Just a little footage of Raunchy Rose and the Radioactive Chicken Heads playing Danny Elfman’s “Theme from Forbidden Zone” to get you jazzed for the inevitable (?) Forbidden Zone 2.
WEIRD HORIZON FOR THE WEEK OF 8/7/2015
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 at the official site links.
IN THEATERS (LIMITED RELEASE):
The Falling (2014): An unexplained plague of fainting spells strikes at a British girls’ school in the 1960s. Picnic at Hanging Rock fans are sure to swoon at this one. The Falling Facebook page.
Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet (2014): This anthology of animations inspired by the popular works of the Lebanese poet is noteworthy because of the talents involved: Tomm Moore, Joann Sfar, Nina Paley, and Bill Plympton are among the animators handling a segment. The framing device involves a political prisoner who dispenses wisdom in the form of poems. Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet official site.
SCREENINGS – (AFI Silver Theater, Baltimore, MD, Sat. Aug 8):
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension (1984) or Evil Dead II (1987): It’s pick your sweet, sweet poison night at AFI’s “Best of Totally Awesome: Great Films of the 1980s” series. Since their playing in opposite theaters at 11:30 PM and midnight, you can either watch Buckaroo battle Dr. Lizardo and the Lectroid aliens, or watch Ash fight the reanimated dead and cabin fever, but not both. In either case, you can take in Terry Gilliam’s insane time travel trip 12 Monkeys at 9 PM beforehand. All three titles will be playing at various times throughout the following week, along with other totally awesome 80s cult movies like Pee Wee’s Big Adventure (and, for you 90s kids, Fight Club). Oh, to be young and in Baltimore in the summer! “Best of Totally Awesome: Great Films of the 1980s” list at the AFI website.
SCREENINGS – (Egyptian Theater, Los Angeles, CA, Tues. Aug 11):
Alleluia! The Devil’s Carnival (2015): Lucifer declares war on Heaven, using the power of song as his chosen weapon. The second installment in a series (read our review of the first) from the team behind Repo: The Genetic Opera. Tuesday’s World Premiere is sold out, but they’ll be touring the U.S. (with live musical acts and circus entertainment) through late summer/early fall. Alleluia! The Devil’s Carnival official site.
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 HISTORY OF SUPERHERO MOVIES (AND THEIR RABID FANBOYS) PART TWO
Continued from last week’s survey of the history of the superhero movie.
Today, Marvel has the upper hand in big screen superhero adaptations. However, DC has long ruled the small screen with both live-action and animated productions. DC’s “Superboy” series (1988-1992) was actually written by comic writers (imagine that), producing a critical and popular success.
Trying to compete with their rival, Marvel issued The Punisher (1989), and the film was as inherently dull as the character itself (they proved this point again in a 2004 reboot).
In the wake of 1989’s hot Batman, executives launched the short-lived TV series “The Flash” (1990). Somehow, it took awhile for them to realize that the Red speedster’s appeal lay in his flashy nemeses. By the time they figured it out, the potential audience had given up after seeing Flash square off against one too many bland burglars. This was unfortunate because later episodes, two of which feature Mark Hamill as the Trickster, were among television’s most psychedelic comic book adaptations.
Warren Beatty produced, directed, and starred in Dick Tracy (1990), which ranks among the best of its kind, self-consciously conveying a delightfully alternative synthetic universe despite uneven writing and an off-kilter performance from Madonna.
Foolishly, Warner Brothers sacked Tim Burton from its Dark Knight franchise (a testament to the influence of a mighty McDonald’s Happy Meal deal) and committed hara-kiri by turning the reigns over to perennial hack Joel Schumacher.
Not surprisingly, on TV “Batman: The Animated Series” (1992-1995), the animated “Superman” (1996-2000), and “Justice League” (2001-2006) found the original comics’ pulse far better than most of their feature film counterparts. Like the earlier Ralph Bakshi incarnation, John Semper, Jr.‘s “Spiderman” (1994-1995) also became a much sought after cult favorite. Semper had a simple rule, which one think would be obvious to everyone but producers: “It does not matter who Spiderman is battling. What matters is Peter Parker has girlfriend problems and struggles to pay the rent.”
DC’s “Lois and Clark: The New Adventures Of Superman” (1993-1997), shared Semper’s commonsense ideology. Again, DC met with critical and popular success, despite its less than dignified final season.
Marvel had a trio of hits in Blade (1998), the even better Blade II (2002), and Blade Trinity (2004), although as super-horror none of the films could compare to Marv Wolfman/Gene Colan’s long-running cult comic book “Tomb of Dracula.”
DC’s “Smallville” premiered in 2001 and had an extraordinary decade-long run until 2011, although it consistently had mixed reviews.
Smartly, Marvel briefly learned from mistakes made by DC and hired Continue reading THE HISTORY OF SUPERHERO MOVIES (AND THEIR RABID FANBOYS) PART TWO
212. AFTER LAST SEASON (2009)
“This movie makes no sense. I don’t mean the story doesn’t make sense, it almost does. I mean the movie as a thing that exists doesn’t make sense.”–Rob Steele
DIRECTED BY: Mark Region
FEATURING: Jason Kulas, Peggy McClellan
PLOT: Matthew and Sarah are med students with an interest in neurology. A fellow student is knifed to death by a serial killer. Matthew runs a telepathy experiment with Sarah, who sees visions of the killer, and together they try to visualize the murderer.
BACKGROUND:
- After Last Season made a minor stir on the Internet in 2009 when its nonsensical (but, as it turns out, completely representative) trailer was released on YouTube and other video sites. The piece was so thoroughly anti-cinematic, with its laughable props and the meaningless minutiae of its dialogue, that many people assumed it was a parody of a low-budget indie film created by an established director. The frenzy reached it’s peak when “Entertainment Weekly” published an article repeating rumors that the trailer was a hoax by notorious prankster Spike Jonze intended (somehow) to draw attention to his upcoming film Where the Wild Things Are.
- After Last Season got a one week release in four U.S. theaters.
- Director Mark Region claimed the film cost $5 million to make. Few believed him.
- After the original run, producer/distributor Index Square stopped offering new DVDs for sale, and actor Jason Kulas said Region has told him there are no plans to produce more.
INDELIBLE IMAGE: The astoundingly crude computer-generated animation, which often looks like it could have been drawn in MS Paint. The best moment is when a killer’s knife (which looks like an ice cream cone held upside down) emerges from out of a blank wall.
THREE WEIRD THINGS: Cardboard MRI; Photoshopped telepathy; invisible ghost
WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: “Huh?,” “um…,” and “whah?” are all equally valid responses to After Last Season. This movie may go down as this generation’s Beast of Yucca Flats: stultifyingly dull at times, but so full of misguided directorial choices and failed attempts at cinematic poetry that it takes on a dreamlike character. Watching After Last Season is like trying to follow a old-timey radio serial on an AM station with fading reception: you can tell there’s a voice trying to make itself heard, but the transmission is so garbled that the basics of the story become lost in static and long stretches of dead air. It’s difficult watching, for sure—thus the “beware” rating—but for intrepid curiosity seekers looking to experience the weirdest of the worst, it’s a must see.
Original trailer for After Last Season
COMMENTS: There’s a concept in cinema theory called “film grammar;” it refers to sets of filmmaking conventions that have been Continue reading 212. AFTER LAST SEASON (2009)
CAPSULE: THE ILLUSTRATED MAN (1969)
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DIRECTED BY: Jack Smight
FEATURING: Rod Steiger, Claire Bloom, Robert Drivas
PLOT: A young hobo meets a man covered from head-to-toe in tattoos; each illustration tells a story of the future if you gaze it at long enough.
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: It has a few odd moments, but overall this collection of speculative fiction isn’t that strange. Maybe people were easier to wierd-out in 1969; after all, this movie comes from a time when the tattoos that cover from Steiger’s character from head to toe made him a freak only suitable for a job as a sideshow attraction at a carnival. Today, the Illustrated Man could just be any old barista at Starbucks.
COMMENTS: Structurally, The Illustrated Man‘s concept is simple. Rod Steiger is Carl, the title character, whose body is a canvas of tattoos (“illustrations!,” he insists) that move and tell stories if the viewer stares at them long enough. Neophyte hobo Willie (Drivas) does so, which is the excuse for the movie to launch into three mildly ironic science fiction short stories. Meanwhile, a lot of time is devoted the interplay between Carl, whose harsh experiences are etched on his very flesh, and the wide-eyed younger wanderer who can’t resist peeking at the bitter future promised by the illustrations. Carl also relates, in flashback, the story of how he met the “witch from the future” (Claire Bloom), who seduces him into becoming her canvas.
The three tattoo-inspired stories involve a virtual reality nursery and some very spoiled children, a group of soldiers trapped on a planet where it never stops raining, and the tale of the last night on Earth. The major roles in these insets are also played by Steiger, Bloom and Drivas, but the framing story (and its flashbacks) outshines each of them. Steiger digs into the role like a famished hobo digs into a steak, and he’s a lot of fun to watch. He is grizzled and dominant as the tattooed tramp wandering the Earth looking to take vengeance on his witch, but fresh-faced and easily led as the younger man who stumbles into her lair. A couple of fantastical, surreal elements also exist in the framing story: Carl’s highly portable dog, and his ability to silence crickets. These moments give the film a strange altered reality and a creepy texture that goes beyond the chills elicited by mere campfire tales. The Illustrated Man received generally poor reviews at the time of its release. It’s not quite as bad as its contemporary critics thought, but neither is it a lost cult classic. It’s a perfectly serviceable science fiction anthology that will probably satisfy the average “Twilight Zone” enthusiast, but it also leaves a lot on the table, since Steiger’s meaty Carl seems like he could carry a feature-length film.
Ray Bradbury’s short story collection “The Illustrated Man” was first published in 1951. The framing story there only consists of a few paragraphs, so the adaptation necessarily expands greatly on the Illustrated Man’s character. Bradbury later wrote a short story also titled “The Illustrated Man,” which shows up in print editions of the book starting in 1997; it’s a dark fairy tale that is thematically similar, but very different, plotwise, than the story that appears in the film. There are rumors of a remake (which would adapt some of the other 18 stories in the original collection), with Zack Snyder to direct.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
(This movie was nominated for review by Caleb Moss. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)