Tag Archives: 1967

CAPSULE: INFLATABLE SEX DOLL OF THE WASTELANDS (1967)

Kôya no datchi waifu; AKA Dutch Wife in the Desert

DIRECTED BY: Atsushi Yamatoya

FEATURING: Yûichi Minato, Shôhei Yamamoto, Masayoshi Nogami, Noriko Tatsumi, Mari Nagisa, Miki Watari

PLOT: A shady real estate agent hires a hitman haunted by the killing of his girlfriend to take out the gang responsible for the kidnapping and torture of his mistress.

COMMNETS: Every day at three o’clock in the afternoon a woman screams and the phone rings. It rings while off the hook, it rings when disconnected, it rings even half-buried in the sand of a desert wasteland. Shô always knows when three o’clock strikes because Rie tells him so. At three o’clock five years ago Shô murdered Rie—when she tried to call him and no one answered the phone.

Real estate agent Naka wants to hire a hitman, so Shô waits for three o’clock in a sunblasted middle-of-nowhere. The client needs to know the assassin of his choice can hit his target in three shots or less. Rie screams as Naka leads Shô to a lone evergreen tree, the only one around for miles, because the blood of “snitches” waters it. Shô chops it down in thirteen shots.

After this display of marksmanship, Naka takes Shô back to his city office. He shows the hitman a disturbing film reel of black-hooded goons recording their sexual abuse of Sae, the woman Naka wants Shô to rescue. Naka himself can be glimpsed in the background, tied to a chair and blindfolded, forced to listen while his girlfriend screams. Shô complains about the poor quality of the entertainment. He can’t see anything in a picture so grainy. Naka admits the film might be wearing out. He must have watched it a hundred times by now.

Shô agrees to take the case. He returns to his hotel room to find a naked woman waiting in his bed. He smells more than cheap perfume and forces her into a bathtub. Mina serenades him with a song overflowing with double entendres. Of course she’s part of the trap, she admits it, but Shô’s not like other gangsters. She wants to help him. He clutches his gun while succumbing to her advances, aiming at the door, ready to fire whenever his enemy enters the room.

Wastelands contains all the classic tropes of film noir—an emotionally compromised detective, a slightly seedy and suspect client, a femme fatale—and then some. Fans of may notice eerie similarities to Branded to Kill, also released in 1967 (they make a perfect double feature). Director Atsushi Yamatoya was one of the Guru Hachiro writers responsible for Branded‘s script. Callbacks ricochet like a volley of gunshots across both story arcs: three o’clock, rings (expensive in Branded, cheap in Wastelands), insects, an antagonist named Kô, hitmen obsessed with their reputations, a (maybe snuff) film within the film.

Both movies share a similar sense of fatalistic black humor and a dynamic visual style. The cinematography always goes for the unusual. Odd camera angles enhance ambiguities of space and perspective, adding to the disorientation. A scene with a character walking up a flight of stairs rotates so “down” becomes left with “up” heading to the right. When a henchman gets shot and slumps over a bar counter the camera tilts with him. The rest of the scene remains skewed as though we’re now viewing the film through the lifeless eyes of a corpse.

Plentiful shoot-outs punctuate the action and every actor who gets shot milks his death scene for all it’s worth. By contrast, the female characters lie around motionless and silent. Whether drugged or sleeping, or worse, it’s hard to tell. Aside from Mina, who radiates a voluptuous vitality (repeatedly rejected as untrustworthy), the others, both living and dead, become indistinguishable.

The final confrontation between Shô and the target of his revenge occurs as a protracted contest recalling Branded‘s Hanada and No. 1. After some creative trash talk (“I can see your heart” – “What color is it?” – “Sickly green” – “You’re colorblind”), they vow that by 3:30 pm tomorrow one of them will die.

Like a fly struggling to escape from a forgotten whiskey glass, time traps people in its vise. Outside a window Shô now sees the desert wasteland surrounding him, the same tree still there standing by its lonesome, as if he never shot it down in the first place. Even Sae and Rie begin to resemble each other. Can Shô save the one if death has already claimed the other?

One possible interpretation of the title implies the entire story takes place in a hellish afterlife where ghosts doomed by their former selves relive their last agonizing moments on earth. A blast of fire burns behind the opening credits. Everyone complains about the heat, but there’s never any air conditioning to cool their tempers. There’s nothing but heat (except for Shô’s lighter, which never works whenever he needs a cigarette). This inferno reduces not only women to puppets. The men jerk each other around by strings, but they’re all tangled together, everyone incapable of escaping their own personal purgatory.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“..an enigmatic and paradoxical title, perhaps capturing something of the film’s hybrid, even contradictory nature… It should come as no surprise that Yamatoya, directing from his own script here, had previously helped write Seijun Suzuki’s similarly surreal and abstract take on hitmen, Branded to Kill…”–Anton  Bitel, Little White Lies (2020 screening)

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: OH DAD, POOR DAD, MAMMA’S HUNG YOU IN THE CLOSET AND I’M FEELIN’ SO SAD (1967)

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Beware

DIRECTED BY: Richard Quine, Alexander Mackendrick

FEATURING: Rosalind Russell, , Barbara Harris, ,

PLOT: 25-year-old manchild Jonathan travels to various points exotic under his mother’s watchful eye; in Montego Bay, his mother hopes to nab a new husband, as the first one is stuffed and hung in the closet.

Still from oh dad poor dad mama's hung you in the closet and I'm feeling so sad (1967)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: It is with reluctance that I recommend this for apocryphization, but I cannot disregard the mathematical theorem: Overblown ’60s romp misfire + Rosalind Russell cranked up to 11 + Stage adaptation + Built-in MST3K post-production tacked on by nervous executives = Weird.

COMMENTS: The good contributors at IMDb inform us that director Richard Quine, “…killed himself because he was not able to make the kind of light comedy films he wanted to make.” I open with this bit of whimsical trivia in keeping with the ODPDMHYitCaIFSS experience: macabre, and almost funny. Sort of. Tragic—but kind of dumb? Well-intentioned? Perplexing?

“Perplexing” might be the most complimentary descriptor I can honestly apply to Quine’s film. “Featuring Rosalind Russell” is another honest thing to say, but while her presence is welcome (as a general rule), her performance as Madam Rosepettle suggests that she knows what she’s doing, but is doing it a bit too well. The outfits, wigs, and Russellness are not for the faint of heart. Robert Morse, as the child of this mother, feels like an underbaked under a layer of pale pastiness. Their romp around a Jamaican grand hotel (mostly in it, I suppose) is scored such that the intent must have been for us to be enjoying a bit of good fun.

“Enjoy” isn’t the word, and neither is the word “fun.” Where ODPDMHYitCaIFSS crashes over the cliff and into the waters of Good God, Why? has to do with the addition of Jonathan Winters. The film, as released, opens with this talented comedian talking to us from Heaven. He’s in a rush, as one of his wings is being repaired by a laconic fellow angel. Throughout the subsequent what-have-you, his face appears in one of the corners, accompanied by some quip concerning the action. These asides are sometimes amusing, sometimes miss the mark, and are sometimes really creepy: I am not a father, but the fellow’s enthusiasm encouraging his somewhat simple son during sexual shenanigans struck me as squicky.

There’s the possibility that Quine’s oddity might have garnered a recommendation if the filmmakers been had able to stick to their guns and play it “straight”—still romp, still badly done, still silly, but minus the bet-hedging from Winters’ character. At points the story could have ballooned into being genuinely disturbing, but the wisecracks deflate the unintentional rise into Beau Is Afraid levels of anxiety. It’s almost enough to drive a reviewer to despair.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“If done right this film could have, I suppose, gained some sort of cult following. Yet it is so poorly realized and so thoroughly botched that it is impossible to know where one could begin to improve it… When you get past the weird fringes all you have left is a stale, plodding coming-of- age tale.” — Richard Winters, Scopophilia Movie Blog (VHS)

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: HAPPY END (1967)

Šťastný konec

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Vladimír Menšík, Jaroslava Obermaierová, Josef Abrhám

PLOT: Chronicling the life of one Bedřich Frydrych (Menšík), a butcher and wife-murderer, from birth to death; in this cas, everything is reversed: his “birth” starts at his execution and his “happy end” comes at infancy.

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: While it’s all light and very funny, deeper and darker meanings lurk under the surface; the hero found guilty and sentenced to life—literally, in this case.

COMMENTS: “You lie down in the bed you make.” This famous epigram opens the film after the credits, all superimposed over the opening image, a close-up of our lead character, seemingly sleeping. Then a pair of hands grasps the head and what we thought was a sleeping man turns out to be a decapitated head, fresh from the guillotine. But far from being the end of the story, this turns out to be the beginning. Frydrych narrates, in the fashion of David Copperfield, his “birth,” as his head is joined to his body, now intact as the guillotine blade moves up, and he is welcomed into the world.

The central gimmick of Happy End—a narrative where the action is reversed—is more commonplace to audiences now than at the time of its production. We’ve seen works such as ‘s Memento and Tenet, Harold Pinter’s “Betrayal,” Gaspar Noé‘s Irréversible, and Martin Amis’ novel “Time’s Arrow,” to name a few. But just because a gimmick is familiar doesn’t guarantee that it’s executed skillfully.

Happy End benefits from several assets: a short running time (barely over 70 minutes); a clever script by Lipsky and his collaborator Miloš Macourek, and a talented pool of actors, especially Vladimír Menšík in a rare leading role 1, and he’s perfect as a murderer who is also a sort of low-rent Candide navigating his way through life.

Considered conventionally, the story is a melodrama set in the early 1900s telling the sordid tale of Bedřich Frydrych meeting young Julia (Obermaierová), whom he’ll eventually marry and eventually murder, along with her adulterous lover, Jenick (Abrhám), leading to his execution. But in this iteration, with things reversed, Frydrych is birthed and “schooled,” whereupon he enters society and is provided with a wife whom he assembles from parts stashed in a suitcase. Marital life starts out rocky when an ambulance deposits Jenick on the street, whereupon he flies up to the apartment through the window (leading to Frydrych’s nickname for him, “Mr. Birdy”). From that point on, it’s a hard life as Frydrych attempts to rid himself of Julia and Jenick to get to his own happy end.

It’s a neat trick, but even more impressive when considering that the narrative works in either direction; as told here, Happy End subverts what would be a tale of tragedy into a tale of triumph. Frydrych is still a murderer, of sorts. His “final” meeting with Jenick is taking him into the water and leaving him there, thereby getting him out of his and Julia’s lives. In conventional time, this is their first meeting; Frydrych saves him from drowning, and thereafter Jenick develops an interest in Julia. Similarly, Frydrych and Julia’s ‘first’ meeting turns into an act of creation, rather than the grisly destructive dismemberment it would normally be. Even the wordplay is subverted, as exchanges take on different meanings: “Only those who repent can enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” “That would take a very long time…”; “You’ll meet your Lord soon.” “That’s disgusting!”

The UK label Second Run premiered Happy End as an all-region Blu-ray in 2024, after its 4K restoration from the Czech National Film Archive. Along with a booklet essay by film researcher Jonathan Owen, the release includes a 30 minute video essay by film critic Cerise Howard and an episode of The Projection Booth Podcast with Mike White, Kat Ellinger and Ben Buckingham serves as commentary.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…as conceptually and formally radical, and virtuosic, as any helmed by the New Wave’s celebrated, most outré directors – your Chytilovás, Němeces, Jakubiskos, Juráčeks, et al.”–Cerise Howard, Senses of Cinema

  1. Menšík is a recurring face in Czech cinema of the 1960s, a Czech “that guy” character actor glimpsed in The Cassandra Cat, The Cremator, and Tomorrow I’ll Wake Up And Scald Myself With Tea, among others. ↩︎

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: THE PRESIDENT’S ANALYST (1967)

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Recommended

DIRECTED BY: Theodore J. Flicker

FEATURING: James Coburn, Joan Delaney, Godfrey Cambridge, Severn Darden

PLOT: Dr. Sidney Shaefer is chosen to provide his psychoanalytical services to the president of the United States, making him target number one for sinister agents both foreign and domestic.

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHAThe President’s Analyst begins as a cute exploration of the 60s craze for psychotherapy; but at an accelerating speed, cute spirals into silly, then into zany, then to madcap, before climaxing in a jaw-dropping finale plucked straight from a giggling paranoiac’s subconscious.

COMMENTS: Psychological analysis is a slow process: trust is built, feelings are explored, and emotions’ roots are teased out over time. The President’s Analyst, on the other hand, is a speedy journey through a pinball plotline, a zany zipping from point A, to B, to C—through the entire alphabet, perhaps, as director Theodore J. Flicker maneuvers an unflappable James Coburn from humble sitcom beginnings all the way through an explosive climax and a joyfully jaded denouement.

To speed along the plot necessities, Flicker amply uses cinema’s age-old time quickener: the montage. He establishes Dr. Sidney Shaefer’s profession before the opening credits wrap up, then intercuts that montage with another laying out the “thriller” angle: shady guy passes off envelope, envelope receiver winds through city streets, then is murdered by Don Masters, sneakily in broad daylight. Don is a CEA agent (not at all to be confused with a CIA agent) in a rush: “I gotta hurry, or I’ll be late for my analyst.” Scenes move along with purpose, often with a 1960s “ahhh-AHHHH-ahhh” woman’s chanting musical cue in moments of peril (and there are many moments of peril), with plenty of smoooooth lounge-style synth work.

Events escalate badly for Dr. Shaefer. Against the wishes of the FBR chief (not at all to be confused with the FBI chief, particularly as this man’s organization is staffed entirely by somber men who stand below five-foot-tall), Shaefer has been groomed and selected to serve the president. This leads our hero to acquire too much knowledge, and hostile forces stack up quickly to either kill or kidnap him: the Russians (through the machinations of friendly super-spy Kropotkin, friend of Don Masters), the Chinese, the Libyans, the Cubans, the British—and even, we find, the Canadian Secret Service. The FBR (who, along with the CEA, were not consulted for this film) are after Shaefer as well, sending two of their top short men.

The second half of The President’s Analyst is “Spy v. Spy” writ large, but with character-building moments breaking into the many montages. The two FBR agents are distinct, established in a delightful little scene in a New Jersey suburb, one admonishing the boy of the house about racist language. Don’s and Kropotkin’s friendship is touching, as two long-career spies working from opposite sides of the Cold War divide. And James Coburn is a combination of James Bond and Dr. Hartley from the “Bob Newhart Show,” thinking on his feet (at one point he stumbles onto a tour bus and ends up dressed as a hippie-band gong maestro), both for survival and analysis.

Looming in the background is a most unlikely nemesis: bigger than any petty foreign agency, bigger than the KGB, bigger, even, it seems, than the US government. This reveal, with its concurrent implications of technological grandeur and the power to enslave humanity, forced my long dropped jaw to remain open until the finish.  Casino Royale, eat your heart out; “The Prisoner,” eat your heart out—The President’s Analyst is a prescient, madcap, disturbing, hilarious, thrilling adventure which fuses Cold War paranoia with ’60s-silly cinematic sensibilities.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a psychedelic mega-satire with sado-burlesque overtones… a full-scale, mind-bending comic nightmare.”–Giles M. Fowler, Kansas City Star (contemporaneous)

(This movie was nominated for review by Mel Arkey, who called it “an all time fave of mine and most definitively weird.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: MARKETA LAZAROVÁ (1967)

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Recommended

DIRECTED BY: Frantisek Vlácil

FEATURING: Frantisek Velecký, Magda Vásáryová, Ivan Palúch, Josef Kemr, Michal Kozuch, Pavla Polaskova

PLOT: In the early Middle Ages, a pair of brothers rob a caravan under protection of the King, setting off a chain of events that eventually leads to the kidnapping of Marketa, a virgin pledged to the convent.

Still from Marketa Lazarova (1967)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Dreamy pagan sequences adorn a stylized and hallucinatory landscape in Vlácil’s stark medieval epic.

COMMENTS: Although Marketa Lazarová is almost universally praised, everyone remarks on its confusing narrative. The film, which begins with a highway robbery and kidnapping, starts off with a lack of context, and the remainder of the story is fragmented, peppered with abrupt changes of scene, and with dreams, visions, and flashbacks which are sometimes impressionistic, sometimes indistinguishable from reality. The plot elements are comprehensible—a petty noble goes too far and angers the king, a virtuous maiden is snatched from her home—-but the main problem is keeping track of who is who, and where their loyalties lie. If you are prepared for confusion, you can soldier through it and the parties should sort themselves out within an hour or so. But if you would like some guidance, I’ll start this review with a short overview of the major players to get you oriented.

Despite providing the film’s title, Marketa Lazarová herself is not a prominent character until the film’s second half. The story atually centers on her eventual abductor, Mikoláš, a lanky and handsome man in a tight beard. Mikoláš’ brother and partner in banditry, Adam, is easily identified because he has only one arm (although watch out for flashbacks where he has two). Although they behave like highwaymen, Mikoláš and Adam are pseudo-nobles, the sons of Kozlík, a bald and bearded feudal yeoman who rules the walled town of Roháček. Long-haired temptress Alexandra, a brunette contrast to Marketa’s blond innocence, is their sister. In the first chapter the brothers kidnap Kristián, a German youth of noble blood, intending to ransom him. Meanwhile, Lord Lazar rules Obořiště, Roháček’s rival village; he is Marketa’s doting father. Mikoláš spares Lazar after catching him scavenging the wreckage of the caravan the Kozlík clan intends to loot, but later regrets his mercy when Lazar refuses to provide assistance against the king. In revenge, Mikoláš kidnaps the virginal Marketa, whom the (relatively) pious Lazar has pledged to the nunnery. The relentless Captain “Beer,” the king’s military representative in the region, is easily distinguished by his bushy mustache. These are the major players; many minor characters enter and leave, but if you can keep these straight, you should be able to navigate the main thrust of the tale—though details are often elusive.

The narrative confusion matters less because the film is so beautiful. The black and white vistas show off the wintry Bohemian countryside, bare interiors where scar-faced men in furs and chainmail Continue reading APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: MARKETA LAZAROVÁ (1967)