“Renegade” is an homage to 1940’s pulp magazines, you may assume correctly that there’s a good guy, a bad guy, and a damsel in distress. What makes these stories unique, and even weird by today’s standards, is what the good guy has to go through to save said damsel from her distress. “Renegade” maintains a great approach, and fortunately doesn’t go as far as the notorious story featured in Man’s Life, “Weasels Ripped My Flesh“.
WEIRD HORIZON FOR THE WEEK OF 10/17/2014
Our weekly 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):
Young Ones: Family melodrama set on a parched post-apocalyptic ranch. Critics seem unable to figure out exactly what to make of this strange melange of genres from Jake (brother of Gwyneth) Paltrow, but they acknowledge it’s unique. Young Ones official site.
NEW ON DVD:
Witching and Bitching (2103): Alex de la Iglesia’s latest sounds like From Dusk Till Dawn with witches; bank robbers fleeing a heist run into a coven in the woods. The Village Voice says it’s “the rare wannabe cult hit that smears the screen in grade-A craziness.” Buy Witching & Bitching
Wonderland (2011): A serial killer employs a drug that allows those who take it to enter other peoples’ consciousnesses to cause a wave of suicides. Co-written by Jimmy ScreamerClauz (not a misprint), director of Where the Dead Go to Die. Buy Wonderland
You and the Night (2013): A couple and their transvestite maid throw an orgy: the invited guests are known only as “the Slut,” “the Star,” “the Stud,” and “the Teen.” This being an avant-garde French film, they talk a lot. Cahiers du Cinéma listed it in their top ten of 2013, for what that’s worth. Buy You And The Night
NEW ON BLU-RAY:
Cauldron of Blood (1970): Read our review. We also like an Amazon reviewer’s summary: “a movie this strange can only be a product of really poor decision making.” Buy Cauldron of Blood [Blu-ray]
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.
THE RAVEN (1935)
The Raven (1935) marks the second teaming of Universal’s dual horror stars: Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. It is also downright mortifying in its pedestrianism. Director Lew Landers simply did not have the sense of style or vision with which Edgar G.Ulmer imbued The Black Cat (1934) . Worse, Landers lacked the foresight or directorial strength to shape or reign in Lugosi’s performance. Lugosi’s overacting is both the key to that which remains most fascinating about The Raven and, paradoxically, sinks the film into abject parody. It was Lugosi’s deliriously sadistic antics here which inspired the two-year UK ban on horror films. The ban significantly hurt Lugosi, causing his salary stock, never good to begin, to plummet. Seeing The Raven today through a decidedly more jaded contemporary lens, one wonders what all the fuss was about. Still, one can easily imagine why 1935 audiences were nonplussed regarding the Hungarian ham.
As the Edgar Allan Poe-obsessed, stark staring mad Dr. Vollin, Lugosi melodramatically throws up his arms, laughs maniacally, and screams: “Poe, you are avenged!” It plays like a scene out of a wretched comic book, with a Transylvanian Marx Brother in the lead role. The reason for Vollin’s madness is his unrequited love of the prettified Jean Thatcher (Irene Ware), which never seems feasible. In gratitude for Vollin saving her life, Jean does a Poe-inspired ballet for him, but the dance is as dull as she is. Earlier, Vollin compares himself to a god, and that is ultimately the nagging problem with Lugosi’s screen persona. Karloff inspires us to identify with his suffering and outsider status: Lugosi, with few exceptions, distances himself from his audience.
While Lugosi undoubtedly sends The Raven crashing, the film would have imploded from boredom without him. Aside from Karloff, the rest of the cast is a non-presence, alternately delivering lethargic line readings and grotesque comedy relief, which is anything but. The only relief is supplied by the two stars, who are our lifeline, even through all that Lugosi pretension.
Lugosi has a chilling, seductive moment when asking Jean if her injured neck still hurts. We sense his glee in the potential of her pain. This scene of intimate sadism works far better than his later howling. However, even in Lugosi’s most embarrassing moments, he remains alluring through his presence and his idiosyncratic mangling of the English language: “Torture, I love torture! What a deeelicccious torture!” When Vollin has just mutilated Karloff’s Bateman, the victim, upon seeing his own reflection, shoots out the room of mirrors. Lugosi’s Vollin responds with a hair raising cackle. Vollin would have felt at home in Margaret Hamilton‘s castle.
Unfortunately, Karloff is saddled with one of Jack Pierce’s absolute worst makeup jobs, which seriously threatens to undermine his performance. The actor even has a been there, done that canned monster growl. Playing second fiddle, Karloff’s discomfort occasionally shows. Still, he is our humanist touchstone. The strength of his performance lies in his introduction as a gangster on the lam, pre-mutilating surgery. He has an outcast monster-like sense of resilience and pathos, and with no help from his director or makeup man, Karloff is forced to rely solely on his own internal resources. He succeeds with underrated, protean skills, delivering a refreshingly nuanced performance, even through a fake, pancake eye. Fortunately, Karloff never descends into Lugosi’s level of cringe-inducing caricature.
The rest of the film is merely a commercial for torture devices. Just as in a commercial, little drama is drawn from the props. Apart from the two leads, The Raven is adolescent, gothic decor.
5TH IRREGULARLY SCHEDULED READERS’ CHOICE POLL
Now that we’ve Certified 182 of an eventual 366 movies as Weird, we’re now officially almost halfway through the List of the Best Weird Movies ever made. We’re very near the Point of No Return, about to go over the hump and get on the downhill slope. We’d like you, the loyal (and even the not-so-loyal) readers to chose the movies to celebrate this milestone.
As observant readers notice, some movies make the List on a first screening, while we nominate others as “List Candidates.” Sometimes these films are lovable classics with powerful imagery, but they’re only a little bit weird. Sometimes they’re amazingly bizarre, but utter crap. Sometimes the reviewer was in a bad mood when they screened it and didn’t give it a fair chance. And, although we’d never admit it, sometimes a movie was good enough to make the List on the first ballot, but we were too busy to write up a full Certified Entry that week and dashed off a List Candidate review instead. The end result is that any of the films listed below could have been placed on the List of the 366 Best Weird Movies, but we chickened out and made each of them “List Candidates” instead.
Although these movies arrived at this point by different routes, they’re all in the same boat now. They all need your help to ensure their rightful spot on the List! Usually we only allow readers to vote two films on the List: in celebration of reaching the midway point (and because we have a lot more candidates than usual), we have split the voting into three groups. Please select one candidate from Group A (movies from 1932-1975), one from Group B (1979-2008), and one from Group C (2008-present). You can vote once per day. Voting closes at midnight (EST) on October 29, 2014.
Past Reader Choices that made the List were Alice, Visitor Q, Pink Floyd: The Wall, Trash Humpers, The American Astronaut, Dead Ringers, Keyhole, and Sweet Movie.
Comments are encouraged: maybe you can sway others to vote for your favorite?
You may vote once per day until the poll ends on October 29.
Vote below: Continue reading 5TH IRREGULARLY SCHEDULED READERS’ CHOICE POLL
LIST CANDIDATE: RUBIN AND ED (1991)
DIRECTED BY: Trent Harris
FEATURING: Howard Hessman, Crispin Glover, Karen Black, Michael Greene
PLOT: Ed, an incompetent but devoted salesman in a cult-like real estate sales “Organization,” agrees to help shut-in Rubin bury his dead cat in hopes of getting him to attend a recruiting seminar.
WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: At heart it’s a simple quirky comedy, not too much different from the usual Coen Brothers outing of the era, but Rubin and Ed has a few extra weird points in its favor: a sense of humor so eccentric that it’s been forced off road to become strictly a cult item, hallucination scenes with a water skiing cat, and Crispin Glover playing something very near the Crispin Glover-iest character ever written.
COMMENTS: “It’s going to get weird now, isn’t it?,” worries Ed after Rubin refuses to bury his decomposing cat in the desert because it’s “not the right spot,” despite the fact that, as Ed points out, “any cat in his right mind would be happy as a clam to be buried here!”
Although almost all of the film concerns Howard Hessman’s sad sack salesman Ed and Crispin Glover’s friendless weirdo Rubin, there are really three stars here: Hessman, Glover, and Trent Harris’ script. Glover is a no-brainer: dressed in skintight pinstripe bell bottoms and giant platform shoes (with magical martial powers), Rubin nearly defines Glover’s odd persona: the mentally ill nerd whose clueless awkwardness seems like it might explode into a burst of senseless violence at any moment. Given how broadly the character is written, Glover actually reigns in his performance, playing the oddness as much with a verbal shrug as with an outburst. Going over-the-top with such a already over-the-top character would have been a mistake, and Glover lets Rubin’s eccentricity come through naturally, rather than trying to force it.
A less expected success is Hessman, whose contribution here as straight man is under-appreciated, but possibly even more important to the film’s success than Glover’s wildness. Hessman definitely leaves “Johnny Fever” behind for this portrait of a postmodern Willy Loman with anger-management issues, a disrespectful spouse, and an infatuation with the New Age sales teachings of a cult-like “Organization.” His Ed is a pure middle class loser, seeing himself as a trusted acolyte in the hierarchy of real estate guru Mr. Busta, while in actuality being closer in social standing to outcast Rubin.
Most of the laughs in Harris’ clever script result from Ed’s unsuccessful attempts to convert Rubin to the cause. His initial interview question—“are you 100% satisfied with your earning potential, 100% of the time?” is met with an unexpected “yep!” from penniless Rubin. Ed remains the saner of the duo, which is how the comedy dynamic works; the emotional arc of the film comes from his humbling realization that his own failings leave him with no right to judge oddball Rubin. Rubin and Ed was made in the early 90s, but the satire has a strong Reagan-era feel (Ed disappoints his mentor when suggests the best way to get money is “work” rather than the correct answer, “real estate”). The film flags a little at the coda, after Rubin’s storyline has been resolved, but in general Rubin and Ed is a sadly-forgotten, somewhat weird comedy gem that deserves rediscovery.
Rubin and Ed‘s pop culture reach may be limited to the answer to a trivia question: this is the movie Crispin Glover was promoting when he appeared, in character, on David Letterman’s late night TV show and almost kicked the host in the head. (Not knowing anything about Rubin and Ed, America assumed that Glover was wasted on powerful psychedelic drugs at the time).
Rubin and Ed was (sadly, unforgivably) never officially released on DVD, but (VHS-dub quality) copies can be purchased from writer/director Trent Harris at his personal site.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
(This movie was nominated for review by “Caty.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)