Out of the kindness of her heart and her desire to spread the weird movies gospel around the world, Irina Goncharova has translated certain articles and reviews from this site into Russian! For those who speak Russian, the articles can be found at the author’s website, along with her other other writings and translations. Thank you very much Ms. Goncharova!
WEIRD HORIZON FOR THE WEEK OF 5/29/09
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 (WIDE RELEASE):
Drag Me to Hell (2009): Sam Raimi returns to the horror genre, but judging by the trailer I wouldn’t expect anything Evil Dead-esque or too out of the ordinary; the in-demand Spiderman director now has too much to lose by being innovative. Prove me wrong, Sam! Drag Me to Hell official site.
IN THEATERS (LIMITED RELEASE):
Daytime Drinking [Not Sool] (2008): Per the press release, this low-budget South Korean pic about a drinker on “an increasingly strange odyssey nursing a never-ending hangover.” The publicists compare it to quirky indie films like Stranger than Paradise and Sideways. Daytime Drinking official site.
Pontypool (2009): An intellectual zombie movie from Canada wherein zombism is spread in a surprising (and allegorical) way. Pontypool official site.
NEW ON DVD:
Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus (2009): What could we say about this product that the title doesn’t already tell you? Well, it’s got a dream cast of Lorenzo Lamas and Debbie Gibson and it’s from Asylum, a studio that specializes in rushing out direct-to-DVD movies that sound a lot like recent hits (e.g., Transmorphers). How bad could it possibly be? Buy from Amazon
The Sky Crawlers [Sukai kurora] (2008): Latest visually impressive sci-fi anime from Mamoru Oshii, director of Ghost in the Shell, about children who are trained from birth as pilots to fight in an endless dogfight. Buy from Amazon
NEW ON YOUTUBE (LEGITIMATE STUDIO-SANCTIONED RELEASES):
Christmas Evil (1980): Offbeat, low budget character study about a killer Santa that’s not as exploitative as future films exploring the same “killer Santa” territory. Read our capsule review. Watch 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.
SIGNE BAUMANE: WOMAN
“Alfred Eaker’s Fringe Cinema” is a column published on Thursdays covering truly independent cinema: the stuff that’s so far under the public radar it may as well be underground. The folks making these films may be starving artists today, but they may be recognized as geniuses tomorrow. We hope to look like geniuses ourselves by being the first to cover them.
“When I don’t think about film, I think about sex. Every 10 seconds. I have the sense that my head is very close to my genitals.” So speaks Latvian animator Signe Baumane in the documentary Signe and…. It’s part of an indispensable and unique collection of Baumane’s animated shorts called Ten Animated Films by Signe Baumane.
True to her word, there is sex aplenty in most of the films in this collection, including her recent Teat Beat of Sex, and Baumane goes a long way to prove obsession in art is indeed a good thing.
In Natasha, a lonely housewife finds a vacuum cleaner is just as effective as any man. In Five F___king Fables the head of a decapitated princess gives a man oral while a dog performs cunnilingus on her, penises do indeed come in every shape, size, color and form, and Georgia O’Keefe’s erotic flowers are taken to a whole new level. These are just a few of the repeated erotic images and themes that make up Baumane’s world.
Baumane is refreshingly open and candid in the documentary Signe and… Her sexuality is naturally frank, while never being worn on sleeve. Her work never condescends to the level of shock for the sake of shock art, as a few critics have claimed, because feminine sexuality is but one of several recurring obsessive themes.
Baumane’s horror of the dentist chair is visited repeatedly. The Dentist and Five Infomercials for Dentists amusingly call to mind W.C. Fields’ take on the subject matter.
Baumane is most compelling in allegorical territory. Tiny Shoes visits a theme often repeated in classic literature such as “Hymn of the Pearl.” A girl is given specific instructions from her dying father and, after his death, she embarks upon a journey, during which she forgets her promise and ignores all of her father’s instructions. Naturally, her foolishness will cost her plenty, but this is served up Signe Baumane style, Continue reading SIGNE BAUMANE: WOMAN
CAPSULE: THE TOXIC AVENGER (1984)
DIRECTED BY: Lloyd Kaufman & Michael Herz
FEATURING: Mitchell Cohen
PLOT: A nerdy teen janitor is tormented by his serial killer peers until he accidentally
falls into a vat of toxic waste and emerges as a mop-wielding, avenging mutant superhero.
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: When a movie about a mutant janitor who fights transvestite thugs and, to add insult to injury, presses his wet mop into their heads after he disembowels them can’t find a place on a list of weird movies, you know you’re searching for a very refined brand of weirdness indeed.
COMMENTS: The Toxic Avenger has just enough craziness going on to make it watchable, but it’s not nearly the classic its cult reputation might suggest. Although an absurd thread runs throughout to keep it sporadically interesting, its sniper-like focus on chesty chicks and cheesy kills keeps it squarely locked in on its target audience of males under 25. Others will find the goofy spoofery seldom funny and often offensive (for example, the hit and run killing of young boys and racial minorities for sport). There are few laugh-out-loud moments for grown-ups, although a scene in the middle of a crime-fighting montage where superhero Toxie helps a housewife with a stubborn jar lid does elicit a chuckle. The centerpiece hostage scene at a restaurant tells you all you need to know: a gang of robbers wearing performance art greasepaint burst in, shoot a blind girl’s seeing-eye dog, and prepare to sodomize her when Toxie arrives. Our hero fights a battle against a gangster with ninja skills who grabs a samurai sword off the wall (of a Mexican restaurant?), and in the end the mutant dweeb gruesomely and painfully dispatches them with a milkshake machine and a deep fryer. It’s a fantasy of nerd revenge against the upper crust of high school society, as Toxie dismembers obnoxious jocks (a justified act, since like all popular people, his tormentors are inhuman monsters who like to mow down kids in their cars and masturbate to the gory Polaroids afterward). The movie invites us to identify with and cheer for Toxie as, Michael Meyers-like, he stalks and kills half-naked girls (who are, of course, evil, and deserve to be dispatched for the good of Tromaville). Ultimately, this Columbine-esque wish fulfillment, where the beleaguered kid not only kills his bullies but becomes a beloved celebrity and gets the girl, creates a subtext that’s far more offensive than any of child killings or the pre-teen white slavery ring Kaufman and Herz try to shock us with.
The Toxic Avenger‘s blend of horror-movie gore, gross-out offensiveness, proudly lowbrow comedy, and absurd touches struck a nerve in the 1980s, when it bypassed the normal movie distribution channels to become one of the first cult videocassette hits. It was so successful that Troma studios has been remaking this same film, under a variety of titles, for the last 25 years.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
ARTSPLOITATION – THE BASTARD OFFSPRING OF “BLOOD OF A POET” AND “SEX MANIAC”
Every knows what “exploitation” films are: films that deliberately appeal to audiences baser nature, and try to lure in viewers with the promise of sex, nudity, violence, and moral degeneracy.
When a film tries to appeal to an audience’s higher nature, to their intellect and aesthetic sense, but at the same time promises plenty of sex, nudity, violence, and moral degeneracy, then you have an “artsploitation” film.
Not all art films which deal with sex or include nudity or violence qualify as artsploitation films. There needs to be some gratuitous or sensationalist element to merit the “-ploitation” suffix. There’s little truly exploitative about the way sex is treated in Sex and Lucia, for example; sex is a natural part of the character’s relationship and there are good plot and thematic justifications for each coupling.
Although the “artsploitation” genre can’t be reduced to a simple recipe, and does not necessarily involve remaking some sort of recognized formula film in an arty way, as a first step at identifying the category, here’s a short list of some art films that also fit neatly into a recognized exploitation film sub-genre:
- EL TOPO (1970) = arthouse + Spaghetti Western
- THE DEVILS (1971) = arthouse + nunsploitation
- LIQUID SKY (1982) = arthouse + science fiction
- GOTHIC (1986) = arthouse + horror
- LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM (1988) = arthouse + horror
- SANTA SANGRE (1989) = arthouse + serial killers
- THE THIEF, THE COOK, HIS WIFE & HER LOVER (1989)= arthouse + gross-out cannibal film
- DELLAMORTE, DELLAMORE [CEMETARY MAN] (1994) = arthouse + zombie film
- KIDS (1995) = arthouse + juvenile delinquency
- NOWHERE (1997) = arthouse + juvenile delinquency + drugsploitation + sci-fi B-movie
Another simple way to identify an artsploitation film: look for the name “Ken Russell” under director.
Exploitation films, which used to play at drive-ins, fleapits and grindhouses, and are now often released directly to video, are considered “trash cinema,” and distinguishable both from mainstream films and from art-house films. They began as early as the 1930s, when Hollywood’s Hays Code created a lucrative gray market for films dealing with forbidden subject matter like prostitution, drug abuse, and revenge killings. Cheaply made films such as Reefer Madness [Tell Your Children] (1936) (the famously campy anti-marijuana flick), Child Bride (1938) (which dealt with the “serious” problem of child marriage among hillbillies by having a 12 year old girl perform nude scenes), and Mom and Dad (1945) (which advertised itself as a “hygiene” film and showed the birth of an illegitimate baby in graphic, gaping detail) quickly stepped in to take advantage of Hollywood’s shyness about sex. An alternative, parallel cinema of forbidden delights Continue reading ARTSPLOITATION – THE BASTARD OFFSPRING OF “BLOOD OF A POET” AND “SEX MANIAC”