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It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: THREE… EXTREMES (2004)

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DIRECTED BY: ,,

FEATURING: , , , Im Won-hee, Kyôko Hasegawa,

PLOT: A woman resorts to extreme measures to regain her youth, an intruder torments a film director and his wife, a young girl is haunted by a traumatic past.

Still from Three... Extremes (2004)

COMMENTS:  Three… Extremes started as a franchise of pan-Asian horror anthologies with 2002’s Three. A collection of short films from Peter Ho-Sun Chan, Kim Jee-woon, and , Three offered a panorama of horror from China, South Korea and Thailand. It never reached the popularity of its sequel, however, remaining obscure while the second and final installment, widely known as Three… Extremes, attained a cult status, largely thanks to a selection of contributors that included a couple of major names in  contemporary  cinema.

Hong Kong’s Fruit Chan offers the first dish, Dumplings. It is perhaps the most infamous of the trilogy, and Chan quickly adapted it into a feature film. The plot revolves around a rich middle-aged woman attempting to regain her youth ( and her husband’s love)  by eating special dumplings that promise to rejuvenate her skin, provided by an unconventional chef. Ethical issues come to the forefront as the stuffing’s origin is revealed. Our heroine’s disgust and second thoughts give easily their way to self-destructive obsession, however. “Dumplings” is a Faustian morality play about the price of narcissism. Like Elizabeth Báthory, the countess who bathed in the blood of virgin women to remain young, our protagonist engages in grotesque acts for selfish reasons. An industrial soundscape enhances the sense of something ominous and disturbing lurking in the background.

After the appetizer, South Korean visionary Park-Chan Wook  presents “Cut.” His story focuses on a successful film director and his wife on the night that an intruder captures them and proceeds with a series of mental and physical tortures. There is no moral justification here; this is no Saw. Instead, the explanation given is brutally honest, making the events following even more shocking. This is a revenge tale, albeit one with elements of social commentary. If you love contemporary socially-conscious genre cinema from South Korea, like Bong Joon Ho‘s Oscar-nominated Parasite (2019), this will be right up your alley (as long as you have a strong stomach for gore). At the same time, the narrative plays masterfully with the nature of reality, blurring the lines between the authentic and the staged, culminating in a series of over-the-top twists and reveals.

The third piece, by far the most haunting, comes from Japan. Takashi Miike’s “Box” is a surreal psychosexual narrative following a young woman ridden by guilt and repressed lust. It alternates between present and past; Miike depicts the former in a cold color palette expressing grief, while warmer tones in the present hint at catastrophic passions. The flashbacks have a carnivalesque aesthetic that, along with the taboo subject matter, recalls ‘s Strange Circus (2005). The hints of supernatural horror and the morbid symbolic imagery are guaranteed to make you shudder.

More often than not, compilation films are uneven. That’s not the case here. A strong thematic link creates coherence, as each tale is a deeply meditative take on human envy. This is thoughtful horror with a psychological aspect, essential viewing for fans of the genre.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…Miike’s ‘Box’ is the best of the bunch – a disturbing, dreamlike tale of a woman novelist haunted by dreams of her twin sister who died long ago…  The film may well live up to its title: it is perhaps too extreme for some viewers, perhaps even in bad taste at times, but you have to give all the episodes credit for being bizarre and effective.”–Steve Biodrowski, Cinefantastique

Three / Three... Extremes [Limited Edition] [Blu-ray]

Three / Three… Extremes [Limited Edition] [Blu-ray]

  • Two anthology films, six ghostly tales of terror, acclaimed directors from Hong Kong, Korea, Thailand and Japan. The ultimate omnibus of horror.

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Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS (2018)

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DIRECTED BY: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen

FEATURING: , James Franco, Liam Neeson, , Tom Waits, , Tyne Daly, Brendan Gleeson, Saul Rubinek

PLOT: Six tales of the Old West, including a singing cowboy, an unlucky bank robber, an impresario and his hobbled talent, a tenacious gold prospector, a prospective bride, and a stagecoach full of tired travelers.

Still from The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)

COMMENTS: The Coen Brothers have made a remarkable cinematic career out of a body of work that careens from grim realism to wild stylization, often making unexpected stops along that spectrum. Sometimes, their push in one direction has alienated fans of the other; if you like the harsh satire of Fargo, you probably won’t enjoy the heightened mannerisms of The Hudsucker Proxy, and the metaphysical mysteries of A Serious Man might feel impenetrable to lovers of the stoner wisdom of The Big Lebowski. When they turned their attention to Westerns, it seemed like the demands of the genre pushed them toward a more sober, realistic approach, as typified by the neo-noir charnel house of No Country for Old Men and the gritty pastoral (not to mention corrective) remake of True Grit. For the final film (to date) of their storied collaboration, Joel and Ethan returned to the Old West, but found a way to hit nearly every possible take on the genre along the way.

At first glance, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs appears to have all the elements to please fans of traditional Westerns: a showdown in an empty street, a wagon train weaving across the plains, a lone man doing battle with an entire tribe of Indian savages, panning for gold, stagecoaches, poker games, and a hangman’s noose. Far from playing to the crowd, however, these six vignettes are haunted by death and regret. There’s at least one fatality in each story, and the survivors come to a reckoning with the actions that have kept them alive. To the extent that any of these needed to be Westerns in the first place, it’s to highlight the harshness and swift cruelty of this place and time. There is a moral code, it’s unforgiving, and it is strictly enforced.

The opening chapter, which gives the film its name, is by far the most stylized of the set. Nelson does not merely play a cowboy but an archetype, wearing a suit of brilliant white, strumming a guitar and speaking directly to us of his philosophy. It’s cloyingly familiar, until he wields his pistol and reveals himself to be a whirlwind of brutality. What ensues is essentially one joke, but it’s a good one told very well: the fella in the white hat is extremely violent, morally repugnant, and dies quickly and without a trace of heroism. It’s a nose thumbed at Gene Autry and Tom Mix and every Hollywood fantasy of the West. In that regard, it perfectly sets the table for what is to come.

The next two stories demonstrate a dark humor that suggests sometimes you can’t win for losing. James Franco’s thief immediately finds himself in over his head in what should be a simple bank Continue reading IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS (2018) →

List Candidates

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: HOPITAL BRUT (1999)

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DIRECTED BY: Le Dernier Cri (Pakito Bolino, Marc Druez, Christophe Istier)

FEATURING: None

PLOT: A revue showcasing the grotesque occupants of the world’s most inhospitable hospital.

Still from Hospital Brut (1999)

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE APOCRYPHA: Hopital Brut is an indefatigable assault on the senses, combining a deliberately crude and hyperactive visual style, a clamorous soundtrack that never softens or slows, and a giddy disregard for propriety. The curators aim to offend, and they never let up in their compulsion to shock.

COMMENTS: The digital hive mind at Google Translate interprets “hôpital brut” directly as “raw hospital.” However, “brut” alone lso translates as “gross,” and “Gross Hospital” is a far more appropriate and accurate title for these 45 minutes of cartoon cacophony assembled by the French collective Le Dernier Cri (translation: “The Latest”).

One of the things that makes animation anthologies like Spike and Mike’s Festival of Animation compelling is the broad range of styles and intentions sitting alongside each other. Hopital Brut is based on comic panels created by more than two dozen stars of the alt-comic scene, and their unique artistic approaches seem well-suited to the format, which promises something distinctly strange behind each door. However, the end product suffers from an interminable sameness, with one chaotic onslaught sliding into the next one. The techniques change somewhat, with stop-motion, paper cutouts, and even the occasional burst of sped-up live action footage spotlighted, but they all share a rapid pace, herky-jerky rhythm, and a love of the coarse. With so many sources of artistic inspiration at play here, and considering the assembled film’s intention to be a patchwork quilt of strangeness, maybe it’s not asking too much to expect a little variety. Instead, the same ideas keep popping up to the tune of the relentless hammering of an industrial soundtrack.

Despite its repetitiveness, a few segments have enough novelty to stand out, such as the tale of the lonely artist who turns to a lord of the underworld in order to get girls, but discovers that the over-endowed demon has more to offer. Another patient freaks out when he sees himself drowning in his soup. A set of genitals features anthropomorphized testicles that look like busts of German composers. A giant praying mantis shows up for a quick orgy of rape and evisceration, which makes for a change of pace from all the poking, prodding, and maiming that the doctors usually employ. But even these moments are only marginally more impactful than their brethren, as the same notions are served over and over again. The chef may change, but the dish remains the same.

There’s little doubt that Hopital Brut is weird. It wears its irreverence and its iconoclasm on its sleeve. But after that, there’s very little to recommend it. The film is a Venn diagram where the categories of “weirdness” and “watchability” are moving steadily apart until they are completely separate circles. It ends as it began, no less defiant and no more engaging than it was from the outset. Still, the collective seems to have landed squarely in the center of its intended target, and there’s an amusing piece of evidence to back that up. If you visit the film’s page at MUBI, you’ll be greeted with a piece of text which is both absurdly tangential and highly apropos: “Hopital Brut is not available to watch. Instead, check out Lars von Trier’s Antichrist.” An even trade? It’s probably a perfect double feature, an algorithmic pairing that would make Le Dernier Cri’s collective hearts flutter.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Don’t want to fry on acid? Afraid your gonna do a Diane Linklater dive off a skyscraper thinking that you can fly and the only “scraper” you’ll get is when they peel you off the pavement?! Look no further than the semi short ‘Hopital Brut’!!!… keep kids far away from this, unless you want your kids traumatized for their rest of their short, miserable lives.” —noisepuncher_caiaav, Noisepuncher

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

Capsules

CAPSULE: V/H/S HALLOWEEN (2025)

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V/H/S Halloween is currently available for purchase or rental on video-on-demand.

DIRECTED BY: , Anna Zlokovic, Paco Plaza, , , R.H. Norman

FEATURING: David Haydn, Samantha Cochran, Natalia Montgomery Fernandez, Teo Planell, Lawson Greyson, Stephen Gurewitz, Carl William Garrison, Jeff Harms

PLOT: Six VHS found-footage style shorts themed around Halloween night.

Still from V/H/S Halloween (2025)

COMMENTS: Caspar Kelly throws down a metaphorical gauntlet statement for horror anthologies when he has a costumed pirate proclaim, “All candy is lame. Corporations have taken all the creativity out. We’ve had the same main candy bars for decades. The variety pack has no variety.” Will this variety pack have genuine variety? Kelly certainly does his bit (we’ll circle back around to it), but despite an interesting mix of new and established directors, at the risk of further mixing a metaphor about mixes, it’s a mixed bag.

This anthology opens with Bryan Ferguson’s contribution, supposed internal footage of a corporation focus-grouping its newest product, “Diet Phantasma,” across a field of very unlucky test subjects. This story (which is a stretch as a Halloween entry; it could have fit into any of V/H/S‘ previous 7 outings) is cut up and stretched across the length of the film. Although lead David Haydn’s arrogant disdain for the fates of his subjects lends the story some humor, the decision to chop it up was wise, since it gets repetitive: different gore effects are the only thing distinguishing the central episodes. The ending isn’t the big score you might have hoped for, either, but it’s passable. Paco Plaza, who co-directed the 2007 Spanish found footage zombie movie [REC], is a natural choice for this series, and his ofrenda en español is one of the stronger entries. It’s built around an ultimately predictable seance premise, but with some unexpected effects (including eyeball vomiting).  Debuting director R.H. Norman offers a well-characterized but well-worn tale of an amateur neighborhood haunted house that turns into a real haunted house after the purchase of a cursed prop. Perhaps the biggest surprise is Alex Ross Perry, the indie director best-known for his literate dramas and comedies (and, around here, for his experimental debut.) His “Kidprint” may not make much too much sense (what really is the market for this film-your-kid-for-identification business?), but the ending is unexpectedly brutal—more so, considering that we don’t think of Perry as a horror director. For better or worse—and to be clear, I didn’t find it one of the better entries—Perry is the one who dares to “go there.” (Kelly, whom we’re getting to, does offer some transgressive comedy, but his grossout gag isn’t on the level of “Kidprint”).

Anna Zlokovic’s “Coochie Coochie Coo” is from another new director, and the first full-length short after the soda pop introduction. Although it has naturalistic acting from the two leads and an unusual maternal theme for its boogeywoman, it plays like an instant cliché. Two high school senior girls want one last night of trick or treating before seguing into adulthood. They end up trapped in a mysterious haunted house full of eerie characters, jump scares, and the camera reliably glitching at tense moments. It’s a competent, but ultimately safe way to begin the series.

But Zlokovich’s short brings us, in a roundabout way, to Kelly’s “Fun Size,” the anthology’s weirdest and most divisive segment (we declare it the Peanut M&Ms of the grab bag, although some more traditional minded horror viewers complain it’s candy corn). This comic relief horror, placed in the dead center of the anthology, almost seems to start as a direct parody of “Coochie Coochie Coo” (which says more about how obvious the opener is than about any deliberate plan on Kelly’s part.) Both feature overage protagonists, almost identical  “Aren’t you a bit old for trick ‘r treating?” lines, and a bit about a candy bowl left in the open with a sign “one per person.” Of course, Kelly takes the premise in a crazy direction with the discovery that the unattended bowl contains candies no one has every heard of: “Snipp%rs,” “Larry Find,” and some unpronounceable varieties.  It turns out this candy is not only weirdly named, but also, um, weirdly shaped. When the 20-somethings try to take extra candy, they’re sucked through the bowl and down into a factory where they learn the secrets of how these confections are truly made. “Fun Size” includes about as many layers as a film this short will allow: parody, satire, horror, and a subtextual theme about fear of commitment. In a full-length Kelly movie, this segment would merely be an introduction that spun off into weirder and weirder meta-commentary.  It’s entertaining, especially by the standards of this format, but if anything, “Fun Size” leaves the audience wanting more. Kelly needs to make a feature-length Halloween movie to complement his two Christmas horror films. (Then a Thanksgiving movie, then a Valentine’s Day one…)

Though far from “elevated horror,” if you’re looking for a common theme to V/H/S/ Halloween, it’s a general anti-corporate sentiment, whether the commodity being foisted on us is ethically questionable soda pop or ethically questionable candy. Of course, pretty much every independent movie ever made has a general anti-corporate sentiment, so that’s not a lot to hang your hat on. Instead, I’d recommend the latest V/H/S solely based the clever goof of “Fun Size,” with the supporting features ranging from acceptable to mildly interesting. If nothing else, at least they’re a varied bunch—even if some of the variation comes in expected flavors.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“It’s a mixed bag, sure, with a handful of duds, a few near-masterpieces, and a lot of inspired weirdness in between… sometimes, the real treat is just watching ambitious horror filmmakers cut loose and make something wild, no matter how messy it gets.”–Nicolas Delgadillo, Knotfest (contemporaneous)

Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: QUICKSILVER HIGHWAY (1997)

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DIRECTED BY: Mick Garris

FEATURING: Christopher Lloyd, , Raphael Sbarge, Missy Crider

PLOT: The mysterious Aaron Quicksilver shares two tales of ill-fated individuals: a traveling salesman who encounters a suspicious set of novelty clattering teeth, and a plastic surgeon who finds that his hands have developed minds of their own.

Still from Quicksilver Highway (1997)

COMMENTS: Horror on television is a tricky proposition. The genre frequently relies upon visceral shock and gore, elements too unseemly for broadcast, which is why the most successful series either emphasize psychological terror or abscond to cable where the standards are looser. But Bless Mick Garris for continuing to try. He is responsible for five Stephen King TV adaptations, including takes on classics The Stand and The Shining. Plu,s he’s well-versed in the televised horror anthology, with credits in “Tales from the Crypt,” “Freddy’s Nightmares,” and “Masters of Horror.” If anyone is going to make Quicksilver Highway work, it’s Garris.

He doesn’t, though. That’s not necessarily his fault, of course. The film is a busted pilot, with two unrelated episodes inelegantly slammed together. They both traffic in body horror, a genre that is never going to get a fair hearing on network TV. The small-screen budget is also a limitation, with simplistic special effects (including some terrible CGI) and overly broad acting. The stories are also heavily padded to fill out 45 minutes apiece, with long diversions into pointless philosophical debates and weak character monologues arriving right at the moment when the story really needs to be gaining steam. Mostly, though, the finger needs to be pointed at the material, which is best described as “better on paper.” Neither of these are horror short story classics from genre masters King and Clive Barker, but one can see how they managed to create a sense of unease though their unlikely subjects. But visualizing them, without the reader’s imagination to hide behind, reveals them as low-stakes and low-impact. 

The King story, “Chattering Teeth,” relies upon a familiar trope from the author, an innocent-looking object that carries with it bad juju and sinister intent. A classic monkey’s-paw scenario. In this case, the object is an oversized set of windup walking choppers, which the protagonist somehow imagines is going to be the perfect gift to appease his disappointed son. When the novelty mandibles attack a nasty hitchhiker, it’s impossible to see it as anything other than an actor forced to pretend-wrestle with a goofy prop. The teeth need to have a “creepy doll” vibe in order to work, and they just don’t.

The second tale, Barker’s “The Body Politic,” finds greater success by indulging in sublime silliness. Here’s a villain we can get behind: human hands which have somehow become imbued with the spirit of Che Guevara, calling for liberation from the oppression of being attached to Matt Frewer. They are ridiculous little gremlins, speaking to each other with Smurf-like voices and hyperactively gesturing at each other while plotting their revolution. They’re risible, but they benefit from a couple solid jump-scares and the full commitment of Frewer, who actually does some pretty nifty acting with opportunities for his face and his hands to play conflicting emotions. Once again, though, what probably reads as spectacularly macabre on the page becomes ludicrous on screen, as when Frewer outwits a whole platoon of severed hands by leading them off the roof of a building, resulting in the jaw-dropping sight of dozens of hands flinging themselves into oblivion. I am sure you’re supposed to laugh in shock. The laughter you get is different.

The connective tissue is our good Mr. Quicksilver, a sort of wandering troubadour of the grotesque. He repeatedly insists that his tales have no moral, but contempt for his audience positively oozes out of him. Lloyd is a curious choice for a narrator. Already odd with his spiky red hair, black peasant’s blouse and knee-high leather boots, looking for all the world like Johnny Rotten in a witches’ coven, he’s an actor we often recognize for his manic interior that threatens to break into the open. This puts him at odds with the cool detachment he tries to project, the hint of judgment from on high that we associate with Rod Serling in “The Twilight Zone,” Vic Perrin in “The Outer Limits,” or even David Duchovny in “Red Shoe Diaries.” It’s telling that, the moment he gets someone to join him in his trailer for a pleasant meal, he immediately jumps into an indictment of America as a land of lies and darkness. (He’s not necessarily wrong, but it’s hardly an icebreaker.) It’s hard to understand why someone would sit through his spiel. Intriguingly, one can easily imagine Frewer in the role in a slightly lower-budget version.

Quicksilver Highway isn’t bad, just extremely inessential, an empty-calorie snack that’s not a career highlight for any of its participants. If you’re driving out west and happen to pass by a strange-looking man in a Rolls-Royce towing an Airstream trailer, don’t stop for one of his stories. Not because of the horrible fate that awaits you. But because there are so many better things to do.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“It’s odd, it meanders, it has unusual moralist tales, and it’s totally goofy. It’s not great, but it has a charm that’s hard to resist.” – Jolie Bergman, Horror Habit

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

Quicksilver Highway [DVD]

Quicksilver Highway [DVD]
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