010)
Ninja Champion (1985) – Seems like one Godfrey Ho cut-n-paste ninja movie should make the List, why not this one?
The Peanut Butter Solution (1985)
Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny (1972)
The Saragossa Manuscript (1965)
Satantango (1994) – Alfred Eaker insists on this one.
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)
Sex and Lucia [Lucia y el Sexo] (2001)
The Temptation of St. Tony (2009)
CANDIDACY REVOKED!: Good movie, not weird enough
Alice in Wonderland (1951) – Disney’s animated adaptation has been superseded by a couple of weirder versions of the classic tale
Keane (2004) – This is actually a less weird variation on Clean, Shaven (1993)
Stay (2005) – Just too many movies with this general plot
CANDIDACY REVOKED!: Weird movie, not good enough
The Guatemalan Handshake (2006)
CANDIDACY REVOKED!: We’ll consider something different from this guy
Codex Atanicus (2007) – Carlos Atanes may get a movie on the List, but this compilation of short films never should have been under consideration
The Oregonian (2011) – If we’re going to have one from Calvin Reeder we’d prefer The Rambler
Shiver of the Vampires (1971) – Jean Rollin has at least a couple of better candidates than this one
CANDIDACY REVOKED!: Moved to avoid charges of nepotism
W the Movie (2008) – I had nominated W for List Candidacy before Alfred Eaker became a weekly contributor to this site, and before we distributed the movie
That’s it! Tomorrow we return to our regularly scheduled reviewing.
I like this! I have seen about 10 of these and I basically agree with the change in all cases (although I am not quite sure about Amer).
I’m particularly happy to see “Hour of the Wolf” raised to List Candidate status. It is not my favorite Bergman film but I seem to like it more the more times I rewatch it. Persona I also had to watch more than once before I fell in love with it. I think it is easy to underestimate the weirdness of Hour of the Wolf because of how we are being shown the artist’s hallucinations and delusions as if they were reality. This way, it looks like there is nothing all that weird going on most of the time. But if you try to imagine what it must be that is really happening, that is when the movie becomes really interesting… and weird.