List Candidates

LIST CANDIDATE: MAKE-OUT WITH VIOLENCE (2008)

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DIRECTED BY:  Deagol Brothers

FEATURING:  Eric Lehning, Cody DeVos, Leah High, Brett Miller, Tia Shearer, Jordan Lehning

PLOT: A young man finds one summer love with the reanimated object of his desire.

Still from Make-out with Violence (2008)

WHY IT SHOULD MAKE THE LIST: Skillful blending of genres combined with a premise of genuinely romantic necrophilia make this movie 100 percent weird, without being over-the-top.

COMMENTS: Patrick and Wendy are best friends for life. He is crazy. She is dead.

When Patrick finds Wendy reanimated, he attempts to remedy his unrequited love for her. Pursing his obsession, his existence spirals into the uncanny.

Thinking, creative-minded viewers will be entranced by this peculiar, arty atmosphere tale. Not a horror movie with conventional thrills and chills, Make-Out With Violence is an unsettling story about love triangles and living death. Dreamy cinematic sequences blend into contrasting scenes of horror and the grotesque.

Brothers Carol and Patrick love best friends Addy and Wendy respectively. Wendy loves Brian, Brian has a fling with Addy, Addy gets jealous when Carol makes eyes at her friend Anne, and Wendy is dead. Dead, and inexplicably reanimated.

Wendy went missing the spring of her senior year. Never found and declared dead the summer before college, she is discovered in a field by Carol.  Undead, but in a semi-catatonic state, Wendy is mostly unresponsive.  Because she was so well liked and admired by all who knew her, Carol and Patrick are compelled take her to the home of an out-of-town friend where they attempt to care for her.

As the summer waxes, then wanes the brothers and their friends pursue their love interests. Carrol dates Addy. And well, Patrick “dates” dead Wendy, both siblings taking time out to tend to her as if such an endeavor is perfectly normal.  All goes well until their love triangles cause them to break their pact of secrecy and Addy finds out about Wendy, with macabre consequences.

Good acting, pleasing photography, and a gentle, artful soundtrack complement wholesome, likable characters, and a dreamy, sepia-toned, perspective on youth and summer. The overall effect makes the cinematic experience like a rosy look back at our idealized impression of golden meadows and free spiritedness of the 1970’s, interspersed with creepy, repellent sequences of undeath.

Make-Out With Violence is a different kind of horror movie, definitely not for a mainstream audience. This film is a well produced, conventionally assembled movie with a truly bizarre plot. It will appeal to fans of mood films such as 2007’s One Day Like Rain, who will find Make-Out With Violence to be infinitely more lucid and coherent.

I am including the trailer below against my better judgment. Whoever put it together should be shot. It fails to adequately convey the essence, tone and substantive impact of the film, making it look like a Generation-X teenage movie, which it is not.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…invests in spacey horror tropes one moment, plunges into absurdist adolescent angst the next and begs questions every step of the way, but just about holds together with its strong compositional sense, killer atmospheric lighting and wall-to-wall music track… the offbeat rhythms of the pic’s non-pro cast cranks up the film’s bizarre intensity.”–Ronnie Scheib, Variety (contemporaneous)

Make Out With Violence trailer

Shorts

SHORT: THE DARK SIDE OF FRIDAY (2011)

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DIRECTED BY:  Matt Mulholland

FEATURING:  Matt Mulholland

PLOT: A depressed cabaret singer and sometime mime, overwhelmed by the pressures of

Still from The Dark Side of Friday (2011)

life and loneliness, contemplates suicide and drifts off into a symbolic abyss of despair.

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST:  As devastating a portrait of human despair as has ever been painted, on a canvass black as velvet, this  poison break-up letter to a cruel world from an embittered heart compresses into a mere three minutes an agony that  it would take a lesser artist four minutes or even more to convey.   

COMMENTS: The nameless singer, dressed in black, observes the camera from a skewed angle, indicating his unwillingness to face the world head on anymore.  Alone, he sings of the pressures of ordinary life, but as the tension and anxiety build, a doppelgänger (who will later moph into a trippelgänger) appears.  The ghastly mirror image both harmonizes with, and mocks, the protagonist as he agonizes over paralyzing alternatives, eternally unable to choose (“which one can I take?”).  The minimalist set dissolves into a series of melancholy reminiscences; the dateless singer hanging his head in front of the mirror (the recurrence of the doppelgänger motif); he stands trapped in on a traffic island, his black garb blending into the surrounding darkness as unheeding humanity rushes by him in both directions (more dualities); he holds his head in his hands as, utterly alone, he kills off a bottle of Ballantine’s; he hangs his head in dejection as he stares hopelessly at the wall.  Mysterious images are interspersed into these reveries: running water (shades of Tarkovsky here, with an urban update); the bright lights of the teeming city intruding on his solitude, taunting him; a clock ticking down to an unstated but ominous deadline; glass shattering like a broken will (the deadline arives—the time for reflection is over).  In the finale the singer, now a mime, poses in front of the Void itself, trapped in an invisible box before Eternity.  Flakes of white drift through the Stygian abyss like fragments of exploded angels.  As masterfully affecting as these images are, without the searingly aware lyrics—written by a young postfeminist poetess to explore the ironic dualities of spirited youth versus weary wisdom, and of abandoned Dionysian collectivism versus painful Apollonian self-reflection—without such sure, knowing narration, the project would have come off as corny, weepy and bathetic.  Instead, it is a spiritually acute and devastating portrait of how having nowhere to go on Friday night inevitably leads to a loss of faith in life itself.   

The Dark Side of Friday is currently available to watch on YouTube.

Miscellanea

WEIRD HORIZON FOR THE WEEK OF 3/31/2011

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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.

Weird movie releases tend to be feast or famine—this week is pure feast.  Bloat yourself on midnight movies, new releases, and cult re-releases this weekend.

IN THEATERS (WIDE RELEASE):

Source Code:  A man wakes up inside the body of another, and realizes that he must use memories from his previous life to stave off a terrorist attack.  Probably not weird, but notable because it’s from Duncan Jones, who showed promise with his (non-weird) sci-fi debut Moon, and because the story is drawing comparisons to Christopher Nolan‘s Memento and Inception. It also stars Donnie Darko himself, Jake Gyllenhaal.  Source Code official site.

IN THEATERS (LIMITED RELEASE):

The Four Times (Le Quattro Volte) (2010):  The four stage journey of a shepherd’s soul through the afterlife, told according to one of geeky Greek cult leader Pythagoras’ lesser-known theorems.  We’ve been wondering if this art curiosity would ever surface since we first heard about it at last year’s TIFF; the wheel’s of weirdness turn slowly.  Of course, it’s only playing at the specialty venue Film Forum in Manhattan, with future stateside dates doubtful, but that’s better than nothing.  The Four Times at the Film Forum.

Rubber (2010): The French film about the serial-killer tire with telekinetic powers finally makes it to these shores, where it’s dividing critics down the middle as to whether it’s a clever absurdist goof or a tedious one-joke insult to the audience.  Whichever, it’s currently sitting in our review queue, so here’s hoping it arrives at a theater near us soon.  Rubber official site.

Super (2010): Another regular-guy-becomes-masked-vigilante black comedy; critics are comparing it to an edgier, more absurd Kick Ass.  From Tromeo and Juliet co-writer/co-director James Gunn, so it’s sure to be offensive, at least.  With TV’s Rainn Wilson, Ellen Page, Liv Tyler and Kevin Bacon.  It’s being reviewed all over, but it’s only playing in Vail, Colorado??  Super official site (not up to date). 

NEW ON DVD:

Black Swan (2010):  Read our capsule review.  A major event in recent weirdness; Black Swan was our 3rd weirdest movie of 2010, and Natalie Portman won a Weirdcademy Award for her role as a goody-two shoes ballerina who learns all about the dark side when she grows feathers.  Buy Black Swan.

Dead Awake (2010): Under-the-radar psychological thriller about a man who fakes his own funeral, then meets a strange crack addict and an ex-lover and finds All Is Not As It Seems.  With Nick Stahl, Rose McGowan and Amy Smart. Buy Dead Awake.

Evangelion 2.22: You Can [Not] Advance (2009): Part 2 of the Evangelion reboot (see our review of Part 1 here) features more giant robots, emo teen angst, apocalyptic occultism, and anime absurdity. If it follows the same path as the series’ two previous incarnations, then the third entry will be the weird one. Buy Evangelion: 2.22 You Can [Not] Advance.

Inferno (1980):  Dario Argento’s sequel to Suspiria, with the Mother of Tears now in the spotlight, is considered far weirder than the first entry in the series, but is not nearly as beloved.   This Blue Underground Special Edition release features only cast and crew interviews as extras, but more importantly it’s a brand new transfer of the movie, and should provide the best sound and picture quality Inferno has yet seen on home video. Buy Inferno (Special Edition).

Poor Pretty Eddie (1975):  About a jazz singer whose car breaks down in a redneck town inhabited by bizarro characters like a fat, drunk ex-stripper (Shelley Winters!) and a homicidal Elvis impersonator.  The promotional materials play this up as a “surreal” lost “cult classic”; we’re skeptical, but willing to give it a try.  Also known as Heartbreak Motel.  The DVD and Blu-ray aren’t sold separately at this time. Buy Poor Pretty Eddie Blu-Ray + DVD Combo Pack.

Smash Cut (2009): A horror director knocks off acquaintances to fill his movie with realistic gore effects. Probably just exploitation comedy trash, but it is made by the director of the pretty dang weird Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter with the blessing of gore godfather Herschell Gordon Lewis, and it features porn star Sasha Grey, who’s been involved in some interesting projects (starring in Steven Sorderberg’s well-received The Girlfriend Experience and “presenting” the weird looking faux-grindhouse spy thriller Modus Operandi). Another DVD/Blu-ray combo. Buy Smash Cut [Blu-ray].

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Black Swan (2010): See entry in DVD above. Buy Black Swan [Blu-ray].

Dogtooth (2009): Read the Certified Weird entry!Bizarre Greek black comedy about kids raised on an estate and kept completely apart from the world with their own unique language; truly disturbing, but more because of its ideas and matter-of-fact execution than its violence and perversity. Buy Dogtooth [Blu-ray].

Inferno (1980): See entry in DVD above. Buy Inferno [Blu-ray].

Poor Pretty Eddie (1975): See description in DVD above. The DVD and Blu-ray versions are sold together. Buy Poor Pretty Eddie Blu-Ray + DVD Combo Pack.

Smash Cut (2009): See entry in DVD above. Buy Smash Cut [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.

Alfred Eaker's Fringe Cinema

TOD BROWNING’S THE UNKNOWN (1927)

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The Unknown (1927) is one of the final masterpieces of the silent film era.  Suspend disbelief and step into the carnival of the absurd.  The Unknown is the ebony carousel of the Tod Browning/Lon Chaney oeuvre, the one film in which the artists’ obsessions perfectly crystallized.  This is a film uniquely of its creators’ time, place and psychosis and, therefore, it is an entirely idiosyncratic work of art, which has never been remotely mimicked, nor could it be.  That it was made at MGM borders on the miraculous, or the delightfully ridiculous, but then this was an era of exploratory boundaries, even at the big studios (again, the risk-taking Irving Thalberg produced).

“There is a story they tell in old Madrid.  The story, they say is true.”  So opens the tale of “Alonzo, the Armless.”  Browning spins his yarn like a seasoned barker at the Big Top of a gypsy circus where “the Sensation of Sensations! The Wonder of Wonders!,” Alonzo (Lon Chaney), the Armless, throws knives, with his feet, at the object of his secret affection, Nanon (an 18 year old Joan Crawford).

Illusions abound.  Alonzo  is actually a double-thumbed killer on the lam.  With the aid of a straight jacket and midget assistant Cojo (John George, who worked with Browning in Outside the Law [1920]), Alonzo feigns his handicap and performs the facade of one mutilated.

In addition evading the law and securing employment, Alonzo’s act of the armless wonder benefits him greatly.  Nanon has a hysterical, obsessive repulsion to the very touch of a man’s arms.   She calls on the Almighty to take away the accursed hands of all men.  Nanon vents histrionic, sexual anxiety to Alonzo every time Malabar the Mighty (Norman Kerry) puts his vile hands upon her.  Alonzo, ever the performer, simulates expressed sympathy, although his affection for Nanon is the one thing about Alonzo that is genuine.

Still from The Unknown (1927)Alonzo, secretly venting enmity, advises Malabar on how to win Nanon.  It is, of course, intentional ill-advice which will eventually karmically rebound and become genuine ill-advice for Alonzo. Malabar’s arms are muscled and strong, compared to Alonzo’s armless torso, or compared to Alonzo’s deformed, hidden double thumb—the very same double thumb which he used to strangle the ringmaster of Browning’s perverse milieu: Nanon’s sadistic Continue reading TOD BROWNING’S THE UNKNOWN (1927) →

Celebrating the cinematically surreal, bizarre, cult, oddball, fantastique, strange, psychedelic, and the just plain WEIRD!