Instead of home security, satellite TV, or pesticides, a door-to-door salesman pitches the ability to unlock the full potential of his unlucky subjects through decoding their “mystery DNA”.
WEIRD HORIZON FOR THE WEEK OF 3/28/2014
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):
Go Down Death (2013): Stories of a town full of captive soldiers, blind prostitutes and child gravediggers, adapted from the works of fictional amputee poet Jonathan Mallory Sinus; there’s a definite Guy Maddin influence at work here. We never expected this film to see any form of distribution, so it’s nice to see it playing for a week at the Spectacle Theater in Brooklyn (Friday and Saturday nights’ midnight showings are even in Smell-O-Vision). Go Down Death official site.
IN DEVELOPMENT:
Phantasm V: Ravager (2014?): After the divisive fourth installment of the Phantasm franchise ended on a cliffhanger, official word has come down that there will be a fifth (and final) entry in the series. According to Bloody Disgusting David Hartman scripts and directs; Don Coscarelli produces. More at the Phantasm series official site.
NEW ON DVD:
Crave (2012): A disillusioned crime scene photographer retreats into a world of vigilante revenge fantasies. The ad copy spoke of an “inner world of dark fantasies” and “dangerous visions,” but the reviewers spoke of “empty movie-shout-out posturing” and “a misleading, long-winded chore.” Ouch. Buy Crave
Disco Exorcist (2011): See description in VHS below. This is a VHS/DVD combo pack (!) with two different sets of cover art. Buy Disco Exorcist [VHS/DVD Combo Pack]
“Mystery Science Theater 3000: Vol. XXIX”: Nothing extremely weird in this particular set, but a trip to the Satellite of Love for some B-movie badness is always welcome. Episodes included are Mamie Van Doren running wild in Untamed Youth, the standard sword-and-sandaler Hercules and the Captive Women, the seemingly interminable The Thing That Wouldn’t Die, and the strangest film in the set, the ultra-rare Italian superhero epic Pumaman. Buy “Mystery Science Theater 3000: Vol. XXIX”
Persona (1966): Read the Certified Weird entry! As opposed to Warner’s indifference to Performance (see below), the Criterion Collection releases their weird Per- title with appropriate respect. This restored version of the film includes the usual suite of interviews, archival footage and extra features (including the full-length documentary Liv & Ingmar) you expect from a Criterion release. Buy Persona [Criterion Collection Blu-ray/DVD combo]
The Swimmer (1968): Read our review. This dreamlike Burt Lancaster vehicle adapted from a John Cheever story gets an elaborate special edition courtesy of… Grindhouse Releasing? Yep. Buy The Swimmer [Blu-ray/DVD Combo]
The Truth About Emanuel (2013): Read out capsule review. Yet another in a long line of movies that chose not to use our quote on their box cover (c’mon—I think “‘the movie as a whole feels very slow-developing’–366 Weird Movies” has a nice ring to it). Buy The Truth About Emanuel
Wonderwall (1968): A professor drills peepholes in his wall to spy on his fashion model neighbor and sees psychedelic visions. This collector’s edition includes the original theatrical version and a re-edited director’s cut with unused footage. Music by George Harrison. Buy Wonderwall
NEW ON BLU-RAY:
Performance (1968/1970): Read the Certified Weird entry! Amazon and other outlets list Warner Archive (normally known for DVD-R’s of deep catalog titles) as releasing this classic on Blu-ray on March 25, but as of this writing it is listed as out-of-stock everywhere. Buy Performance [Blu-ray]
Persona (1966): See description in DVD above. Buy Persona [Criterion Collection Blu-ray/DVD combo]
The Swimmer (1968): See description in DVD above. Buy The Swimmer [Blu-ray/DVD Combo]
The Truth About Emanuel (2013): See description in DVD above. Buy The Truth About Emanuel [Blu-ray]
Wonderwall (1968): See description in DVD above. Buy Wonderwall [Blu-ray]
NEW ON VHS:
Disco Exorcist (2011): A Seventies swinger is cursed when he spurns a voodoo priestess. Releasing this throwback movie in an inferior format at a higher price is either a stroke of marketing genius, or idiocy. If it’s a clamshell case, though, I’ll take one. Buy Disco Exorcist [VHS]
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.
PENNIES FROM HEAVEN (1981)
Steve Martin burst onto the national radar with his comedy album “A Wild and Crazy Guy” (1978). He followed that success by starring in his first feature film, the box office bonanza The Jerk (1979) directed by Carl Reiner and co-starring his then-current flame, Bernadette Peters. Although The Jerk was merely crass instead of authentically humorous, Martin and Peters re-teamed for Herbert Ross’ winningly experimental Pennies From Heaven (1981). Predictably, American audiences smelled something new with the film, and stayed away. Many critics were more astute and praised the film, which prompted Martin and Reiner to briefly follow that attempted path of originality in Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (1982) and Man With Two Brains (1983). Alas, like the rest of that decade, what started in a burst of creative energy petered out midway through and succumbed to formula.
Martin’s work as an interesting artist paralleled the rise and fall of the 1980s. He simply ceased to take chances after his role as the dentist in Little Shop of Horrors (1986) and rendered himself irrelevant. In contrast, Peters continued to challenge herself, instead of taking the safe route. It is her post Pennies career, rather than Martin’s, which is more consistently satisfying.
Pennies from Heaven is an idiosyncratic and delightfully grim film, and it separates authentic critics from the weak-kneed boys by defying the rules of filmmaking and confounding those who expect dogmatic adherence to genre expectations (with due apologies to Mr. Ebert). It startles us even today and seems as fresh and innovative as it did thirty years ago.
Dennis Potter wrote the screenplay, which sprang from his 1978 BBC mini-series of the same name. As in his later script for Dreamchild (1985), Potter achieves a level of unsettling emotional intensity rarely achieved in the medium. Potter and Ross recreate a mythological Depression era, lifted straight from the haunting canvases of Edward Hopper, giving the film its unique texture.
Arthur (Martin) is a down on his luck sheet music salesman trying to ply his wares in a corrupt world. Compounding his frustration is his downright Victorian marriage to Joan (Jessica Harper). When Arthur encounters the uninhibited Eileen (Peters), he is not above lying about his marital status.
The characters lip-synch to songs from 1930s musicals and, surprisingly, it works. Often, Pennies From Heaven supersedes its source material because—let’s be frank—do any of us ever watch period musicals for their emotional depth or narrative substance?
A web of lies, back alley abortions, and the rape and the murder of a blind girl are not going to add up to an Astaire/Rogers happy ending. (Arthur and Eileen even take the place of that famous duo by literally stepping into a scene from 1936’s Follow the Fleet). Christopher Walken has an all too brief scene, doing a slimy striptease as only he can. Martin is refreshingly subdued. We root for him and Eileen, despite his manipulations. Harper is equally good, and it’s a revelation of some kind that her character in 1981 is not the one we are asked to identify with or root for, as we would have fifty years earlier.
Pennies From Heaven was a gutsy movie in 1981. It still is, never once succumbing to bland and pretentious realism, while at the same time never alienating us emotionally. Ross, Potter, Martin, Peters, Harper, and Walken all proved that the good and original musical had not gone the way of the dinosaur. Alas, it took European audiences to respond to them.
166. TALES FROM THE QUADEAD ZONE (1987)
“That was a strange tale, wasn’t it, Bobby?”–Shirley L. Jones in Tales from the Quadead Zone
DIRECTED BY: Chester Novell Turner
FEATURING: Shirley L. Jones, Keefe L. Turner
PLOT: A woman reads her invisible child two stories from a book entitled “Tales of the Quadead Zone.” In one, a redneck family never has enough food for everyone at the table to eat, until one of the clan figures out a solution. In another, a man retrieves his dead brothers’ corpse in order to ritually abuse it.
BACKGROUND:
- Chester Turner’s 1984 movie Black Devil Doll from Hell was originally written as one of the segments in this anthology film, but was expanded to a full-length feature instead. A remnant of that intention may linger in the theme song, which claims that “dolls will kill…”
- Although they did almost all of the technical work themselves, Turner and Shirley Jones made up fictitious names for the camera and sound credits so the crew would seem larger than it was. Turner is still credited with direction, writing, music, special effects, and editing.
- Most of the cast and crew have surnames of either “Jones” or “Turner.”
- Disappointed after receiving less than $1,000 from the distributor of Black Devil Doll from Hell, Turner and Jones decided to sell copies of Tales from the Quadead Zone themselves. They traveled to every video store they could find within a 25 mile radius of Chicago selling their tapes.
- After completing Quadead Zone, Turner quit filmmaking (because he hadn’t made any money at it) and started a construction business. For two decades he was unaware that his videotapes were being bootlegged and circulated among a small cult of trash-film devotees. (One original VHS copy of Quadead sold for $1,300). Internet rumors circulated claiming that Turner was dead, but Massacre Video’s Louis Justin eventually tracked him down by calling every Chester Turner for whom he could find a telephone number.
- Turner has publicly stated he’s interested in making Tales from the Quadead Zone 2 and Black Devil Doll from Hell 2 (for which he’s already written a script—it’s subtitled “The Goddoll” and will be a spoof of The Godfather).
INDELIBLE IMAGE: The corpse dressed up as a clown. Who dresses up a corpse as a clown? What makes the scene especially unforgettable is the basic chroma-key technology used to depict an orangish-red blob of pure spirit entering the dead body.
WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: What the heck is a “quadead” zone? A zone with four dead people in it? You’ll have no more clue after watching the movie than you did before, but you will at least understand that any film made by the unique Chester Novell Turner deserves a name that doesn’t make sense. Turner’s two-movie horror universe is a world of puppet rapists, killer rednecks, undead clowns and invisible child ghosts, shot through a camcorder lens, acted out by friends and family, and accompanied by a homemade Casio keyboard score that frequently drowns out the dialogue. Of his two brain-damaged films, Tales from the Quadead Zone earns a slight edge over Black Devil Doll from Hell, mainly because it’s a half-hour shorter, and features a broader range of non-actors engaging in awkward pauses in more varied environments.
Scarecrow Video’s trailer for a screening of Tales from the Quadead Zone
COMMENTS: The credits and theme song really tell you what you’re getting into with Tales from the Quadead Zone. With the unmetrical opening Continue reading 166. TALES FROM THE QUADEAD ZONE (1987)
CAPSULE: BLACK DEVIL DOLL FROM HELL (1984)
DIRECTED BY: Chester Novell Turner
FEATURING: Shirley L. Jones
PLOT: A sexually-repressed church lady buys a magical puppet who comes to life and rapes her, waking her slumbering libido.
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Chester Novell Turner deserves some sort of weird movie recognition for his two movie opus of Black Devil Doll from Hell (1984) and Tales from the Quadead Zone (1987), films which reveal the relative polish and elegance of the maligned Ed Wood Jr. Sadly, a spot on the list of the weirdest movies of all time for Black Devil Doll from Hell is not that recognition. Although the doll sex scenes are a hoot, the movie as a whole is dull, and made up mostly of filler.
COMMENTS: The original tagline to Black Devil Doll from Hell was “Was it a nightmare? Or was it for real?” It should have been “I was raped by a puppet—and I liked it!” Shot on video with a budget of about $8,000—although when you watch you’ll find yourself wondering what Turner could possibly have spent all that money on—Black Devil Doll is basically an elaborate home movie starring Turner’s then-girlfriend and a cast and crew made up of relatives and buddies.
Massacre Video’s DVD presentation is taken from the best source material possible—which is a transfer of an vintage VHS tape. Anyone who dug the glitchy visual aesthetic of Trash Humpers should respond to this style: with warping around the edges and lots of horizontal roll to accentuate the washed-out lighting, Black Devil Doll is authentic analog ugliness. You shouldn’t want to see it any other way—these visual smudges are all part of recreating the authentic “just took a chance on this turkey because of the crazy title and cover” 1980s video store experience. Watching a pristine, restored version of Black Devil Doll from Hell would be as pointless as a Spike Lee remake with Halle Berry in the lead and Samuel L. Jackson voicing the puppet.
While the visuals are drab, the audio is frustrating. There is a constant background hiss, the dialogue can be hard to make out, and Turner’s childishly repetitive Casio keyboard score is irritating beyond belief. At one point, he holds a single ear-piercing high note for 45 seconds (I timed it). And let’s not forget that the acting is terrible, and the direction, too—there are long pauses in the dialogue while Turner patiently waits for the actors to remember their next line, and scenes where Jones just putters morosely around her house, doing nothing to advance the story.
All of this incompetence would be intolerable, if the core idea of a supernatural rapist who looks like Rick James turned into a ventriloquist’s dummy wasn’t so inherently bizarre and ludicrous. As it is, you’re left watching wide-eyed in sick fascination to see what strange, sleazy turn the tortoise-paced story will come up with next. The Devil Doll occasionally exhales smoke through his mouth, solely because it’s a cheap effect that looks marginally cool. After blasting his victim with a vent of steam he utters the classic seduction line “now that you have smelt the foulness of my breath, you may feel the sweetness of my tongue!” (I’m totally trying that line out on my next date). The sex scenes look absolutely ridiculous and anti-erotic, but the puppet’s technique must be is superlative, because soon after he rocks her world the church lady proclaims “I didn’t know it could be this beautiful!” She soon throws her Bible in the trash and starts searching the house to find the Devil Doll (whom she dubs “Mr. Wonderful”) for another round of fine lovin’ (splinters be damned!), but he’s gone missing. With the doll departed, she picks up strange men instead, but no one can satisfy her.
It’s all quite amazing; you keep on watching not because it’s entertaining, but out of awe that something like this even exists.
Massacre Video’s releases comes in a box set together with Turner’s other movie, Tales from the Quadead Zone (which we chose to represent the Chester N. Turner phenomenon on the List). The Black Devil Doll disc includes an alternate cut of the film that’s missing 13 minutes (they kept all 12 minutes of credits, though). There’s also a thirty minute interview with writer/director Turner and star Jones, and, even better, a commentary track. Jones, now likely a grandmother, makes some priceless comments: she calls the puppet “my baby!” when he first appears, critiques her own nipples, and breaks into an uncontrollable fit of laughter during the sex scene.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY: