First off, apologies for the advertising creeping onto the site.  It’s only going to get worse in the coming weeks and months, as we try to reach the level where the site can pay for its own hosting fees, but I will always try to keep it as unobtrusive and relevant as possible.

Next week, you can expect to see reviews of Takashi Miike‘s Gozu, and a reader review of Big Man Japan.  We’re hoping (no promises yet) to add a review of Suicide Club for an (almost) all “weird Japan” week—that is, until Thursday, when Alfred brings us another in his ongoing survey of the offbeat world of B-Westerns.

As for the weirdest search term used to locate the site this week, we had the usual string of fetish porn requests, including (among the printable and least disturbing ones) “penis weird movies” (a legitimate quest to find Taxidermia?)  We’ll go in a more PG related direction, however, and select “Dracula eye trick”: was the searcher looking for info on how they lit Bela Lugosi’s eyes, or advice on how to hypnotize potential victims just by looking at them?

The reader suggested review queue looks like this: Suicide Club (hopefully next week);  Gozu (next week); Trash Humpers (DVD release is imminent, but this will probably be pushed back while we wait for it); Tales of Ordinary Madness; The Wayward Cloud; Kwaidan; Six-String Samurai; Andy Warhol’s Trash; Altered States; Memento; Nightmare Before Christmas/Vincent/Frankenweenie; The Science of Sleep; The Attic Expeditions; After Last Season; Getting Any?; Performance; Being John Malkovich; The Apple; Southland Tales; Arizona Dream; Spider (2002); Songs From The Second Floor; Singapore Sling; Alice [Neco z Alenky]; Necromentia; Hour of the Wolf; MirrorMask; Possession; Suspiria; Mary and Max; Wild Zero; 4; Nothing (2003); The Peanut Butter Solution; Ninja Scroll; Perfume: The Story of a Murderer; Danger: Diabolik; Faust; Sublime; Battle Royale; Pink Floyd: The Wall; Escanaba In Da Moonlight; Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter; Zardoz; The Films of Suzan Pitt; Toto the Hero [Toto le Héros]; Paprika; The Holy Mountain; Brazil; The Casserole Masters; Dark Crystal; Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets; The Nines; 964 Pinocchio; The Pillow Book; Final Flesh; Lunacy [Sílení]; Inmortel; Tetsuo; Dead Ringers; Kairo [AKA Pulse]; The Guatemalan Handshake; Dead Leaves; The Seventh Seal; Primer; Maniac (1934); Hausu; A Boy and His Dog; 200 Motels; Walkabout; Private Parts (1972); Possession; Saddest Music in the World; Mulholland Drive; The American Astronaut; Blood Tea and Red Strings; Malice in Wonderland; The Films of Kenneth Anger, Vol. II (for Lucifer Rising, among others); Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory ; The Bride of Frank; La Grande Bouffe; Uzumaki [Spiral]; Hedwig and the Angry Inch; Even Dwarves Started Small; Bunny & the Bull; “I Killed My Lesbian Wife, Hung Her on a Meat Hook, and Now I Have a Three-Picture Deal at Disney” (assuming I can find it); Cinema 16: European Short Films; Freaked; Session 9; Schizopolis; Strings; Dellamorte Dellamore [AKA Cemetery Man]; The Hour-glass Sanatorium [Saanatorium pod klepsidra]; The Addiction; Liquid Sky; The Quiet; Shock Treatment; Tuvalu; “Zombie Jesus” (if we can locate it); 3 Dev Adam; Fantastic Planet; “Twin Peaks” (TV series); Society; May; The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension; Little Otik; Final Programme; Careful; Sweet Movie; The Triplets of Belleville; “Foutaises” (short); Johnny Suede; and “Jam” (TV, UK, 2000).

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):

Trash Humpers (2010): Harmony Korine’s latest follows a gang of elderly Peeping Toms around in low-grade video as they engage in trash humping and other activities.  Reviews have been on the poor side of divided, but then the critics (including us) didn’t “get” Gummo, either.  Opens in NYC next week, with scattered showings across major U.S. cities through the summer.  We’re probably going to have to wait for DVD.  Trash Humpers official site.

SCREENINGS (ANTHOLOGY ARCHIVES, NYC)

DDR/DDR (2010): Descriptions of this collage-style documentary on the vanished East and West Germany sound like first drafts of a masters’ thesis, full of terms like “propositional” and phrases like “a self-reflexive inquiry into non-fiction film.”  It’s a “dreamlike” “ciné-constellation,” but jargon aside, the idea of a free-association visual essay mixing up historical surveillance footage with interviews with a group of German “‘Redskin’ Indian hobbyists” has real potential to weird-up the reality-bound documentary genre.  DDR/DDR official site.

NEW ON DVD:

Nine (2009):  Read our capsule review.  Adapting Federico Fellini’s relationship problems into a musical is a “small-w” weird concept, but with Oscar aspirations, the movie succeeds in being as conventional as it can. Buy Nine.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Nine (2009): See entry in DVD above. Buy Nine [Blu-ray].

FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON YOUTUBE

Fantasy Mission Force (1982): This is a great, crazed, weird kung-fu comedy about a gang of misfits (including a young Jackie Chan) who brave a haunted house and fight Amazons, among other obstacles, in their quest to rescue Abraham Lincoln from the Soviets. That description barely scratches the surface of the lunacy of this movie, which also mixes in musical numbers and violent, epic gun battles. The legitimacy of this release is questionable, but as long as YouTube is OK with it, we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. This may disappear soon. Watch Fantasy Mission Force free on YouTube.

Hamlet (2007): A surrealistic rendition of the Shakespeare tale focusing on the supernatural elements with minimalist sets. Very few people have seen this, including us. Watch Hamlet free on YouTube.

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.