A seemingly innocent sing-a-long style video about creativity goes awry when it urges its characters to “get creative”.
WEIRD HORIZON FOR THE WEEK OF 8/12/2011
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):
Bobby Yeah (2011): Robert Morgan (of the crowd-pleasing horror short The Cat with Hands) has a new animated 23-minute short touring film festivals and, based on the trailer below, he’s developing a pleasing penchant for the peculiar. Though the chances you’ll be able to catch this are slim, we’re happy to know Mr. Morgan is continuing his craft and hopeful he’ll be able to fund a feature some day. Bobby Yeah official Facebook page.
SCREENINGS (NATIONWIDE):
Rifftrax LIVE: Jack the Giant Killer: Jack the Giant Killer was a 1962 stop-motion kid-friendly fantasy inspired by Ray Harryhausen’s Sinbad adventures; it’s actually not half bad. Nonetheless, MST3K alumni Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett will mock the movie mercilessly in this live broadcast simulcast in cinemas across the nation. The show includes three comic shorts and a url will be revealed to download digital content. Rifftrax LIVE: Jack the Giant Killer official notice.
NEW ON DVD:
Super (2010): Read our capsule review. Average guy becomes masked avenger by night in a sort of indie/alternative version of Kick Ass directed by Tromeo & Juliet screenwriter James Gunn. Buy Super
NEW ON BLU-RAY:
Dead Man (1995): Read our certified weird entry! This Jim Jarmusch/Johnny Depp weird west fave lands on Blu-ray (not for the first time, however, as there had previously a Region free French release). Supplemental features appear to be the same as on Miramax’s previous release (a Neil Young video and unused footage), but the image and sound are reportedly great, and the Blu-ray is value priced at under $10 (!) Buy Dead Man [Blu-ray]
Super (2010): See entry in DVD above. Buy Super [Blu-ray]
FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON YOUTUBE:
Bill and Coo (1948): A villain known as “the Black Menace” arrives in a formerly peaceful town, and it’s up to cab driver Bill to save the burg. The weird part? All actors are played by trained parakeets and other birds. Watch Bill and Coo 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.
PAUL LENI’S CAT AND THE CANARY (1927)
In 1927 Universal Studios chose their new emigree star director Paul Leni to turn John Willard’s hit stage play, The Cat and the Canary, into a work of German Expressionist art. Carl Laemmle was clearly envious of the types of films being produced in Europe and Leni had proven himself with the critical success of Waxworks (1924).
The Cat and the Canary is a compact (not a shot is wasted) standout in the “old dark house” genre. Who needs dialogue when the visual story telling is so richly expressed? Leni’s style certainly was a profound influence on both the Universal films to follow, and on James Whale in particular, whose Old Dark House (1932) virtually lifted Leni’s shots of shrouded corridors and expansive, ominous windows. Whale may have learned how to frame a composition by absorbing Leni. Leni’s lighting, camera angles and set design mirror the emotional state of the actors to remarkably vivid effect.
Cyrus West is likened to the canary (think Tweety Bird) and his greedy relatives are the circling cats (think Sylvester), hungering for his fortune. So incensed is the dying Cyrus that he dictates that his will be read twenty years after his death. When it comes to money, relatives can wait. They all show up on the twentieth anniversary of Cyrus’ passing.
To contemporary viewers, the relatives are a gang of archetypes: the bitchy, greedy matriarch Aunt Susan (Flora Finch), the sexy cousin Cecily (Gertrude Astor), the Harold Lloyd-like Paul (Creighton Hale), a seemingly insane, red-herring psychiatrist (Lucien Littlefield), death-warmed-over in the form of Mr. Crosby (Tully Marshall), and the virginal Annabel (Laura La Plante, who Whale later used in 1929’s Show Boat). The gang is ushered in to the reading by a mysterious, somber servant named Mammy Pleasant (Martha Mattox). The actors are a hoot, one and all, and superbly directed. Of course, there is a romance, but it is subtle and, in a rare example of silent cinema, not embarrassing to watch.
Dead bodies emerging from hidden panels, disappearing bodies, a lycanthropic hand snatching diamonds from the virgin’s neck, a cowering geek hiding under the bed and taking a peek at Cecily’s legs, a conniving aunt, and a villain (with a fake eye and saber tooth) who seems the role model for every Scooby Doo cartoon ever made all add up to something we have seen copied to death (pun intended) countless times since. Leni’s imaginative style, however, takes precedence here. Leni even has a good time playing with an intertitle (the film impressively keeps intertitles to a bare minimum). The “Gosh, what a spooky house!” text shakes and shimmers as if it too is scared from being stuck in such a scary place!
The Cat and The Canary is played for laughs and it’s not surprising that Hollywood re-made it twice, first starring Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard in 1939 and, again in 1978 (the latter had an interesting all-star, if eccentric, cast directed by cult nasty fave Radly Metzger). Both remakes are pleasant enough diversions, but Willard’s play becomes something unique and influential only in the hands of this German Expressionist artist. Leni’s original is finally getting its due and is part of Kino’s valuable American Silent Horror Collection (buy
LIST CANDIDATE: DEAD RINGERS (1988)
NOTE: By popular demand, Dead Ringers has been promoted onto the List of the 366 Best Weird Movies ever made! Please read the official Certified Weird entry. Comments are closed on this post; this initial review is left here for archival purposes.
DIRECTED BY: David Cronenberg
FEATURING: Jeremy Irons, Genevieve Bujold
PLOT: A woman disturbs the delicate psychic balance between twin gynecologists.
WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: When the plot synopsis contains the words “twin gynecologists,” you know you’ll be traveling into territory off the beaten path. When it’s David Cronenberg directing a story about twin gynecologists, you can expect something even further out there. While Dead Ringers is a drama, it’s a drama for horror movie fans, and it’s offbeat and unnerving enough that it might in indeed rise to the level of “weird.”
COMMENTS: Twins can be mildly eerie. Male gynecologists are slightly creepy. Put twins and gynecologists together, though, and the ick factor increases exponentially; especially when the twin gynecologists’ dating practices are, to say the least, highly unethical. As shy Beverly and suave Elliot, the Mantle twins, Jeremy Irons gives a fascinating and multifaceted performance. By utilizing differing mannerisms and energy levels (Bev is jittery where Elliot is detached), Irons makes it so the viewer can immediately differentiate which twin is which about 80% of the time. That 20% uncertainty about who you are looking at on the screen adds an extra uneasy edge to a picture that’s already morally queasy. Bev and Elliot, you see, share their women—who are also their patients—and the ladies may be bedding Bev while believing they’re receiving Elliot. When Beverly, the more sensitive of the pair, becomes enamored with a French-Canadian actress/patient, he decides he wants to keep her for himself and pursue a normal male/female relationship. But these psychic Siamese twins have become accustomed to share every experience, professional and erotic, since childhood, and asserting his independence proves traumatic for Beverly. He slides into drug abuse and professional disgrace, and drags codependent Elliot down into the sewer with him. Cronenberg keeps the explicitly weird elements to a minimum. There’s a dream sequence, but perhaps the film’s oddest feature is the fact that, rather than using the traditional reassuring white scrubs, the twins perversely outfit their surgical staff in uniforms of blood red—the color of alarm. Though it’s played straight (for a Cronenberg film), there’s a murky psychological undertone to the incidents that makes Ringers unsettling even beyond its unsavory subject matter. Cronenberg directs crisply, with sharp cinematography on elegant sets that ironically underscore the seediness of the proceedings. Stiff Brit Irons lends a touch of class and even manages to make the unsavory twins sympathetic as they spiral to a professional and personal nadir of barbiturate withdrawal psychosis. Irons performance nabbed Best Actor awards from the New York and Chicago film critics associations and a runner-up prize from the LA film critics, but the project was too strange to be endorsed by the Academy Awards, which procrastinated until the following year to recognize the actor for his role as accused murderer Claus von Bulow in Reversal of Fortune (Irons credits Dead Ringers for an “assist” in nabbing him that statuette). Despite the paucity of plaudits, this may be the greatest portrayal of twins by a single actor in movie history, making this unusual and extremely dark film worth a look even for conventional cinephiles.
As strange and implausible as Dead Ringers scenario might seem, it’s actually loosely based on a real-life case.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
(This movie was nominated for review by “Mighty Utar.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)
READER RECOMMENDATION: THE TINGLER (1959)
Submission for the reader review writing contest #4 by Shane Wilson
“In the final count, I think we must have buzzed 20,000,000 behinds.” – William Castle
DIRECTED BY: William Castle
FEATURING: Vincent Price, Judith Evelyn, Darryl Hickman (the older brother of “Dobie Gillis” star Dwyane Hickman)
PLOT: There are two plots running simultaneously in The Tingler. In the first, Dr. Warren Chapin (Price) frees the parasite that lives in the human spine and grows when the host experiences fear, and must save the unsuspecting public from the menace he’s unleashed by stressing the importance of screaming. In the other plot, film director William Castle raises his penchant for outrageous gimmicks to new heights by running shocks of electricity through auditorium seats.
BACKGROUND:
- As was his wont, director/producer Castle supported the release of The Tingler with several gimmicks, including hiring actresses to play nurses to stand outside the theater and planting audience members to scream and faint at key moments in the picture. His piece de resistance was called “Percepto.” For the theatrical release, Castle arranged for a handful of auditorium seats to be wired with war-surplus electric vibrators. At a key moment during the film’s climax, the projectionist would activate the zappers, buzzing unsuspecting viewers (or eagerly-hoping viewers) with a jolt of electricity, thereby breaking the fourth wall in a way 3-D never could.
- William Castle earned his reputation for his attention-getting publicity stunts. Beneath his huckster’s heart, however, lays a surprising credibility. Castle served as assistant director on Orson Welles’ The Lady from Shanghai, and produced the horror classic Rosemary’s Baby.
- Directors Stuart Gordon and John Waters both included The Tingler in their Top Ten lists for “Sight and Sound”‘s 2002 Top 10 poll.
INDELIBLE IMAGE: A blank projection screen, onto which ambles the shadow of a large rubber insect puppet, followed immediately by blackness, the sound of faux audience members shrieking their heads off, and the unmistakable command of Vincent Price: “Scream! Scream for your lives! The Tingler is loose in this theater!”
WHY IT SHOULD MAKE THE LIST: William Castle always dabbles in oddness. The Tingler’s means of engaging the audience certainly ups the ante in this regard. Whereas previous auditorium gimmicks were content to merely startle theater patrons, The Tingler was now actively complicit in harming the audience, by attempting to electrocute select viewers. On another level, though, The Tingler represents a fascinating metatextual experience. On the one hand, Percepto pushes the film beyond the boundaries of the screen by affecting the audience physically, rather than through the usual avenues of picture and soundtrack. The movie not only breaks the fourth wall, but actually rebuilds it behind the audience. Consider Price’s admonition: “The Tingler is loose in this theater!” He means the very theater we are sitting in. We have suddenly assumed the role of the audience in the film-inside-the-film, and for a moment, we are actually part of the action, not merely in front of it. Castle’s prank destroys the proscenium. Many films play games with the insurmountable distance between the screen and the seats. Castle is happy to throw it away entirely.
COMMENTS: Vincent Price’s legend is built on a reputation for portraying elegant, velvet- Continue reading READER RECOMMENDATION: THE TINGLER (1959)