Tag Archives: Afterlife

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: THE DRAGON LIVES AGAIN (1977)

Li san jiao wei zhen di yu men; AKA Deadly Hands of Kung Fu

Still from The Dragon Lives Again (1977)

DIRECTED BY: Lo Chi

FEATURING:  Siu-Lung Leung (as Bruce Leong), Ie Lung Shen, Ching Tang, Alexander Grand, Jenny, Wong Mei, Eric Tsang, Bobby Canavarro, Hsi Chang

PLOT: Martial arts superstar Bruce Lee dies, winds up in the afterlife, and soon butts heads with the King of the Underworld, the Godfather, the Man With No-Name, Zatoichi, 007, Emmanuelle, the Exorcist and Dracula—but he’s still Bruce Lee, and he’s got Caine the Wanderer, the One-Armed Swordsman and Popeye the Sailor Man backing him up…

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: There are many, many films in the wake of Bruce Lee’s death made to capitalize off of the death and his fame. Very, very few of them pull off the feat of being entertaining and imaginative enough to surpass their crass origins to become something that stands on its own.

COMMENTS: The Bruce Lee Phenomenon is unfathomable to someone who didn’t grow up in the mid-70s. You had to experience it firsthand. There’s no one in the present day who comes close to Lee: cultural icons all have their share of imitators, but few can spawn an entire subgenre after their death.

The “Bruceploitation” phenomenon encompassed all aspects of Bruce Lee’s short life and ongoing legacy, from biopics and docudramas to variations on his most popular films to total fantasies on his death (or faux death) and afterlife, all with a variety of imitators/wannabees/clones presented to the still Bruce-hungry public. Some were unapologetic cash grabs, while some genuflected some modicum of respect towards Lee.

The Dragon Lives Again occupies its own niche. It’s the most bonkers Bruceploitation movie and probably the most entertaining of the bunch, making good on its opening “Dedicated to the Millions Who Love Bruce Lee” title. It’s one of the best examples of a theory what experimental filmmaker Craig Baldwin would encapsulize years later in his motto, “Copyright infringement is your best entertainment value.” It’s actually kind of wild that it works as well as it does, bringing such disparate characters together. (Lee is as much of a brand character as the others, fighting Dracula and his minions in his Kato wardrobe from “The Green Hornet”.)

The Dragon Lives Again (1977) KatoThe comedy is good, including moves named for films Lee appeared in and talking skeletons. At times it’s naughty: a running gag involving Lee’s rumored sexual prowess and the Underworld King’s wives attempting to find that out firsthand; a joke involving nunchucks and “Bruce Lee’s Third Leg,” which was snatched subsequently for other kung-fu comedies. And just the idea of bringing together Popeye, Emmanuelle, 007 and others is brilliant, especially since such a thing wouldn’t even be possible in today’s corporate climate unless it were a no-budget ultra-underground project that maybe 30 people would even be aware of existing.

The Dragon Lives Again has been available in various dodgy versions for years, but I doubt that anyone is going to better the Severin Blu-ray in their box set “The Game of Clones: Bruceploitation Vol. 1.” The original negative was deemed unusable, so they utilized a 2K scan of a print from the AGFA Collection. It’s not immaculate, but it’s much better than what’s was previously available. The disc has a commentary by Bruceploitation experts Michael Worth and Frank Djeng, an audio essay by one Lovely Jon, and 7 minutes of deleted/extended scenes from the French release.

The Dragon Lives Again (1977) The Third Leg of Bruce

Cinefamily trailer:

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…perhaps no Kung-Fu film is more insane; more bizarre; more completely fucking bonkers than THE DRAGON LIVES AGAIN. Not only does it fit quite snuggly into the Bruceploitation genre, but it has more weirdness per minute than any production you’re likely to see this side of David Lynch.”–Doug Tilley, Daily Grindhouse

 

CAPSULE: DESPISER (2023)

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DIRECTED BY: Phillip J. Cook

FEATURING: Mark Redfield, Doug Brown, Gage Sheridan, Frank Smith, Michael Weitz, Tara Bilkins, Mark Hyde

PLOT: A near-death experience pulls a down-on-his-luck artist into Purgatory, where a rag-tag team are waging a losing battle against the Despiser.

Still from Despiser (2003)

COMMENTS: Phillip Cook loves action: gunfights and explosions abound. He also loves metaphysics: purgatory is real. He loves, too, hearty doses of ambiguity: is this death-world really purgatory, or just another dimension? Most of all, though, he loves his CGI: its delineations, its vibrancy, its rudimentality—its ubiquity. Despiser will cater to any number of genre enthusiasts, but if you’re not on board with his late ’90s, classic-Windows era aesthetic, you should just keep walking.

Personally, I was fully on board with watching the action-machinations of a gang of do-gooders, who exhaust any amount of bullets, burn any amount of tire tread, and quip any amount of one-liners, as they careen through an uncanny world of angular churches, Day-Glo lava, and boxy sports cars. Despiser‘s backdrop is an odd and exciting one, contrasting greatly with the humdrum doings in the living world of our reluctant hero, Gordon: unmotivated painter, failed graphic designer, and, in the end, savior. His dreams—and a near-death experience or two—may be a flashy, dark, and stripped-down nigh Hellscape, but that sure beats his (and our) ho-hum, beige existence. The visual clash is bold, as observed by Gordon himself: “This place doesn’t look real”, he muses upon arrival. And no, it does not. Thank goodness.

The plot twitches along from action set-piece to action set-piece, with religious overtones not quite saturating the atmosphere. The gun-toting team of righteous actioneers who take Gordon into their fold is led by a wisecracking, scripture-quoting Army Ranger from the turn of the 20th century: Carl Nimbus, who never met a Bible passage he couldn’t twist into a badass threat. Despiser almost comes across as something of a gotta-be-cool Christian movie, but Phillip Cook has it both ways (indeed, he has it several ways). Just when the God-and-Thunder motifs threaten to show their hand, Cook deflates them, most notably when Carl quotes, “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death—Psalms: 23”. Gordon rejoins, “We’re on a highway to Hell. AC/DC: 1980.” This is not a movie to take entirely seriously.

But the characters do, and that’s key for us being on board with the imaginative nonsense which unravels, re-ravels, and ultimately ends up as an entertaining crochet of in-your-face foolishness, bullet-flying fantasy, and desperate characters going to desperate measures to thwart the titular Despiser. (A being so evil, it could only have been properly voiced by author/producer/director Phillip Cook.) I spent two bucks renting this diversion, but golly if I’m not tempted to buy the modestly priced super-duper Blu-ray. Not to sound too religious here, but it’s a small blessing that this singular cinematic extravaganza (made for video though it was) came around the first time, but also to be released in tip-top form on a disc featuring all the great love for the material that makes Despiser the funtime oddity it is.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“… weird, convoluted, all around dumb and yet completely fucking awesome…. [Cook’s] bizarre fetish for low quality CGI and green screens spreads through his entire work history and you gotta respect a guy for sticking to his guns. If you want low budget action that’s determined to be itself and be refuses to take itself anything less than seriously, you’ll love what the guy has to offer…” — Mikey Ward, Mondo Exploito

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: A NEW OLD PLAY (2021)

Jiao ma tang hui

椒麻堂会

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A New Old Play is currently available for VOD rental.

Recommended

DIRECTED BY: Qiu Jiongjiong

FEATURING: Yi Sicheng, Guan Nan, Qiu Zhimin, Xue Xuchun, Gu Tao

PLOT: Two affable demons come for the soul of Qui, a famous Chinese opera clown; on his way to the afterlife, he reminisces about his life’s experiences.

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE APOCRYPHA: The saga unfurls on stage-like sets using theater tricks and practical effects, with an easygoing charm bubbling throughout. The mindless catastrophes besetting the Chinese from the 1930s through 1980s batter fruitlessly against a quiet resolution to survive. Demons, symbolism, wit, and magic realism co-mingle with the tragedy, creating an experience unlike anything this reviewer has ever seen.

COMMENTS: This is a daunting prospect: stage-theater style, a deep-dive into Chinese cultural politics, and an epic length. The day before watching A New Old Play, I quipped that I was certain that this three-hour film would be sooo good, I’d want it four hours long. But I can admit when I’m mistaken. Its theatrical nature gives Qiu Jiongjiong’s film a stylish and deeply cultural resonance; the deep-dive into the darkest times of the People’s Republic of China is tempered throughout by playful humanity; and when the film wrapped up, I could have happily sat through another hour—or more. From the protagonist’s friendly acquisition at the hands of two neophyte demons (they had just taken over from their recently retired fathers), during the long reminiscences at the Netherworld inn, and up through Qui’s final, memory-washing meal at the river to Hell, A New Old Play is a jaunty, enlightening ride.

Old Qui learns that his fame as an opera clown performer transcends the Earthly plane. The King of Hell himself has sent his death invitation in the care of two escorts—demons whom Qui recollects from his childhood days during China’s “Great Leap Forward” and Cultural Revolution, when they come to collect the soul of his briefly adopted sister. As Qui travels from our world to the next, he makes a stop at a wayside inn established by a fellow Sichuan who owned an inn topside, and staffed by the handyman for Qui’s troupe. The “New New Players” were an elite band of performers founded by Commander Pocky to maintain the morale of the troops: first the anti-Japanese rebels, then the Chiang Kai-shek Nationalists, and then the Maoist People’s Liberation Army. Always the same troupe, shuffling to and fro as factional powers ebb and flow.

Qiu Jiongjiong sets the stage with humor from the get-go. One demon laboriously employs a bicycle pump to inflate the front tire of the faerielight-lined rickshaw on which he and his fellow demon travel. The opening memory corrects the demon’s information about when Qui joined the acting ensemble (they admit that certain records have been lost), introducing the concept of “New New Players” via a committee-style exploration of the merits of the repetitive term. The war against Japan is framed as a competition for theater funds and an irritating lack of flour for steamed buns. The civil war is nearly reduced to the swapping-out of a poster on the theater building: first anti-communist, then anti-nationalist.

The bulk of the melodrama (if I might even to call it that) occurs during the famine and cultural destruction unleashed by Mao as he sought to maintain his grip on the fledgling new (new) country. But the focus is on the the actors, and how the downtrodden manage to cock a snook at the gun-toting thugs. As happened to nearly all those caught in the vortex of the “Cultural Revolution”, Commander Pocky falls out of favor, and his actors are forced into self-abasement; Qui, the clown, stands amongst the troupe, dressed shabbily, wearing ridiculous makeup, and wearing a sign advertising his transgression. But as he is a clown, he manages to gather a small adoring crowd with a near-immobile performance, turning those who came to shun and gawk back into human beings through the power of his performance. Qiu Jiongjiong has nothing good to say about the evils of the Maoist regime, but refuses to grant that blood-soaked tyrant even a semblance of power over him. Like his film, all of time is a new-old play, as we stumble forward with a trip and a laugh, forever escaping from the inhumanity which the evil among us would subject us to.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“… filmed as theatrical tableaux, complete with blatantly contrived sets and supernatural fantasy sequences, which virtually shout at viewers not to take the depicted events as literal truth.”–Richard Brody, The New Yorker (contemporaneous)

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: BEETLEJUICE (1988)

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Recommended

DIRECTED BY: Tim Burton

FEATURING: , , , , ,

PLOT: A milquetoast suburban couple find themselves dead and haunting their own house; when new tenants they can’t stand redecorate the place and prove themselves immune to haunting, they hire a “bio-exorcist.”

Still from Beetlejuice (1988)

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: The premise, following a couple of ghosts protagonists along their misadventures in the afterlife, is a good enough foundation, but could have been a ho-hum fantasy in different hands. It took this all-star crew to come up with a desert world populated by sand snakes, a brothel in model train scale, a dinner party becoming a Harry Belafonte singalong, and a million and one creepy/hilarious dead folk to round it up to an eye-popping experience. It’s the happiest movie about death ever made!

COMMENTS: Tim Burton has certainly provoked his share of discussion on our site. Had 366 Weird Movies been around when he started his career, he doubtless would have been keen to make our list. Don’t let him kid for you a minute: Tim Burton knows exactly what weird is. He has Danny Elfman around, he knows about Forbidden Zone. There’s no excuse. He also knows what money is, and the siren song of the almighty buck has proven a stronger lure than prestige as a true artiste and auteur of midnight movies. Hence has he ever aimed his output straight for the suburban outlet mall, right between Hallmark and Hot Topic, making sure he can be equally merchandised in both. It’s clear that his artistic muse struggles to insert weirdness into everything he does, but if the weirdness factor cuts into the box office factor, he’s not about to take a chance on leaving a single empty seat in that theater on opening weekend. He still sobs himself to sleep at night over the lost Happy Meal deal. His saving grace is that he got off a few riskier shots in his wild years before Hollywood tamed him.

Beetlejuice is definitely Tim Burton at his wildest. If you remove his name and the all-star crew from consideration and view Beetlejuice objectively as its own thing, it’s pretty jaw-dropping that it ever got made. It is the blackest of black comedy subjects, getting a laugh out of scenes like suicide cases showing off their slashed wrists. And how would you like to hang yourself, only to find out that in the afterlife you’re condemned to keep dangling from the same noose, which is running around on a track amid office cubicles, so you can deliver memos? And the daughter protagonist—who can see ghosts through her sheer magical goth pixie powers alone—writes her suicide note but ghosts talk her out of it because, basically, death sucks too, kid. And how about Juno, the social worker for our hapless couple, who chainsmokes and exhales through the slash in her throat, and yet the effect is so underplayed that you could blink and miss it?

I once griped about the Imagination Ceiling: writers who bring up supernatural characters with allegedly near-boundless powers, but then the writer can’t think of anything awesome enough for them to do to make it worth the while. Beetlejuice does the Imagination Ceiling right. It’s jam-packed with supernatural characters who warp reality with a thought, pulling off one crazy stunt after another. Beetlejuice, tasked with getting rid of an intruding couple, does so by turning himself into a carnival strong man mallet game topped by a malevolent merry-go-round, for no other reason than that’s the first idea that popped into his head. In the manic hour-and-a-half running time, we never get very much explained, but the fever-dream logic is internally consistent enough that it makes perfect sense for a guy to get munched by a sudden sandworm attack. Right after he got rammed in the foot by a toy car driven by an outraged hobbyist shrunken down and left for stranded in his own model town, of course.

The mortal characters would be hard pressed to match the supernatural ones, but they do a bang-up job regardless. From the impossibly prissy interior decorator turned medium to the hysterically neurotic sculptress who will eventually be held prisoner by one of her own creations, they match the dead half of the cast bonker for bonker. Nobody with more than two lines in this film is forgettable. Only now we can start talking about the cast and crew, a unique blend of quirky careers and offbeat talents. Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis stand out by the magnitude of their vanilla Brad and Janet routine, lost in a different kind of Gothic funhouse. Winona Ryder plays the most Winona Rydery role of her career. Danny Elfman’s music is a haunted circus. And all I want is for Glenn Shadix to follow me around all day narrating every mundane thing I do in his dramatic purple ham voice, is that too much to ask?

Beetlejuice is Tim Burton’s weirdest movie, because it ranks four out of five bowls of sugary cereal on the Saturday Morning Cartoon scale of unfettered childhood imagination.

Warner Brothers re-released Beetlejuice in a collectible Blu-ray steelbook package in 2019, giving us the excuse we needed to finally review it. It has the original trailer and the three episodes of the “Beetlejuice” cartoon series that were included on the “20th Anniversary” Blu-ray, but doesn’t come with the isolated score or soundtrack CD bonus disc from that release.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Right off the bat, the whole premise is fucking weird, and it just gets weirder with each subsequent single scene. People pull their faces off, heads are shrunk, sculptures come to life, eyeballs become fingers, massive worms eat people—it really is a nonstop barrage of ‘what the hell?’ How someone sat down and gave Tim Burton millions of dollars to make this is almost incomprehensible.”–Germaine Lussier, Gizmodo

270. WAX, OR THE DISCOVERY OF TELEVISION AMONG THE BEES (1991)

“The keeping of bees is like the direction of sunbeams.”―Henry David Thoreau

RecommendedWeirdest!

DIRECTED BY: David Blair

FEATURING: David Blair

PLOT: A “supernatural photographer” and beekeeper searching for evidence of the afterlife buys a hive of rare, disease-resistant Mesopotamian bees. Years later, his grandson Jacob, who works as a software engineer designing flight simulators for warplanes, inherits the insects. The hive gives him visions, then drones pierce his skin and insert a crystal—which allows him to see the bees’ version of television—to direct him in his destiny as a metaphysical assassin.

Still from Wax, or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees (1991)

BACKGROUND:

  • Wax took six years to complete and was partially funded with grants from German Public Television, the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Film Institute, and other private and state charitable endowments.
  • Jacob’s grandfather, James “Hive” Maker, is played by (in a non-speaking role).
  • First broadcast on German television in 1991, this shot-on-video feature never received a true theatrical release, although it was blown up to 16mm film for limited screenings in 1993.
  • The New York Times reported that Wax was be the first feature-length motion picture to be broadcast on the Internet.
  • A “hypermedia” version of Wax, or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees is available for free viewing at a site hosted by the University of Virginia. The movie is available to watch or download for free on Vimeo under a Creative Commons license.
  • Two years ago, Blair said that he was still working on a sequel, which has been in progress for at least seven years.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: Oddly enough, in a movie with so many digital distortions and abstract psychedelic graphics, it’s the shots of Jacob in his white beekeeping suit that stick in the mind the most—because, absurdly, he almost never takes it off, whether trudging through the steaming desert or walking past banks of supercomputers at his job at a military facility. Even when cuddling with his wife in front of the TV, he only takes off his hat. The suit becomes both a symbol of Jacob’s insular insanity, and a low budget substitute for a spacesuit a la 2001: A Space Odyssey, as Jacob ventures into cosmic realms far beyond ordinary human conception.

THREE WEIRD THINGS: Semi-intelligent missiles; the dead on the Moon; the Planet of Television

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: This is a “documentary” about a man who is sent to the Planet of the Dead via bee television in order to kill the reincarnation of his grandfather’s brother-in-law, thereby becoming Cain, before being reincarnated in paradise. I think. The story is utterly insane, although it makes complete sense to bees.

Wax or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees [10:00/85:00] from David Blair on Vimeo.

The first ten minutes of Wax, or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees

COMMENTS: When I first watched Wax, or the Discovery of Television Continue reading 270. WAX, OR THE DISCOVERY OF TELEVISION AMONG THE BEES (1991)