Next week look for a full writeup of the second reader’s choice Certified Weird movie, Jan Svankmajer‘s amazing stop-motion animated Alice [Neco Z Alenky] (1988). We’ll also review a couple of items from the reader-suggested review queue: the Japanese cult action movie Battle Royale (2000), and the extra-quirky Jeff Daniels deer-hunting comedy, Escanaba in da Moonlight (2001).
Lots of weird search terms rolled in this week. Before we run down the weirdest, we have to give a special award to “wierd eel sex” (and variations) for turning up time and time again in our server logs. We had no idea people were so hungry for information on this topic, or why they think we would know anything about it. As for this week’s nominees, we got some doozies, including “mini skirts and snickers visible video” (hungry and horny? Grab a mini skirt and a snickers!) In the “questions we can’t really answer” file we find “what is a weird omnivore” and “was john wayne murdered by us. psychotronic weapons” (although we’d be willing to bet “no” on the last one). Every week, at least one term shows up that makes us hope we don’t accidentally walk by this guy’s computer when he’s doing an image search; this week’s winner was “rex the wonder horse penis.” But in a very competitive week for weird search terms, the one that stands out above the crowd is “three teenage sex drugs lesbian weirdo on the inside or weirdo on the out side” (it was the extra “or weirdo on the out side” that put it over the top).
Here’s how the reader-suggested review queue stands: Battle Royale (next week!); Escanaba In Da Moonlight (next week!); Songs From The Second Floor; Possession; Wild Zero; Nothing (2003); The Peanut Butter Solution; Perfume: The Story of a Murderer; Faust; Continue reading WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE→
A grocery bag, voiced by Werner Herzog, searches desperately for his “maker” after being thrown away. While grieving his loss, he begins to contemplate his meaning in life. This short was already mentioned as being an extra on the DVD of My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done, but we wanted to be sure you don’t overlook it.
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 (WIDE RELEASE):
The Green Hornet: The martial arts-inflected hero Green Hornet is given a big-budget, comedy-tinged update. It’s not weird, it’s a superhero movie; we mention it for those who are following (and with this release, possibly bemoaning) the career of Certified Weird director Michel Gondry. The Green Hornet official site.
IN THEATERS (LIMITED RELEASE):
I’m Dangerous With Love: Credulous-sounding documentary about the underground movement that treats heroin addiction by administering another illegal drug—ibogaine, a powerful psychedelic with a 24 hour duration used by African shamans. Certainly an odd subject, and documentian Michael Negroponte has animated some sequences from his own ibogaine trip. Playing the IFC center in Manhattan this week, future dates seem unlikely. I’m Dangerous With Love listing at Michael Negroponte’s homepage.
Repo Chick: Alex Cox’s long awaited (by us, at least) “spiritual sequel” to the groundbreaking Repo Man is a “kooky” comedy casting what appears to be a modernized “Valley Girl” as the Repo Chick drawn into a kidnapping plot in Los Angeles. Looks deliberately cheap and campy, shot mostly in green screen, and the trailer’s frankly uninspiring. Where has Alex been since turning down the chance to direct Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas? Repo Chick will play New York this week and LA next before hitting DVD and Blu-ray Feb 8. No official site (really?), so check out this post on The Geek Files instead.
IN DEVELOPMENT:
The Congress (est. 2011/2012): What a promising pedigree for this animated science fiction piece: it’s from a story by admired sci-fi author Stanislaw Lem (whose Solaris was adapted into a great weird film), and directed by Ari Folman as a followup to his devastating and mildly surreal Waltz with Bashir. The original story was a black comedy involving a dystopian future in which psychoactive drugs (including hallucinogens) are used to control every aspect of the populace’s behavior; in the clip below Folman suggests he’s drifting away from Lem’s plot, but we still expect something wild.
Pairs, I’ll Kill You (est. 2012): Horror anthology set in Paris, with a title that clearly lampoons Paris, Je T’aime. It probably won’t be thoroughly bizarre, but there’s an interesting lineup of talented directors, some of whom have gone weird in the past: Vincenzo Natali (Cube, Splice and the vampire segment in T’Aime) and Christopher Smith (Triangle), joined by the venerable Joe Dante, Paco Plaza ([Rec]), Ryuhei Kitamura (Midnight Meat Train), Xavier Gens, Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo, and Joern Heitmann. Read more courtesy of Goregirl.
The Rum Diary (est. 2011): This is probably not going to be weird, but there are several interesting things about this project. It’s from Hunter S. (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) Thompson’s novel about drunken reporters in San Juan, Puerto Rico, it stars weird favorite Johnny Depp (who’s already portrayed one Thompson alter-ego in Fear and Loathing), and it’s the first movie directed by cult director Bruce (Withnail & I) Robinson since 1992’s Jennifer Eight. We suspect it will be offbeat, at least.
NEW ON DVD:
The Chainsaw Sally Show, Season 1: OK, I’m officially out of the modern horror loop. This is advertised as a bloody sitcom about a busty chainsaw-wielding vigilante, from Troma studios and with unspecified participation (a “from” credit) by Herschell Gordon Lewis. It’s based on director Jimmyo [sic] Burril’s 2004 movie Chainsaw Sally, which I’ve also never heard of. I ‘m pretty sure the series didn’t air on NBC. Buy “The Chainsaw Sally Show, Season 1”.
How to Get Ahead in Advertising (1989): An advertising exec grows what is either a boil, or a second head, out of his shoulder. This cult black comedy from Bruce (Withnail & I) Robinson has been out of print and largely unseen forever, so this is very welcome release from Image Entertainment. Buy How to Get Ahead in Advertising.
Uncle Boonmee (Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives) [Loong Boonmee raleuk chat] (2010): About a man who slips in and out of past (and future) lives at the moment of death. This Thai film won the 2010 Palme D’Or, but it arrives on DVD with no fanfare whatsoever. RedSun DVD’s apologetic ad copy for this one is intriguing: “Warning: This movie, like other mood-pieces is not made for casual moviegoers. Its definitely not a mainstream movie, and if you aren’t prepared for it, you may feel confounded and perplexed after watching it…” If that isn’t a recommendation, I don’t know what is. Buy Uncle Boonmee.
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.
Director Terence Fisher had quickly grown bored with the Hammer Dracula series, along with the character of the Count. For the two sequels, Fisher omitted the title character from the first (Brides of Dracula, 1960) and then made him secondary to Barbara Shelley’s character in Dracula, Prince of Darkness. However, Fisher clearly reveled in the Baron Frankenstein character and focused primarily on the creator, as opposed to the creation.
In the fourth of the series, Frankenstein Created Woman (1967), the Baron allegorically became God the Father in Fisher’s idiosyncratic take on the Trinity. In that film, Peter Cushing’s Baron is empathetic and waxes poetic at the tragic conclusion. In the fifth film, Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969), Fisher and Cushing create an alternative perspective on Frankenstein. Here, the Doctor is at his most obsessed and least sympathetic.
Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed is a relentlessly paced, visceral, and nihilistic film. The opening, bouncing-off-the-wall sequence, in which the masked Baron interrupts a potential burglar—who in turn stumbles upon a gruesome laboratory straight out of a Josef Mengele nightmare—juxtaposed, as usual, to James Bernard’s athletic score, is all worthy of Franjou.
The striking Veronica Carlson gives the best performance of her short-lived career as the tragic Anna; the Baron’s landlord, whom he blackmails and brutally rapes. Carlson registers complete devastation in a skillfully tense scene in which a water main bursts at the boarding house to reveal the hand of the Baron’s latest victim.
Unfortunately, the rape scene, inserted by the meddlesome producer, throws off the film. Fisher, Cushing, and Carlson all rightfully objected to it as it is unnecessary, nonsensical and cheapening. That scene aside, the rest of the film is so well directed and acted that it clearly is the best of Hammer’s Frankenstein series.
The dependable Thorley Walters returns as an acidic inspector, Freddie Jones brings real pathos to the transplanted Dr. Brandt, and Maxine Audley even evokes sympathy as the much put upon Ella, who is, on the surface, an unsympathetic character. Still, the film belongs to the Cushing’s increasingly emaciated egomaniac Baron Frankenstein, who is vile here, yet never cartoonish. Cushing is hopelessly charming, a progressive whom we root for (when putting bourgeoisie conservatives in their place), yet he is callous, single-minded, and dangerously narcissistic .
Together with The Devil Rides Out (1968), The Horror of Dracula (1958), and The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959), Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed is Fisher at his most assured and at the top of his form.
PLOT: The head of a medieval warlock possesses the bodies of young people staying at an isolated country estate, turning some into zombies and causing them to kill each other.
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Horror Rises is a worthwhile, but not quite exemplary, illustration of the tendency of 1970s Eurotrashy fantastique horror to elevate atmosphere and effect over sense and logic. Made out of equal parts camp, decadence, and incoherence, it’s a decent choice for a midnight viewing some evening when you don’t want to think too hard while getting some pre-bedtime chills.
COMMENTS: Most of the plot developments in Horror Rises from the Tomb need to be prefaced with the phrase, “for unclear reasons…” When invited to a seance with a medium, swinging playboy Hugo suggests they contact an ancestor of his who was hanged for practicing witchcraft (and vampirisim and lycanthropy), then decapitated so his head and body could be laid in separate graves to prevent him from rising from the tomb. The same warlock ghost has been haunting Hugo’s artist pal, dripping blood from his severed head on his canvases. After successfully contacting the spirit, Hugo, the painter and their girlfriends travel to Hugo’s isolated country estate to go digging for the head but are waylaid by bandits, then rescued by vigilantes who execute the criminals on the spot. Upon arriving the foursome hires village locals to dig up the head, or buried treasure, whichever they find first. Halfway through the movie, after the cast is mostly dead or possessed, the caretaker’s daughter remembers that her father hid a magic talisman that would protect them from any evil spirits that would rise from the nearby tomb in a well. Besides possession, the warlock also creates a mini-army of walking corpses, and when daylight comes Hugo goes to dredge up their corpses from the river (where he dumped them earlier—for unclear reasons) and burn the bodies, even though he already incinerated them the night before. And so it goes. The storytelling is jumpy—characters are killed off before you even realize who they are—and awkward editing exacerbates the problem. According to legend, star Naschy took anywhere between two days to a week to write the script, and it’s easy to believe. You go into every story segment presuming it’s not going to make sense, and you’re surprised when, on reflection, there’s a hidden logic to some development. Besides writing the script, Naschy is also credited as playing three roles (the warlock and Hugo are two of them, but somehow I missed the third one). Horror Rises gets by on atmosphere—beautiful, misty Spanish scenery; gorgeous doomed women in gauzy nightgowns; floating heads; zombies; Paul Naschy flinging his black cape about and keeping his bushy arched eyebrows flying at full mast. There’s also a screechy organ score that is irritating but effective in keeping you on the edge. The decadent exploitation, in combination with the disjointed storytelling and jittery editing, produces a comic-nightmarish effect typical of 1970s Eruohorrors; it’s a style that can become addictive if you give yourself over to it wholeheartedly.
The version of Horror Rises from the Tomb reviewed here is the edited, full frame version, likely compiled for television broadcasts, that’s commonly found in multiple-movie bargain packs. This edition cuts out the abundant nudity and most of the gore (including, reportedly, heart-eating) and runs 10-15 minutes shorter than the uncut film. The frequent edits to produce a TV-friendly, PG-rated product likely increase the incoherence factor, but given the movie’s edited in the purely expository scenes, I don’t believe the complete version makes significantly more sense. The out of print but widely available BCI/Eclipse DVD contains both cuts of the film, along with a third “clothed” version intended for European distribution that substitutes alternate takes for some of the nude scenes but keeps the blood and guts intact.
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Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed is a relentlessly paced, visceral, and nihilistic film. The opening, bouncing-off-the-wall sequence, in which the masked Baron interrupts a potential burglar—who in turn stumbles upon a gruesome laboratory straight out of a Josef Mengele nightmare—juxtaposed, as usual, to James Bernard’s athletic score, is all worthy of 