Tag Archives: 2015

List Candidates

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: CAT SICK BLUES (2015)

2 Comments

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

Recommended

DIRECTED BY: Dave Jackson

FEATURING: Matthew C. Vaughan, Shian Denovan, Meg Spencer, Jeni Bezuidenhout

PLOT: A former Internet celebrity whose life revolved around her cat’s  viral video performances and a fellow with a fetish for defiling and murdering women while dressed as a cat meet at a pet-loss support group. This is not a love story.

Still from Cat Sick Blues (2015)

COMMENTS: Within the first five minutes, Cat Sick Blues had already checked all my boxes for my favorite kinda horror movie: sick, dark humor on the /Full Moon spectrum (check), faithful adherence to horror movie protocol that the first two characters we meet die in minutes (check), a punk rock/screamo soundtrack that evokes the nihilist spirit of the story about to unfold (check), smirky social satire (check), a roller-coaster pace where you can’t possibly predict the next swerve (check), and a camera shot (pictured) with a head on a table, perfect to add to your decapitation scrapbook alongside Frankenhooker (check-a-roonie). By the time the first victim’s head had bounced gaily down the stairs, the movie had already bounced purring into my lap. Cat Sick Blues takes turns affectionately nuzzling your face and playfully clawing you hard enough to draw blood. Just when you think you can let your guard down, it bites your hand again, lest you get too comfortable. Many will be turned off by it, but for the rest of us horror/sicko freaks, this is our cup of catnip tea.

Claire (Shian Denovan) is the owner of Imelda, a fluffy white cat whose videos have taken on a viral life of their own. Sadly, Imelda’s fandom is a little too fanatic, as one obsessed fan shows up at her door and bluffs his way inside, only to summarily murder her cat and rape her. Broken, Claire ends up at a support group for bereaved pet owners (if you liked Fight Club’s satire of support-group culture, here’s another dose of that). There, she meets Ted (Matthew C. Vaughan), a towering and imposing fellow who’s also shy and antisocial. Ted is going through some things, to put it mildly. He has sought a support group way too late in life, having already converted himself by night into a serial killer in a cat mask. He even enlists the help of a local leather-crafter to fashion a set of sharp-clawed gloves, and a monster-sized strap-on spiked dildo to complete the ensemble. In this costume, he dispatches victims and, more than once, has a very dramatic orgasm while doing so, spasming on the floor in his cat mask and floppy dildo. All of this turns out to have a second purpose for Ted: he is collecting the blood of victims in a bucket in anticipation of re-animating his own dead black cat, Patrick. (Note to A Bucket of Blood: this is what a whole bucket of blood looks like!)

Claire and Ted hook up, after Ted makes a whirlwind cleaning tour of his apartment to hide the serial killer paraphernalia and trophies. So the question becomes, will Claire figure out that she’s dating a killer before Ted fulfills his body count? What happens from here becomes less clear as the story proceeds, until act three, where the director decides to let the story-logic slide into territory, with dream sequences and hallucinations clouding the narrative enough that we can pick our own ending. The one thing that’s clear is that this movie will have no shortage of indelible images right up to the end credits, including some genuine gross-outs.

For a small budget picture, it’s a pleasure seeing such attention to detail. The chaos is sharply filmed, framed, and hemmed in by a tight production all around. The set is filled with familiar cat-themed gift shop kitsch like cat mugs, cat T-shirts, and cat bongs. One scene has Claire sorting through her mail; the pile of envelopes has some custom-printed mailers relevant to the plot, with text you’ll want to freeze-frame so its carefully spread satire may be read and appreciated in full. A blink-and-you’ll-miss-it scene has Ted visiting a rave where teenagers in glowing jewelry wave their phones in the air and the DJ raises a squirt-gun to his lips. Most impressive of all, Cat Sick Blues was released in 2015, and yet has not aged a single day. We’re still a culture obsessed with Internet fame and cats, wallowing in bizarre fetishes and shallow morals. Claire’s fans, adoring the content yet lacking empathy for its creator, flock to ridicule her situation, or steal clicks by posting reaction videos to her plight.

It’s remarkable that this film isn’t better known (or at least didn’t cross our radar sooner), but we can chalk that up to an Australian production by a director who seems to live entirely at film festivals down under. Reading the IMDB reviews, I see commenters practically coughing up hairballs as they remark how upsetting, offensive, and disturbing this movie is. Let the poor little kittens lap their safe milk. For us fans of feral film, Cat Sick Blues is the kitty that roars like a lion.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…sometimes movies just leave you completely confused and unsure of what it is that you just watched. That basically sums up how I felt once I had finished watching the bizarre Australian horror film, Cat Sick Blues.”–Chris Coffel, Bloody Disgusting (DVD)

(This movie was nominated for review by Bradley, who called it “one odd movie.”. Suggest a weird movie or two of your own here.)

 

 

Cat Sick Blues

Cat Sick Blues

  • Region Free Blu-ray

List Price : 36.97 $

Offer: 27.73 $

Go to Amazon
Today on sale with a special price!
Take advantage of this special offer now!
Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: TURBO KID (2015)

Leave a comment

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

DIRECTED BY: François Simard, Anouk Whissell, Yoann-Karl Whissell

FEATURING: Munro Chambers, Laurence Leboeuf, Aaron Jeffrey, Edwin Wright, Michael Ironside

PLOT: In a post-apocalyptic future, a young kid discovers the fighting gear of the legendary Turbo Rider and sets out to topple the tyrannical overlord Zeus.

Still from Turbo Kid (2015)

COMMENTS: Turbo Kid lays down its ace right from the get-go, as a gravel-voiced narrator describes the grim vista of a tomorrow carved out by nuclear winter and acid rain. “This is the future,” he intones, as a boy on a BMX bike pedals into frame. “This is the year 1997.” Time for a quick double-check on the year this came out… yep, and we are truly underway.

The 366 Weird Movies archive does not lack for films from four decades ago that employed a low budget and suitably barren locations to depict the world-after-the-end-of-the-world to audiences. (Just off the top of my head, I can think of three such movies that I myself have reviewed.) Recent years have seen several attempts at nostalgic pastiche, but Turbo Kid stands alone for setting “80s desolation romp” as a target. In particular, it’s the product of the serial nostalgist collective Road Kill Super Stars (aka RKSS, which consisted of this film’s three writer-directors, until Simard was booted last year for criminal sex charges); when their proposed contribution to the anthology The ABCs of Death was rejected, they had more than enough ideas to expand the concept into a feature.

Considering that Turbo Kid’s sole objective is to recapture that special 1980s mix of futuristic nihilism and naïve can-do spirit, the effort is remarkably successful. The empty fields and gravel pits in Quebec that stand in for the future’s wastelands are suitably desolate. Costuming and production design tap into the mixed milieu of flashy colors and big hair roaming around what look like abandoned sewage treatment plants. Plenty of props serve as icons of the era, from Rubik’s cubes and Nintendo Power Gloves to the ubiquitous BMX bikes that serve as everyone’s transportation around the barren wasteland. (Not that bicycles would be the most unusual form of transport to dominate the coming hellscape.) Plus, the synth-fueled musical score by Le Matos is both pitch-perfect and tiresome in a way that’s era-appropriate, and is supplemented in the font-of-the-future opening credits with the most fitting rock song choice imaginable, a fist-pumping anthem from Stan Bush (of “The Touch” fame). If you’re fooled for a moment into thinking that this was churned out in 1985, that’s fully intended, because Turbo Kid doesn’t want to just capture the feel of these 80s low-budget sci-fi epics; it wants to be one of them.

This commitment to verisimilitude extends to the film’s cast, who play everything straight enough to sell the movie’s central joke. Chambers is just the right kind of bland hero, not looking anywhere as young as his outward level of maturity, but fully selling The Kid’s sweet ignorance. As his sidekick and love interest, Leboeuf’s perky Apple turns out to be the most delightful, refreshing thing that Turbo Kid brings to the party. Her indefatigably chipper vibe initially seems like it’s going to become annoying fast but quickly becomes the animating force in the film, with a naively joyful spirit that makes a crucial revelation about her character land with a nod of approval instead of a roll of the eyes. And then there’s the filmmakers’ most crucial piece of casting, landing master of scene-chewing villainy Michael freaking Ironside to do the thing he does. Undoubtedly, he could play this part in his sleep, but while his work here is effortless, he’s in no way phoning it in. He plays the heel with all the acid-tongued vigor of his younger days, in which he no doubt celebrated getting cast over Kurtwood Smith. Ironside even makes a virtue of the directors’ most questionable choice, surrounding Zeus with a less-than-skillful set of minions who leave the overlord shy of his most supervillainous aspirations. It’s a bit of postmodern irony that’s out of place in Turbo Kid’s otherwise resolute commitment to the homage.

Perhaps the thing that most distinguishes Turbo Kid from its ancestors is the remarkable level of gore. It’s not as though these films are devoid of viscera, as any Mad Max entry will demonstrate, but RKSS is relentless, with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of fake blood spewed via every manner of stabbing, decapitation, and explosion. This festival of fluid is impossible to take seriously, presented in an extremely cartoonish manner, and resembling nothing so much as Sam Peckinpah’s Salad Days. It can be outright funny at times, like a sawblade on a helmet that turns its victim into a screw top, or a body that lands squarely atop another person like the most unwieldy hat. So it’s one of Turbo Kid’s better surprises that the orgy of violence ends up showcasing the film’s sweetest moment, a romantic tableau that’s only enhanced by the surrounding rain of blood.

Given the opportunity for parody, Turbo Kid opts instead for direct mimicry, an odd choice by itself, but one that makes the finished film more earnest than weird. That does make the film a charming watch, if a weightless one. That 80s trash was pretty fun, and this re-creation is pretty fun, too. It’s a low bar, but clearing it is a decent way to spend an hour or two.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a wildly discordant, schizophrenically adorable, gore-soaked fantasy set in an deserted industrial wasteland… Add in the other nutso, hilarious touches, and you have the garnish you need to turn your sweet tale of friendship into a Friday night blood feast.” – Patrick Feutz, Inside the Blue Paint

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

Turbo kid

Turbo kid

    New starting from: 39.99

    Go to Amazon

    Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

    IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: DEEP DARK (2015)

    Leave a comment

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

    DIRECTED BY: Michael Medaglia

    FEATURING: Sean McGrath, Anne Sorce, Denise Poirier

    PLOT: An failed artist’s last stab at success is given an unexpected boost by a mysterious creature living inside a hole in his shabby studio apartment, but the hole’s motives are not entirely charitable, and the arrangement may come at an unexpectedly high cost.

    Still from Deep Dark (2015)

    COMMENTS: Among the unsung heroes of modern cinema are the home-video closed-caption writers. They must not only transcribe the dialogue but provide detailed descriptions of sound effects that offer meaningful context for the mood and the stakes of a scene. Surely some sort of award is owed to the unknown captioner for Deep Dark, who was tasked with delivering a full accounting of the first appearance of the hole in the wall who will change the life of our protagonist, and came through with this masterpiece: “[eerie sounds, vaguely wet, vaguely female]”.

    It’s an auspicious introduction. We’re told that the Hole has inspired Pollock, Warhol, and Patrick Nagel, and she sparks a sea change in the artistic output of tiresome whiner Hermann by expelling pearlescent orbs that drive art patrons to ecstatic distraction. Her sultry, needy entreaties (delivered by Poirier, best known for voicing the title character in the “Æon Flux” animated series) leave him completely in her thrall, so much so that it is far from surprising that she eventually demands more of him, culminating in an encounter that reveals the Hole to be, shall we say, glorious. One of writer/director Medaglia’s craftier decisions (in his only feature to date) is to leave details about her true nature or origin completely unaddressed. The mystery only enhances her power over everyone who encounters her.

    What we have here is a Little Shop of Horrors scenario, in which a monster provides a loser with the key to success, only to demand more and more in return—up to and including blood. Deep Dark is clean and efficient at delivering its story in a tight 80 minutes and taking advantage of a small cast and limited locations to convey its thrills. The film looks good, too, with a crisp editorial sensibility and evocative use of locations both publicly bright and privately grimy. Outside of Poirier’s very good voicework, the actors are definitively fine, turning in perfectly workmanlike performances that deliver the material without enhancing or undercutting it. Like Hermann’s art, though, Deep Dark is missing something. All the pieces are in place, professionally delivered, but it just doesn’t feel like there are any stakes. Events unfold almost entirely as expected, and even the movie’s most graphic moments are evocative, but not shocking or surprising.

    Where the film falls the furthest from the goal line is in developing a voice or message uniquely its own. There’s the hint of satiric intent—Medaglia subtitles Hermann’s art and life with ironic descriptions, a tool that will be echoed a few years down the line in The Menu—but the targets are lame and the delivery is weak, especially since there’s a strong argument that we don’t see a single piece of good art in the film. Characters who could provide depth or further complications are assigned subplots that never fully take shape; a curious landlady is the most notable, but Sorce’s influential gallery owner is frustratingly inconsistent, by turns mercenary, snobbish, and weak-minded as needed. Medaglia has his straightforward horror tale, complete with a notably interesting monster. He just doesn’t have much more than that.

    WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

    “Both deeply disturbing yet strangely alluring, the film offers audiences something inherently crazy and incredibly macabre… if like me you have a fondness of the strange and bizarre then Deep Dark is a film worth seeking out.” – Jon Dickinson, “Scream” (contemporaneous)

    (This movie was nominated for review by Patricia, who called it “hilariously disturbing” and added “gotta love the weirdness of it…” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)     

    Deep Dark

    Deep Dark

    • DVD

    New starting from: 19.94

    Go to Amazon

    Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

    IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: COOL CAT SAVES THE KIDS (2015)

    2 Comments

    Beware

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

    DIRECTED BY: Derek Savage

    FEATURING: Derek Savage, Erik Estrada, , several innocent children who don’t deserve to have their good names sullied by mentioning them here

    PLOT: Cool Cat, a human-sized bipedal feline who loves you and himself in equal measure, spends his days learning important life lessons, watching Daddy Derek engage in various self-improvement pastimes, and creating rock songs about love, friendship, and the general awesomeness of being Cool Cat. 

    COMMENTS: This is potentially the most perilous review I’ve ever written. After all, when the video blog “I Hate Everything” decided to share its assessment of Cool Cat Saves the Kids, the helpful feline’s caretaker, Derek Savage, launched an all-out assault on them, allegedly impersonating a lawyer to issue threats and soliciting a DMCA takedown order from YouTube. (Another YouTuber with whom Savage sparred, YMS, produced a follow-up video to explain copyright law and the Fair Use doctrine.) So while I’m hopeful that the passage of a decade will have softened Savage’s feelings toward critical opinions, one can never be sure.

    So let’s tread carefully, because we rarely venture into the genre of children’s safety videos. As anyone who has had a child anytime in the past two decades knows, there is a massive market for peppy, carefully-worded productions that use some sort of animated or costumed character to import crucial lessons about staying alive in a dangerous world, covering topics from traffic safety to home safety to stranger danger. They are often amateurish, frequently unbearable to the adult mind, and sometimes very effective with their young audience. So if we’re being charitable, we could say that Savage spotted an opportunity to use his skills as a Hollywood extra and Playgirl model to advocate on behalf of the kids. If we’re less than charitable, we might say that he saw a marketing opportunity.

    What gets Savage mentioned in the same sentence with legends like Ed Wood and Tommy Wiseau are his deeply lo-fi moviemaking skills. Beginning with the goofy Comic Sans opening credits (which include a credit for Cool Cat himself as, of all things, associate producer), the whole production has big Vegas-suburb energy, with plenty of scenes located in someone’s guest bedroom that has been decorated with pictures of Cool Cat and signs reading “Cool Cat Loves You,” desperate improvisation that take the form of characters describing every action they take, some wonderfully melodramatic child acting, and a hero whose primary action is to holler “Yay!” at every opportunity. Cool Cat is happy about absolutely everything, and every dicey situation is resolved with Cool Cat’s commitment to just, you know, not do the bad thing and then launch into a green-screened musical interlude about being cool. So repetitive and unengaging is the film (which is actually a mashup of three separate Cool Cat shorts) that it Continue reading IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: COOL CAT SAVES THE KIDS (2015) →