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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: QUANTUM COWBOYS (2022)

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DIRECTED BY: Geoff Marslett

FEATURING: Kiowa Gordon, John Way, Lily Gladstone, Patrick Page, , , Alex Cox

PLOT: After three years in prison, Frank reunites with his pal Bruno to affirm that a murdered musician is alive; meanwhile, Colfax and Depew pursue increasingly desperate measures to remove themselves from a simultaneously occurring time-loop.

Still from Quantum Cowboys (2022)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Good times, looping and otherwise, await the viewer in this multivariously-animated adventure, with its scattered reality monitored by an all-observant supernatural entity, his recording crew—and his cat.

COMMENTS: Quantum Cowboys plays like the fun-time menace of The Endless fused with the philosophizing of  Waking Life, with a story unfolding in the late 19th-century Arizona Territory. If that comparison doesn’t do it for you, I got others. While director Geoff Marslett hasn’t made a wholly new phenomenon, in the manner of igneous rock spewed from cinema’s core, he has through precedent and pressure forged a metamorphic rock, squeezing genres, tropes, and ideas into a film different from what has come before. And all its inner weirdness is coated with such easygoing charm that only upon reflection does the viewer realize a whole lot of odd stuff just happened.

Four layers of narrative interact and interlay as Quantum Cowboys unfolds. A pair of nobodies—sly Frank and honest Bruno (Kiowa Gordon and John Way)—shovel horse droppings as a band plays to a small crowd at the opening of a railway station. Mischief leads to tragedy when a US Marshall pursuing Frank for petty robbery shoots the band leader. Meanwhile, the traveling salesmen Colfax and Depew (David Arquette and Frank Mosley, the latter looking like a dead-ringer for a younger version of the former) attempt to make bank by importing ideas from the future to sell to the past. Looming in the background is the charmingly earthy Linde, whose ambitions include land acquisition by way of matrimony with a white man. Looming over everything is Memory, who attempts to fuse these various observed paths into a coherent, single reality.

Frank is our reluctant hero, pulled into the time travel nonsense triggered by Colfax and Depew, our reluctant villains. Frank didn’t experience personal growth during a three-year prison stint for robbery, but his release, and the unlikely events immediately following, set him on a path toward maturity—but one that can only conclude happily if he can engineer an outcome that doesn’t leave everybody dead. Scattered amidst his journey are plenty of alt-country music luminaries (such as Neko Case), as well as Alex Cox as a preacher only somewhat anchored to any given timeline. Bruno, with his simple outlook and honorable ways, gives Frank—and the film—a focal point; Frank needs his friend for direction, and his friend needs someone to direct.

I could easily tell that everyone involved had a good time, from the the sanguine trio serving as Memory’s recording crew to the multi-roled John Doe, who has no time for the other John Doe’s tuneless musicianship and coolly shoots up John Doe’s tavern to silence an unpleasant cacophony. Geoff Marslett and co-writer Howe Gelb (an Arizona-born singer-songwriter) let their animation team do their thing, making for a visual style that’s a coherent variation on being everywhere at once. The music rocks with a twang, the performers ooze charm, and the action gyrates to a delightful finale of friendship triumphing over obsession. As Linde observes the day after her nuptials, “Nothing’s meant to be. Especially this.” Quantum Cowboys probably shouldn’t exist, but, thankfully, here it is for our enjoyment.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“May I be the first to crown Quantum Cowboys the new king of the psychedelic western? Visually it beats El Topo to the draw. It makes your brain slide further across the theater floor than Greaser’s Palace.” — Michael Talbot-Haynes, Film Threat (contemporaneous)

Quantum Cowboys [Blu-ray]

Quantum Cowboys [Blu-ray]
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Apocryphally Weird

28*. WALKER (1987)

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“I was seriously off the rails here.”–screenwriter Rudy Wurlitzer, on Walker‘s commentary

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , , , , Peter Boyle,  Marlee Matlin

PLOT: Shipping magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt hires William Walker, a mercenary and adventurer fresh off a failed campaign to establish an independent state in Mexico, to take a small army to Nicaragua to join their civil war on the side of the Democrats. Assembling a ragtag band of disreputable men lacking better prospects, Walker takes his army to Nicaragua, where he has unexpected success, driving back the Legitimist army and arriving in the capital of Grenada as a liberator. Initially accepting a position leading the army, Walker grows power mad and seizes the country’s Presidency.

Still from Walker (1987)

BACKGROUND:

  • William Walker was a real historical figure and, ridiculous anachronisms and obvious fantasy scenes aside, Walker describes the general direction of his career. Many scenes were drawn from his diaries and letters and other historical sources. (One major change was the role of Cornelius Vanderbilt, who did not sponsor Walker’s original expedition, but was involved in his downfall.)
  • The practice of American adventurers invading Latin American countries with private armies was surprisingly common in the 19th century, so much so that it earned its own name: filibustering. William Walker was the most successful filibusterer of all time. He somehow took control of Nicaragua with an army initially comprised of a mere 60 men.
  • Rudy Wurlitzer’s previous screenplays included the bizarre post-apocalyptic Glen and Randa (1971), ‘s cult film Two-Lane Blacktop (1971), and the Western Pat Garret and Billy the Kid (1973).
  • Cox made Walker in the same year as Straight to Hell, a quickie scraped together after plans to film a punk rock concert in Nicaragua fell apart.
  • The movie was filmed while the C.I.A..-backed Contras were waging a guerilla war against the ruling Sandinistas. Cox filmed corpses from a Contra massacre and included the footage in the film’s end credits.
  • Universal Studios gave Cox his largest budget ever, six million dollars, to make what they hoped might be a prestige biopic, or even a hit. They did not expect the deranged, anachronistic, incendiary film Cox delivered, and after poorly-received test screenings they buried the film. Cox never directed in Hollywood again.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: It’s tempting to cite one of the many iconic scenes of Walker, rifle in hand, striding confidently in the foreground in his smart Puritan-black suit while mayhem erupts in the background. We instead selected the surreal image of Walker striding confidently across the beach in the background, while in the foreground two of his men are being punished by being buried up to their necks in the sand with a tarantula crawling over one’s head, while their overseer enjoys a Marlboro and Coke.

TWO WEIRD THINGS: Smoking during tarantula torture; 19th century helicopter evacuation

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Imagine Aguirre, the Wrath of God directed by (if he was obsessed with politics instead of sex and Catholicism). That’s Walker in a nutshell.


Original trailer for Walker

COMMENTS: Walker drops its strangeness on its viewers gradually. Continue reading 28*. WALKER (1987) →

Apocryphally Weird

27*. MAD GOD (2021)

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“If in spite of this you still do not listen to me but continue to be hostile toward me, then in my anger I will be hostile toward you, and I myself will punish you for your sins seven times over. You will eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters. I will destroy your high places, cut down your incense altars and pile your dead bodies on the lifeless forms of your idols, and I will abhor you.” -God, Leviticus 26:27–30

DIRECTED BY: Phil Tippett

FEATURING: Alex Cox

PLOT: Condemned by God, Humankind yet survives. In an effort to destroy the deity, a lone explorer laden with explosives is sent to unfathomable depths. The assassin must survive Hell on Earth to complete his mission.

Mad God (2021)
– Mad God – Photo Credit: Shudder

BACKGROUND:

  • Phil Tippett is a sought-after effects man who’s worked on multiple Hollywood blockbusters. He began his career with the original Star Wars film in the “Miniatures and Optical Effects” unit, and was possibly the first-ever credited “Dinosaur Supervisor” for his work on Jurassic Park.
  • Mad God was three decades in the making, crafted by Tippett and his workshop between paid projects.
  • With the advent of CGI, Tippett nearly abandoned his hopes of completing his stop-motion opus. A KickStarter campaign helped to fund the film’s completion. He also received assistance from film students he met giving guest lectures.
  • Mad God premiered at Locarno on August 5th, 2021, garnering Tippett the festival’s Vision Award Ticinomoda, which “highlights and pays tribute to someone whose creative work has contributed to renew the cinematographic imaginary.” The film also won the Audience Choice Award at the 2021 L’Étrange Festival, which as its name suggests is no stranger to weird cinema, as well as the “Most Groundbreaking Film” and “Best Animated Feature” trophies at the Fantasia International Film Festival.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: Putting the viewer through a viscerally agonizing and philosophically despairing grinder for eighty-three minutes, Mad God is wholly indelible. It is a harsh viewing experience, and so its few moments of tenderness stand out like flowers atop a mound of sullied corpses. When the unnamed explorer has a fleeting moment of connection with a doomed fiber-man, Mad God reminds the viewer that in life, there is hope—perhaps even in Hell.

TWO WEIRD THINGS: Toothy baby-talk overseer; Day-Glo death garden

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Stop-motion, theological nihilism, and a panorama of horrid wonder in every frame make Mad God one of the most visually intense experiences ever to be unleashed in cinema. Phil Tippett’s dedication to the craft, coupled with his deep knowledge of ecumenical imagery and fearless depiction of despair, makes his deeply personal movie a non-stop spectacle of exquisite hideousness.


Trailer for Mad God

COMMENTS: This mad God is the incarnation of sadistic capriciousness—a giggling, infantile entity, seen only via display screens: babbling mouth with stained teeth, and blood-shot eyes. Fibrous humanoids, forged from the defecation of bound and tortured creatures, operate a horrific machine. Exhausted upon creation, they Continue reading 27*. MAD GOD (2021) →

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FANTASIA FILM FESTIVAL 2021: MAD GOD

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Mad God has been promoted to Apocryphally Weird status. Please visit the official Apocryphally Weird entry.

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DIRECTED BY: Phil Tippett

FEATURING: Niketa Roman,

PLOT: An explorer descends into the depths with the mission to destroy God.

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Drawing inspiration from Ray Harryhausen and the Brothers Quay, as well as siphoning the theological-cinematic marrow of E. Elias Merhige, Phil Tippett has created a stop-motion nightmare of such scale and unrelenting viciousness that it turns the corner into the darkly poetic.

COMMENTS: Words nearly fail me. I could go on at length about Mad God‘s technical wizardry and the staggering horror of  its vision. The soundscape is calculated for maximum unpleasantness. The entities populating the Hellish layers are the nastiest collection of putrescent malevolence this side of the imagination. Whatever message there may be here is of the utmost nihilistic hideousness. Myriad paragraphs could be spun going over all the elements Phil Tippett has created for this trial of a film, but mere text cannot convey the goings-on in Mad God. I’ve seen torture porn; this movie is nothing short of torment porn.

Babel is destroyed, and what follows is a vision of mankind, had he defied the warnings of Leviticus 26: 27-33. Man survives, as he must and as he can. An explorer in a capsule descends past a skyscraper guarded by flak cannons. He is armored and equipped with a map and a briefcase. And he witnesses Hell on Earth as he travels, passing defecating guardian beasts. Wispy humanoids are stamped in a press and sent off to labor on a giant apparatus, burnt to crisps, crushed under steam-rollers, and splattered by the dark monoliths they have been tasked to create. Down and further down continues the explorer, map disintegrating, briefcase clutched in hand. Inside is a bomb, and with it the hope of destroying this God and what he has wrought. He reaches the bottom, on which rest innumerable heaps of other briefcases. And he sets the timer…

It may be best for me to describe the few moments of comparative ease on display. A doll-like human woman passes her time masturbating; a nurse has the luxury of a pillow to lay upon; and somewhere in God’s alchemical laboratory there exists a carefree group of DayGlo beings who sup daintily on maggots. And that is all I can think of. Of course, each instance has caveats: the doll-like woman is imprisoned; the nurse must facilitate a ghastly human-emptying surgery for each delivery of an ungainly foetus to be handed unto God; and the DayGlo cavorters are intermittently snatched up and eaten by beasts for the alchemist’s amusement.

There is a timelessness to Mad God, explained not just by its lack of dialogue and grandness of the vision. This project took Tippett thirty-three years to complete. Every crushed human, every organ tossed idly aside, and every burst of goo and shit—it all leads to a dispiriting rejoinder to 2001: A Space Odyssey. When God is fed the dust of the infant, he spews forth black monoliths into the cosmos, infecting neighboring worlds. The abominations on display here are beyond most people’s utterance, and you may be tempted to flee, but Mad God ends on an odd note that ever-so-slightly tempers the despair: another explorer, with another briefcase, is sent down for another attempt.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Tippett’s odyssey, equally compelling and off-putting, enmeshes the viewer in a maximalist excess not too formally different from the likes of Flying Lotus’ trippily mutated Kuso, abetting its dream logic with lurid visions of the scatological and profane.”–Morris Yang, In Review Online (festival screening)

Capsules

CAPSULE: STRAIGHT TO HELL (1987)

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , Joe Strummer, Dick Rude, Courtney Love

PLOT: Three gangsters, with a pregnant girlfriend in tow, blow an assignment, rob a bank, and hide out in a Central American village ruled by a band of coffee-addicted desperadoes.

Still from Straight to Hell (1987)

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: This silly, violent and absurd attempt at a Western comedy made by non-comedians doesn’t really work, except as a curio.

COMMENTS: The story behind Straight to Hell is that filmmaker Alex Cox had assembled a number of punk bands for a concert in Nicaragua, which had to be canceled due to political turmoil. With his schedule involuntarily cleared and time on his hands, he sat down with a guy named Dick Rude (!) and scratched out a movie script in three days, using the musicians and whoever was available on short notice as actors. The result is a silly spoof, made on the spur of the moment, with punk rockers trying to be comedians. There’s a party vibe, and it’s clear that the cast and crew had a blast farting around in the desert. It’s equally clear that you will never have as much fun watching it as they did making it.

Sy Richardson (whom Cox had worked with before on Repo Man and Sid and Nancy) was one of the few actual actors available for the project on short notice, so the prolific character actor gets a rare featured role here, and makes the best of the opportunity. (Because he’s cool, black, and wears a suit and tie while brandishing a gun, he’s often pointed to as a precursor to Samuel L. Jackson’s Jules in Pulp Fiction). The Clash’s Joe Strummer is second-in-command, while Rude takes the role of the youngest and jumpiest of the gang. Courtney Love is Sy’s shrill, preggo girlfriend, who’s so effectively annoying that they effectively write her out of the script after the setup. Besides the main cast, Eighties underground culture aficionados can keep an eye out for cameos by the Pogues, Elvis Costello, Grace Jones, , and even .

And yes, it is weird, although more in the vein of a spectacularly drunk Mel Brooks than of . The credits list a “sex and cruelty consultant” (a bit tongue-in-cheekly, since there’s not terribly much of either). What you do get it some attempted slapstick from musicians trying to be comics, scenes spoofing Once Upon the Time in the West and Cool Hand Luke, hard-to-understand accents (not only from the rotten-toothed Shane MacGowan), a Western hot dog vendor, a butler who serves coffee to desperate killers, a barrelhouse piano version of “Night on Bald Mountain,” a musical number (including “Danny Boy”) or two, and a long conclusory shootout to prune the cast (including a few extra bodies like Jarmusch who show up at the last minute to get mowed down). Perhaps the oddest touch of all are two brief shots of Ray Harryhausen-style animated skeletons: a wolf who howls at the moon and a human clutching a knife between its teeth. It’s like Cox bought a few seconds of unused footage from a Charles Band production and shoehorned them into his movie at random. Whatever charm Straight to Hell possesses comes from the fact that you seldom have any idea what will happen next.

The story is supposedly based on the Canonically Weird Django Kill… If You Live, Shoot!—Cox went so far as to secure the adaptation rights—but the similarities between the two films are completely superficial. Remastered with new digital gore effects and re-released in a director’s cut in 2010, Straight to Hell is obscure, but Kino-Lorber’s 2018 edition with director’s commentary is actually its third appearance on DVD (it was released by Anchor Bay in 2001, and by Microcinema DVD under the title Straight to Hell Returns in 2010). The film is also available on Blu-ray or streaming outlets.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“It’s a very weird vibe, and it requires one to not only accept, but also embrace, boredom. If the movie has one theory, it’s this: if you stare long enough at a certain spot, something weird and cool is bound to happen.”–Jeffery M. Anderson, Combustible Celluloid (DVD)