2012

June 1, 2012 admin 1 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 DEVELOPMENT:

Planet Diva: Director John Hartman is asking for funds to expand his thirty minute post-apocalyptic/grindhouse/dominatrix short (which played the Fetish Film Festival last year) into a feature film. Most of the budget will be spent on converting riding mowers into alligator-shaped golf carts, and the director promises “I don’t mind taking the audience through a really dark and weird tunnel.” Planet Diva feature page at Indiegogo.

NEW ON DVD:

The Demoniacs [AKA Curse of the Living Dead] (1974): Two women are raped by pirates, and make a deal with the devil to come back from the dead to extract revenge. In January of this year Redemption released remastered versions of five films by surreal horror specialist Jean Rollin. Several major titles were missing, but this three-DVD June drop (Rape of the Vampire and Requiem for a Vampire are also on tap) makes the majority of Rollin’s oeuvre easily available for the first time. Buy The Demoniacs (1974).

“The Found Footage Festival, Volume 5”: Another compilation of strange and frightening misfires from the golden years of direct-to-VHS video. Includes cats riding motorcycles, Linda Blair’s revenge video, and karaoke yetis singing beloved Christmas tunes. Buy “The Found Footage Festival: Volume 5.”

In the Realms of the Unreal (2004): Documentary on legendary outsider artist Henry Darger, a janitor who secretly wrote and illustrated a 15,000 page (!) fantasy novel called “The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What Is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion” that was only discovered after his death. Director Jessica Yu animates some of Dager’s beautiful but sometimes disturbing artwork, which mixes obsessive Catholic iconography with naked prepubescent girls—with tiny penises. Buy In The Realms Of The Unreal.

The Rape of the Vampire [Le Viol du Vampire] (1968): A psychoanalyst tries to convince four sisters that they are not undead bloodsuckers, but the Queen of the Vampires disagrees. Jean Rollin’s first feature was conceived of as a surrealist film rather than a horror movie; this farrago of vampires, sex and strangeness proved so lucrative that he built an entire career out of it. Buy The Rape of The Vampire.

Requiem for a Vampire [AKA Caged Virgins] (1973): Two young women fall into the clutches of an elderly vampire; he needs virgins to repopulate the nosferatu race, and being lesbians, they qualify… Requiem became one of Rollin’s best known movies because it was the only one that was dubbed into English and distributed in the U.S. (under the Caged Virgins title). Buy Requiem for a Vampire.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

The Demoniacs (1974): See description in DVD above. Buy The Demoniacs [Blu-ray]

The Rape of The Vampire [Le Viol du Vampire] (1968): See description in DVD above. Buy The Rape of The Vampire [Blu-ray].

Requiem for a Vampire (1973): See description in DVD above. Buy Requiem for a Vampire [Blu-ray].

FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON YOUTUBE:

The Devil’s Backbone (2001): We view this creepy (but just short of weird) Guillermo del Toro ghost story set in a Spanish Civil War orphanage as the auteur’s warm-up for the Certified Weird Pan’s Labyrinth (2006). Many respectable people believe Backbone is the superior film, however. Watch The Devil’s Backbone fee 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

DARK SHADOWS (2012): A SECOND OPINION

May 31, 2012 Alfred Eaker 6 Comments

Tim Burton will go down as an artist who peaked early. Dark Shadows (2012) continues the autopilot fatigue that has plagued this director for the past sixteen years. Burton’s quasi-religious fan base has a tendency to erroneously dress him up as some kind of “dark” auteur. Rather, his is a one-note style with increasingly few exceptions. The bulk of his post Ed Wood (1994) films are “Disneyfied” and actually jettison the darker, complex nuances in favor of what he imagines to be audience accessibility. Alice in Wonderland (2010) and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) are lucid examples of this syndrome. Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka projected far more interior disturbance than Johnny Depp‘s silicone interpretation. In Burton’s Alice Lewis Carroll’s twitchy surrealism gave way to a Disney-paced narrative with yet another cartoon pseudo performance by Depp at its center.

Many critics harp on Burton’s narrative shortcomings. The films of Luis Buñuel refute the lie that three-dimensional characterizations are absolutely wedded to orthodox narratives. Burton’s early films evoked a strikingly fresh milieu with characters who, on the surface, seemed to be flying the freak flag high. But, Burton’s initial cannon of freaks really weren’t so different than the rest of us. If Pee Wee Herman, Adam, Barbara, Lydia and Beetlejuice, Bruce Wayne & Selina Kyle, Edward Scissorhands, Kim, and Peg, along with Ed Wood and Bela Lugosi were, perhaps, not immediate family, then they were most certainly extended family or close friends with whom we felt affinity, kinship, and admiration.

Then, something happened. Burton lost his mojo, and Depp followed suit in an even more pronounced, blatantly obvious way. At one point, Depp promised to be the new Brando, offering a fresh alternative to the plasticity of Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt. Whoever would have guessed Continue reading DARK SHADOWS (2012): A SECOND OPINION →

Canonically Weird (The List)

115. A REPORT ON THE PARTY AND GUESTS (1966)

May 30, 2012 Gregory J. Smalley (366weirdmovies) 4 Comments

O slavnosti a hostech

“When one lives in a society that is essentially not free, it is the obligation of every thinking person to attack obstacles to freedom in every way at his disposal.”–Jan Nemec

Recommended

DIRECTED BY: Jan Nemec

FEATURING: Jan Klusák, Ivan Vyskocil, Evald Schorm

PLOT: Seven people are pleasantly picnicking by a stream when they see a festive bridal party in the distance; they wonder if they can join in the celebration. Later, walking through the woods, a gang of men accosts them and takes them to a clearing where the leader interrogates them without explaining why. The bully’s adoptive father shows up, apologizes for the son’s crude behavior, and invites the party to the outdoor bridal banquet; the older man becomes upset, however, when one of the invitees decides to leave the party and strike off on his own…

Still from A Report on the Party and Guests (1966)

BACKGROUND:

Even under the relatively liberal 1967 Czechoslovakian regime, The Party and Guests was banned (at the same time as Vera Chytilová‘s Daisies) because it had “nothing in common with our republic, socialism, and the ideas of Communism.” The movie was briefly exhibited during the Prague spring of 1968 then banned again after the Soviet invasion. In the second round of censorship, hardline President Antonín Novotný honored Party and Guests by naming it one of four films that were “banned forever” in the dictatorship.
The movie was filmed quietly and quickly in five weeks because director Jan Nemec was afraid that authorities would shut down the production.
Party and Guests was accepted in competition for the 1968 Cannes film festival, but the festival was cancelled that tumultuous year out of solidarity with striking French workers and students.
The common English translation of the title O Slavnosti a Hostech adds a pun on “party” (both a celebration and a political association) that wasn’t present in the original Czech. The American title also adds the word “report” (the British released it as simply The Party and the Guests).
None of the cast were professional actors; most were artists and intellectuals who held “counter-revolutionary” political views. Jan Klusák (who makes quite an impression as the bullying Rudolph) was a composer who scored many of the Czech New Wave movies (including Valerie and Her Week of Wonders), and later made music to accompany Jan Svankmajer shorts. Director Evald Schorm (“House of Joy“) plays the guest who decides to leave the party. This bit of casting suggested to the authorities that the film was a protest of their decision to ban one of Schrom’s previous films.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: The idea of a functionary sitting behind a desk, your fate in his hands and an enigmatic grin on his face, is the preeminent vision of bureaucratic totalitarianism from the 20th century. The incongruous twist A Report on the Party and Guests puts on this disquieting picture is to set up that desk in the middle of an open forest glade, with birds chirping merrily in the background.

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: When discussing A Report on the Party and Guests, every critic is required to use two words: “allegorical” and “Kafkaesque.” The second descriptor explains why this quietly disturbing examination of senseless conformity earns its place on the List of the best weird movies ever made. After watching this quietly absurd totalitarian nightmare, I can pretty much guarantee you will scratch Report on the Party and Guests off your list of possible wedding themes.

Short clip from A Report on the Party and Guests

COMMENTS: Understated to the point of madness, A Report on the Party and Guests slips Continue reading 115. A REPORT ON THE PARTY AND GUESTS (1966) →

Essays

WHAT’S WRONG WITH BEING WEIRD FOR WEIRDNESS’ SAKE?

May 29, 2012 Gregory J. Smalley (366weirdmovies) 11 Comments

The names of film critics cited in this essay have been redacted to protect them from professional humiliation.

“The filmmakers are stoned on weirdness for its own sake…”—from a negative review of Being John Malkovich

“Soavi’s decision to emphasize weirdness for weirdness’ sake quickly lends the proceedings a distinctly interminable feel, to the extent that it becomes virtually impossible to appreciate the film’s few positive attributes.”—from a one star review of Cemetery Man

“It’s just weirdness for the sake of weirdness…”—from a negative review of Michel Gondry‘s Human Nature (2001)

Have you ever read some film critic’s dismiss a surreal movie with some variation of the stock phrase, “it’s just weird for weirdness’ sake?”

Weird for Weirdness Sake Un Chien Andalou Now, think quick: have you ever heard someone criticize a comedy by complaining that “it’s just funny for funniness’ sake?”

In researching this essay I quite easily came across a dozen critical citations of the phrase “weird for weirdness’ sake” and it’s variants, and I suspect that there are hundreds of examples out there awaiting cataloging. In every case, the reviewer considers the negative connotation of the magical phrase “weird for weirdnesses’ sake” as something so axiomatic that readers will automatically rush to delete the movie from their Netflix queue the second they see that description.

My only problem is that, among the dozens of quotations I uncovered, I never found one that explains what the phrase is actually supposed to mean… that is, what exactly is wrong with a filmmaker being weird for weirdness’ sake?

Since none of the critics who deploy the dictum so casually will tell us what it means, I’ve come up with six possible interpretations, each based on a different unstated premise, to supply some meaning to this persistent but confoundingly content-free phrase:

1. I don’t like weirdness, and I’m betting you don’t either.

The simplest way to decode this cryptic phrase is to assume that what the critic is actually Continue reading WHAT’S WRONG WITH BEING WEIRD FOR WEIRDNESS’ SAKE? →

Capsules

CAPSULE: JOHNNY SUEDE (1991)

May 28, 2012 Gregory J. Smalley (366weirdmovies) Leave a comment

DIRECTED BY: Tom DiCillo

FEATURING: Brad Pitt, Catherine Keener

PLOT: Johnny Suede, a young man with a freakishly large pompadour, tries to pay the rent,

Still from Johnny Suede (1991)

keep a girlfriend, and make it as a musician in the big city.

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Johnny Suede flirts with weirdness, but can’t commit to it.

COMMENTS: By far, the weirdest thing about Johnny Suede is Brad Pitt’s Fabian-on-steroids pompadour. That said, one early scene promises a high level of creepy surrealism that the body of the movie fails to deliver. Walking home from another night at the club where his stuck-in-the-fifties style fails to impress the nifty chicks, Johnny passes an alley where a woman who appears to be heavily drugged is either being raped or prostituted. Like a good citizen, Suede finds a public telephone and calls the cops, but he is interrupted when a falling projectile shatters the phone booth’s glass ceiling. The box from the heavens contains Johnny’s dream footwear: black suede shoes with rhinestone accents. Johny forgets the alleyway assault, and the movie forgets the atmosphere of urban dread and decay and forges ahead instead with the slightly offbeat story of a delusional young man struggling to find his way to manhood, romantic happiness and self-sufficiency. A few fantasy moments—a wooden hand poking out of a deserted street, bad fried chicken shared with equally-pompadoured but more successful jerkwad singer Freak Storm in an alley, and lightly Lynchian dreams of nude men in diners and being stabbed by a dwarfs with a TV antenna—intrude on what is basically a series of scenes of apartment-painting jobs, band rehearsals, and awkward dates. Johnny is mildly delusional about both his musical talent and his skills as a ladykiller, and generally not as cool as he thinks he is; he’s a braggart, a bit slow, and a bad liar. His out-of-touch, out-of-time greaser perception of what it means to be a man—indicated by his peacock ‘do as well as recurring symbolism involving miniature cowboys and bulletless guns—keep him impoverished financially, morally, and romantically. Suede’s an interesting, complex character, but the script doesn’t give him much of interest to do. He is well-realized by pretty young Pitt, and the supporting cast is appealing and talented, supplying enough interest to make the minimal story watchable. As a schoolteacher with shoe-throwing tendencies, Keener is sexy, in an average-gal-with-needs sort of way. Watch out for small roles by a young but already cool Samuel L. Jackson as the bass playing Bebop, a still-elegant Tina Louise as a romantic interest’s record industry-connected mom, and a platinum blonde Nick Cave as a drunk and coked-out scam artist singer who represents Johnny’s probable future if he doesn’t wise up and let Keener’s good lovin’ into his heart. As a weird movie lover, you might find yourself wishing the movie had the courage to pull the trigger on that surreal gun it gave us a peek at early on. Like it’s main character, Johnny Suede is indecisive—it’s quirky and can even be a bit weird when it lets its guard down, but it secretly craves acceptance from normal society.

Writer/director DeCillo was Jim Jarmusch‘s go-to cinematographer before striking out on his own with this debut.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Offbeat, stylish and packed with some wonderfully bizarro moments…”–Jeff Dawson, Empire Magazine

(This movie was nominated for review by Eric Gabbard, who argued that it “has a low key, offbeat charm to it that I love” and “would make an excellent triple feature along with Barton Fink and Eraserhead [only due to the humongous hair theme].” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

366 Weird Movies