Even a boy’s talent for sketching pictures that come to life can’t make him “cool” in this animated fable about the ups and downs of childhood popularity. Joy and Noelle Vaccese have done numerous bumpers for film festivals, and we love their trade name: “Twins are Weird.”
ZEB HARADON’S REVISED TOP 10 WEIRD MOVIES
EDITOR’S NOTE: Zeb Haradon, writer/director/star of the Certified Weird Elevator Movie, has asked us to submit a revised “Top 10 Weird Movies” list. Of course we complied without hesitation. (Here’s his [more conventional] original list).
A while ago I was asked to put together a list of 10 weird movies. I did this pretty quickly without thinking much about it. It was, I think, too hastily written, as if I was just writing an email. Also the movies, while all excellent, were not all particularly “weird” enough. I decided to put together this better list.
1. The Room – The plot of this movie sounds fairly straightforward and is hardly worth mentioning. It’s a domestic drama about a couple where the woman has an affair and the man becomes jealous and then finds out. The strangeness is in the tone and execution. This cult movie is widely known as an unintentional comedy “so bad it’s good”, but I think there’s something else going on. Notice how the dialog seems to come out of nowhere, how characters seem to say their lines with no particular motivation, or have motivations that change from moment to moment. I think what we’re seeing here is what a movie looks like to an autistic person who is not aware of the inner lives of other people. I think the filmmaker is making a movie of what society looks like to him, where everyone is made of cardboard and another human’s personality is unfathomable.
2. “Happy Days Reunion Special” – This “Happy Days” reunion special, made just a few years after the series ended, never saw the light of day, but a copy was leaked (bad quality with time codes), and you can find it if you know where to look. This was made in 1989, and also set in 1989, so it’s supposed to take place 30 or so years after the original. 90% of this hour long reunion is just dopey sitcom B.S., but there’s a jaw-droppingly incongruous subplot involving Fonzie discovering that he has become infected with the AIDS virus. This was probably due to a well intentioned effort to talk about the disease, but “Happy Days Reunion” was not the place to do it, which is probably why this ill conceived special never saw the light of day.
3. Silhouette – This movie consists of a series of explicit sex scenes, and the sounds and dialog are right out of hard core pornography, but the only images you ever see are shadows of the Continue reading ZEB HARADON’S REVISED TOP 10 WEIRD MOVIES
LIST CANDIDATE: SPIRAL [UZUMAKI] (2000)
DIRECTED BY: Higuchinsky
FEATURING: Eriko Hatsume, Fhi Fan
PLOT: One by one the residents of a small Japanese village become “infected” with an obsession for spirals, leading them to neglect their normal day to day lives and eventually to their odd spiral-related deaths. Yes, you read right…spiral deaths!
![Still from Spiral [Uzumaki] (2000)](https://i0.wp.com/366weirdmovies.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/uzumaki.jpg?resize=450%2C247 "Spiral [Uzumaki]")
WHY IT SHOULD MAKE THE LIST: Movies that achieve a coveted final place on the List need to be really very good or really very weird. Some will be great enough to score on both counts. Much as I love Uzumaki, I have to say it should earn a place based on the sheer quality and quantity of the weirdness on display. Viewers who like a neatly wrapped plot will be annoyed and frustrated that the nature of what’s going wrong in the village is never really explained. There’s a breadcrumb sprinkling of just enough hints to allow you to ponder the cause yourself: is it an ancient curse, casually malevolent demons or something worse, rooted in the double helix of the villagers’ very DNA?
COMMENTS: This should be a pretty grim film. An apparently innocent group of villagers are led to gruesome self mutilation and picturesque suicides by a strange infection, for which there is no cure, no explanation, and from which there is no escape. It “should” be a grim film, and yet it’s charming, quirky and downright laugh out loud funny in parts. Based on Junji Ito’s manga of the same name, it was made and released before the conclusion of the print version was released, so viewers coming to it via the books will apparently find significant differences. I have only read a couple of chapters of the manga and therefore cannot comment on how the two compare, but watching the film it’s tempting to think that some of the stylization of the cinematography and acting draws on the original artwork. Burtonesque spirals are so ubiquitous throughout the film, appearing in clouds, bushes and ceiling panels that it would be a rash viewer who launched into an uzumaki drinking game.
The story centres on schoolgirl Kirie and her solemn, androgynous boyfriend Shuichi. It’s Shuichi who first realizes that all is not well. His father has become so obsessed with Continue reading LIST CANDIDATE: SPIRAL [UZUMAKI] (2000)
CAPSULE: MARTYRS (2008)
DIRECTED BY: Pascal Laugier
FEATURING: Morjana Alaoui, Mylène Jampanoï, Catherine Bégin, Robert Toupin, Patricia Tulasne
PLOT: A girl ventures into unknown territory when she helps her lover, a former torture victim, seek revenge on her one-time captors, in this bloody tale of madness and sadism.
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: You may have heard incomplete descriptions of Martyrs in the media or by word of mouth. Hushed references and whispered gossip might make it sound like a snuff movie, a sado-masochistic tableau, or a scandalous exploration of taboos. It is none of these things. While Martyrs is a heavy, very violent film with a grim story, it is not a snuff movie or a sensational expose of torture. It is an offbeat, horrifying thriller, and nothing more.
COMMENTS: When Anna (Alaoui) and her lover Lucie (Jampanoï) embark on a mission of revenge against Lucie’s childhood torturers, the situation quickly spirals out of control. The couple locates Lucie’s alleged abductors, but did they find the right people? Lucie is stalked and victimized by the spectre of the mutilated sister she had to leave behind, and Anna is not so sure where the truth lies. In the process of exacting retribution the landscape changes dramatically and Anna is swept into an incomprehensible morass of hell on earth.
I’m so underwhelmed! I was expecting a real stick of dynamite, but instead, I got one of those Fourth of July smoldering snake novelties. Movie site rumors and an ongoing debate over whether or not Martyrs amounts to little more than “torture porn” made me expect a wild ride. I had hoped to see the ultimate horror movie, or at least something mindlessly vulgar and sensational, but no dice.
What I got was an extremely well-shot, conventionally produced, offbeat story. Unfortunately, it consists of two loosely linked plot sequences which, once combined, don’t amount to a sum greater than their parts. Nor do they deliver any sort of soul stirring revelation. Ho hum.
I found Martyrs to be intriguing, but, well, kinda boring. Maybe even a little tedious in places. Continue reading CAPSULE: MARTYRS (2008)
LIST CANDIDATE: THE APPLE (1980)
The Apple has been promoted onto the List of the 366 Weirdest Movies ever made. Comments are closed on this post, please visit the Certified Weird entry to comment.
DIRECTED BY: Menahem Golan
FEATURING: Vladek Sheybal, Catherine Mary Stewart, George Gilmour
PLOT: An innocent pair of Canadian folk singers/lovers split up when the female falls under the spell of a Mephistophelean pop music promoter in this “futuristic” (set in 1994) musical fantasy.
WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: How do you solve a problem like The Apple? This science-fictiony musical satire/religious allegory is an obvious attempt to cash in on the camp credibility of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, but with the disco sensibility and glittery production values of Xanadu (also made in 1980). The results are spectacularly uneven: the bizarre costuming, choreography, and psychedelic production numbers are actually pretty good in their deliberate excess, the songs range from annoying to quite hummable, and the rushed, out-of-nowhere messianic ending is an unforgettable cinematic disaster. With RHPS already taking up a spot on the List in the “fantastical outré musical” category, I’m not sure that this similar (but less entertaining) movie is worthy of making it on the first ballot. It’s more of a second tier midnight movie; but I wouldn’t rule The Apple out altogether.
COMMENTS: The Apple pulls you in many different directions: you’re never quite sure whether to tap your toes, roll your eyes, drop your jaw, or bring up your lunch. The plot, which mixes old MGM backstage musical themes with the Faustian corruption of show-biz innocents and a touch of dystopian literature, is familiar and easy to follow; it’s the production numbers that strangify things. The easiest way to simulate the insanity of The Apple is to take a track-by-track guided tour of the film.
“BIM’S on the Way.” (Representative lyric: “there ain’t no shame…”). A full scale glam rock concert anthem, complete with dozens of backup singers, flashing multicolored lights, a disco ball, and a sheep-like chanting audience armed with green glowsticks, as two pop stars in sequined skullcaps screech out a propaganda ode to their corporate sponsor (B.I.M. Continue reading LIST CANDIDATE: THE APPLE (1980)