Here’s what the lineup looks like for next week: we’ll take a look at the odd, recently re-released adult-infant thriller The Baby (1973) and the experimental Portuguese drag queen drama To Die Like a Man (2010). And, what would October be without a nostalgic look back at that 70s favorite, “The Paul Lynde Halloween Special”? (Normal?) We’ll throw another review in there too, but we’re not 100% sure what it will be—possibilities include the (relatively) star-studded post-apocalyptic fantasy Bunraku (2010) or the star-less (and bodiless) sleazy grindhouse favorite The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (1962).
Either it’s a weak season for weird search terms, or we’re just becoming jaded to the flood of odd Google searches that flood our servers every week. We suspect a search strings like “psychotronic fascism – the reality of our time” or “366 black pharaonic stones” would stun most webmasters with their otherworldliness, but they barely cause us to raise a collective eyebrow. We do wonder about the stories behind some of these weird queries, though. Did the guy searching for “contrasting monologues – creepy cannibal monologues” have an audition coming up for the lead role in a cannibal movie? Also noteworthy: “the happy hooker meets rex the wonder horse” (we’re pretty sure this one was never made, and we’re afraid its too late now) and “no no no weird movie.” Still, the fact that it was a lean week for weird search terms gives us the opportunity to finally award the coveted title of “Weirdest Search Term of the Week” to that old chestnut, horse,” “wierd lumpy movie short,” which has received an honorable mention a record seven weeks in a row. Congratulations to horse,” “wierd lumpy movie short,” which now moves into the Weird Search Terms Hall of Fame and is hereby retired from future competition.
Here’s the absurdly long list of absurd movies suggested for review by our crazy readers: The Baby (jumping ahead in line); Kairo [AKA Pulse]; Private Parts (1972); Saddest Music in the World; Mulholland Drive; The American Astronaut; Blood Tea and Red Strings; The Films of Continue reading WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE→
If you’re looking for something insightful, you may want to skip this post. This trailer for the Nigerian movie The Stolen Bible is among the most incoherent videos out there, and, judging by the other treasures available on YouTube nowadays, that’s saying quite a lot.
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 Human Centipede II (Full Sequence): More people are sewn together to make a longer centipede. If early notices are to be believed, this sequel is a dumbed-down, grossed-up version of the original. Is that even possible? Also available on demand beginning Oct 12. The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence) official site.
NEW ON DVD:
“Alfred Hitchcock: Essentials Collection”: Universal Studios owns the rights to 14 Hitchcock films, including most of the master’s greatest pictures. Here’s a truly essential collection of 5 masterpieces. None of them will knock you out with their surreality, but in descending order of weirdness we’d rank them The Birds (1963), Vertigo (1958), Psycho (1960), and Rear Window (1954)/North by Northwest (1959) (tie). All are must sees, though. Buy “Alfred Hitchcock: The Essentials Collection”.
Amer (2009): Read our capsule review. This hypersexualized giallo tribute is a welcome addition to the home video ranks. Buy Amer.
I’m a Cyborg, But That’s OK (2006): Read the Certified Weird entry! It’s about time that Chan-wook Park‘s film about love in a mental asylum—which probably ranks as the strangest romantic comedy ever made—gets a real region 1 release. A big thumbs up to Pathfinder Pictures for doing the right thing (finally!) Buy I’m a Cyborg, but That’s OK.
The Juche Idea (2010): One of director Jim Finn’s award winning “utopian comedies,” Idea paints a portrait of the absurdity of North Korea though a series of short films made by a fictional South Korean director brought across the border to to the North to help modernize the propaganda machine of Kim Jong Il. We never thought something this smart, satirical, topical and off-the-wall would ever get a real DVD release. Buy The Juche Idea.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005): Tim Burton‘s alternate version of Roald Dahl’s scary kiddie classic about a dictatorial candy magnate ( Johnny Depp, natch) who exploits children’s moral weaknesses and has them killed in bizarre, ironic ways isn’t as classic as the 1971 film starring Gene Wilder and his orange dwarf slaves, but it has its fans (we’re not among them, but whatever). Buy Charlie and the Chocolate Factory [Blu-ray].
Dead-Alive [AKA Brain Dead] (1992): Peter Jackson saw the rampaging undead and absurd gore in Evil Dead II, thought to himself, “I can top that,” and did, in this crazy film featuring kung fu priests and zombies sliced up with a lawnmower. The pinnacle of the gut-spewing genre, it’s never been surpassed (although every year three or four low-budget filmmakers predictably try). Buy Dead Alive [Blu-ray].
Interstella 5555 (2003): The plot is something about aliens who are kidnapped, have their memories wiped, and are forced to become a house band. It’s really an extended music video by the band Daft Punk, with retro Japanimation done in an 80s style by Kazuhisa Takenôchi. Fair warning: customers are complaining that the video quality on this Blu release is no better—or maybe even worse—than the DVD version. Buy Daft Punk: Interstella 5555 [Blu-ray].
Pee Wee’s Big Adventure (1985): The adventures of man-child Pee Wee Herman, who meets Elvira, Twisted Sister and Godzilla as he crosses the country trying to recover his stolen bicycle, are almost surreal in their childish extravagance. An early success for Tim Burton. Buy Pee-wee’s Big Adventure [Blu-ray].
Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975): Torture porn, before the genre existed—except that this almost literal translation of the Marquis de Sade’s most pornographic work was made by Pier Paolo Pasolini, considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. So respected was Pasolini that the Criterion Collection gave this hymn to coprophagia the deluxe treatment, and has now upgraded the depravity to hi-def. Buy Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray].
NEW ON VIDEO ON DEMAND:
Melancholia (2011): Lars von Trier‘s latest is apocalyptic sci-fi; a planet (called Melancholia) is set to collide with Earth on a woman’s wedding day. Kirsten Dunst walked away from the Cannes with Best Actress honors; Charlotte Gainsbourg, Keifer Sutherland, Charlotte Rampling and John Hurt round out the fine cast. In a tactic the smaller studios are increasingly using, for obscure marketing reasons we can’t explain, this is being released on demand a week before it appears in theaters. Rent Melancholia (Pre-Theatrical).
FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON YOUTUBE:
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1921): The wild, slanted sets Caligari uses to tell its tale of murder and madness still amaze modern viewers. A perfect way to get a jumpstart on the Halloween season. Watch The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari 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.
After the death of the silent star, Lon Chaney, The King of Horror crown was up for grabs. It was Universal Studios contract actor Boris Karloff who inherited Chaney’s mantle, and reigned supreme as horror’s newly crowned King.
Karloff was not the studio’s first pretender to Chaney’s throne. Bela Lugosi starred as the screen’s greatest vampire in Tod Browning‘s Dracula, released at the beginning of 1931, nearly a year before Karloff’s star-making performance in James Whale‘s Frankenstein (also 1931). With the premiere of Karloff’s monster, Lugosi and his vampire alter-ego were usurped. Lugosi liked to tell the tale of how he turned down the role of Frankenstein’s monster, thus “giving” Karloff his career-making role. It is merely a story. Lugosi was not wanted by either the new director (James Whale, replacing Robert Florey) or producer (Carl Laemmle, Jr.). Lugosi’s career and life quickly deteriorated, catapulting the Hungarian actor into parody, abject poverty, drug addiction, and pathos. In 1956 Lugosi was buried in his vampire’s cloak, forever merging actor and role.
In sharp contrast, Karloff celebrated unabated success until his death in 1969. Since Karloff’s passing, Lugosi has exacted revenge (from beyond the grave) on the thespian who stole his crown. Lugosi’s cult status has risen considerably, far surpassing that of Karloff. This turnabout is, in part, due to the increasing faddish (and increasingly dull) obsession with Continue reading KARLOFF→
PLOT: The strange but true story of Joyce McKinney, the former Miss Wyoming who caused a
tabloid sensation in Britain in 1977 when she was convicted of kidnapping a Mormon missionary, tying him up, and forcing him to have sex with her for three days.
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Joyce McKinney, the subject of this documentary, is as odd and eccentric a woman as you’ll find outside of an institution, but the film itself isn’t otherwise weird.
COMMENTS: “I don’t see what a 32-year-old sex-with-manacles case has to do with cloned puppies,” opines Joyce McKinney as the third act of Tabloid dawns. The only connection between those two disparate headlines, of course, is McKinney herself, who, if she isn’t crazy, at least attracts crazy to herself like a cloned puppy attracts fleas. Now in her sixties, the former beauty queen still has a sweet old country gal drawl and a disarming charm that makes her, in oddball documentarian Errol Morris’ revival of a long dead scandal, a Tabloid star. After winning the title of Miss Wyoming, McKinney’s story begins in earnest when she falls in love and plans to marry a handsome young Mormon in Utah. One day (as she tells it), her beau simply disappears without warning or notice. She tracks him to London where he is serving his two year Mormon mission, assembles a gang of bodyguards and a freelance pilot to track him down, and leaves for England with thirteen suitcases full of disguises and surveillance gear. The sexagenarian ex-sexpot has consistently maintained that the liaison between her and her Latter Day Saint loverboy in a cottage in Devon was not only consensual, but one of the world’s great love stories: she deprogrammed her brainwashed lover with a “honeymoon” weekend of sex and back rubs, before the Church got their hooks back into him and turned him on her. Once she’s put on trial, archival footage and testimony by journalists involved in the case paint a picture of a woman who loves the limelight almost as much as she loves abducting sex slaves. Things heat up even further when the press digs up startlingly juicy details from her shady past and splays them on the cover of the Daily Mirror. Disillusioned with notoriety, she skips bail and flies back to North America disguised as a deaf-mute. Decades later, still pining for the lost love of her life, the once-gorgeous McKinney remains an old maid and a virtual hermit, comforted only by the unconditional love of her pit bull Booger and his eight clones. Since the victim in the case has retired to normal life and refuses to be interviewed, and her primary accomplice is dead, the story is told almost entirely from McKinney’s viewpoint. But the lack of rebuttal testimony doesn’t make her version of events much more believable; even before she explains how she trained her dog to dial 9-1-1 using a telephone with extra-large buttons, McKinney’s not a very credible witness. But even though you may not buy her story, you may find yourself having a harder time doubting her sincerity; she ironically muses that “sometimes you can tell yourself a lie for so long that you start to believe it.” The remarkable thing about Tabloid is how likable and harmless McKinney appears on screen; she comes off more as a grandmotherly type reminiscing about the good old days through rose colored glasses than like a multiple felon inventing self-serving justifications for her crimes. The tale is told almost entirely via interviewees speaking directly to the camera, although Morris assembles a few witty collages from torn newspaper clippings to fill in the extra spaces. The issue of the British press’ exploitation of the whole salacious affair (which the dubbed the “Mormon sex in chains” case) is touched upon, but Tabloid isn’t an indictment of trashy gossip journalism: it’s a clever, polished example of it. There’s little to the movie besides the bizarreness of the yarn itself. It’s entertaining, but if it has a downside it’s that you may start to feel sorry for the deluded, exploited McKinney in ways she never intended you to when she seized this opportunity to (once again) tell her side of the story.
Devout Mormons will want to stay away from Tabloid, as the film takes some dry shots at the religion (including revelations about their beliefs re: the mystical powers of undergarments, and animated segments illustrating planetary dominion in the afterlife). The inclusion of an anti-Mormon activist, who has no relationship to the McKinney case, as a talking head is one of the documentary’s few obvious missteps.
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Karloff was not the studio’s first pretender to Chaney’s throne. 