1300 votes were cast, and the first round of our weird movie elimination tournament is over. Thirty-two weird movies went home in disgrace, and thirty-two remain in the running!
The biggest surprise of the first round was not an upset, but the fact that Gummo, the overall #1 seed, only garnered 54.2% of the votes against unheraldedSkidoo. Does that suggest that the favorite may have trouble in its second round matchup against The Wicker Man (which defeated arthouse fave Belle de Jour rather easily, with 2/3s of the vote)?
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):
The FP: Post-apocalyptic spoof where rival gangs fight in a desolate urban wasteland, dominating the bands of survivors through their mastery of dance video games. Released via the new distribution arm of the fantastic Alamo Drafthouse theater, which we fear may be the coolest thing about the movie. The FP official site.
NEW ON DVD:
@Suicideroom (2011): A bullied teen turns emo after kissing a boy on a dare and flees into a virtual reality world in this Polish movie. It probably only describes what it’s like to be a modern day adolescent in a world of techno-escapism, but who’s to say that everyday reality isn’t weird? Buy @Suicideroom.
“4 Film Favorites: Fantasy Thrillers”: This grab bag of 2005-2006 visionary features includes Constantine, a minor cult film starring Keanu Reeves as a demon hunter; a bigger cult hit in the graphic novel adaptation V For Vendetta; Neil LaButte’s strange and awful anti-feminist remake of The Wicker Man (featuring Nicolas Cage at his manic, overacting worst); and Darren Aronofsky‘s mystical The Fountain (a title that’s in our reader-suggested review queue). You could do a lot worse for under $20. Buy “4 Film Favorites: Fantasy Thrillers”.
Coonskin (1975): Ralph Bakshi’s controversial satire on racism features three animated Song of the South stereotypes (a fox, a bear and a rabbit) rising to lead a Harlem crime syndicate. With live action sequences and the voices of Scatman Crothers and Barry White; Al Sharpton protested the film’s opening, despite the fact that the NAACP approved of it (with reservations). This is currently in our reader-suggested review queue, and will soon climb out of it. Buy Coonskin.
House of Tolerance [AKA House of Pleasures] (2011): The story of a Parisian bordello circa 1899, told in a deliberately anachronistic style (a 1960s soundtrack, split screens, etc.) We only mention it because David Fear of Time Out gave it a positive review while simultaneously calling it “occasionally WTF hilarious”; other sources, however, haven’t noted significant strangeness here. Buy House of Pleasures.
Killer’s Moon (1978): Four criminally insane patients are given an experimental drug and go on a crime spree while believing they’re living in a lucid dream. Redemption (which recently brought us those Jean Rollin remasters) is pitching this minor, seldom-seen British shocker as A Clockwork Orange meets a slasher movie. Buy Killer’s Moon.
Melancholia (2011): Read our capsule review. Lars von Trier‘s followup to the frighteningly deranged Antichrist once again metaphorically explores the harsh reality of clinical depression, this time as a mysterious planet named “Melancholia” threatens to collide with Earth and destroy all life. In our judgment the movies doesn’t go all the way to “weird”; but, it’s equally far away from normal. Buy Melancholia.
My Joy (2010): A Ukrainian truck driver begins his day trying to make a delivery, runs into absurd bureaucracy and corruption, and ends up trapped in a strange timeless village. Critical response was been favorable, while hinting at an uncomfortable strangeness. Buy My Joy.
Neverland (2011): Nick Willing has specialized in creating expressionist alternate versions of imagination classics for TV: Tin Man, an update ofThe Wizard of Oz); a sci-fi tinged version of Alice; and now this one, which explains the origin of the puckish Peter Pan. Charlie Rowe plays Pan, Rhys Ifans is Hook, Keira Knightley supplies the voice of Tinkerbell, and Bob Hoskins appears in the same role he did in Speilberg’s Hook. Buy Neverland.
“Superjail: Season 2” (2011): This crudely animated series about a fantastic prison housed inside a volcano is transgressive, offensive, and senselessly cruel and violent. It’s also undoubtedly surrealistic and psychedelic. Viewer beware. Buy “Superjail: Season Two”.
Natural Born Killers (1994)/True Romance (1993): An ultraviolent and well-matched 1990s cult double-feature Blu-ray from Warner Brothers. True Romance is Quentin Tarantino-scripted coke-deal-gone-wrong variant with pulp sensibilities; Natural Born Killers is Oliver Stone’s hallucinogenic violence satire, following two celebrity serial killers slaying their way through a bent TV reality. (NBK is in our reader-suggested review queue). Buy True Romance/Natural Born Killers [Blu-ray].
Wizards (1977): An animated mix of sword and sorcery and post-apocalyptic science fiction which features fairies, elves, robots and Nazis. This week’s second release from cult animator Ralph Bakshi, it gets the full special edition treatment, complete with insert booklet and director’s commentary, from 20th Century Fox (who wouldn’t touch the controversial Coonskin). Buy Wizards [Blu-ray].
FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON YOUTUBE:
Black Sunday (1960): Mario Bava’s black and white masterpiece of Gothic horror recalls Universal Studios in the 1930s. Barbara Steele was so radiant and iconic as the medieval witch and her 20th century descendant that she was typecast playing dual roles in Italian horror movies for years afterwards. Not that weird, but very influential (it’s said to be one of Tim Burton‘s favorite movies).
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 first testament in our Ed Wood Gospel. The second, New Testament, will cover Wood’s late films, including his collaborations with A.C. Stephens.
This month, Ed Wood‘s Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959) sees its Blu-ray release; posthumously, Ed is thoroughly enjoying his last laugh. He can thank those smug, condescending, hopelessly unimaginative thugs posing as establishment critics, the Medveds, for resurrecting him from the dead and catapulting him into a cult Valhalla. As everyone knows by now, the Medveds infamously awarded Wood the honor of “Worst Director of All Time” in their infamous Golden Turkey Awards. Today, of course, we know that award could go to someone far more deserving, such as Mel Gibson, Tony Scott, or Mark Steven Johnson. Why pick on the genuine tranny auteur of outsider art? But, thank John Waters, the Medveds saw fit to bestow their award on Ed! There is a sense of divine justice after all, because we have rightly canonized him.
Plan 9 was already colorized for DVD a few years ago, and there wasn’t a single complaint about a legendary film being subjected to this much-maligned process. Probably because we all realized Ed simply would have loved the extra attention it gave his magnum opus. According to his biographer, Ed Wood said that while Glen or Glenda? (1953) was his most personal film, Plan 9 was his proudest accomplishment!
Wood’s appeal and fame continues unabated. Yes, he was a trash filmmaker, but he was a trash filmmaker delightfully of his time, simultaneously encased in and fighting against the naiveté of the 1950s. Naturally, that phenomenon is something that cannot be repeated, despite the countless attempts to do so by Continue reading THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO EDWARD D. WOOD, JR!→
FEATURING: John Cameron Mitchell, Michael Pitt, Miriam Shor, Andrea Martin
PLOT: We first meet Hedwig as she and her band the Angry Inch are performing at a seafood buffet in Kansas City. In flashback, and in music videos, we learn that she was born a boy named Hans in East Berlin, and underwent a (botched) sex change operation so she could marry an American G.I. and leave for the West. Now, she and her band are shadowing the cross-country tour of Tommy Gnosis, Hedwig’s ex-boyfriend turned arena rock star, whom she accuses of having stolen her songs.
BACKGROUND:
John Cameron Mitchell, then a professional stage actor, debuted the character of Hedwig in 1994 at a drag show at a punk nightclub in New York City. With the help of songwriter Stephen Trask, he built an off-Broadway play—originally staged in the ballroom of a fleabag hotel in Manhattan’s meat packing district—around the androgynous chanteuse.
In the early drafts of the play Tommy was the main character and Hedwig a supporting player.
Mitchell’s father was U.S. Army Major General John Mitchell, and the younger Mitchell spent much of his childhood in Berlin where his father was stationed during the later part of the Cold War.
INDELIBLE IMAGE: Is it Hedwig’s androgynous Aryan visage, half-hidden under a pound of glittery makeup and a sculpted blond wig big enough to double the diameter of her head? Or is it the animated retelling of Aristophanes fable in “The Origin of Love,” with a squiggly line drawing of Zeus cutting the legs off whales? Fortunately, thanks to split-screen technology, we don’t have to choose; we can get Hedwig’s glacial glam mug on the left and a severed half-moon face yearning to swallow her up on the right together in one still.
WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Well, it does feature a rock star who’s the victim of a botched sex
Original trailer for Hedwig and the Angry Inch
change searching for love and vengeance and telling her life story through song while playing on a tour of discount seafood restaurants with her band of Eastern European refugee musicians, which is a plot you don’t see everyday. If that’s not enough to satisfy your weird desires, however, stick with it until the end, when it drifts into a dreamlike series of music videos that see characters swapping sexes and changing into other characters.
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Plan 9 was already colorized for DVD a few years ago, and there wasn’t a single complaint about a legendary film being subjected to this much-maligned process. Probably because we all realized Ed simply would have loved the extra attention it gave his magnum opus. According to his biographer, Ed Wood said that while 
