Miscellanea

WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE

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The fourth reader review contest is over, and the winner is: Shane Wilson for The Tingler (read his excellent review here!)  Congratulations Shane!

Next week we’ll be focusing on (relatively) new releases, starting with our latest 366 Underground entry, Race War: The Remake (2011), and following with the star-studded (Megan Fox, Mickey Rourke) fantasy flop Passion Play (2010), and ending with either Miranda July’s sophomore effort The Future (2011) or Antonio Banderas’ shot as an existential hard-boiled private eye in ‘s The Big Bang (2011).  [EDIT: That should have read that we’ll definitely cover The Big Bang and either The Future or Passion Play].  To counteract all that newness, Alfred Eaker will travel back in time to finish off his series on silent Expressionist .

We discovered a theme in our weird search terms of the week: requests for info on movies we hope exist somewhere, but fear don’t.  In the “that’s nice dear” category, we noticed what was either a weird search term or an idle confession: “i saw a movie in the late 70’s it was weird.”  Getting into searches with just a bit more specificity, we tracked people looking for the lowdown on the following fascinating mystery films: “a movie about an alien parasite that likes paprika and has a big sexual appetite,” “late 60s sci fi movie about little orange monkeys,” “movie where people test on spinning machine and explode,” “shipwrecked breastfeeding movie,” and “japanese erotic movie ninja gets frozen.”  Our favorite, however, was “italian horror nuns impaled ape;” at least, we hope that was a search for a movie, and not a headline in the Milano Times.

Here’s what the massive reader-suggested review queue looks like: Kairo [AKA Pulse]; The Guatemalan Handshake;  The Seventh Seal;  Primer; 200 Motels; Private Parts (1972); Saddest Music in the World; Mulholland  Drive; The American Astronaut; Blood Tea and Red Continue reading WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE →

Miscellanea

WEIRD HORIZON FOR THE WEEK OF 8/12/2011

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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):

Bobby Yeah (2011):  (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.

Alfred Eaker's Fringe Cinema

PAUL LENI’S CAT AND THE CANARY (1927)

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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 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.

Still from The Cat and the Canary (1927)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  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 Candidates

LIST CANDIDATE: DEAD RINGERS (1988)

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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.

Recommended

DIRECTED BY: David Cronenberg

FEATURING: Jeremy Irons, Genevieve Bujold

PLOT: A woman disturbs the delicate psychic balance between twin gynecologists.

Still from Dead Ringers (1988)

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:

“Who, then, will be drawn to this spectacle? Anyone with a taste for the macabre wit, the weird poignancy and the shifting notions of identity that lend ‘Dead Ringers’ such fascination.”–Janet Maslin, The New York Times (contemporaneous)

(This movie was nominated for review by “Mighty Utar.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

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