Tag Archives: 1995

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: FOUR ROOMS (1995)

366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.

DIRECTED BY: Alison Anders, Alexandre Rockwell, Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino

FEATURING: Tim Roth, , Valeria Golino, Madonna, Ione Skye, Lili Taylor, , , David Proval, Antonio Banderas, Tamlyn Tomita, Lana McKissack, Danny Verduzco, Kathy Griffin, Marisa Tomei, Paul Calderón, Quentin Tarantino, Bruce Willis

PLOT: On a particularly crazy New Year’s Eve at a rundown Hollywood hotel, a harried bellman’s first night on the job is highlighted by the wild goings-on in the various guestrooms, including a coven of witches, a dysfunctional married couple, a pair of disorderly children, and a film director’s sadistic game of chance. 

COMMENTS: Every now and then, someone gets the bright idea to assemble an anthology film, bringing together a unique roster of top-flight directing talent. They’re almost never a success, financially or critically, but they keep coming back, and every age gets their turn. In the mid-90s, it was time for the young guns of the new Hollywood to join forces for a project set in a crazy hotel, and Four Rooms is the result.

All four filmmakers were coming off big successes, and while few people would ever look for common ground between, say, Gas Food Lodging and Desperado, it’s not completely impossible that the common setting and diverse storytelling styles could combine to make for an interesting melange. Unfortunately, all four seem to have settled on “unbridled chaos” as a guiding principle for their segments. It’s comedy by way of breathlessness, which is typically more exhausting than amusing. In addition, they’re counting on Tim Roth to be a unifying element, providing his own brand of untethered mania. Alas, they don’t seem to have checked in with each other on how they were using Roth, which means we really get four (and arguably five or six) different versions of Ted the Bellboy, a character developed via exquisite corpse.

The first story, Anders’ “The Missing Ingredient,” is a joke with no punchline. A collection of witches, ranging from glamour queen Madonna to crunchy granola Taylor, have gathered in the Hotel’s honeymoon suite to resurrect one of their sisterhood, lost to a curse years ago. By turning the whirlpool tub into a cauldron and adding such items as blood and sweat, they can restore her, but the only thing missing is naive babe-in-the-woods Skye’s assigned contribution: semen. The solution? Seduce the bellboy. And this is exactly what happens. Roth goes full-on Hugh Grant here, stammering and sputtering his way through Skye’s come-ons. He poses exactly no obstacle to the Continue reading IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: FOUR ROOMS (1995)

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: “THE END OF THE WORLD IN FOUR SEASONS” (1995) AND THE CANADIAN FILMS OF PAUL DRIESSEN

DIRECTED BY: Paul Driessen

PLOT: In “The End of the World in Four Seasons” small, repeating vignettes of life in each season play out in eight separate-but-interconnected frames; each ends with some sort of destruction, but by winter, all the settings are wiped out.

Still from The End of the World in Four Seasons" (1995)

COMMENTS: Paul Driessen first appears in the weird movie connoisseur’s consciousness as a hired hand; the Dutchman was enlisted to storyboard and animate on Yellow Submarine. But rather than trying to move up the ladder to features, he has resolutely stuck with his self-created shorts, establishing a personal style and inspiring plenty of others. Two movies created by Driessen’s students have won Academy Awards, while his own “The Killing of an Egg” allegedly inspired marine biologist Stephen Hillenburg to try his hand at animation. (Hillenburg would go on to create the cartoon juggernaut SpongeBob SquarePants.) 

In the early 1970s, the fabled patron of animation the National Film Board of Canada enlisted Driessen to come and work on the other side of the Atlantic, resulting in a series of unusual and subversive works. Six of these shorts were collected in an anthology entitled “Des histoires pas comme les autres” (“Stories Unlike Any Others”), and while we’re focused on one of those today, a quick glance at the full set can be instructive in assessing Driessen’s style and development.

Consider “Air” (1972), which presents multiple relationships with the title subject in less than two minutes. Flowers, fish, birds, and finally a being who seems to be in sheer terror of clouds all struggle to take in enough air to breathe. Of note is Driessen’s facility with the line, which does most of the work to define the space, transforming from the earthen bed of the flowers to the still surface of the sea in the space of a breath.

Cat’s Cradle”(1974) goes deeper into the idea of transformations, with objects consistently scaling up and shifting from predator to prey. The design here hearkens back to Yellow Submarine with its large, toothy creatures and optical illusions. The French title, “Au bout du fil,” is also a hidden commentary; it means “on the line”, which of course is Driessen’s whole M.O.

In 1975’s “An Old Box”, we get our first look at Driessen’s fondness for simultaneous narratives, as the title object unfolds and refolds itself to reveal changing tableaux on its sides. We also get some of his dark whimsy, such as a garbage truck that licks its lips after gulping down a healthy chunk of refuse.

So now we come to “The End of the World in Four Seasons,” which indulges Driessen’s penchant for minimal animation by making it minuscule. The screen is populated with eight tiny screens, each of which displays its own tiny repeating vignette, sometimes connecting across the gaps. The film cleverly demands repeat viewings to take in everything that’s going on. (With a new set for each season, there are about 30 stories to take in.) Driessen also demonstrates a slapstick master’s gift for stretching out a joke as far as it can reach; for example, a skier hurtles incessantly downhill for nearly three minutes until Driessen suddenly moves his camera and the athlete slams into the side of the frame. But that cleverness points to the biggest shortcoming of “The End of the World”: it’s not much more than its joke. Actions repeat until they don’t, creatures behave grotesquely until they meet grotesque fates themselves. The shifting of the seasons changes the milieu but not the method. And crucially, the film has no real point it wants to get across. The end of each world–by fire or by crumbling–isn’t instigated by the actions or behaviors of the characters within them. It’s just time to move on. Of all the movies in the Canadian collection, “The End of the World” is the most ambitious in its technique, but surprisingly empty when it comes to generating any sense of Driessen’s feelings about his creations.

This is decidedly not a problem in the next work, a movie Driessen would later call his favorite.  2000’s “The Boy Who Saw the Iceberg” is the Walter Mitty-like tale of a boy who dreams of a more interesting life. The twinned layout has fun juxtaposing fantasy against reality, right up until the moment when reality becomes far more intense. It owes a lot to the narratives of “An Old Box” and “The End of the World” with the way attention gently shifts between two competing storylines, but is far more mature in its content and tone. The gimmick is simpler, but allows for more focus on the details that lead to the haunting outcome.

The most recent film in the collection, 2003’s “2D or Not 2D”, begins in a rush of color and movement that looks positively decadent compared to his previous films, but hinges on the discovery of a bizarre two-dimensional barrier which feels solid and impenetrable until the camera pivots slightly along the z-axis, turning the barrier into doorways, trees, or even one of the protagonists. In other words, Driessen has come back to the line, only now it has far more depth and nuance.

All told, the collection of Driessen’s output for his Canadian producers provides an excellent snapshot of the filmmaker’s styles and mindsets. While “The End of the World” does capture him at his most adventurous, it also helps define the arc of  his career, marking the moment when mastery of technique became a means more than an end.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“This is a bizarre cartoon…  I found this cartoon to be weird, slightly disturbing, and not entertaining in the least. But hey, I’m not complaining that they included it. The more the merrier.” – David Blair, DVD Talk (from a review of the IMAX feature Seasons, which includes “The End of the World in Four Seasons” as a DVD extra)

(This movie was nominated for review by Steven. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

37*. TEENAGE TUPELO (1995)

366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.

“Everything Revealed! Nothing Explained!”–tagline for Teenage Tupelo

Recommended

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: D’Lana Tunnell, Hugh Brooks, Wanda Wilson

PLOT: Voluptuous D’Lana Fargo is knocked up by local Tupelo singer Johnny Tu-Note. Her mother sets up an adoption, and Johnny wants her to get rid of the baby. D’Lana falls in with a group of “Man Haters” who are fans of stripper/sexploitation filmmaker Topsy Turvy, who is the spitting image of D’Lana.

Still from Teenage Tupelo (1995)

BACKGROUND:

  • Teenage Tupelo was the first (and only) original production released by Something Weird video. It was released directly to VHS but never made the transition to DVD, going out of print and becoming unavailable for decades.
  • Produced by legendary exploitationeer David Friedman, a longtime collaborator of who also produced such oddities as The Acid Eaters (1968) and Ilsa, She Wolf of the S.S. (1975).
  • The film was shot on Super-8 for $12,000.
  • McCarthy’s adoptive parents appear as extras in the diner; their younger alter-egos are played by actors.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: Almost certainly, you will remember the birth-of-a-baby scene (borrowed from the 1948 roadshow shocker Because of Eve). Even if you’ve seen a live birth before, it’s still shocking to see this sight casually shuffled into a narrative film context—and, accompanied by a tinkly music box rendition of “Frère Jacques,” it comes across as decidedly unwholesome. Viewer beware!

TWO WEIRD THINGS: Battered Johnny Tu-Note serenades vixen; chainsaw devil tattooist

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Teenage Tupelo plays like director McCarthy took Something Weird Video’s entire vintage VHS catalog, ran it through a woodchipper, and used the resulting pulp to sculpt his own phantasmagorical autobiography. It’s utterly unique, history’s first postmodern grindhouse film.

Trailer for the soundtrack release of Teenage Tupelo

COMMENTS: Not too many exploitation films open with an epigraph—even if it does come from a fortune cookie—but Teenage Continue reading 37*. TEENAGE TUPELO (1995)

CAPSULE: WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE (1995)

366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Heather Matarazzo, , Matthew Faber

PLOT: The trials and tribulations of Dawn Wiener, the least popular girl in her middle school (and in her own family).

COMMENTS: With it’s unflinching depiction of junior high social dynamics—including a bully who angrily promises to “rape” his twelve-year-old schoolmate, treating it as the male-female equivalent of an afterschool fight—Welcome to the Dollhouse was a shocker in 1995. Most previous Hollywood coming-of-age movies were nostalgic comedies where the even nerdiest outcasts had their moments to shine (a la The Breakfast Club). Classics like Zéro de conduite (1933) and If…. (1968) focused on the dark side of schoolboy fascism, but operated more as surreal political allegories than slice-of-life character studies. Although one probably exists, I can’t think of a pre-Dollhouse movie that focused so masochistically on its protagonist’s fatal unpopularity. The 400 Blows comes close, but it still features a charismatic antihero who triumphs through rebellion. Solondz allows Dawn Wiener no triumphs, symbolic or otherwise.

The courage to take on such on a then-unusual subject as teenage bullying and abuse made Dollhouse seem like a work of startling realism to many. Many of the episodes seem taken from real life: the outcast kid’s anxiety over finding a place to sit in the lunchroom, for example, or a group of cheerleaders asking the nerdy kid if she’s a lesbian and not taking no for an answer. But most of the story is only emotionally true. Do you remember when you were a kid and your parents took some home videos and you did something mildly embarrassing like stumbling in the pool, and when they played it back you were sure everyone was pointing and laughing at you? In Welcome to the Dollhouse, the whole family is actually pointing and laughing at you when they play it back, calling you out by name, actively enjoying your humiliation. And can we actually believe that Dawn could run away from her middle-class home—in the midst of a separate family tragedy—and her disappearance go virtually unnoticed? We see these events through Dawn Weiner’s paranoid preteen eyes, and while she’s perfect at conveying her own feelings of alienation, she’s an unreliable narrator as to external events.

This ironic tone—the light-hearted world of childhood, with its secret clubs and garage bands and first kisses that we expect from these kinds of coming-of-age movies, coupled with the far more realistic scenes of kids being mean to each other and being psychologically and neglected abused by their elders—may strike some as “weird.” To be honest, I find that while Dollhouse was a revelation in its day, its not the landmark many feel it to be. It isn’t nearly the gut-punch that much darker and more bizarre followup, Happiness, was. And, though far be it for me to recommend realist movies, I found Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade (2018), a straightforward drama hopskotching across approximately the same pavement, to be a better and more moving treatment of similar subject matter. This material calls for unflinching truthfulness, it needs no varnishing. Middle school is awkward and horrible for everyone, and for kids at the status-poor end of the social spectrum, it’s truly hellish. Though frequently called a “black comedy,” there’s precious little to actually raise a smile in Welcome to the Dollhouse, and its mixture of painful realism and morbid exaggeration doesn’t feel revolutionary anymore. The sadness of Dawn’s plight still comes through as jaggedly as ever, however. Thank goodness middle school only last three years (and that Dollhouse only lasts 90 minutes).

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“[Solondz] shows the kind of unrelenting attention to detail that is the key to satire… If you can see this movie without making a mental hit list of the kids who made your 11th year a torment, then you are kinder, or luckier, than me.”–Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times (contemporaneous)

(This movie was nominated for review by Frank, who called it “Uncomfortable to watch at times, but watched it several times since it came out in the mid-90s.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

CAPSULE: DAY OF THE BEAST (1995)

El día de la bestia

366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.

Recommended

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , Santiago Segura, Armando De Razza

PLOT: A priest decides he must become a great sinner as part of a scheme to summon the Devil and stop the Apocalypse; he enlists a death metal fan and a TV occultist to help him.

Still from Day of the Beast (1995)

COMMENTS: Cult favorite Day of the Beast builds its story around a trinity of characters, who become sort of the three anti-wise men at the nativity of the Antichrist. Having discovered the place and date of the Antichrist’s birth (typical of copycat Satan, it’s to be on Christmas Day), priest Angel enacts a plan to draw the devil’s attention by committing as many sins as possible. His apprentice crimes involve him stealing a beggar’s alms and assaulting a helpless mime (an act that shows how poor his grasp of the idea of “evil” really is). Angel knows he needs help to get that real, gnarly aura of wickedness, so he seeks out death metal records to play backwards; impressed with his musical taste, dimwitted and instinctually sinful record clerk Jose Maria agrees to tag along on the apostate’s adventures. Now, the duo need only recruit occultist television charlatan Cavan to teach them the necessary rituals to summon Old Scratch.

Of course, that requires them to convince a reluctant Cavan to join them… and to acquire the blood of a virgin and other items necessary for the ritual. Around the halfway mark, things get truly wild; de la Iglesia picks up the pace, sending his trio through an obstacle course that sees them fending off a matron with a shotgun and hanging off a neon billboard atop a skyscraper. Along the way there are a few genuinely weird scenes: a naked LSD-scarfing grandpa, and a trip to a convenience store where the staff has been dispatched by an anarchist murder cult. But mostly, the film is a series of black comedy hijinks and effective Satanic horror imagery (the devil is depicted both by a real goat and by a man in a goat costume). It’s quite a ride: subversive, but with comic characters you actually like and root for.

This was de la Iglesia’s sophomore feature and is typical of his output: genre pictures with strong characterizations, brutal violence, transgressive imagery, dark humor, and complex, fast-paced plots. They all have a / energy to them that might be best described more as “wild” than “weird.” Perhaps we should consider de la Iglesia’s work “weird-adjacent.” Whatever you call it, it’s well worth checking out.

El día de la bestia  was a big success in Spain, even notching a Best Director Goya (and five other awards, too, although not Best Picture). Unfortunately, other than a successful international film festival run, it did not screen much outside of its native land, and was poorly distributed on home video, not even scoring a region 1 DVD release. Severin rectified this absence in 2021 with a Blu-ray edition of Day of the Beast (along with another rarely-seen de la Iglesia movie, 1997’s Perdita Durango). Along with a newly restored print, the deluxe release contains a feature-length “making of” documentary, interviews with de la Iglesia and select cast and crew, and most substantially, de la Iglesia’s 1990 short film “Mirandas Asesinas,” an antique-looking B&W horror comedy featuring Álex Angulo as a literal-minded psychopath.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“… appealingly unrefined, this serving of satanic excess and good-naturedly dumb humor should please young audiences with a taste for off-the-wall cult fare.”–David Rooney, Variety (contemporaneous)