Miscellanea

WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE

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Expect to see reviews of Brainiac, the magnificent Pan’s Labyrinth [El laberinto del fauno], and more next week.

We’ve been tracking and documenting the weirdest search terms used to locate the site for a while now. However, every now and then something slips by. We looked at Alexa’s web information page the other day, and learned that “weird animal attached to woman’s face” is the top search term people click on to get here. Who knew?

OK, now to that ever-growing reader-suggested review queue (followed by an explanation of why it’s not likely to be cut down significantly any time soon):

Pan’s Labyrinth (next week), Greasers Palace (substituted for Institute Benjamenta), Waking Life, Survive Style 5+, The Dark Backward, The Short Films of David Lynch, Santa Sangre, Dead Man, Inland Empire, Monday (assuming I can find an English language version), The Abominable Dr. Phibes, Barton Fink, What? (Diary of Forbidden Dreams), Meatball Machine, Xtro, Basket Case, Suicide Club, O Lucky Man! , Harmony Korine’s Trash Humpers (if it’s released), Takashi Miike’s Gozu,  Tales of Ordinary Madness, and The Wayward Cloud, Kwaidan, Six-String Samurai, and Andy Warhol’s Trash.

OK, that’s a long list of titles to cover, and it’s not likely to get much shorter very soon.  When I woke up this morning, I noticed there was a bit of a chill in the air, a chill that spells: November.  And to any dedicated movie-review webmaster, November means one thing and one thing only: “I only have two months left to cover all those 2009 releases I skipped over so that I can create a meaningful Weirdest Movies of 2009 list.”  Just glancing through our weekly Weird Horizons, I noticed that there are at least eight high priority 2009 releases that we never covered because they never made it to a theater near us.  That’s not to mention a dozen or so less interesting movies, and a few intriguing movies that have yet to show up on DVD.

In other words, although we’d like to whittle that reader-review list down, we’re making the primary focus in the next two months to cover Weird 2009.  That doesn’t mean we won’t be throwing in older movies, including reader suggestions, into the mix: we’ll just be tackling them at a slightly slower rate than our usual glacial pace.

Saturday Short, Shorts

SATURDAY SHORT: HALLOWEEN TRASH (2007)

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What the heck is a Shaye St. John? From the evidence provided in this short, it’s a scary, androgynous mask wearing figure that likes to film itself verbally abusing passing trick-or-treaters, then remix the resulting footage to make it look like a low-grade acid trip.  Or maybe it’s a robot?  Maybe its My Space page would help?

Oh, and happy Halloween, you luscious piece of trash!

Miscellanea

WEIRD HORIZON FOR THE WEEK OF 10/30/2009

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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):

The House of the Devil:  A satanic creepfest set in the 1980s, which (word has it) plays out like a forgotten VHS era occult gem.  Maybe not weird, but clearly offbeat, and the presence of cult actress Mary (Eating Raoul) Woronov doesn’t hurt anything.  Opening in L.A. with limited national distribution thereafter.  In a sign of the times, it’s also already gotten a “pre-theatrical” release via video on demand (rent).  House of the Devil official site.

NEW ON DVD:

Adult Swim in a Box (Aqua Teen Hunger Force Volume 2 / Space Ghost Season 3 / Moral Oral Season 1 / Robot Chicken Season 2 / Metalocalypse Season 1 / Sealab Season 2): What twentysomething hipster doesn’t dream of finding this 7-disc set and a one pound brick of medical-grade marijuana (with prescription) under their tree on Christmas morning? Contains and extra disc of failed pilots from the boundary-pushing late night cartoon lineup. Buy from Amazon.

Afterwards (2008): A New York lawyer meets a doctor (John Malkovich) who can foretell who is going to die. Reviewers used adjectives such as lyrical, allegorical, boring and pretentious to describe this arthouse non-hit that nonetheless may be to some tastes. Buy from Amazon.

Death in the Garden [Mort en ce jardin] (1956):  This minor Buñuel adventure piece from his Mexican Marxist period concerns conflicts between gold prospectors and the state. The director’s Surrealist tendencies were on the backburner during this period, so this one is for dedicated Buñuelists and Communist sympathizers only. Buy from Amazon .

Fear(s) of the Dark [Peur’s du Noir] (2007): A French horror anthology containing six black and white animated shorts dealing with themes of fear and night. As with all anthologies, the films likely vary as to quality and bizarreness. Buy from Amazon.

Monty Python: Almost the Truth (The Lawyers Cut) (2009): Six hours of interviews and clips spread out over three discs tell the entire story of the famous British comedy troupe that made absurdism fashionable through the 1970s. A must-get for dedicated fans. Buy from Amazon.

Night of the Creeps (1986): Long-anticipated released of the intentional campy cult 1980s horror/sci-fi flick that simultaneously sends up and pays honest tribute to teen sex comedies, alien invasion pics and zombie movies. Buy from Amazon

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Monty Python: Almost the Truth (The Lawyers Cut): See the description above in the DVD section. Buy Blu-ray from Amazon

Night of the Creeps (1986): See the description above in the DVD section. Buy Blu-ray from Amazon

The Prisoner: The Complete Series: The classically Kafka-esque, paranoid, psychedelic-era BBC TV series about a retired spy who finds himself held prisoner by the government on a surreal island makes it’s welcome debut on Blu-ray. Buy from Amazon.

NEW FREE (LEGITIMATE) MOVIES ON YOUTUBE:

Sex Madness (1938): From the demented mind of Dwain Esper (Reefer Madness, Maniac) comes another hysterically exploitative “warn your children!” anti-classic, wherein a promiscuous chorus girl catches syphilis from the casting couch.  Watch Sex Madness free on YouTube.

HAUNTED HOUSES (INDIANAPOLIS AREA):

The Asylum House is running a series of high-tech, interactive hauntings in the Indy area. Our own Alfred Eaker is involved in a mysterious, occult capacity with the Crypt of Shadows.  Check ’em out for a frightful time if you’re in the area; this is professional stuff.

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

NIGHTMARE THEATER WITH SAMMY TERRY

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On Friday nights in Indiana during the 1960’s and 70’s, you invited your best friend over to spend the night (Denny), pleaded with Mom to fix a tray of pizza rolls and, out of courtesy, asked to stay up late for a night of Nightmare Theater with Sammy Terry. Of course, Mom always allowed it, as you knew she would, fixed those pizza rolls, brought in the blankets and left the two of you to your night of magic because she sure as heck was not going to watch those “scary movies’.

The creaking of the coffin filled the house as you watched, transfixed, as Sammy Terry and his spider, George, emerged to host a night of classic horror.  Usually, it was one of the Universal movies starring Karloff, Lugosi, or Chaney, Jr.

Bride of  Frankenstein, Dracula, The Mummy, The Black Room, Werewolf of London, The Invisible Man, The Wolfman, Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman, and Creature from the Black Lagoon were frequently shown favorites.  Quite a few of the Val Lewton RKOs were shown regularly, as well as the occasional Jack Arnold film, such as Monster on the Campus, Tarantula, or The Incredible Shrinking Man. My own personal favortie was Ulmer’s The Black Cat with Karloff and Lugosi battling out to strains of the Beethoven 7th. If the films shown on Nightmare Theater were  not always approached by the filmmakers as high art (i.e. The Wolfman) , then there was certainly consummate craftsmanship that one always felt Sammy approved of.

In between the features, Sammy Terry would discuss the movies, make jokes with George and other regulars (Ghost Girl, Ghoulsbie) , have an occasional guest, talk about the Pacers, or show off the crayola drawings of Sammy and George that local children would send to WTTV 4.  Sammy had an inimitable laugh that would send shivers down the 8 year old spine.

If you made it to the end of the night (and frequently did not, hence the blankets)  Sammy would retreat to his coffin and bestow his wish of “Many Pleasant Nightmares.”  You knew, with excitement and dread, that he would return the following Friday.

There were lots of local urban myths about Sammy Terry and we were all too happy to spread those myths to fellow classmates since Sammy was a favorite subject.  Of course, this was long before the days of cable TV, VCRs, and even color TV (at least until the mid 70’s at our house) so the local WTTV 4 Station ruled the roost out of the four available TV Continue reading NIGHTMARE THEATER WITH SAMMY TERRY →

Canonically Weird (The List)

39. COWARDS BEND THE KNEE, OR, THE BLUE HANDS (2003)

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“I only include things that are psychologically true in my stories, no matter how bizarre, stupid, silly or gratuitous the episodes in them may seem… I can only hope that the spectacle of me trying to inflict pain on hard-to-reach places on my own body is amusing to some people.”–Guy Maddin

Must SeeWeirdest!

DIRECTED BY: Guy Maddin

FEATURING: , Melissa Dionisio,

PLOT: Amateur hockey player Guy Maddin falls in love with the proprietor’s daughter when he takes his current girlfriend to a hair salon/brothel for an abortion. The daughter, Meta, will not give herself to a man until her father’s death at the hands of her mother is avenged. To accomplish this, she wants to transplant her dead father’s hands onto Guy, so that it will be her father’s hands that strangle her mother.

Still from Cowards Bend the Knee (2003)

BACKGROUND:

  • Commissioned by the Power Plant Art Gallery of Toronto.
  • On its debut at the International Film Festival in Rotterdam, viewers watched the ten chapters of Cowards Bend the Knee through ten peepholes in a wall. Spectators had to kneel to put the peepholes at eye level.
  • Maddin issued a companion book to Cowards Bend the Knee (now a collector’s item) containing an expanded screenplay of the film and an interview with Maddin where he discusses Coward‘s autobiographical elements and gives his personal interpretations of the film.
  • Autobiographical elements abound in Cowards Bend the Knee. Maddin’s real life Aunt Lil owned a beauty parlor similar to the one that appears in the film. Maddin’s father coached the Winnipeg Maroons, a pre-NHL professional hockey team; the actual Allan Cup championship ring his father won appears in the film.
  • Maddin’s mother, Herdis, a non-actress, played Meta’s grandmother in the film.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: As Veronica lies on the operating table undergoing a clandestine abortion, the blood streaming between her legs forms itself into a Canadian maple leaf.

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Cowards features Maddin’s trademark in-your-face style (a mix of silent film artifacts and glitchy hypermodern editing); crazed, dreamlike narrative (incorporating hockey matches, beauty salons, murder, infidelity, ghosts, and a hand transplant); and a wildly veering, yet somehow coherent tone that moves from melodrama to slapstick to absurdist vintage pornography to Greek tragedy in the space of a few frames. If that’s not enough, there’s the fact that the entire story is observed by a scientist, who witnesses it being played out while looking through a microscope at a dab of semen on a slide. Weird enough for you?

[wposflv src=http://366weirdmovies.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Cowards-Bend-the-Knee.flv width=480 height=360 previewimage=http://366weirdmovies.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/cowards-bend-the-knee-still.jpg title=”Cowards Bend the Knee clip”]
Clip from Cowards Bend the Knee

COMMENTS: Maddin’s Cowards Bend the Knee is a dream, and like all dreams it is at the Continue reading 39. COWARDS BEND THE KNEE, OR, THE BLUE HANDS (2003) →

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