RECOMMENDED AS WEIRD: KONTROLL (2003)

Kontroll has been upgraded to the List of the 366 Best Weird Movies of all time. Please visit the full certified weird entry for Kontroll for comments and deeper coverage of the film.

Recommended

DIRECTED BY: Nimród Antal

FEATURING: Sándor Csányi, Bence Mátyássy, Eszter Balla, Gyözö Szabó, Lajos Kovács, and György Cserhalmi

PLOT: A Budapest metro transit cop copes with eccentric passengers and coworkers as he

Still from Kontroll (2003)

pursues a veiled serial killer.  Living and sleeping in the tunnels, Bulcsú is bullied by tormentors, chases gang members, dodges trains and follows a mysterious girl as he tracks a murderer who pushes passengers under speeding engines.

WHY IT SHOULD MAKE THE LIST: Kontroll is a fantasy that stands alone in its enigmatic singularity.  The film craftily assimilates drama, suspense and social satire into a multifaceted story in the unusual setting of an Old World subway.   Director Antal surprisingly succeeds at combining an unlikely combination of plot elements.  He decants the chaos of social rambunctiousness, the absurdity that entails when authority dictates regulation at the simplest levels of its jurisdiction, and a survey of attitudes and life’s daily ironies into an imaginative story.  The resulting integration presents a unique, alternate viewing experience.

COMMENTS:  Hydraulics hiss, rails clatter, and trains blast at high speeds in the dimly lit, neural convolutions of the Budapest underground.  A man runs for his life through a tunnel between two trains.  A hooded figure emerges from cracks in the wall to launch the unwary under oncoming subway cars.  A puzzling girl (Balla) haunts the maze-like passages disguised as a bear.  Ticket inspectors engage in madcap jousts and chases with each other when they are not comically pursuing a colorful assortment of freeloading ruffians.  A host of eccentric characters cavort and couple in a subterranean round-table of flickering signal lamps, iron Continue reading RECOMMENDED AS WEIRD: KONTROLL (2003) →

ANNOUNCEMENT: “THE BEST OF DAMON ZEX” NOW AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE

366 Distribution’s second project, “The Best of Damon Zex,” is now available for purchase at CreateSpace. It will also appear on Amazon in the following days.

Damon was a polarizing figure in public access television in the 1990s. His show assaulted the suburbs with frank sexuality, vulgarity, occultism and blasphemy; but more importantly, it challenged viewers with its high quotient of surrealism, artistry, experimental hypnotic video techniques, and satire.

The press release describes the contents thusly:

DVD 1 contains:

1. “The Diabolical Damon Zex.” 60 min. Watching this hour-long compilation is like flipping through the TV channels at 3 AM and discovering every station has been taken over by Zex. Includes the controversial and shocking tampon scenes from “Damon’s Bloodfeast.” First time on DVD.

2. “A Day in the Life of Damon Zex.” 30 min. Damon’s day begins with wine in his cereal, and gets weirder from there. First time on DVD.

BONUS DVD: CHECKMATE

30 min. Zex’s timeless, post-public access expressionistic chess game shows a more mature artist focused on aesthetics, without sacrificing his sadomasochistic edge. This film, which has never seen before in its entirety outside of private screenings, is a must-have for Zex fans.

For more information on Damon Zex, read Alfred’s article Damon Zex: Intellectual Provocateur and Damon Zex’s Checkmate.

We’re thrilled for the opportunity to help bring Damon’s work to a wider audience.

WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE

Next week, look for a lengthy review of the Hungarian subway flick Kontroll (2003), the lowdown on the new-to-DVD Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! tribute Bitch Slap (2009), and coverage of the would-be cult musical Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008).

After a few down weeks for bizarre search terms used to locate this site, the Internet showed us glimpses of Googles potential to generate random and surreal requests this week.  We liked “movie french clown war” (actually we want to see that one), “french hypno sex” (but who doesn’t?), and our runner-up, “donney a boy is 13 black hair the vampire in 2009.”  But once again we’ll vote for simplicity and honor “who makes odd movies named richard” as our weirdest search term of the week.

Here’s how the reader-suggested review queue currently looks: Suicide Club; O Lucky Man!; Trash Humpers (when/if released); Gozu; 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]; Necromania (1971, Ed Wood); 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; Taxidermia; 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); The Human Centipede (First Sequence); 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; and we’ll even take a stab at locating the hard-to-find short “Zombie Jesus.”

WEIRD HORIZON FOR THE WEEK OF 4/16/2010

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):

Pornography: A Thriller (2009):  Murder and weirdness in three related tales from the world of gay porn.  The press release promises us that “surreal and supernatural elements weave together these three haunting stories.”  Due to its subject matter and less than thrilling reviews it’s exceedingly unlikely to be coming to a theater near you. Expect a DVD release soon.  Pornography: A Thriller official site.

UPCOMING:

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Undead (2009):  The wacky premise involves a vampire writing a bizarre adaptation of Hamlet.  The distributors promise a “perfect mix of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer,’ Terry Gilliam, Dude Where’s My Car and Woody Allen all in one fantastic film!” Release date was originally scheduled for this week but has been pushed back to June 11.  Rosencrantz and Guildendtern are Undead official site.

NEW ON DVD:

Essential Art House, Vol. 5: Courtesy of Janus films under the Criterion imprint, the Essential Art House series positions itself a low priced, extras-free alternative to Criterion Collection’s special editions. Beyond the “art house” theme, the selections are relatively random. Vol. 5 includes David Lean’s adaptation of Noel Coward’s Brief Encounters, the 1959 Japanese drama Floating Weeds, Francois Truffaut’s Jules and Jim, the Finnish holocaust drama Kapo (1959), and Milos Forman’s Loves of a Blonde (1965). We mention it because of the sixth feature: Fellini’s weird masterpice 8 1/2. Buy Essential Art House, Volume Five.

Nightmare on Elm Street Collection: With its iconic villain, multiple dream sequences and blackly comic puns, A Nightmare on Elm Street was a bright spot of imagination in the wasteland of 1980s teen-oriented slasher horrors. Later entries in the series became much campier than the frightening original, but were enjoyable nonetheless. This box set collects together Nightmares 1-5 along with Freddy’s Dead, Ronnie Yu’s “high concept” Freddy vs. Jason, and 1994’s Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, an admirable attempt to steer the series away from self-parody and back to horror. Buy Nightmare on Elm Street Collection.

Tenderness (2009): Despite starring Russel Crowe, theaters passed on this serial killer thriller and it debuts on DVD this week. Reviews are mediocre, but Bret Frazer of Amazon suggests that “flashes of David Lynch-esque eeriness provide some thrills” and fan reviewers often describe it as “strange” or “odd.” Buy Tenderness.

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.

Celebrating the cinematically surreal, bizarre, cult, oddball, fantastique, strange, psychedelic, and the just plain WEIRD!