Free Online Weird Movies, Miscellanea

WEIRD HORIZON FOR THE WEEK OF 11/1/2013

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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):

Mr. Nobody (2009): In 2092, an 118-year old man recounts his life story to a reporter, but the details of the various alternate personal histories he recounts are contradictory. This four-year old speculative feature from eccentric (Toto the Hero) is getting a very late, very limited U.S. release. Mr. Nobody official site.

The Visitor (1979): Jesus Christ sends an angel to snatch a woman with telekinetic powers from Atlanta, Georgia, and bring her to heaven before the Devil can get his hands on her. John Huston, Sam Peckinpah, , Glenn Ford, Mel Ferrer, Franco Nero and Shelley Winters all signed up for this Exorcist/Omen-ripoff that Drafthouse Films is resurrecting in hopes it will become the next exhumed camp hit (à la Miami Connection). The Visitor official site.

NEW ON DVD:

“Scream Factory All Night Horror Marathon, Vol. 2”: The “prize” feature here is the seven-director Dungeons & Dragonsploitation (!) flick The Dungeonmaster (1984), which is famous for bringing the world the solipsist’s favorite quote, “I reject your reality and substitute my own!” The rest of the mildly crazy entries in this rare horror box are Cellar Dweller (1988), about horror cartoonists who accidentally summon ancient demons; Catacombs (1988), about Italian monks who accidentally summon ancient demons; and Contamination .7 (1993), about nuclear power plant managers who accidentally create mutant radioactive killer trees. Buy “Scream Factory All Night Horror Marathon, Vol. 2”.

Tabu (2012): A two-part experimental art movie, with the first section taking place in modern Lisbon and the second half being a dialogue-free flashback to an affair in Africa. The title references F.W. Murnau’s scandalous silent film Tabu: A Story of the South Seas (1931). Buy Tabu.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

100 Bloody Acres (2012): Two brothers find themselves running low on the corpses they need to make their organic fertilizer, until they find three stranded motorists. This Australian horror-comedy reportedly puts a bloody new spin on familiar ideas, and the Twitch reviewer called it “completely bizarre.” Buy 100 Bloody Acres [Blu-ray].

“Attack Of The B’s”: A wacky collection of el cheapo B-movies that includes a couple of our favorites oddities from the genre: Spider Baby (1968) and The Brain that Wouldn’t Die (1962), along with sixteen others including such usual B-list suspects as A Bucket of Blood, I Bury The Living, Little Shop of Horrors, Plan 9 from Outer Space, and Santa Claus Conquers Martians. A nice selection a crazy flicks, but these are all standard definition, full frame 480i transfers compressed onto a single (?!) disc—these movies won’t benefit from Blu-ray presentation. Buy “Attack Of The B’s” [Blu-ray].

FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON YOUTUBE:

Tombstone Canyon (1932): Read our review. An early attempt to mix horror and the Western, with a black-cloaked phantom in the role of desperado.

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.

Shorts

SHORT: THE TRICK IS THE TREAT (2013)

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recites a list of yummy Halloween treats, but something is a bit off… This short by 366 fave celebrates “the euphoria of the Halloween candy score… and the paranoia of the Halloween candy predator…”

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As our own Pamela De Graff  likes to say, everyone out there have an unsafe and insane Halloween!

List Candidates, Reader Recommendations

THREE TAKES ON ESCAPE FROM TOMORROW (2013)

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Escape from Tomorrow has been promoted to the List. Comments are closed on this preliminary review; please visit the official entry.

We received an unprecedented three separate reviews of Randy Moore’s controversial surrealist satire Escape from Tomorrow, the independent feature which was shot guerrilla-style at Disney World and which many originally supposed would be unreleasable thanks to Disney’s notoriously aggressive legal department. We have decided to compile these three individual takes into one giant mega-post for your enjoyment and edification. So here’s everything you need to know about Escape from Tomorrow, at least for now…

DIRECTED BY: Randy Moore

FEATURING: Roy Abramsohn, Elena Schuber, Katelynn Rodriguez, Jack Dalton, Danielle Safady, Annet Manhendru, Allison Lees-Taylor, Lee Armstrong, Stass Klassen

PLOT: A day in the life of an American family vacationing at Disneyland… or Walt Disney World… or at least some Disney related theme park. Only the day starts out with Jim (Roy Abramsohn) getting a call from his boss, who tells him that there’s no job for him to return to. Things can only go downhill from there, but everything is filtered through a cheerful veneer. From a spreading cat-flu epidemic, to stalking teen-age girls, brainwashing by Park cyborgs, it just goes to show that “bad things happen everywhere”… even in the Happiest Place On Earth. (synopsis by L. Rob Hubbard)

Troubled family man Jim White and his family try to enjoy their final day in Disney World, but he becomes distracted by a pair of pretty French teenagers, blackouts, and visions of sinister happenings in the idyllic theme park. As the intensity of White’s visions grow, so too do tensions between him and his family, and soon it seems he might lose them and himself altogether to the weird power of Disney World. Would he really miss them, though, or does Disney offer him something better? (synopsis by Ben Sunde)

A middle-aged man (who looks an awful lot like a husky Tom Cruise) gets promptly fired via telephone amidst a family vacation to Disneyworld, and proceeds to break down mentally and physically with his family while he covertly follows two barely-legal Parisian teenagers during his waltz through the happiest place on earth. (synopsis by Ryan Aarset)

1. L. Rob Hubbard

WHY IT SHOULD MAKE THE LIST: Aside from the accomplishment of actually shooting on Disney property completely in plain sight, the film’s subversive commentary on Disney’s hold on the collective imagination has a solid bite that has not been previously approached as directly as it is here.

COMMENTS: “Jim, listen to me. Don’t let your imagination run wild. It’s a transitional period.”

This is the first full sentence of Escape from Tomorrow, and it’s a key—if not the key—to understanding exactly what writer/director Randy Moore is up to in this groundbreaking film. Thanks to its impressive and unique origins, Escape from Tomorrow now occupies a spot analogous to that The Blair Witch Project held over a decade ago (leaving aside the latter film’s massive box office) in independent film. And, like Blair Witch, Escape is starting to encounter backlash in reaction to the hype that accompanied its debut at Sundance as “the best film that you may never get a chance to see.” Most of that backlash centers around a perceived lack of bite in the satire, and to criticism of the acting and filmmaking as “amateurish” and “just plain awful.” To each his own, but since most of the initial discussion centered around the film as a cause célèbre when it appeared to be waiting to be crushed by Disney’s corporate paw, now that it has been released with very little reaction from The Mouse House, some are feeling cheated that perhaps the film didn’t go as far as it could taking on Disney… that it’s a missed opportunity.

Still from Escape from Tomorrow (2013)Those who hoped for a harsh slash and burn attack on Disney and its park practices will need to seek satisfaction elsewhere, but those who feel that the satire is too soft and too on the surface are missing the point entirely. Escape from Tomorrow is a comic nightmare of the subconscious: “Lynchian” has been used many times in descriptions of the film. But Moore isn’t a -style surrealist; his take in presenting the paranoia and sexual tension that lurks in the corners of The Happiest Place On Earth is closer to the work of .

“Imagination” is a word that is repeated throughout Escape from Tomorrow, and it is the coin of this realm. After all, the whole function of amusement parks such as Disney World is to provide a playland. What could be better than having your playland already thought out for you—characters, scenarios, every little thing? Disney may not have been at it the longest, but they have certainly been very thorough in “imagineering” characters and places that have Continue reading THREE TAKES ON ESCAPE FROM TOMORROW (2013) →

Capsules

CAPSULE: MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO (1988)

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Recommended

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , (Disney dubbed version)

PLOT: Two young girls befriend a forest spirit who lives in a tree near their new country house.

Still from My Neighbor Totoro (1988)

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: My Neighbor Totoro is somewhat strange, like being dropped into the unfiltered imagination of a six-year old girl. Its kidlike oddness is not sustained enough to thrill adult weirdophiles, however.

COMMENTS: In My Neighbor Totoro, Hayao Miyazaki takes yōkai, Japanese traditional folk monsters, and literalizes them in the only way possible: by making them into real spiritual phenomenon that are only visible to children. None of the adults in the movie, even Satsuki and Mei’s university professor father, doubt the real existence of the yōkai; a grandmotherly character confesses that she could see them when she was young, but lost the ability with age. This strategy creates a pleasant truce between kids and adults as to the reality of these fairy creatures. Grownups can’t see or interact with Totoro or his friends, but they don’t denigrate or patronize kids for believing in them. The girls’ first encounter with the mythical creatures is in the form of “soot sprites” who huddle in the dark corners of the long-vacant country home. Later, Mei, the younger of the girls, will encounter a couple of miniature troll-creatures (these mini-Totoro’s are never explained); following them leads her inside a hollow camphor tree, where she finds the massive plush Totoro slumbering, and immediately befriends him. Later, at a rainy bus stop, Satsuki meets Totoro, too. Impressed by her offer of an umbrella, he introduces her to the film’s strangest invention, the Catbus: literally, a fuzzy bus with a tail and a Cheshire cat grin. Catbus is a fusion of the organic and the mechanical, a newfangled yōkai for the 20th century. Although there are magical nights when the girls soar above the treetops with Totoro and friends, not a lot of the movie’s running time is actually devoted to fantastical encounters with yōkai. Most of the time, we are engaged in the girls’ domestic life with their doting dad, and in observing the bucolic vistas of a Japanese country village. There is a distant stressor in the girls’ sick mom, but for the most part their days are spent happily, exploring the countryside and doing cartwheels among the flowers. Although some adults may find the lack of expected tension and conflict in the story perplexing and unfamiliar, Miyazaki’s technique strikes a chord with young children across cultures. What four- to eight-year-old girl wouldn’t want to have a huge, friendly, protective teddy bear like Totoro as a friend to recline and rely on? Totoro doesn’t have bad guys or moments of serious jeopardy because its ultimate message to kids is that they don’t have to be scared by life’s challenges and changes; the unknown isn’t a threat, it’s an opportunity.

Although Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli has long been intimately associated with its current distributor, Walt Disney, in the English speaking world, the fact is that Totoro‘s first American distributor was none other than the low-budget exploitationeers . The scant negative reviews for the film that can be found almost all relate to the Troma theatrical release. It’s not clear whether this is because Troma’s dub job detracted from Miyazaki’s magic, or whether Disney’s seal of approval predisposed critics to approve of the effort. Disney acquired the rights to this early feature in 2006 and re-dubbed the film with a better-known vocal cast. Meanwhile, Totoro himself became so popular that he was incorporated into Studio Ghibli’s logo, becoming Japan’s equivalent of Mickey Mouse.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…the film evinces a disorienting combination of cultures that produces a nowhere land more confused than fascinating.”–Leonard Klady, Variety (Troma theatrical version)

Miscellanea

366 UNDERGROUND: PICTURES OF SUPERHEROES (2012)

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DIRECTED BY: Don Swaynos

FEATURING: Kerri Lindo, Shannon McCormick, John Merriman, Byron Brown, Danu Uribe

Still from Pictures of Superheroes (2012)

PLOT: After being fired from her maid service job and being dumped by her boyfriend on the same day, Marie (Kerri Lindo) picks up a job cleaning up after an overworked businessman (Shannon McCormick) and his messy roommate (John Merriman) who’s never really grown up.

COMMENTS: I’m not entirely certain that ‘weird’ is quite the right word to apply to Pictures of Superheroes.  “Off-center” certainly applies, if you identify with the mindset of the main character Marie, who is the sanest person to be found here. If the movie can said to be about anything, it’s a wry look at the extremes of “growing up” versus “arrested development,” and the poor people in the middle who end up having to clean up the messes of those at those extremes.

Marie is the middleman in this scenario, finding herself locked in a job that she really doesn’t like that much, but that she happens to be very good at—and it’s better than the alternative. So, it’s a double punch when she loses her job due to the service being a front for prostitution (which she never gets recruited into because she’s much better as a maid, she’s told), and is dumped by her passive-aggressive boyfriend (due to his interest in a co-worker) in the same day.

She gets hired by Eric (Shannon McCormick), a high-strung businessman who’s so busy, he scrounges from the vacuum cleaner since he doesn’t have time to cook, and who doesn’t even notice that he has a roommate, Joe (John Merriman), a friend from college whose main interest is eating candy and drawing amateurish pictures of superheroes. Marie ends up, against her own wishes, becoming involved with both of them, to the point of posing as Eric’s wife for his clients and parents, and indulging in talkfests with Joe that he counts as dates.

The look and feel of Superheroes is in the area referred to as *shudder* ‘mumblecore’, but the movie is much better than that heinous term would imply. The performances are good, especially Kerri Lindo playing straight man to the crazy that surrounds her, and look-alike John Merriman playing a role that would go to Galifinakis in a higher-budgeted project. The movie was made in Austin, TX, which may account for the off-center humor that fits the film like a glove.

Pictures of Superheroes played in several film festivals and is now available on VOD from several platforms (iTunes, Amazon, and Google Play, among others), with a DVD release coming soon. This is the first feature film directed by Don Swaynos, who has an impressive resume as an editor on projects like “Shipping Wars” on A&E and the recent indie features Saturday Morning Massacre, Pit Stop and Cinema Six.

Pictures of Superheroes Official Site

Don Swaynos’ Personal Site

Pictures of Superheroes on Facebook

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