64 weird movies entered our March Mad Movie Madness elimination tournament, and we’re down to the eight most eccentric features of all. We won’t tell you who won last round (because we prefer you go to the voting link to see), but we will mention that the possibility of an all David Lynch final is still alive. It only takes a minute or two for you to help select the Freaky Four, so vote now!
Next week look for a review of the weirdest Academy Award winning documentary of all time (and the only one narrated by a fictional mad scientist), The Hellstrom Chronicle (1971). We’ll also take a look at two (count ’em, two!) titles from the reader-suggested review queue: the post-Tetsuo Japanese cyberpunk cycle entry Rubber’s Lover (1996) and the post-apocalyptic British absurd farce The Bed Sitting Room (1969).
Spring fever has struck and more and more people are choosing to spend their time basking in the warm glow of the Earth’s sun rather than in the dim glow of the LCD monitor. What that translates to, for us, is fewer bizarre Google queries to compete in our Weirdest Search Term of the Week contest. Nonetheless, from the trickle of traffic we’ve received this week, we’ve cobbled together a selection of strange searches we hope you will enjoy. First, from the “horny ESL student of the week” category came this oddity: “bone prone tube watch romance film porno prins train atate.” Even weirder, though, was “girls pregnant pushing child with boys hands and dildo sin”—the searcher here seems to have a much better acquaintance with the English language, and therefore much less of an excuse for stringing together such a bizarre series of unrelated nouns. But, despite the fact that it well could just describe a South Park episode we haven’t yet seen, the scenario posed by “depressed garbage can leaves the city and travels to the wood where he meets some strange hippies” was just too far-out for us to pass on naming as our Weirdest Search Term of the Week. Congratulations, and we hope some enterprising Flash animator will bring this deranged story to life!
A brief clean-up of the reader-suggested review queue: we’re removing “Zombie Jesus!” since it’s not available anywhere, and the filmmakers never responded to our emails regarding it. With another one down, that leaves only several hundred of your suggestions for us to deal with. Here’s how the queue now stands: Rubber’s Lover (next week!); The Bed-Sitting Room (next week!); Even Dwarfs Started Small; “My Wrongs 8245-8249 and 117″; Freaked; Strings; Continue reading WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE
Two kids are cured of their boredom when they receive a concussion from a rainbow.
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 (WIDE RELEASE):
The Hunger Games: In the anarchic future, teenagers are sent to battle to the death in a televised tournament. Nope, it’s not a remake of Battle Royale, and with lovely and talented but decidedly conventional Jennifer Lawrence headlining and a tween-friendly PG-13 rating (it’s actually aimed at Twilight fans), we’re declaring it (site unseen) unweird. It’s still noteworthy because of its similarity to the cult Japanese film (which, perhaps not at all coincidentally, is seeing a DVD release this week). The Hunger Games official site.
IN DEVELOPMENT:
The ABC’s of Death (est. 2012): 26 directors each tell a short story about death based on an assigned letter of the alphabet. Some of the mini-auteurs whose work will be featured include 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. Sponsored by the Alamo Drafthouse, fast becoming the world’s coolest theater (like they weren’t before). The ABCs of Death page at Alamo Drafthouse.
NEW ON DVD:
Battle Royale [Batoru Rowaiaru] (2000): Read our capsule review. In the anarchic future, teenagers are sent to battle to the death in a televised tournament. Nope, it’s not Hunger Games. Buy Battle Royale
Battle Royale: The Complete Collection: True BR fans with deep pockets will want to buy this 4-disc set, which includes the original theatrical cut, the director’s cut, sequel Battle Royale II, and a disc full of supplemental material. Buy Battle Royale: The Complete Collection
Clown Hunt (2010): In an alternate universe where men hunt clowns in the wild for sport, a rare albino jester turns the tables and stalks them instead. The tagline says, “Clowns, they’re not just for laughing anymore.” Fellini once said, “Today all is temporary, disordered and grotesque. Who can laugh at clowns anymore?” Buy Clown Hunt
The Devils (1971): Big, big news—but only for those of you living in Europe. Very loosely based on real-life medieval Satanic hysteria in a French nunnery, Ken Russell‘s The Devils is the most insane, pretentious and hallucinatory nunsploitation arthouse feature ever made.The British Film Institute releases a Region 2 DVD this week, but it is not the uncensored version with a pseudo-sex scene between Christ and a nun and Vanessa Redgrave masturbating with a leg bone. Warner Brothers is hopefully saving that complete cut for spectacular Region 1 release any day now—right? Buy The Devils at BFI.
The Dragon Lives Again [AKA Deadly Hands of Kung Fu] (1977): Bruce Lee goes to Hell where he fights James Bond, Zatoichi and Dracula with the help of Popeye the Sailor Man. The box cover advertises, “the strangest martial arts picture you will ever see,” and while Fantasy Mission Force may have something to say about that, we’re willing to give this semi-legendary flick a chance. Buy The Dragon Lives Again
General Orders No. 9 (2009): An experimental environmental documentary self-described as “one last trip down the rabbit hole before it gets paved over.” It appears intended in the spirit of Koyaanisqatsi; the cinematography looks fantastic, and for unknown the movie poster features a rabbit smoking a corncob pipe. Buy General Orders No. 9
“Lexx”: Complete Season 3 (2000): A campy cult sc-fi series that sometimes gets tagged with the label “surreal.” It concerns a security guard, an assassin, a sex slave and a robot head who pilot a stolen giant insect spaceship through a bizarre universe. Buy “Lexx: Complete Season 3”.
“Lexx”: Complete Season 4 (2001-2002): See above. Buy “Lexx: Complete Season 4”
Lovelorn (2010): A brother goes to fight Death in a dreamscape to save his sister who’s in a coma but visiting the afterlife searching for her dead boyfriend… sounds trippy. The bad news is this What Dreams May Come-ish British indie holds a pathetic 3.8 rating on IMDB—but maybe it’s “so-bad-it’s-weird”? Buy Lovelorn
The Museum of Wonders (2010): This is a modern-day Italian remake of Freaks. No word on whether actual deformities were cast in the main roles (we suspect not). Buy Museum Of Wonders
Season in Hell: Evil Farmhouse Torture (2012?): A farmer who is actually a cult leader with a gateway to Hell in his basement tortures nude women in what the makers call “a surreal psychedelic homage to the 70’s era of horror films.” The (very R-rated) YouTube trailer brags that it was “BANNED from theatres” (it was BANNED from an IMDB listing, too). Buy Season In Hell: Evil Farmhouse Torture
This Is Not a Movie (2011): Per the ad copy this is a “surreal, psychedelic, apocalyptic quest” undertaken from inside a Las Vegas hotel room. Not to be confused with This Is Not a Film (2010), the celebrated documentary clandestinely made by Iranian director Jafar Panahi while under house arrest. Buy This Is Not a Movie
What You Don’t See (2009): A teenage boy still coping with his father’s suicide befriends a strange, free-spirited couple while vacationing with his mother and her new boyfriend on the eerie Brittany Coast. This Teutonic psychological thriller did well overseas but failed to find theatrical distribution in the U.S., so it’s basically unknown here. Buy What You Don’t See
NEW ON BLU-RAY:
Battle Royale [Batoru Rowaiaru] (2000): See description in DVD above. Buy Battle Royale [Blu-ray]
Battle Royale: The Complete Collection: See description in DVD above. Buy Battle Royale: The Complete Collection [Blu-ray]
General Orders No. 9 (2009): See description in DVD above. Buy General Orders No. 9 [Blu-ray]
This Is Not a Movie (2011): See description in DVD above. Buy This Is Not a Movie [Blu-ray]
FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON YOUTUBE:
Room 6 (2006): A schoolteacher with a fear of hospitals searches for her boyfriend after he’s carted away in an ambulance and finds bizarre medical horrors instead. The user ratings aren’t great, but it’s got lots of hallucinations and hospital-horror completists may want to check it out. Watch Room 6 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.
This is the second half of a two-part overview of the career of Ed Wood, Jr. You can read the first part here.
Before the terms Art Brut, Outsider Art, and Naïve Art were bandied about freely, Ed Wood, Jr. personified those concepts. Of course, Wood himself had to die first before being canonized as one of outsider art’s patron saints. Predictably, with that canonization came an institutional sheen of sorts, and Wood became the proverbial yardstick of “so bad it’s good” filmmaking.
Orgy Of The Dead (1965) was written by Wood and directed by Stephen C. Apostolof (AKA A.C. Stevens). This was Wood’s first of many collaborations with the soft-core porn director. Orgy stars TV-psychic Criswell in what has to be his biggest role. Our lounge lizard clairvoyant serves as a bloated and clearly inebriated host called “the Emperor.” He eccentrically delivers dialogue recycled from Night of the Ghouls (1959) straight off of cue cards: “Once human, now monsters! Monsters to be pitied! Monsters to be despised!” William Bates is horror writer Bob. Bob’s girlfriend, Shirley (Pat Barrington) just has to ask “Why Bob? Why those horror stories?” We’ll never forgive her for asking that after being made to suffer through Bob’s response: “My monsters have done well for me. You think I’d give that up so I could write about trees or dogs or daisies? That’s it! I will write about my creatures pushing up the daises!” Shirley plants a kiss on him. “Your puritan upbringing sure doesn’t hurt your art of kissing.” “My kisses are alive!” (she sure told him!) “Who’s to say my monsters aren’t alive?” Bob and Shirley are looking for an old cemetery so Bob can get inspired when, lo and behold… a car crash! “Aah!”
As our victims lie unconscious, in the very cemetery they were looking for, Criswell intones: “Time seems to stand still. Not so the ghouls!” Bob and Shirley wake up to the sound of music. But, no, Julie Andrews is not on hand and as Shirley perceptively says, “I can’t believe anything dead is playing that music.” On their way to find the source of the music, they spy a nubile lass doing a lethargic striptease. Bob can’t Continue reading THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO EDWARD D. WOOD. JR: THE NEW TESTAMENT
