List Candidates

CAPSULE: FLOODING WITH LOVE FOR THE KID (2010)

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DIRECTED BY: Zachary Oberzan

FEATURING: Zachary Oberzan

PLOT:  Small town Kentucky Sheriff Teasle picks up a shaggy vagrant, but finds that the kid is not as harmless as he initially appears; violent events lead the cop to stalk the resourceful fugitive through the forests toward a deadly showdown.

Still from Flooding with Love for the Kid (2010)

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST:  Flooding With Love for the Kid actually breaks the Weirdometer.  A one-man retelling of David Morell’s pulp novel “First Blood,” made for $96, with toy snakes, teddy bears, and pine branches for props, shot entirely inside one Manhattan apartment, Flooding exists in its own universe: beyond weird or normal.

COMMENTS: In the category of “best feature film shot for under $100,” the winner, by a wide margin, is Flooding With Love for the Kid.  The end credits explain that the film was “adapted, produced, directed, designed, filmed, performed, edited, special effects and makeup by Zachary Oberzan”: an entire career résumé in one movie.  Primarily, the film’s an advertisement for Oberzan’s acting abilities.  Playing all the characters, his ingenuity is tested to its limits.  He generates significant empathy in the primary role of Teasle, the cop who looks like a man completely in command of his tiny police fiefdom, but who’s hiding personal pain and insecurity underneath the assured facade.  The kid, Rambo, is a more mysterious figure—almost Christlike in his passive resistance to authority at the film’s beginning, though he turns into a survivalist psychopath cypher by the end of the first act.  This portrayal focuses on the character’s mystical, symbolic side rather than on Rambo as a killing machine; Oberzan’s no Sylvester Stallone, and that’s meant as a compliment.  When clean-shaven Teasle acts in split screen beside the bearded kid, you realize that these seamless-looking scenes where Oberzan reacts to himself had to be shot months apart.  The auteur also plays the dozens of supporting characters, including an entire police squad, greasy spoon waitresses, Viet Cong torturers and, in his oddest role, a team of bloodhounds on Rambo’s trail.  Playing all these parts tax Oberzan’s art to its limit, but he manages at the very least to distinguish each character so we can always tell them apart.  Humorously, one of the deputies has slightly gay mannerisms (though we’re told he’s married).  Other minor characters don’t fare as well: Colonel Troutman is little more than a pair of mirrored shades Continue reading CAPSULE: FLOODING WITH LOVE FOR THE KID (2010) →

Miscellanea

WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE

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Next week we’ll have a (re)-review of the one man Rambo adaptation, Flooding with Love for the Kid (2010), we’ll dig into the queue to check out Roy Andersson‘s melancholy, weird arthouse hit Songs from the Second Floor (2000), and Alfred will continue his review of Terence Fisher‘s Hammer horror  résumé with The Curse of the Werewolf (1961).  We’ll also give you our cynical take on the Academy Award nominees, and offer a weirder set of candidates.

There weren’t that many weird search terms used to locate the site this week—either that, or we’re getting so jaded looking through the bizarre server logs that a search for “zombie dominatrix” doesn’t seem so odd anymore.  Nonetheless, we were impressed by the tortured perversity of stuff like “free movies with most extremely high orgasm in the world of women.”  In the “we can’t believe that domain name’s still available!” category, the clear winner was  “coommon jender sunbatheo of the worldmovies. com.”  But our weirdest search term of the week is the one that mixes leftist politics with quantum physics: “the oppressed peoples of schrodingers dead cats.”  Keep em coming—we know you weirdos can do better next week!

OK, here’s our weekly posting of that extremely lengthy and ever-growing reader-suggested review queue for you to ponder:  Songs From The Second Floor (next week!); Possession; Wild Zero; Nothing (2003); The Peanut Butter Solution; Perfume: The Story of a Murderer; Faust; Sublime;  Pink Floyd: The Wall; Zardoz; The Films of Suzan Pitt; Toto the Hero [Toto le Héros]; Continue reading WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE →

Miscellanea

WEIRD HORIZON FOR THE WEEK OF 1/28/2011

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A look at what’s weird in theaters, on hot-off-the-presses DVDs, and on more distant horizons…

This is a monster week in terms of DVD/Blu-ray releases, with improved editions of two Certified Weird movies, plus the home video release of our weirdest movie of 2010, among other treasures.  We advise you to stay home this weekend and catch up on some weirdness.

IN THEATERS (LIMITED RELEASE):

Kaboom (2010): Little Gregg Araki is growing up.  The 53-year-old has graduated from making movies about horny high schoolers to making movies about horny college students.  This one involves a hunky bisexual protagonist,  hallucinogenic cookies, and a murdered dream girl, and is also described as “a sci-fi story centered on the sexual awakening of a group of college students.”  As with other films distributed by IFC, Kaboom will also be simultaneously available on many cable systems’ “on demand” feature for those who can’t catch it in theaters. Kaboom official site.

Scream of the Banshee (2011): The official press release explains that the story describes what happens when the titular folkloric creature’s “scream begins to haunt all that heard it in strange and surreal ways.”  The press release also reveals what we suspect has to be the strangest and most surreal incident in the movie: “she and her students hear a horrifying scream belonging to that of a bloodthirsty banshee. They think nothing of it…” (emphasis ours).  Hopefully they took as much care writing the script as they did the ad copy.  With Lance Henriksen, from After Dark Originals, co-produced by SyFy.  Rotten Tomatoes seems to think it’s being released theatrically; we suspect they’ve been had.   Scream of the Banshee Facebook page.

NEW ON DVD:

Dogtooth [Kynodontas] (2009): Read Kevyn Knox’s review. Bizarre Greek black comedy about kids raised on an estate and kept completely apart from the world with their own unique language. Buy Dogtooth.

Enter the Void (2010):  Read our review.  DVD release makes our early choice for weirdest movie of 2010, about a hallucinating ghost in Tokyo, officially eligible to join the List. Buy Enter the Void.

Santa Sangre (1989):  Read our certified weird entry!  This is the first official American release of Jodorowsky‘s weird mix of surrealism and serial killers, replacing the old “Singapore” version which contained the documentary The Constellation Jodorowsky.  This two-disc release from Severin Films contains 5 hours (!) of bonus material, and also includes a commentary track from Jodorowsky and journalist Alan Jones.  Big news indeed. Buy Santa Sangre.

Violent Blue (2010): From Gregory Hatanaka, director of the intriguing but unseen Mad Cowgirl, comes this story of a composer whose ex-husband locks her in a cage. It’s the baffling “WTF?” trailer (below) that caught our attention. Buy Violent Blue.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Enter the Void (2010):  See entry in DVD above. Buy Enter the Void [Blu-ray].

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004): Read Eric Young’s certified weird entry!  Writer Charlie Kaufman and director Michel Gondry team up for this mindbending speculative romantic comedy about memory erasure that’s a favorite of sentimental weirdos everywhere.  A quick scan of Universal’s planned special features doesn’t reveal anything significant that hasn’t appeared on previous releases. Buy Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind [Blu-ray].

Santa Sangre (1989):  See entry in DVD above. Buy Santa Sangre [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

THE GORGON (1964)

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This post is part of an ongoing series on Hammer horror director Terence Fisher.

The Gorgon (1964) has a hopelessly silly synopsis: it’s basically a werewolf story transplanted onto a minor Greek myth with an even more ridiculously executed monster (complete with rubber snakes in her hair). Yet, with a stylish script from John Gilling, sublime characterization, and poetic beauty, Terence Fisher enthusiastically managed to transform this irredeemable trash into an artistically rewarding experience. Impossible, but true.

The Gorgon is an oddity in the Hammer cannon. Its pacing is deliberate and forlorn. The “monster” is the mythological Gorgon Megaera, inhabiting amnesiac victim Barbara Shelley, who again gives a performance well above that of the standard Hammer glamour girl. Unfortunately, Shelley does not play Megaera herself, a poor decision which blunts the tragic impact of the production.

For several years a number of unexplained deaths have occurred, during the full moon, in a small German village. The most recent victims are a model and her artist boyfriend. The father of the late artist, professor Jules Heitz (Michael Goddliffe) inquires into his son’s death but is met with resistance from the entire town, including old Dr. Namaroff (Peter Cushing). Namaroff has a motive for evading the truth, since he is not-so-secretly in love with Carla Hoffman (Shelley), whom he knows to be the Gorgon.

Although the human identity of the Gorgon is blatantly obvious from the start, it is the pathos projected by Cushing’s Phantom of the Opera-like hero (scarred by unrequited love) and Shelley’s genteel torment (inspired by the doctor’s jealousy and evasiveness) that creates the striking emotional milieu throughout the film.

Professor Heitz soon falls prey to the Gorgon. The scene plays out first in the beautifully atmospheric castles ruins, during the autumn moon, where Heitz spies the shadowy figure of the Gorgon.  Running from the horrible visage of Megara, Heitz makes it to his office and lives long enough to write his second son, Paul, a letter as he slowly and memorably turns to stone.

Barbara Shelley in The Gorgon (1954)Paul (Richard Prasco) is a student of Professor Karl Meister (Christopher Lee, in a rare, and quite good, turn as a sympathetic character). Paul is given leave from school upon the news of his father’s death. Like his father, Paul meets the same resistance from Namaroff and the townspeople. Carla is sympathetic to Paul’s frustrations and a love triangle develops, which enhances the inevitable tragedy of all three characters. One scene in particular conveys the expressionistic iciness of the film. Carla, in hopes of escaping the town and the shadowy spirit of Megaera, meets Paul in the same ruins in which his father met his fate. Carla sits regally in a throne-like chair and descends, fur coat draped around her shoulders, shuddering from the coldness of the season and the dread spirit lurking. The scattered, elegiac autumn leaves with their somber hues weave a spell akin to a doomed medieval fairy tale; Carla, inexplicably, cannot resist, much like the Gorgon’s victims cannot resist the act of looking at her deadly face.

Professor Meister, who has arrived to assist Paul, knows that it is Carla who is possessed by Megaera, but Paul passionately rejects his professor’s conclusion and is even more intensely driven to get Carla away from the town and Namaroff. Namaroff, channeling Lon Chaney tragic magic, sacrifices himself for his unrequited love, but he is not the only victim. Indeed, the film ends quite pessimistically.

Fortunately, the title character is, for the bulk of the film, only briefly seen, half emerging from the shadows of the columned ruins, or in one evocative scene, in the reflection of a dark pool. In the climax, when Megaera is finally seen full on, the letdown is severe enough to nearly wreck the film. Still, The Gorgon is a refreshingly unique oddity in the Hammer canon, thanks, in no small part, to a director who took the most unlikely material and crafted it into something poetic.

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