Everything is Terrible! are going in an arguably weirder direction with their spinoff YouTube channel, Memory Hole. This newer project features similar editing over footage from home videos. Although the end goal still seems to be laughter, the lead up to the punchline is a lot less comfortable than their work under the EiT! brand… and we’re totally fine with that!
WEIRD HORIZON FOR THE WEEK OF 7/4/2015
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 on the official site links.
SCREENINGS – (Spectacle, Brooklyn, NY, July 6):
The Day of the Beast (1995): Alex de la Iglesia‘s over-the-top, gory black comedy about a Basque priest, a heavy metal fan and an occult TV host who team up on Christmas Eve to try to find the location where the Antichrist will soon be born. This film is highly regarded but is little known on these shores because there is no English-subtitled version in circulation on home video. More de la Iglesia is on tap at Spectacle throughout July, including Accion Mutante, about a terrorist organization of the handicapped waging war on beautiful people, and Perdita Durango, with Rosie Perez and Javier Bardem. Hatchet to the Head: an Unholy Trinity by Alex de la Iglesia at Spectacle.
FILM FESTIVALS –New York Asian Film Festival 2015, New York City, June 26-July 8):
We’re a little late in noticing this Lincoln Center-sponsored festival featuring movies from China, Hong Kong, Japan, and Korea, which actually began a week ago. The fest’s weirder offerings are still upcoming, however, so we don’t feel too bad.
- Full Strike – An absurd comedy that aims to do for badminton what Shaolin Soccer did for its sport, from Stephen Chow protégé Derek Kwok. The U.S. premiere is tomorrow, July 4.
- Tokyo Tribe – Shion Sono‘s latest is described as a “yakuza-street gang-hip hop-musical epic” (!) Also playing July 4.
New York Asian Film Festival home page.
IN DEVELOPMENT (POST-PRODUCTION):
Evolution: As Innocence was about young girls in a world without men, Lucile Hadzihalilovic‘s long-delayed second film is about young boys—in a world without men. All we know is that the setting is an isolated island where boys are raised by the mothers and subjected to scientific experiments. Evolution announcement at distributor Wild Bunch.
NEW ON DVD:
Hard to Be a God (2013): Future Earth scientists land on a planet stuck in its own version of the Middle Ages, and are treated like gods. Director Aleksei German, who died in 2013, worked on this adaptation of a novel by the Strugatsky brothers (who also wrote the source material for Stalker) for the last 13 years of his life. Buy Hard to Be a God
UHF (1989): Read our review. The 25th Anniversary Blu-ray of Weird Al Yankovic’s cult comedy came out last November, and for some reason Shout! Factory releases the DVD seven months later. Buy UHF
Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970): Read the Certified Weird entry! Among the cool extras on Criterion’s deluxe edition of this surreal coming-of-age tale from the Czech New Wave are three Jaromil Jires shorts and the “psych-folk” soundtrack by The Valerie Project. Buy Valerie and Her Week of Wonders [Criterion Collection]
NEW ON BLU-RAY:
Hard to Be a God (2013): See description in DVD above. Buy Hard to Be a God [Blu-ray]
Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter (2014): Character study about a backwards Japanese woman who mistakenly concludes that the movie Fargo is a documentary, and sets out for Minnesota to discover the lost ransom money Steve Buscemi‘s character buried. No DVD yet, but presumably one will follow in about seven months? Buy Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter [Blu-ray]
Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970): See description in DVD above. Buy Valerie and Her Week of Wonders [Criterion Collection Blu-ray]
Vanilla Sky (2001): A remake of the Spanish mindbender Open Your Eyes with Tom Cruise (Penelope Cruz plays the same role in both films). A publishing magnate’s life is turned upside down after an accident which kills the other driver and leaves his face scarred. This Blu was supposed to come out last year, but the release date kept being pushed back over and over by months at a time; they must have had trouble syncing Cruise and director Cameron Crowe’s schedules to record the commentary track, or something. Buy Vanilla Sky [Blu-ray]
FREE MOVIES ON YOUTUBE:
Fata Morgana (1971): Eccentric early Werner Herzog “documentary” composed of footage he shot in the Sahara desert, set to Leonard Cohen music and Lotte Eisner reciting an ancient creation myth. Watch Fata Morgana free at Shout TV.
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 2014 EDITION OF THE 366 WEIRD MOVIES YEARBOOK IS FINALLY HERE!
In 2014, we later debuting the print version of our Yearbook later than ever before… a shameful record we’re hoping to reverse in 2015.
Here’s a glimpse at what you’ll be getting, and why it was worth the wait:
Thanks to Todd M. Coe, whose work has been featured on this site before, for the extraordinary cover!
We think the ad copy speaks for itself:
Covering everything bizarre in cinema, from art house surrealism to next-generation cult movies to so-bad-they’re-weird B-movie atrocities, 366 Weird Movies has been meeting all of your weird movie needs since 2009 with a combination of sly humor and serious insight. This is our annual Yearbook covering all the weird movies released and re-released in 2014, from “Bad Milo” to “The Zero Theorem”, with over 50 full-length reviews and extensive supplemental listings. If it’s weird, and it’s a movie, and it’s from 2014, and 366 Weird Movies covered it, you’ll find it here.
You can buy the 366 Weird Movies 2014 Yearbook from Createspace (our preference, due to higher royalties) or from 366 Weird Movies 2014 Yearbook
All profits derived from your kind purchase will go towards paying our (increased) hosting costs. Any leftover monies will be used to fly the 366 Weird Movies staff out to Cannes (but not for the film festival; we just want to hit the beach).
JOHN WATERS’ MULTIPLE MANIACS (1970)
Multiple Maniacs (1970) was John Waters‘ second feature-length movie (his first was 1969’s Mondo Trasho). Shot in grainy black and white, it lives up to its “Cavalcade Of Perversions” tagline. Even for those familiar with Waters’ early work (and everyone should at least sample one of them), Multiple Maniacs may be considered an extreme challenge. Comparatively, Pink Flamingos (1972), Female Trouble (1974), Desperate Living (1977) and especially Polyester (1981) might be seen as Busby Berkeley-styled celebrations of white trash.
Shot on a two thousand dollar budget (Pink Flamingos came in at $5,000 and Polyester, $200,000), Multiple Maniacs opens with the camera panning down credits typed out on white paper.
David Lochary, as a carny broker, introduces us to Lady Divine‘s “Cavalcade Of Perversions.” As the locals ready themselves in a canvas tent, Lochary, in best tent revival tone, assures us: “This is the show you want: the sleaziest show on earth. Not actors, not imposters, but real, actual filth. These assorted sluts, fags, dykes, and pimps know no bounds. They have committed acts against God and nature that would make any decent person recoil in disgust.”
These are not mere words, and before we can scream “Tod Browning,” we are privy to a woman licking a bicycle seat, a hippie eating a bra, two men licking the hairy armpits of a topless girl, a Human Ashtray, and two-cent choreography of a naked human pyramid that makes us thankful Adam invented the fig leaf.
Mere warm-up acts: “See two actual bearded queers French kissing! See a heroin addict in Fruit of the Looms, writhing among the leaves… Now I give you Lady Divine.”
After Divine robs the audience and killing one of its members (with a pop gun), Lochary, Mary Vivian Pearce, and gang cruise and dance to Elvis (without permission to use the music, which is one of the reasons Multiple Maniacs has never been made available on DVD and only appeared briefly on VHS). All that 1950s devil music inspires even more hedonism, and soon Lochary and Pearce are doing the nasty, despite the fact that David is Divine’s lover. Enter Edith Massey to spill the beans to Divine in a phone call.
Hell hath no fury like an oversized drag queen scorned, but before Divine can get her hands on the cheating beau, she is accosted by rival queens. Fortunately, she is consoled by her guardian angel, the Infant of Prague, who takes Lady Divine by the hand and gets her to the church on time.
With blasphemy rivaling L’ Age d’ Or or Viridiana, Divine gets a “rosary job” from Mink Stole on the sacred pews of St. Cecilia, as the narrative literally parallels St. Francis’ “Way Of The Cross.” Perhaps even more blasphemous than Stole inserting prayer beads into anal orifices is future egg-lady Massey as the virgin Mary, meeting Jesus on the way to Calvary. Like Buñuel before him, Waters actually knows the orthodox dogma he satirizes, which makes the film effective guerrilla heterodoxy. Multiple Maniacs is Waters’ weightiest, most literal, penetrating, and spiritual film (yes, I said that). Divine (she is divine for a reason) delivers a voice-over narrative: a conjoined, meditative, idiosyncratic homily between actor and director, advocating for the societal outcast forever opposed by the smug, suburbanite Pharisees.
Made at the height of the Manson murders, Waters catapults Divine and Stole into the mayhem that had paralyzed American culture in a frenzy of fear. Caught in a perverse, religious fervor, our heroines are ordained as Waters’ SS Perpetua and Felicity, martyrs of the Multiple Maniacs. Unlike his country, Waters was anything but appalled. Rather, his brand of faith remained lucid and unwavering.
You can rest assure that neither the kitsch martyrdom of Dick Burton or Vic Mature included being raped and stigmatized by a lobster on a passion play couch. Perhaps that is the reason Moses forbade shellfish, which actually makes sense in a Waters’ universe. If only the hopelessly self-righteous Cecil B. would have been demented enough to know, he might have spared us those 1950s Hollywood Bible epic pornos. However, given 20/20 camp-value hindsight, perhaps it is better that constipated hypocrite wasn’t in on a Waters joke. Multiple Maniacs may just be seen as a healthy response to a sanctimonious Ten Commandments (1956).
209. BLACK MOON (1975)
“I see it as a strange voyage to the limits of the medium, or maybe my own limits.”–Louis Malle on Black Moon
DIRECTED BY: Louis Malle
FEATURING: Cathryn Harrison, Therese Giehse, Joe Dallesandro, Alexandra Stewart
PLOT: A young woman is driving a car during a shooting war between the sexes. Escaping from a checkpoint where male soldiers are executing females, she finds refuge at an old farmhouse inhabited by a batty old woman, a mute brother and sister, a band of nude animal-herding children, and a unicorn. Initially rejected by the chateau’s residents, she gradually finds herself becoming part of this strange alternate society.
BACKGROUND:
- Although Louis Malle had dabbled in light surrealism before with the whimsical Zazie dans le Metro (1960), there was nothing in the respected director’s then-recent oeuvre (mostly documentaries and historical pieces like 1974’s Vichy drama Lacombe, Lucien) to prepare his audience for the bizarreness of Black Moon. Sven Nykvist won a Caesar for his cinematography, but the film was mainly a commercial and critical failure, and quickly lapsed from circulation.
- Black Moon was a transitional work in Malle’s move from France to the USA. He shot the film in France, at his own estate near Cahors, but in the English language, with a British, American and Canadian actor in the cast. After this movie, the director went to America where he scored a series of critical successes with Pretty Baby, Atlantic City and My Dinner with Andre.
- Joyce Buñuel, Malle’s co-writer, was Luis Buñuel‘s daughter-in-law.
- Therese Giehse, who plays the bedridden woman, died before the movie was released, and Black Moon is dedicated to her. Malle credited her with partly inspiring the idea for Black Moon by suggesting he make a movie without dialogue (although the eventual script did have dialogue, it is sparse and often nonsensical).
INDELIBLE IMAGE: Appropriately for a dream-movie, the indelible image is an imaginary one; it’s the transgressive event you see transpiring in your mind’s eye the minute after the film officially ends on a provocative freeze-frame.
THREE WEIRD THINGS: Gender genocide; portly unicorn; resurrection by breast milk.
WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Black Moon concerns a young girl’s flight from an absurd world—where camo-clad men line up female prisoners of war and execute them, while the gas mask-wearing ladies returning the favor to their male captives—into a totally insane one. The movie is an unexpected assay of the irrational from nouvelle vague auteur Louis Malle, and although it’s congenitally uneven, it makes you wonder how wonderful it would have been if every master director had indulged himself by unleashing one unabashedly surreal film on the world.
Original trailer for Black Moon
COMMENTS: A frayed fairy tale set in no time or place in particular, Continue reading 209. BLACK MOON (1975)