The sporadic, screeching, acoustic sounds of eerie composer Isambard Khroustaliov conjoin with the flashy, out of focus, and often unsettling images of Candas Sisman to create a short we just couldn’t keep to ourselves.
edicisum from candas sisman on Vimeo.
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.
IN THEATERS (LIMITED RELEASE):
The Oscar Nominated Short Films 2011: The title is self-explanatory. Very few of the short films nominated this year hold any weird appeal; two titles caught our interest, though, both in the animation category. One is “The Lost Thing,” an Australian fantasy about a boy who discovers a strange contraption on the beach, but finds that no one cares about it but him. The second film was not actually nominated for an Oscar but was included as a “highly commended” short in order to pad out the running time: it’s sometime-weird animator Bill Plympton’s “The Cow Who Wanted to Be a Hamburger,” described as “a children’s fable about the power of advertising.” Playing in scattered cities across the US and Canada and also in London; check the official website for a location near you. The Oscar Nominated Short Films 2011 official website.
NEW ON BLU-RAY:
Amarcord (1973): The Criterion Collection upgrades its edition of the Fellini classic (in which the director recalls a highly fictionalized and, well, Felliniesque childhood) to Blu-ray. We believe all the same special features were available on the previous DVD version. Buy Amarcord (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]
Barb Wire (1996): How can you ensure your sci-fi remake of Casablanca will be a flop? Cast bodacious but scarcely talented Baywatch babe Pamela Anderson as the titular (1000 pardons, gentle reader) character. Some contend this disaster has camp value. If you’ve always wanted to see them in hi-def, here’s your chance. Buy Barb Wire [Blu-ray]
FREE MOVIES ON THE WEB:
“The Marvellous World of the Cucu Bird” (1991): Made in the early nineties and only shown at two or three film festivals, director Carlos Atanes has resurrected this 18 minute short made when he was 19 years old, and considers this Internet premier to be the film’s real debut. Shot in Barcelona, the grainy black and white film has Italian neorealist visuals, but the story is anything but realistic. It concerns a love affair—perhaps—between a prostitute and a butcher’s assistant, and a talking bird trapped under a sewer grate, a mysterious man on crutches dragging a useless leg behind him, and symbolist poetry all feature heavily. There’s also a good dose of tasteful eroticism and violence, and the film has a very disorienting/impossible timeline. Worth seeing. Watch “The Marvellous World of the Cucu Bird.”
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.
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This post is part of an ongoing series on Hammer horror director Terence Fisher.
There is a scene in each of Terence Fisher’s trilogy of vampire films—Horror of Dracula (1958), Brides of Dracula (1960), and Dracula, Prince of Darkness (1966)—in which a wise and devout man releases a vampire from the pains of immortal existence. In the Horror of Dracula, Van Helsing releases Lucy, much to the relief of her brother Arthur. Arthur smiles as he sees the beauty of innocence restored to his sister. In Prince, Fr. Sandor releases Helen from the curse, as her brother-in-law, Charles, smiles upon witnessing the peace that finally envelops the troubled Helen. In Brides of Dracula, Van Helsing, introduced as a doctor of philosophy and theology, releases vampire Baroness Meinster (Martita Hunt), at her own request. After being staked, the Baroness shows a touch of a smile.
For the first (and best) sequel to Horror of Dracula, Fisher and the writing team (which included an uncredited Anthony Hinds, Jimmy Sangster, Peter Bryan, and Edward Pearcy) chose a disciple of Dracula, in the person of Baron Meinster (David Peel), as the antagonist rather than the Count himself. The Baron is blond, pretty, manipulative, charming, and genuinely menacing. Luckily, Peel fits the bill, although by general consensus he is no Christopher Lee. Still, he is refreshingly different. Such a choice allowed the production imaginative freedom and innovation. The resulting film is inordinately elegant, poetic and seething with atmosphere.
Marianne (Yvonne Monlaur) is on her way to start a job at a girl’s school when she is stranded at a local inn. The Baroness Meinster arrives and offers to put Marianne up for the night at her castle. The locals , well aware of the Baroness’ motives, attempt to to keep Marianne from accepting the invitation, to no avail. Marianne is introduced to the Baroness’ imperious maid, Greta (Freda Jackson), and discovers that the Baroness’ son, the Baron Meinster, is a shackled prisoner in the castle. The Baroness’ plan to feed Marianne to her son is upset when her guest releases the Baron from his chains of bondage.
Marianne flees the castle, confused and frightened, unaware that she has set a vampire free. Peter Cushing‘s Van Helsing, ever the father figure, discovers her in the woods, takes her to the school, and, after hearing Mariann’s story, knows that his crusade to rid the world of vampires is far from finished.
Jackson, as Greta, is one of several acting delights here. She cackles and theatrically waxes poetic. She hams it up in several scenes, most notably one in which she assists a vampire’s attempt to resurrect himself directly through the soil. Equally good is Martita Hunt (best known for her role as Miss Havisham in David Lean’s Great Expectations-1946) who becomes her son’s Oedipal victim. Miles Malleson also does a charming turn in the role of the alcoholic Dr. Tobler. Cushing, as usual, conveys self-assured, icy precision in a part that he seems born to play. Peel’s Baron puts the bite on Helsing and, in a blood-red, thrilling scene, the Doctor plants a burning iron to his own throat to cauterize the wound. Cushing masters the scene in his inimitable way.
However, Monlaur, as Marianne, is merely decorative and, consequently, bland, which is a serious defect in the film. Another glaring flaw is in the some slipshod writing (the result of too many hands in the pot, no doubt). A compelling, eerie henchman character appears and is ingloriously dropped. Van Helsing’s appearance is far too convenient and contrived. A cheesy flying bat is a major distraction. Despite the flaws, however, Fisher’s enthusiastic direction is contagious; aided , in no small part, by lavish art direction and camera work. The finale, at a windmill, is sumptuous and visually exciting.
Unfortunately, there would only be one more good film in the series; Fisher’s Dracula, Prince of Darkness. After that, the series was pretty much turned over to the hacks and it did not take long at all for the rot to set in.
“When I see the film now, I’m astonished at my hubris in making this extraordinary farrago.”–John Boorman in his 2001 director’s commentary for Zardoz
DIRECTED BY: John Boorman
FEATURING: Sean Connery, Charlotte Rampling, John Alderton, Sara Kestleman, Niall Buggy
PLOT: Zed is an Enforcer, a warrior and slaver who pillages the countryside and takes commands from Zardoz, a floating stone head, in a distant barbaric future. One day Zed sneaks into the head and is carried away with it to Vortex 4, a land filled with technologically advanced people who never seem to age. Zed is a curiosity to them and becomes both a slave and an object of scientific study, but his presence disrupts their society in profound ways.
BACKGROUND:
INDELIBLE IMAGE: Try as he might to fill his film with unforgettable visions of giant floating stone heads vomiting firearms and of humanity’s entire cultural heritage projected onto the half-nude bodies of immortal hippies, the one image that adorns almost every review of Boorman’s Zardoz is a simple one: Sean Connery standing in the desert, pistol in hand, ponytail insouciantly thrown over one shoulder, dressed in thigh high leather boots and a red diaper with matching suspenders.
WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: This sci-fi spectacle starts with serious ideas and weighty themes, but gets weighed down under an avalanche of self-indulgent dialogue, a confused script, low-budget psychedelics, and consistently bizarre directorial choices. Fill a talented young director’s head full of anticipation of adapting Tolkien, then pull that opportunity out from under him but instead give him Sean Connery and carte blanche to make whatever film he wants, and the result, apparently, is Zardoz. (Oh, and LSD might have had something to do with it, too).
COMMENTS: Zardoz is introduced by a floating head weaving through a void, slowly Continue reading 78. ZARDOZ (1974)
DIRECTED BY: Suzan Pitt
FEATURING: Jose Luis Rodriguez Avalos (“El Doctor”)
PLOT: A collection of three surreal animated shorts. In “El Doctor”, a Mexican doctor visits odd patients while dreaming of a long dead love. “Joy Street” contrasts a the life of a whimsical anthropomorphic ashtray with its suicidally depressed owner. “Asparagus” is a totally abstract surrealist film featuring a faceless woman and obscene iterations of the titular vegetable.
WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: It’s a question of classification, not of weirdness or quality. Counting these three short films, made decades apart, as one “movie” for List purposes would clearly be cheating. That means that we’re really only considering the compilation’s main event, “Asparagus,” for inclusion on the List, which raises the metaphysical question: how good/weird does a short have to be take away a spot from a deserving feature length presentation? Some shorts will eventually make the List. “The Heart of the World,” though a “must see” weird film, was eliminated from consideration for being too slim at just over three minutes long. Pitt’s impressive work clocks in at 18 minutes—should that be enough to put it on equal footing with films that run four or five times as long?
COMMENTS: Considering the shorts included in The Films of Suzan Pitt from most recent to oldest, and coincidentally from least favorite to most highly recommended:
“El Doctor” sports the crudest animation of the three shorts; deliberately, because the style means to evoke Mexican folk art. We find the title character slumped at a bar, dreaming of riding into the sunset on horseback with a señorita, but soon the world-weary médico is called away to his strange and melancholy rounds. These appointments—which take the form of miracles—don’t do too much for the main narrative; mainly, they supply Pitt with the opportunity to take mini-flights of fancy. There’s not much to the story other than these surreal digressions. One patient is pocked with holes from which flowers grow, giving Pitt the opportunity to film a field of flowers as if they were a rainforest (an image which pervades all Continue reading LIST CANDIDATE: THE FILMS OF SUZAN PITT (1979/1995/2006)
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