Miscellanea

WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE

Leave a comment

With the hours ticking down in the third Reader’s Choice poll (voting ends at midnight EST, Aug. 8), some clear (if not prohibitive) favorites have emerged. In Group A, American Astronaut leads perpetual runner-up Adaptation by a count of 27 votes to 16. The Group B contest is tighter, with David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers ahead of Frank Zappa’s 200 Motels by a slim 37-32 margin. The “rescue” category, on the other hand, is not even close to competitive: Chris Marker’s time-travel classic La Jetée has more than double the number of votes as its nearest competitor (which, in a shocking contrast, is Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny). You’ve got a few more days to make a difference, but it looks like American Astronaut and Dead Ringers will be your newest additions to the List.

Next week you can look forward to reviews of the Swedish anarcho-absurdist music satire Sound of Noise (2010), the weirdo-horror May (2002), another dip into ‘s seemingly bottomless well for The Amazing Transplant, and… well, we’re not 100% sure yet. Let’s just say a mystery weird movie to be named later.

It was a thin week for bizarre search terms, but as always we will collect the strangest ones we catch for our popular Weirdest Search Term of the Week contest. First, we have to give honorable mentions to two searchers looking for websites servicing incomprehensible and/or untranslatable fetishes: “loveflies on vagina movies.com” and “www.saxxy grail mobail no.” We’ll move on to an absurd sex pair that would probably be the weirdest search terms to grace another, less weird, site, but are fairly par for our course: “amazonian catfish oral sex” and “tattoo pinocchio sex.” For our weirdest search term, we’re going to step outside the sex world, though, and go with this one from the world of violence: “i watch a black and white scene then i want to kill.” We knew the average moviegoer doesn’t enjoy black and white movies, but we had no idea they were so fed up with them they spontaneously confessed their homicidal impulses to Google!

Here’s the ridiculously-long-and-ever-growing reader-suggested review queue: May (next week!); The Hour-glass Sanatorium [Saanatorium pod klepsidra] (out of print in Region 1, but we’ll keep looking); Liquid Sky (re-review); “Twin Peaks” (TV series); Society; Little Otik; Final Programme; Continue reading WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE →

Miscellanea

WEIRD HORIZON FOR THE WEEK OF 8/3/2012

Leave a comment

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):

Free Radicals: A History of Experimental Film (2010): The title tells all; this is an 80 minute survey of 20th century experimental film, highlighted by the final recorded interview of pioneer Stan Brakhage. Playing at the Anthology Archives in New York City for one week only. Free Radicals official site.

SCREENINGS (Cinefamily, Los Angeles, CA, Aug. 5)

After the Triumph of Your Birth (2012): According to the press release it’s a “a surreal, dark humored portrait of the outsider; a music driven celebration of uncertainty.” After watching the trailer we’re still not sure what to make of it, but it does look professionally assembled and weird. The sold out (?) showing at Cinefamily this Sunday, Aug. 5, is to be followed by the official premier and an accompanying Maria McKee concert in Santa Monica on September 13, followed (we’re guessing) by a DVD release. After the Triumph of Your Birth official site.

IN DEVELOPMENT:

Fantastic Planet (est. 2013): It’s little more than a rumor at this point, but if it comes true it will be one of those “say it ain’t so!” moments: a remake of the indescribably original, Certified Weird Fantastic Planet. We would expect it to be live action, in 3-D, and star Shia LaBouef as Terr and Jennifer Lawrence as Tiwa. Michael Bay or James Cameron are the obvious choices for director. It’s just an IMDB entry right now, and let’s pray it stays that way.

NEW ON DVD:

The Bunny Game (2012): B&W experimental S&M shocksploitation about a prostitute named “Bunny” picked up and ritualistically tortured and humiliated but a trucker named “Hog.” WARNING: This has been “banned in Britain”; but then again, it’s not that hard to get something banned in Britain (these guys forbade Possession, for crying out loud!) Buy The Bunny Game.

Detention (2012): A postmodern, self-aware slasher sci-fi comedy that also parodies 1980s teen movies. Depending on how the idea is handled, this could totally rule, or end up totally gay. Buy Detention.

“Midnight Movies Vol 4: Thriller Triple Feature” (Bloodstained Shadow/Short Night of Glass Dolls/Who Saw Her Die?): We hadn’t heard of any of the movies in the first three volumes Blue Underground’s new triple feature series, until Short Night of Glass Dolls (1971) on Vol. 4 finally rang a bell. It’s a fairly well-regarded (despite the presence of Barbara Bach) giallo with sex and hallucination sequences. The companion features look more forgettable, but you could do worse than to get three giallos for the price of one. Buy “Midnight Movies Vol 4: Thriller Triple Feature” (Bloodstained Shadow/Short Night of Glass Dolls/Who Saw Her Die).

“Mystery Science Theater 3000: XXIV”: The twenty-fourth volume of bad movie goodness from the movie-mocking robots of the Satellite of Love. Episodes include the two Fugitive Alien movies, the Soviet spectacle The Sword and the Dragon, and El Santo’s only MST3K appearance in Samson vs. the Vampire Woman. Buy “Mystery Science Theater 3000: XXIV”.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

The Bunny Game (2012): See description in DVD above. Buy The Bunny Game [Blu-ray].

Detention (2012): See description in DVD above. Buy Detention [Blu-ray].

Nazi Invasion: Team Europe 3-D [AKA Jackboots on Whitehall] (2010): Read our capsule review. They made the action-figure Nazis invading Britain movie Jackboots on Whitehall into 3-D, then changed the name on us. We’re not fooled. Buy Nazi Invasion: Team Europe [AKA Jackboots on Whitehall] [Blu-ray 3D].

Total Recall (1990): Arnold Schwarzenegger stars as an ordinary man with implanted memories in this mildly-mindbending sci-fi hit super-loosely based on a Phillip K. Dick novel. Forget the currently playing 2012 remake—OK, you could probably forget the original too, but if you can only forget one version of Total Recall, the remake is the one to forget. This “mind-bending” edition is said to be an upgrade over the poor-quality, feature-free 2006 Blu release. Buy Total Recall (Mind-Bending Edition) [Blu-ray].

FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON YOUTUBE:

Scrambled Beer (2007): Chilean comedy about a roommate who involuntarily travels through time. We haven’t watched it all the way through but we can confirm a character drinks scrambled beer. Watch Scrambled Beer 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.

Alfred Eaker's Fringe Cinema

DEADLY WEAPONS (1973)/DOUBLE AGENT 73 (1974)

7 Comments

‘s Deadly Weapons (1973) and Double Agent 73 (1974), both starring 73FF(!)-32-36 Chesty Morgan, makes for a bizarre double feature, and a bizarre Something Weird Blu-ray release. This set (entitled “Chesty Morgan’s Bosom Buddies”) also includes a third feature The Immoral Three (1975), which does not include Morgan (who had, remarkably, taken the star bit between her teeth and was promptly sacked by Wishman). We focus on the first two features starring Chesty.

 had the incomparable Divine. Wishman had the incomparable Chesty Morgan. The big difference is that Divine could actually act. Morgan, an exploitation freak of nature, was the energizer bunny rabbit to Wishman’s directorial enthusiasm.

Wishman’s influence on John Waters cannot be underestimated. Her films are a visual smorgasbord of bad taste with attentive detail. Wishman’s nonsensical lens focus is so mercurial it brings to mind ‘s frozen camera in Three’s A Crowd (1927). Repeated, dumbfounded concentration on queer inanimate objects disrupts the narrative flow and coats Wishman’s films in loving disjointedness. Cut-away shots of hedges, a repellently hued yellow-ochre telephone, the most beautifully ghastly wallpaper ever captured on celluloid, and nonsensical extreme close-ups of Morgan’s 73-inch fleshbags creates a visually surreal train wreck of a movie.

Morgan’s voice is dubbed in both films. Apparently, her polish accent was so thick as to be indecipherable. Unfortunately, her acting range is nowhere near as mammoth as her breasts. Morgan begins with leathery boredom and ends with celluloid sleep walking. Now, dress this big breasted zombie up in bad wigs and garish clothing to enact a zany plot!

Well, yes, there is a plot of sorts to Deadly Weapons. It has something to do with Morgan as an office manager (!) wearing 8-inch platform heels and a blouse at least two sizes too small. She has a Continue reading DEADLY WEAPONS (1973)/DOUBLE AGENT 73 (1974) →

Canonically Weird (The List)

121. 8 1/2 (1963)

6 Comments

AKA Otto e Mezzo; Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2

366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.

CLAUDIA: Let’s leave this place. It makes me uneasy. It doesn’t seem real.

GUIDO: I really like it. Isn’t that odd?

Must See

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , , Sandra Milo, Claudia Cardinale, , Edra Gale

PLOT: Full of doubts and very near to suffering a breakdown from stress, a director is planning to make his next movie, never making much progress. The story is continuously interrupted by flashbacks to his boyhood and dream sequences, including one where he imagines all the women in his life living together in a harem. The production is complicated further by the arrival of his wife on the set, who is humiliated to find that his mistress is also there.

Still from 8 1/2 (1963)

BACKGROUND:

  • By Fellini’s count, this was the 8 1/2th film he directed (counting shorts and co-directing gigs as 1/2 of a movie each).
  • This was Fellini’s first feature after the incredible international success of La Dolce Vita (1960). In the movie, Fellini’s alter ego Guido has just come off of a great success, and everyone around him is expecting him to produce another masterpiece.
  • After making La Dolce Vita and before 8 1/2, Fellini became involved in Jungian psychoanalysis and started keeping a dream diary.
  • 8 1/2 won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 1964. It played out of competition at Cannes, because the Italians split up their two 1963 prestige pictures, 8 1/2 and Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard, between Cannes and the Moscow Film Festival (a successful strategy, as Visconti took Cannes and Fellini Moscow). 8 1/2 has since far surpassed its companion and become a staple of “best movies of all time” lists. It ranked #9 on the 2002 version of Sight & Sound’s critic’s poll of the greatest movies ever made, and #3 on the director’s poll.
  • The “dance” ending was originally intended as a promotional trailer, but Fellini decided he liked the optimistic tone of this sequence better than the dark ending he had originally planned.
  • Unaccountably, this intellectual meditation on artistic doubt was adapted as a Broadway musical (!) called “Nine,” which was then made into a mediocre Hollywood musical.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: It is with great reluctance that I select the image of Marcello Mastroianni flown like a kite above the beach as 8 1/2‘s representative image; not because it isn’t a fascinating and beautiful invention, but because I have to pass on so many other worthy candidates. In particular, I would have loved to pick a shot of Guido with a whip trying in vain to tame the women in the harem of his mind; but that ten minute sequence flows so beautifully and seamlessly from polygamous bliss to infantilism to feminist rebellion that it unfortunately can’t be summed up in a single still.

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Watching 8 1/2 is like being dropped inside Federico Fellini’s brain and wandering around inside its convoluted folds. As self-centered stream-of-consciousness filmmaking, this wonderfully masturbatory masterpiece has never been equaled. The film flows smoothly from anxiety-ridden nightmares to wish-fulfillment daydreams to some state we could safely call “reality” (although some new magic is always creeping up on even the most mundane moments of Guido’s confused existence).


Opening scene from 8 1/2

 

COMMENTS: Expressing my disappointment with the middelbrow conventionality of 2009’s Continue reading 121. 8 1/2 (1963) →

Celebrating the cinematically surreal, bizarre, cult, oddball, fantastique, strange, psychedelic, and the just plain WEIRD!