Worried pet owner Tina consults a pair of psychic science cranks in hopes of speaking to her dying pooch MeeMoo. From Dmitri Simakis, half of the team behind Everything is Terrible!, this short was briefly referenced in Pod 366, Ep. 49. CONTENT WARNING: Adult language.
POD 366, EP. 100: A SECRET MISSION OVERSEAS
366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.
Quick links/Discussed in this episode:
Motel Hell (1980): Read Giles Edwards review. A Steelbook with a 4K UHD and Blu-ray of the cheesy (but fun) cannibal comedy. A Walmart exclusive.
Rampo Noir (2005): Read Gregory J. Smalley’s review. The Edogawa Rampo anthology receives a deluxe Blu-ray from the good folks at Arrow. Buy Rampo Noir.
Things Will Be Different (2024): Read Giles Edwards’ review. This is a DVD only U.S. release (a Blu-ray available in European edition). Buy Things Will Be Different.
NEPOTISM CORNER:
Co-host “Penguin” Pete Trbovich is now on Medium: https://medium.com/@levitatingrock
WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE:
As Giles mentions, he and El Rob Hubbard will host next week’s Pod 366 as Gregory J. Smalley is still on vacation overseas. In written reviews, Shane Wilson will cover reader-suggestion Memoirs of a Survivor (1981) and Giles Edwards clues you in on Ryan Kruger‘s 2023 remake of Street Trash. Meanwhile Greg tries to run things using beach wi-fi (meaning posting and promotions may be sporadic). Onward and weirdward!
CAPSULE: LOVE LIES BLEEDING (2024)
366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.
DIRECTED BY: Rose Glass
FEATURING: Kristen Stewart, Katy O’Brian, Jena Malone, Anna Baryshnikov, Dave Franco, Ed Harris
PLOT: In a small Southwestern city, Lou (Stewart) manages a gym and generally keeps her head down, keeping an eye on her sister, Beth (Malone) and her abusive husband, JJ (Franco), while keeping distance from her dad, Lou Sr. (Harris), a major player in the local crime scene. When Lou meets Jackie, who’s temporarily working for her dad while saving money for a body building competition in Vegas, sparks fly, setting off a conflagration which threatens to burn everything to the ground.
COMMENTS: It’s reductive to call Love Lies Bleeding just a queer neo-noir, but that is basically what it is. It hits all the right noir notes: shady characters mired in shady dealings for questionable reasons. The setting (New Mexico, 1989) brings the “neo” to the noir, along with the fact that the star-crossed protagonists are a lesbian couple instead of the usual heterosexual pairing. And at first glance, it seems that, interesting and entertaining as it is—performances are good all around, as well as Glass’ direction—there’s nothing truly “weird” about this, at least not in the way we at 366 Weird Movies define the term.
However, as an A24 release, it’s at least atypical: it ain’t no Bound, for sure. For one thing, the setting allows for Glass and co-writer Weronika Tofilska to make some cultural commentary. There’s a solid background of violence always hovering about, and Lou Sr.’s club/shooting range is always packed with people eagerly exercising their Second Amendment rights, evoking specters of the wild west. There’s also the gym rat culture: intimidating motivational slogans and steroid use, which is a major plot point in the story.
The weird elements aren’t exactly subtle, but they are startling and metaphorical: a massive ravine in the landscape that reads as rather vaginal and several instances of ‘roid rage. At the bodybuidling competition, Jackie vomits up a full-grown Lou. The climatic confrontation between Jackie, Lou, and Lou Sr. has been called “the most A24 ending of A24 endings.” It works well, as long as it’s not taken literally, and it doesn’t detract from the denouement, which isn’t afraid to put the worm in the apple, as noir endings go. It may not be “weird” in the full sense, but there’s enough weird to notice in this hot, queer neo-noir.
Currently streaming on several platforms like Max, Hulu, and Sling, the film is also on a Region-free Blu-ray with a commentary by Glass and Tofilska, two featurettes—“In the Land of Guns and Muscles” and “Sex, Steroids and Codependency”—and an image gallery. A 4K UHD will be available in January 2025.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
- Blu-ray Movies, Blu-ray TV Shows
APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: DREAMS THAT MONEY CAN BUY (1947)
366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.
Dreams That Money Can Buy has been placed on the Apocryphally Weird list. Please read the official entry here.
DIRECTED BY: Hans Richter
FEATURING: Jack Bittner
PLOT: Once Joe develops the power to observe his inner self and secures a lease for an office—not in that order, mind—he enters the dream-selling business.
WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: With the era’s avant-garde luminaries assembled here, you couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting all of them as they worked on the set. One room, a mountain of oddball talent, and dreams, dreams, dreams.
COMMENTS: The title, the talent, not to mention the where…: Dreams That Money Can Buy is one of the most American movies out there. It’s behind its time—it’s ahead of its time; it bounces gaily, and turns on a dime. Calder and Cage, and Duchamp, and Man Ray: devising the dreams for the money you’ll pay. Three years, seven dreams, one Manhattan loft—and anchored by Joe, with his Cagney-esque coif.
Of all the random titles I’ve stumbled across, Richter’s Dreams That Money Can Buy stands out like flower-child noir; like a Seussian corporate video; like… perhaps nothing I’ve seen before. The opening credits clued me in to the fact that this motion picture (from 1947? sure, sure) was going to be more than a little out there. It was a pleasant surprise—again, from the start—to find it such a jolly jaunt through the deep subconscious up into the luminescently tactile, with the occasional staccato of life in the ’40s.
Meet Joe: “Look at yourself: a real mess, you’re all mixed up; snap out of it! Get yourself fixed up. Even if poets misbehave, they always remember to shave. Say, what’s the matter, Joe? Something gone wrong? Is your head on wrong? No! It’s terrific! Here’s something on which you can really pride yourself: you’ve discovered you can look inside yourself. You know what that means? You’re promoted! You’re no longer a bum—you’re an artist!” And a businessman. He sells dreams of desire, techno-futurism, and identity. We meet a pamphleteer offering membership to the Society for the Abolition of Abolition, or Daughters of American Grandfathers. On-screen audiences mimic on-screen-on-screen performances. A full-wire tabletop circus delights and astounds. Glittering mobiles tickle light across the camera lens. Our hero disappears, briefly, after receiving a wallop from a thug demanding a lead on the races. But while you may have recovered, Joe, beware the poker-chip’s probing eye…
Dreams That Money Can Buy is jam-packed with surrealism and lightheartedness: always sprightly, but never saccharine. The sights and sounds evoke the dreamy past, and the hazy future. (The closing track, composed for this mid-’40s feature, sounds like an obscure B-side from the late ’60s.) More fun-house than art-house, Richter and his team gaily crash the dour columns of haute couture and build a wonder-world from the freshly minted tumble of rubble.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: THE SEA THAT THINKS [DE ZEE DIE DENKT] (2000)
366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.
DIRECTED BY: Gert de Graaff
FEATURING: Bart Klever, Rick de Leeuw, Devika Strooker
PLOT: A screenwriter is hard at work on a film about the impossibility of reality, and begins to incorporate his every thought and action into the script, which in turn directs the action of the writer, which results in the very film we are watching—unless he decides to delete the document.
WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE APOCRYPHA: The Sea That Thinks is a rich, dense text about the intangibility of everything, and it has the guts to put this challenging concept into practice, making for the most self-reflexive motion picture imaginable. An exercise like this should be the height of navel-gazing, and an astonishing amount portion of the soundscape is given over to dry oration about the futility of independent thought, but the mix of captivating imagery and surprising action makes for a fascinating film, regardless of whether you acknowledge that it exists.
COMMENTS: I am writing this review. That’s a thing that is happening, right now, as I type these words on a laptop. I will keep on typing until some point in the future when I have concluded that the words I have assembled to describe this movie and its weirdness are good enough to submit (although, being a writer, I will never think it’s “good enough”). Then I will transfer the words into a content management system, where the esteemed editor of this website will look them over, make appropriate changes to produce a marked improvement in the quality of the piece, and finally choose a day for the review to be shared with the world, forever joining the public discourse…
…except that I can’t be writing this review because I’ve already written it. The present moment is you reading this, right now. Unless, of course, you’re not reading this right now. Maybe you’ve paused, or perhaps you’ve skipped ahead to the comments. It’s possible that no one is reading this at this particular moment. And if they’re not, do these words even exist? Did I even have the thought? Did I watch the movie? Is there a movie? Is there a me? How can you be sure there’s a you?
By now, you should be getting a taste of the mental ouroboros that is the mind of Bart Klever, a writer who is struggling to churn out a screenplay and who is caught in an intellectual loop about the nature of creativity and reality. And while you’re at it, welcome also to the mind of director Gert de Graaff, who has crafted the screenplay for De Zee Die Denkt, which is about writing a movie called De Zee Die Denkt and which includes a character named “Bart Klever” to be played by an actor named Bart Klever. Yes, it’s the infinity mirror gone Hollywood. This is a movie that lays out its challenge from the very beginning and never lets up.
We don’t meet Bart right away. Instead, we begin with the three awakenings of a character named Rick (played by an actor named Rick): first in front of a frustrated camera crew whose latest take is interrupted by a cannon blast of water shooting through the windows; next, the film crew is gone, but when Rick gets up to answer Continue reading APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: THE SEA THAT THINKS [DE ZEE DIE DENKT] (2000)