A skeleton android searches its way through a maze full of deadly traps and puzzles.
WEIRD HORIZON FOR THE WEEK OF 9/7/2012
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):
Branded: A man discovers an advertising conspiracy in what the press release describes as “a dark and mind-bending journey into a surreal, dystopian society.” Apparently there have been no advance screenings for critics, which is a bad sign. Branded official site.
Toys in the Attic [Na Pude] (2009): Good toys battle evil toys in this Czech stop-motion animation recently dubbed for American audiences. This looks like what might result if Pixar hired Jan Svankmajer to remake Toy Story; one reviewer says it “easily earns a capital-W for weird” (he was trying to warn audiences away, but it’s what made us add the flick to our “must see” list). Toys in the Attic official site.
SCREENINGS (Thurs., Sep. 13, Santa Monica, CA):
After the Triumph of Your Birth: A surreal, noirish spiritual road trip movie about a world-weary forty year old man searching for meaning in existence. This official premiere will be accompanied by a concert by singer/songwriter Maria McKee, who wrote and performed the film’s music. See the After the Triumph of Your Birth official site for more information.
FILM FESTIVALS: BUT (B-MOVIE, UNDERGROUND & TRASH) FILM FESTIVAL (Sep. 5-9, Breda, The Netherlands):
We’ve already missed the beginning of this festival that describes itself as “for the weird, the wicked and the bizarre,” but we couldn’t pass on commenting on the remaining slate.
- Gallino: The Chicken System – It’s the world premiere of Carlos Atanes‘ latest effort, which he describes as a “pornophilsophical film.” No idea what it’s about, but chances are 100% that it will be weird. Screening Sep. 8.
- Remington and the Zombadings – It’s a Filipino comedy about a boy who gradually becomes gay due to a drag queen’s ancient curse. Even the name says “weird.” No info on whether it is subtitled in English, however. Screening Sep. 8.
FILM FESTIVALS: CINCINNATI FILM FESTIVAL (Sep. 6-14, Cincinnati, OH):
Although you can find interesting and offbeat alternative films at any regional film fests, these events rarely make our radar unless there’s something unusual and rare playing there. We’ve got a particular interest in one film on Cincinnati’s slate this year…
- FDR: American Badass – Franklin Delano Roosevelt fights Nazis and werewolves from his wheelchair. Next up in the Presidential B-movie sweepstakes: Herbert Hoover: The Shark-Hunting Years. Screening Saturday, Sep. 8, at midnight (naturally).
- Thunder-Sky – 366 contributor Alfred Eaker‘s documentary (co-directed with Ross Eaker) about autistic artist Raymond Thunder-Sky—who frequented construction sites dressed as a clown wearing a hard hat—will play at the Cincinnati Film Festival this September. Screening tonight (Sep. 7) at 11:00 PM; also screening Mon., Sep. 10, and closing the festival in a double feature with a documentary on country icon Charlie Louvin. If you go, say hi to Al for us.
Cincinnati Film Festival homepage.
FILM FESTIVALS: TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL (Sep. 6-16, Toronto, Canada):
Possibly North America’s most prestigious film festival, major Hollywood films debut at the TIFF, and the red carpet often hosts mainstream stars like Kristen Stewart, Tom Hanks and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Still, TIFF makes space for smaller, more interesting, and weirder films, and if we were there we’d be skipping the lines for Anna Karenina and scooping up tickets for some of the movies listed below:
- The ABC’s of Death – 26 directors each tell a short story about death based on an assigned letter of the alphabet. Some of the mini-auteurs whose work is featured: Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani (Amer), Jason Eisener (Hobo With a Shotgun), Noboru Iguchi (RoboGeisha), Yoshihiro Nishimura (Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl), Marcel Sarmiento (Deadgirl), Srdjan Spasojevic (A Serbian Film), and Yûdai Yamaguchi (Yakuza Weapon). The letter “T” was reserved for a contest winner.Screening in the “Midnight Madness” category Sep. 14, 15 & 16.
- The Act of Killing – A strange and disturbing documentary in which members of Indonesian death squads unapologetically re-enact their real-life murders for the cameras in the style of the American movies they loved; Werner Herzog and Errol Morris were so impressed with the concept they signed on as executive producers. Sep. 8, 10 & 16.
- Antiviral – Here’s a bizarre premise: adventures in an underground trade supplying fans with viruses taken from their favorite celebrities. The directorial debut of Brandon (son of David) Cronenberg. Sep. 10 & 12.
- Berberian Sound Studio – A neurotic British sound engineer used to working on quiet nature documentaries goes mad when he takes an assignment designing the audio for a 1970s Italian horror film. Sep. 10 & 11.
- The Fifth Season [La cinquième saison] – All we know about this Belgian film is that the magical realist premise is that one year spring does not come to a rural village, and the social order disintegrates.Sep. 12, 13 & 16.
- John Dies in the End – Cult director Don Coscarelli adapts a popular webseries about two losers saving the world from a psychedelic drug being used by aliens to take over the planet. This on has been on the festival circuit for almost a year now. Sep. 15 (midnight showing) & 16.
- Krivina – A Bosnian emigrant returns to his homeland in search of a missing friend in what programmers describe as a “quietly chilling and finely surreal meditation on confronting traumas of the past.” Sep. 9 & 11.
- A Liar’s Autobiography – The Untrue Story of Monty Python’s Graham Chapman – 12 animators adapt and illustrate late Monty Python alumnus Graham Chapman’s 1980 fictionalized autobiography. Sep. 8 & 10.
- Peaches Does Herself – Described as a “wild transsexual rock opera,” it’s the first feature film from Peaches, a singer known for her sexually explicit lyrics and gender-bending avant-garde stage shows. Sep. 13, 15 & 16.
- Post Tenebras Lux – From Mexico comes this kaleidoscopic, non-linear portrait of a family in crisis. Sep 12, 13 & 16.
- Room 237 – Documentary about people who believe that Stanley Kubrick‘s The Shining contains hidden messages revealing vast international conspiracies. One loony theorizes that the entire movie is Kubrick’s coded confession that he helped fake the footage of Americans landing on the moon.Sep 13, 15 & 16.
- Spring Breakers – The bikini publicity photos make it look like a typical teen-sex comedy, but with Harmony Korine at the helm we’re guessing this story of four college girls who get into criminal trouble on spring break will be anything but conventional. Squeaky clean Disney alums Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens will try to de-habilitate their images with this project. Sep. 7, 9 & 14.
- Yellow – A substitute teacher escapes the drudgery of her life by indulging in bizarre psychedelic fantasies. Sep. 8, 9 & 16.
Toronto International Film Festival home page.
NEW ON DVD:
Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948): Two bumbling baggage clerks accidentally revive the remains of both Frankenstein’s monster and Dracula; fortunately the Wolf Man arrives to help the buffoons defeat ultimate evil. This DVD/digital copy release is significantly cheaper than the Blu-ray/DVD/digital copy Universal put out last week. Buy Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein
The Birds (1963): Although it’s known today mostly as the inspiration for James Ngyuen’s Birdemic, this Alfred Hitchcock movie about a series of relentless and unmotivated attacks by our fine feathered friends is sort of strange, when you stop and think about it. No word on whether this is an upgrade over the 2000 “Collector’s Edition” of the film, which was a very nice release. Buy The Birds
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004): Read the Certified Weird entry! This “Universal 100th Anniversary” edition appears to be essentially disc 1 of the now out of-print special 2-disc collectors edition Universal released in 2005; buy the 2011 Blu-ray
Lisztomania (1975): Can celebrity virtuoso Franz Liszt (portrayed by rock star Roger Daltrey) fend off the hordes of groupies slobbering over his version of “Chopsticks” while simultaneously frustrating rival composer Richard Wagner’s plans for world domination? This oft-requested cult item from the irrepressible Ken Russell is being released on an el cheapo DVD-R via Warner Archives, which is better than no release at all. It is advertised as remastered, at least. Buy Lisztomania
Re-Animator (1985): Jeffrey Combs is chillingly geeky as a med student who raises the dead in this outrageously sleazy and spoofy adaptation of a serialized shocker by H.P. Lovecraft . One of the first and best of the B-movie black horror comedies gets a severed-face lift from Image Entertainment. Buy Re-Animator
Secret Beyond the Door (1947): An heiress marries an architect who “collects” rooms in which famous murders have occurred. A forgotten Freudian shocker from Expressionist master Fritz Lang. Buy Secret Beyond the Door
Vertigo (1958): A detective suffering from the titular phobia uncovers even deeper psychological issues when he falls in love with a woman who dies before his eyes, then comes across her exact double… Universal’s re-release of this creepy classic comes just as Vertigo has displaced Citizen Kane on Sight & Sound’s critic’s poll of the Greatest Films Ever Made. Buy Vertigo
NEW ON BLU-RAY:
Holy Flying Circus (2011): The story of the flap surrounding Monty Python’s Life of Brian in 1979; actors playing John Cleese and Michael Palin defend their movie against charges of blasphemy from a representative of the “Popular People’s Church” (one of many, many in-jokes). Made for BBC television, it tells the true story in a Pythonesque style of overlapping absurdist sketches, fourth wall breaks and animation. Buy Holy Flying Circus [Blu-ray]
Re-Animator (1985): See description in DVD above. Buy Re-Animator [Blu-ray]
Secret Beyond the Door (1947): See description in DVD above. Buy Secret Beyond the Door [Blu-ray]
FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON YOUTUBE:
Maniac [AKA Sex Maniac] (1934): Read the Certified Weird entry! One of the weirdest of the so-bad-it’s-weird genre—and maybe the most entertaining. Extremely quotable. “Vonce a ham… alvays a ham. You… an actor?” Watch Maniac [AKA Sex Maniac] free on YouTube.
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.
EDGAR G. ULMER’S BLUEBEARD (1944)
Edgar G.Ulmer began his career at Max Reinhardt’s theater, became an apprentice to F.W. Murnau on the director’s masterpiece Sunrise (1927), and received a commission to direct Universal’s two new horror icons, Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, in their first co-starring film. With The Black Cat (1934), Ulmer secured an enviable budget and practically carte blanche. The Black Cat may not have had much to do with Edgar Allan Poe, but the legendary 19th century writer would have loved Ulmer’s deliciously black deco homage. 1934 critics and audiences most certainly did, making it a bona fide hit. Ulmer’s idiosyncratic cult film remains the two stars’ best film together. The director was at the top of his game and looked to have a long and successful career ahead. By all rights, Edgar G. Ulmer should have had a career and body of work that could be placed alongside the films of James Whale and Tod Browning. Then, Ulmer screwed up.
Universal was a family-run studio when Ulmer decided to have an affair with the wife of a top-ranking Universal studio executive. Ulmer was fired and blacklisted, by the major studios, for life. Believe it or not, Hollywood once had a sense of morality. Ulmer was reduced to working for the poverty row circuit, namely PRC Studios. He later claimed that this was his artistic choice to do so, because it gave him greater creative freedom. He lied. Ulmer loved European culture, art music, and was known to discourse fluently on the aesthetic process with actors (Karloff was delightfully challenged by Ulmer). Many of Ulmer’s contemporaries freely acknowledge that Ulmer was also a pathological liar. Of course, this only makes him more interesting. He consistently exaggerated his background (when he didn’t need to), padded his resume, and made outrageous claims about himself. Despite all of that, Ulmer had a unique aesthetic sensibility and conscientiously tried to inject that into his films, even in scripts that could only pass for excrement.
Ulmer struggled as much with PRC as he did with Universal. It was the classic case of artist vs. executives. Ulmer lost far more battles than he won, although he naturally fared best when he was allowed to act as his own producer. Ulmer desperately wanted to make a film of the Bluebeard story for 10 years. Originally, it was supposed to star Karloff and would be his follow Continue reading EDGAR G. ULMER’S BLUEBEARD (1944)
LIST CANDIDATE: ATTENBERG (2010)
DIRECTED BY: Athina Rachel Tsangari
FEATURING: Ariane Labed, Evangelia Randou, Vangelis Mourikis, Giorgos Lanthimos
PLOT: A strange young woman tries to cope with her father’s impending death and her disgust at human sexuality with the help of her equally odd but extremely promiscuous best friend.
WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: Because you can use the first scene, which begins with the least erotic lesbian kiss ever put on screen and ends with the two girls dropping on all fours and hissing at each other like cats in heat, to clear any unwanted squares out of the room.
COMMENTS: “If ever there was a possibility of escaping the human condition and living imaginatively in another creature’s world, it must be with the gorilla,” proclaims Sir David Attenborough from the TV screen—but that’s only because he never met Marina. The conceit in this study of the ineffable otherness of others is that we watch Marina and her friend Bella as if we’re watching a nature documentary about creatures whose rituals we can only dimly grasp, but not entirely understand. To remind us of that fact, the pair will break into weird dances of their own invention, or suddenly slip into animalistic hissing, spitting, and primal chest pounding. Yet, despite these alienating narrative techniques, we still manage to sympathize with strange Marina, thanks to Ariane Labed’s affectingly melancholy performance and confident direction which manages to keep the uncomfortably absurd from sliding into the merely laughable (as many commentators have pointed out, the girls’ dances are reminiscent of outtakes from Monty Python’s “Ministry of Silly Walks” sketch, only with more crotch-grabbing). Even when the movie avoids experimentation and plays it straight, Marina is one odd bird. She believes herself to be asexual but forces herself to practice French kissing with her best friend, and eventually to seduce a visiting engineer (played by Dogtooth director Lanthimos). The resulting sex scenes are so painfully awkward they make losing your virginity on prom night a model of erotic smoothness by comparison. Marina’s deepest relationship is with her cancer-stricken father. There’s a naturalness and comfortableness to their conversations; it comes across that she’s been in the habit of confessing her bizarre thoughts—like the fact that she imagines her father naked, but without a penis—to him for years, and he’s been in the habit of gently steering her opinions into more conventional channels. When he dies, who will constrain her deranged imagination? If normality and integration into society is the goal for Marina, however, then her only friend Bella is a bad influence, encouraging her in her apparent dream of becoming an avant-garde choreographer for Martians. Bella’s very existence, and her devotion to Marina, is something of a mystery in Attenberg. She is Marina’s mirror image, reversed along the sexuality axis: where Marina imagines fathers without penises, Bella dreams of a forest of phalluses, then worries that “seeing genitals in your sleep is a bad omen.” Attenberg is at its best when it’s spying on these intriguing creatures and their shocking individuality. In those few occasions where it widens its lens to suggest a wider sociopolitical metaphor, as when the dying father pontificates about the death of the twentieth century, Greece’s future, and “petit-bourgeois hysteria,” we politely indulge the discourse as we would the observations of any dying man who’s being used as a director’s mouthpiece, but secretly wish Marina and Bella would get back to dancing like circus monkeys hopped up on fermented bananas. Although “normal” movie audiences will find the casual, naturalistic surrealism of Attenberg insufferable, around here we see it as a case where an infusion of welcome weirdness spices up what otherwise might have been a dreary drama about a disaffected daughter and her dying dad.
First with Dogtooth, and now with Attenberg, it appears that the economic and social crisis in Greece has put national filmmakers in a weird mood; or, at least, that’s what The Guardian believes. Regardless, Greek drama hasn’t achieved this level of weirdness since they were making up stories about guys ripping out their eyes because they accidentally had sex with their moms.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
(This movie was nominated for review by Gnosos, who described it as “another [G]reek weird movie.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)
LIST CANDIDATE: MUTANT GIRLS SQUAD (2010)
DIRECTED BY: Noboru Iguchi, Yoshihiro Nishimura, Tak Sakaguchi
FEATURING: Yumi Sugimoto, Suzuka Morita, Yuko Takayama, Tak Sakaguchi
PLOT: On her 16th birthday a bullied teenage girl discovers she’s really a half-breed mutant with
a claw for a hand; she joins up with others of her kind and must decide if she will help them destroy humanity and usher in an age of mutants.
WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: At least one of these new wave Japanese splatterpunk movies will eventually make the List; it’s just a question of which one can raise its head (or more appropriately, spout its geyser of blood) above the mad crowd. This entry in the cycle has the advantage of being a collaboration between three of the top talents in the sleazy subgenre—Noboru (RoboGeisha) Iguchi, Yoshihiro (Tokyo Gore Police) Nishimura, and Tak (Yakuza Weapon) Sakaguchi—as well as being bat-guano insane in its own right.
COMMENTS: You’ll probably know whether you want to see Mutant Girls Squad or not on the basis of the still above. Three of Sushi Typhoon’s top directors each handle a thirty minute chapter of this thinly-plotted, tripped-out triptych, and each is intent on outdoing the other in outrageousness. It’s a testament to the anything-goes interchangeability of the mutant-bioweaponry genre that you probably wouldn’t realize three hands were in this pie without being told; each of the directors promiscuously mixes up styles within his own segment, from teeth-chattering action sequences to absurd organ-oriented comedy to a terrorist music video medley mixing “Ave Maria,” calypso dancing, and suicide bombings. This filmmaking procedure may result in a certain level of discontinuity (schoolgirl Rin discovers and activates her mutant claw in the first chapter, and then goes through the mutant awakening procedure all over again in the succeeding segment), but that’s not too much of an issue in a style that makes comic books look like hardcore realism by comparison. The loosely sketched storyline involving a war between humans and mutants is just a clothesline on which the filmmakers hang as many “WTF?” moments as they can. To wit, you get soldiers equipped with masks that fire bullets from their noses; a baker ironically carved up into a baguette; a mutant pop with deformed nipples and genitalia; a flashback to a decapitated head on a birthday cake; a final boss with two giant boobs on either side of his head that shoot acidic milk; and so on, and so on. All this craziness becomes so expected, in fact, that it’s the quieter touches that stand out: in context, it’s actually more bizarre that the mutant cheerleader girl wears a bright yellow sweater reading “I [heart] Texas” than that she can extrude a chainsaw from her rectum. Of course, if you’re familiar with these movies at all, you know they’re not intended for anyone squeamish around blood and guts. Squad lives up to its forebears with all the expected exploding heads, absurdly abundant fountains of blood jetting from decapitated necks, and other demonstrations of the infinitely malleable meatishness of our all-too-frail human forms. Mutant Girls Squad‘s only real ambition is to zip from one outlandish, grotesque image to the next, and to do so as fast as possible so its audience never has the slightest opportunity to get bored. It achieves that ambition, but the effect is like scarfing down a pile of candy on Halloween; it’s tasty while you’re guzzling it down, but you might feel a little sick and guilty when the feast’s over. You also might feel that you’ve been robbed of a proper nutritious meal.
Since Meatball Machine essentially founded the mutant splatterpunk genre in 2005, Japanese studios have been churning out these chaep, absurdly bloody vehicles at the rate of 3-4 videos per year. In 2010 Nikkatsu Studios (makers of yakuza potboilers and pink films, and the company that infamously fired Seijun Suzuki for making movies that were too weird) spun off a sub-label called “Sushi Typhoon” to pump out these b-movies and market them to the lucrative Western market.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY: