Miscellanea

WEIRD HORIZON FOR THE WEEK OF 8/2/2013

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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 DEVELOPMENT:

Alice in Wonderland 2 [This Time, It’s Curiouser?] (no street date): To Alfred Eaker‘s eternal dismay, Johnny Depp is reported to have signed up to reprise his maddening role as the Hatter in a sequel to Disney’s disappointing 2010 Alice in Wonderland adaptation. The only shred of good news here is that Tim Burton will not be directing, leaving those duties to the highly competent James Bobin (The Muppets) instead. The horrifying news comes courtesy of Deadline.

NEW ON DVD:

The Devil’s Backbone (2001): A twelve-year old boy is sent to a haunted orphanage after his father is killed in the Spanish Civil War. We still say Pan’s Labyrinth is ‘s masterpiece, but there is a vocal minority who think Backbone is the better film. This is a 2-DVD set from the Criterion Collection. Buy The Devil’s Backbone (Criterion Collection).

Night Across the Street (2012): An old man remembers incidents from his life—including such suspect reminiscences as his boyhood trip to the movies with Beethoven—and stories are interwoven inside stories. This is the final film of , who died of a lung infection in August 2011 soon after completing it. Buy Night Across the Street.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Dark Minds (2013): A psychiatrist seduces and molests his female patients under hypnosis, and it’s up to a police psychic to stop him. This indie that’s scheduled for a theatrical release in September but is already out on Blu-ray looks like nothing so much as the Asylum knockoff version of Vanishing Waves. Buy Dark Minds [Blu-ray].

The Devil’s Backbone (2001): See description in DVD above. Buy The Devil’s Backbone [Criterion Collection 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.

Alfred Eaker's Fringe Cinema

MICHAEL REEVES’ THE SORCERERS (1967)

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Michael Reeves’ The Sorcerers (1967), starring , became a barely noticeable cult film in a cinematically innovative era. A few prominent, hip critics took note of Reeves, and, in some quarters, predictions were made that he could become a horror director of the caliber of , , , or .

Reeves’ had only made one previous film, the low budget The She Beast (1966) starring horror icon , but it was imitative of ‘s work and received scant notice. In contrast, The Sorcerers was stylish, quirky, and unique, although it was also low budget and barely made a profit. Still, it resulted in Reeves’ being given a larger bankroll to work with in his third film: the critical and box office hit Witchfinder General (1968) starring .

Reeves’ death of a drug overdose at twenty-five, shortly before the release of Witchfinder General, affected that film’s reputation. Reeves was hailed as a tragic auteur in the James Dean mold. Since then, Witchfinder General has long been lauded as one of Price’s finest films. Its was considerably helped by the actor/star himself, who listed it as one of his two personal favorites, along with Theater of Blood (1973). Having a historical subject, Witchfinder General defies its period, is highly esteemed, frequently revived, and has been readily available throughout the video age.

In light of Witchfunder General’ s reputation, The Sorcerers was considered a lesser, obscure effort, partly because it seemed more dated and did not have a vital star to promote it (Karloff died a mere week before Reeves). Nor did the actor’s fans promote it. Instead, of Karloff’s late films, they waxed sentimental about Peter Bogdanovich’s Targets (1968), feeling that film was a truer coda for the “King of Horror.” It was only this year that The Sorcerers was finally made available on DVD as part of the Warner Archive collection.

Still from The Sorcerers (1967)The aged and poverty stricken Professor Marcus Monserrat (Karloff) is a long publicly disgraced hypnotist who invents a machine (cue sci-fi mumbo jumbo) which allows him and his wife Estelle (the delightfully vile Catherine Lacey) to project their consciousness into the minds of others. The Monserrats live in a dilapidated London flat during the swinging 60s (cue sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll), and Estelle is corrupted from bitterness due to her husband’s fall from grace. The couple find a willing guinea pig for their gizmo in stud Michael (Ian Ogilvy). Michael, bored with sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll, agrees to be strapped into the Professor’s mind-altering gizmo (cue psychedelia). Although clearly a product of the 60’s, The Sorcerers is imbued with a stylish, compact, contemporary impudence that transcends mere period novelty.

Once the couple psyche into Mike’s experiences, Estelle begins making up for lost years. She quickly becomes addicted to the experience, which causes her to become increasingly imbalanced. After she forces Mike into hedonism, theft, and murder, a battle of wills between Estelle and her husband leads into Being John Malkovich (1999) and Scanners (1981) territory.

The Sorcerers stands out as a respite from Karloff’s humiliating last years. Although seriously ill, the actor gives an admirably subdued performance that rises to a crescendo in the final showdown with his wife. As good as Karloff and Ogilvy are, it is Lacey who steals the film.

The lower budget trappings actually enhance the grittiness of a film that seems to be saying something about the jaded nihilism of the “I, me, mine” culture (well, at least it noticed it).

Canonically Weird (The List)

150. JOHN DIES AT THE END (2012)

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“The name grabbed me instantly, but when I read the log line about a street drug called ‘soy sauce’ and a pair of mid-west slackers battling a silent otherworldly invasion, I was hooked. Since my youth I’ve had a rabid interest in the sci-fi, horror and fantasy genres.  Many of my previous films have explored the surreal and strange.  What I love about JOHN DIES AT THE END is that in addition to being hide-under-the-bed scary, it’s also laugh-out-loud funny.”–Don Coscarelli, director’s statement

Recommended

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , Rob Mayes, , , , Glynn Turman,

PLOT: A college dropout named David Wong tells a story to a journalist at a Chinese restaurant while under the influence of a drug called “soy sauce.” He reveals that the sauce has given him and his friend John psychic powers that enable them to see inter-dimensional intruders who are bent on conquering our reality. He then relates the story of how, together with his one-handed girlfriend and her dog, he and John traveled to the alternate dimension to thwart the invasion.
Still from John Dies at the End (2012)
BACKGROUND:

  • John Dies at the End was adapted from a comic novel of the same name. The name of the story’s protagonist and the author are both “David Wong,” which is actually a pseudonym for Jason Pargin. “John Dies” began life as a short story posted on Pargin’s blog.
  • Don Coscarelli had been working on a sequel to his previous feature, Bubba Ho-Tep (2002), with , but funding fell through. Giamatti supported the idea of adapting John Dies at the End instead, and served as executive producer on the substitute project.
  • Coscarelli credits Amazon’s recommendation algorithm with suggesting the novel “John Dies to the End” to him.
  • The movie’s prologue is a modern zombie-based variation on an ancient philosophical paradox called “the ship of Theseus” (in the book, the prologue refers to an ending that is not explicitly present in the movie).

INDELIBLE IMAGE: We can’t actually mention the movie’s most memorable image here, both thanks to the fact that it’s obscene, and that doing so would spoil what may be the movie’s best joke. Those who’ve seen the film already, however, will doubtlessly remember the door that “cannot be opened.”

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Jason Pargin wrote a sprawling comedy novel in part about two party-hearty college dropouts who take a mysterious drug nicknamed “soy sauce” that makes them clairvoyant, enabling them to perceive an invasion by demonic forces from another dimension. Don Coscarelli, the writer/director of Bubba Ho-Tep and the Phantasm series, took note of this literary property and decided to adapt it, chopping up the timeline and adding hallucinatory demonic visuals until the result plays out like a bad trip brought on by shooting up way too much of an experimental psychedelic drug.


Original trailer for John Dies at the End

COMMENTS: Here’s an unexpected spoiler for you: John doesn’t die at the end of John Dies at the End. At least, I don’t think he does. But it may Continue reading 150. JOHN DIES AT THE END (2012) →

Capsules

CAPSULE: WALK AWAY RENEE (2011)

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DIRECTED BY: Jonathan Caouette

FEATURING: Renee Leblanc, Jonathan Caouette

PLOT: Jonathan Caouette documents his mentally ill mother Renee’s move from a group home in Houston to one in New York; on the trip she loses her medication and dementia and paranoia set in.

Still from Walk Away Renee (2011)

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Though its subject is bonkers, and its experimental methodology sometimes follows suit, Renee is only weird by the standards of documentary filmmaking. The movie has episodes of madness, but most of the time it’s fairly stable.

COMMENTS: A crazy-quilt of documentary footage, recreations, old home movies, and psychedelic montages, Walk Away Renee is meandering to the point of being psychotic, an arguably appropriate approach given its subject. Filmmaker Jonathan Caouette’s mother (he always calls her Renee, never Mom) is both bipolar and schizoaffective; even in her most lucid moments, she seems distant and distracted. When she’s unstable, she becomes panicky and irritable, and talks about the dead baby inside her while sitting in the doorway of a Manhattan business and screaming at her son to leave her alone. Once a gorgeous green-eyed brunette who could have been a model, fifty years of being unable to care for herself while drifting in and out of institutions have taken their toll on her beauty; she’s lost several teeth, which causes her to mumble and makes her offbeat declarations (“I’m Dolly Parton!,” “Want to be in the family circus?”) even harder to understand. The traditional family roles have been reversed; the son mothers the mom, taking her for Ferris wheel rides at the fair and overseeing the diet of antipsychotic medication necessary to keep her coherent. This dynamic leads to touchingly ironic moments, as when the son stops his distracted mom from stepping out into traffic; this event reminds her of her motherly duties, and at the next crosswalk she tells him to be careful and hold her hand while crossing the street. The opening epigram, from Einstein, suggests that past, present and future are a “stubbornly persistent illusion,” which the movie uses as a license to intersperse home video footage of a younger Renee throughout the contemporaneous story of relocation from Houston to New York City. Some of the memories are wistful ones of happier times, when guileless Renee would play at being the lead actress in Jonathan’s home movies. Others, from Renee’s stay in the 1990s with her demented eighty-year-old father in his filthy Houston home, seem to come right out of one of ‘s nightmares: the two screech at each other, caught up in separate delusions, while a toy baby doll cackles demonically in the background. Avant-garde montages also intrude on the proceedings, utilizing layers of home movies edited into psychedelic backgrounds, meant to dislocate us inside Renee’s weaving brain. This process culminates in a kaleidoscopic trip through an umbilical wormhole connecting alternate soap-bubble universes. Of course, we know that editorial selection has created the story we are seeing, but we want to believe (and have no real reason to doubt) that this vision captures the essence of their relationship. Caouette, whose face is constantly photographed in worried closeups, presents himself as the long-suffering good son. It’s a little self-serving, but there’s nothing to suggest he hasn’t earned such a portrayal; anyone who has cared for a mentally ill relative deserves a little pat on the back. The knowledge that this is one of those newfangled “hybrid” docs—-many of the scenes are recreations rather than live events, all of the voices of doctors and nurses on the other end of the frantic phone calls are voiced by actors, and Caouette gives himself a “story” credit, an unconventional touch for a supposed documentary—also undercuts the emotional impact a bit. Still, there is enough of the undeniably real Renee here to make this a touching, if meandering, tribute to a gentle soul whose misfiring neurons have trapped her in an eternal childhood.

Caouette’s 2003 documentary Tarnation covered much of the same ground, with more focus on the (also dysfunctional) grandparents who raised him. That movie was edited on an Apple laptop with an estimated budget of $218 and was championed as a masterpiece of DIY filmmaking. Most of the critics who panned Renee suggested that it was little more than a bigger-budgeted remake of Tarnation; not having seen the original, I found this effort to be interesting and poignant.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“There are also elaborate, ‘Tree of Life’-style effects for an ill-advised science-fiction subplot that further distances this follow-up from reality.”–Lou Lumenick, New York Post (contemporaneous)

Capsules

CAPSULE: ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS (1973)

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DIRECTED BY: James MacTaggart

FEATURING: Sarah Sutton, Brenda Bruce, June Taylor, Judy Parfitt, , Geoffrey Bayldon, Richard Pearson, Raymond Mason, Anthony Collin, Douglas Milvain

PLOT: On a boring, snowy afternoon, young Alice discovers that she can walk right through the large mirror over her fireplace; there, she finds herself in a parallel universe, competing in a life-size chess game ruled over by the Red and White Queens, and meeting such strange characters as Humpty Dumpty, the White Knight, and the twins Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

Still from Alice Through the Looking Glass (1973)

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Even though this is actually one of the better film or television adaptations of the “Alice” books, it’s extremely low budget and bare-bones, shot-on-videotape look prevents the visuals from getting as wild or fantastical as they might be.

COMMENTS: Although most filmed versions of Lewis Carroll’s novel “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” (1865) include elements of his sequel “Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There” (1871), this production is one of just three or four adaptations of the second book standing alone. Some consider “Through the Looking Glass” to be the better of the two “Alice” tales, being simultaneously stranger and more sentimental than its predecessor. Aired by the BBC on Christmas Day 1973, this trip through the mirror really looks like a 40-year-old television show; that is to say, the budget is rock bottom. The lack of fancy special effects means that this is basically all (brilliant) dialogue all the time, which may strike some as boring. For those who have read the novel, however, this is actually one of the few adaptations that is genuinely amusing (at least in fits and starts), as opposed to just odd. During the sequence depicting the “Jabberwocky” monster, for instance, the combination of threadbare effects (the monster resembles a sock puppet) and gesticulating, posing actors, renders the silliness almost -esque, which seems to have been intentional. The lack of big name actors also makes this version somewhat unusual, since most other “Alice” productions are chock-full of luminaries (the biggest names here did their notable work later, Red Queen Judy Parfitt in 1995’s Dolores Claiborne and Humpty Dumpty Freddie Jones in ‘s The Elephant Man and Dune). The performers (including future “Doctor Who” sidekick Sarah Sutton, who looks about eleven years old here) stand in front of primitive blue screen backgrounds that resemble John Tenniel’s original book illustrations, and generally have a fine old time, particularly Jones, who is basically just playing a giant head. This is also the only “Looking Glass” I’ve seen where the White King (Richard Pearson) is more memorable than the White Queen (Brenda Bruce). The droll performances, including Geoffrey Bayldon’s unexpectedly acerbic White Knight, almost make up for the shoestring production values in this 74-minute program (not 66 minutes, as it says on the box). There are flaws to be sure: the calamitous dinner party finale is nowhere near as crazy as its counterpart in Hollywood’s 1933 version of Alice in Wonderland, for example.  But although this production is unlikely to please the kids, it’s a surprisingly pleasant experience for oldsters who’ve been raised on the original books.

Since this is a DVD of a little-known television program, the disc has no extras and is presented in mono sound. The image, while a little soft, looks presentable enough for a video that has probably been sitting in the BBC vaults for four decades.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Very free and dreamlike at times… . The pacing is strange, but then, so is the story being told so somehow that seems appropriate even if in some ways it does hurt the movie. All in all, as dated as it is and as stagey as it is, this is worth tracking down simply because it’s quite an effective take on the book and one that treats the subject matter seriously and without the need for parody of or modernizing of the original text.”–Ian Jane, DVD Talk (DVD)

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