Miscellanea

WEIRD HORIZON FOR THE WEEK OF 4/13/2012

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A 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):

Detention:  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.

NEW ON DVD:

Hidden (2011): Addictions turned into literal monsters run amok at an experimental clinic. We’re listing this as a possible “so-bad-it’s-weird” candidate. One of the few available reviews is titled “David Cronenberg called, he wants his story back!” Amazon reviewers complain the movie is incomprehensible and the screenwriters are “Alan and Alana Smithy,” so we’re cautiously hopeful. Buy Hidden.

Sleeping Beauty (2011):  From Australia comes this modern folktale that sounds like it has more to do with The House of Sleeping Beauties than with the classic fairy tale.  We like writer/director Julia Leigh’s quote: “I’m interested in Wonder Cinema…” On the other hand, we don’t like some reviewers’ quotes, like David Rooney’s “Soporific in every sense.” Buy Sleeping Beauty.

A Trip to the Moon (1902): A major restoration of the 13 minute A Trip to the Moon, ‘ seminal film fantastique and possibly cinema’s first blockbuster, which restores the original hand-tinted color from a single surviving print discovered in Spain. Featuring a new soundtrack by the electronic band AIR. The package contains a much longer documentary on Trip to round out the running time. This is a DVD/Blu-ray combo set, but if you’re specifically interested in the Blu version, please read the additional notes under “New on Blu-ray” below for details on a minor defect. NOTE: Since composing this entry the set was recalled while Flicker Alley corrects the defect. We leave the link up in case you want to pre-oder (we’ll remind you again next week!) Pre-order A Trip to the Moon (Restored).

The Witches of Oz (2011): A grown up Dorothy Gale discovers that the tales of the wonderful world of Oz she spins into children’s books don’t come from her imagination, but are repressed memories of a real place, and that the Wicked Witch is now coming to New York City to claim a magical artifact in her possession. This aired as a 150 minute miniseries in the UK, then a 110 minute cut very briefly ran in US theaters as a US theatrical release (this release is the complete version). Christopher Lloyd plays the Wizard, and reviews were generally negative. Buy The Witches of Oz.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

A Trip to the Moon (1902): See description in DVD above. Per Flicker Alley, there is an issue with the Blu-ray disc: one of the alternate audio tracks was supposed to feature an orchestral arrangement along with narration written by , but the narration is missing. The feature works properly on the DVD. New Blu-rays are being remastered and will be replaced in future sets, but if you order and receive one of the defective Blus you can request a free replacement from Flicker Alley’s site. Replacement discs will be available April 19.  Pre-order A Trip to the Moon Restored [Blu-ray].

The Witches of Oz (2011): See description in DVD above. Buy The Witches of Oz [Blu-ray].

FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON YOUTUBE:

RoboGeisha (2009): Read the reader review. It’s Japanese  about Robo-Geishas: what more do you need to know? Watch RoboGeisha 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, List Candidates

DUCK SOUP (1933)

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“Movies gave them a mass audience, and they were the instrument that translated what was once essentially a Jewish style of humor into the dominant note of American comedy. Although they were not taken as seriously, they were as surrealist as Dali, as shocking as Stravinsky, as verbally outrageous as Gertrude Stein, as alienated as Kafka. Because they worked the genres of slapstick and screwball, they did not get the same kind of attention, but their effect on the popular mind was probably more influential.”–Roger Ebert on the Marx Brothers

The Marx Brothers were, understandably, the darlings of the surrealists; and that should be a red flag to contemporary audience members belonging to the religious cult of Hyperrealism.

I say that up front because I have watched this film in the company of such alien types as the Hyperrealists. Their melodramatic, aggressive reactions were the same as I saw in a showing of the films of  Busby Berkeley (be forewarned: a series on Berkeley is coming). Naturally, I saw it as my aesthetic duty to cut those sophistic assailants down to size.

The Marx Brothers, perhaps, are the quintessential comedy team with an edge. exhibits a comparable level of surrealism, but as a predominantly solo act, he’s a mono whisper compared to the quadrophonic Brothers. 1930s audiences showed themselves to be a somewhat more imaginative lot (not by much) than us in that they not only accepted the Brothers level of unhinged zaniness, but they even made stars out of them.

Still from Duck Soup (1933)Note that “but not by much,” because Duck Soup (1933) was the Marx Brothers most revolutionary film, a surrealist-politico masterpiece, and it totally bombed at the box office. This resulted in the Brothers being released from their Paramount contract.  MGM and Irving Thalberg were quick to snap them up, but Thalberg, a self-confessed fan, knew he had to polish their act in order to increase their accessibility.

The MGM films that followed Soup Continue reading DUCK SOUP (1933) →

Canonically Weird (The List)

109. EVEN DWARFS STARTED SMALL [AUCH ZWERGE HABEN KLEIN ANGEFANGEN] (1970)

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“To put it mildly, Even Dwarfs Started Small is a bit bizarre… Because Herzog’s film makes little direct reference to social-historical conditions outside of the sealed-of institution in which it takes place, questions remain as to what the film ‘means.’ It seems as though something is being allegorized, but little in the film helps decode it… [Dwarfs is] indeed allegorical in the way that Kafka’s works are allegorical: it reflects the world back to us not as it actually is, but in a distorted form, as though seen through a glass darkly. The intention may be to force us to recognize our world by re-presenting it to us in this strange and alienating incarnation.”–Brad Pager in The Cinema of Werner Herzog: Aesthetic Ecstasy and Truth

RecommendedWeirdest!

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Helmut Döring, Paul Glauer,

PLOT: As the film begins we infer that a group of people in some sort of institution, possibly a mental asylum, have revolted, and an “instructor” has barricaded himself in a manor house while holding one of them prisoner. As the instructor tries to reason with the rebels and waits for the arrival of the police, the insurgents vandalize the property in increasingly bizarre ways: lighting flower pots on fire, fixing a stolen car so that it circles endlessly around a track and throwing crockery at it, and crucifying a monkey. All parts are played by dwarfs, although the buildings and props are scaled normally.

Still from Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970)

BACKGROUND:

  • Herzog financed Even Dwarfs Started Small, his second feature, with funds he received when he won the German National Film Award for his first feature film, Signs of Life. Dwarfs was then banned by the German censors on its release.
  • The film was shot on Lanzarote, a volcanic island in the Canary Islands.
  • Herzog partially attributes the dark influences of the film to the fact that before making it he had been imprisoned in a third world prison while shooting footage for another movie in Cameroon in the paranoid weeks after a coup attempt. While incarcerated he contracted a blood parasite and ran a high fever.
  • The production was plagued with problems: one of the dwarfs was struck by the driverless car (he was unscathed), then the same actor caught on fire (he had minor injuries). With the morale among the non-professional troupe low, Herzog promised the actors that if they completed the film, he would jump into a cactus patch and allow them to film it. The actors stuck with it and Herzog fulfilled his end of the bargain.
  • A scene of piglets nursing at what appears to be the corpse of their mother is disturbing and proved highly controversial. The sow’s eyes are shut and it lies almost perfectly still, but its legs clearly jerk during the feeding—though perhaps this is just a post-mortem reflex.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: Hombre, the tiniest dwarf with the most demonic laugh, nearly chuckling himself to death as he watches a camel struggling to rise to its feet. Watch the scene and share an inexplicable nightmare with millions of other human beings.

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Even the title of Even Dwarfs Started Small starts weird. What follows is a grotesque parade of cannibalistic chickens, insects dressed as a bride and groom, a crucified monkey, a defecating camel, and dwarfs running amok destroying everything in sight. Presented in bleak black and white in a heartlessly cold documentary style, it’s the gloomiest depiction of the triumph of the irrational ever filmed.


Re-release trailer for Even Dwarfs Started Small

COMMENTS: A provocateur knows he is doing something right when he gets criticized from Continue reading 109. EVEN DWARFS STARTED SMALL [AUCH ZWERGE HABEN KLEIN ANGEFANGEN] (1970) →

Capsules

CAPSULE: FASCINATION (1979)

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Jean-Marie Lemaire, Franca Maï, , Fanny Magier

PLOT: A highwayman burns his fellow brigands and holes up in a chateau, where he meets two seductive women who are expecting mysterious guests at midnight.

Still from Fascination (1979)

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: It’s one of Rollin’s most polished and conventional horror movies; the surrealistic dalliances are kept to a minimum, and the rough edges of his earlier lesbian vampire films (like the crazy Nude Vampire) have been smoothed out. That makes it a good choice for fans atmospheric horror of with lots of sex—who will find it a fairly odd period terror–but lacks true fascination for the weird film fan.

COMMENTS: Fascination starts out fascinatingly enough, with a woman opening a tome on witchcraft and caressing the pages sensually with her lace-sleeved hands, followed by a credits sequence with two women waltzing on a stone bridge. After this prologue comes an eye-widening first scene where two women—one dressed in bridal white and the other in funereal black—stand in a slaughterhouse and drink ox’s blood as a doctor helpfully informs them, “today, in April 1905, we find it’s the best way to cure anemia.” Unfortunately for lovers of the bizarre, however, the ride smooths out after that opening and we get a familiar-feeling story about a desperate man who seeks refuge in a house inhabited by fairy tale femme fatales. This is a well made film: as per usual with Rollin, the cinematography, sexual choreography, locations (featuring another memorable château, this time isolated on an island with a stone bridge being the only approach) and music (ranging from medieval inspired chants to waltzes to heavy horror cues) are all top notch. But lovers of the bizarre will find this love triangle in a misty universe of sex and death only mildly titillating; devotees of erotic Eurohorror will get far more satisfaction from the ample female flesh on display (the stage blood, on the other hand, is both thin and rare for this type of production). Fascination does show remnants of Rollin’s slightly illogical, dreamlike signature style, with impassioned romances compressed into hours and a clueless protagonist who remains irrationally cocky even as evidence mounts that things are not as they seem. Characters say things like “beware, death sometimes takes the form of seduction” and “the love of blood may be more than that of the body in which it flows” and “it’s all very melodramatic…” Brigitte Lahaie supplies Fascination‘s highlight when she transforms into a buxom grim reaper; armed with a scythe, she goes on a killing spree wrapped only in a thin black cloak that reveals her bosom when the slightest breeze blows. The fatalistic (if predictable) final scene, set in what seems to be some sort of bizarre, cavernous aviary, is also a keeper. For the most part, however, Fascination is a polished product, containing little that the mainstream horror fan would find alienatingly weird. Predictably, this leads some to proclaim it Rollin’s best film. But the absence of surreal gambles doesn’t make it his best; it merely prevents it from being his worst.

Although she’s not the featured star, curvaceous and sensual Brigitte Lahaie steals the show, ruling the screen whenever she’s on it. Lahaie began her career in hardcore porn, in the era when adult films had scripts and the players actually acted in between sex scenes. Rollin, who also directed adult films to pay the bills, gave her her first role in a horror film in 1978’s The Raisins of Death, then gave her a larger part in Fascination. Although France’s top adult actress at the time, Lahaie always seemed too beautiful, elegant and talented for porn, and she indeed retired from hardcore in 1980. She appeared mainly in horror and softcore films afterwards, but landed a bit part in the NC-17 arthouse hit Henry and June (1990) and a small but memorable role in the very weird Calvaire (2004). She currently hosts a French radio talk show about sexuality. Fascination may well mark the high point of her acting career.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“The sex scenes are more intense and explicit than Rollin’s previous horror outings but remain suffused with a heady surrealism that makes the encounters play like animated works of art… this DVD is a sight for sore eyes and should serve as a nice aid for introducing new viewers to Rollin’s strange, wonderful cinematic world.”–Mondo Digital (DVD)

Miscellanea

WHAT’S IN (AND WAS IN) THE PIPELINE

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We bumped our “What’s in the Pipeline” column from Sunday to Monday so we could bring you a thematically appropriate review of Jesus Christ Superstar on Easter Sunday. So, you already know a bit of what we’ll be covering this week. But, even though we’re taking today off, tune in the rest of the week for reviews of Fascination, part of our continuing coverage of ‘s lesbian vampire series; Even Dwarfs Started Small, ‘s bizarre disturbing parable about little people running the asylum; and our exploration of the more hysterical brand of madness exhibited in Duck Soup, the Marx Brothers’ insanest comedy.

Of course, we could have just skipped the “What’s in the Pipeline” feature this week, but then you would have missed our intensely popular rundown of the Weirdest Search Terms of the Week feature—and we can’t afford to alienate regular readers. So without further ado, we bring you our first nominee: the simple, but powerfully strange, search for “frog weirdo.” That’s OK, but we prefer the query about “gospel on guest jesus.” (“Sorry, folks, Christ couldn’t be here tonight for this Gospel, but not to worry, we do have a guest Jesus!”) And we would be remiss if we didn’t mention a couple of searches for films that we should probably track down: a “movie about orgasming robots” and a “movie allagory garden of eden peeing.” For our Weirdest Search Term of the Week, however, we’ll once again turn to one of our favorite types of searchers—the stream-of-consciousness typist—for “they find the train under the movie comedy to buy the house mexican he sold the train for hause.” Frankly, guy, you had us at “they find the train under the movie” and the rest of that bizarre search string was just gravy.

Here’s the ridiculously-long-and-ever-growing reader suggested review queue: Even Dwarfs Started Small (next week!); “My Wrongs 8245-8249 and 117″; Freaked; Strings; Dellamorte Continue reading WHAT’S IN (AND WAS IN) THE PIPELINE →

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