After serving her prison sentence, Karen Hickman receives a strange request by one of her greatest admirers.
Content Warning: This short contains strong language and violence.
Tag Archives: Black Comedy
CAPSULE: BAD TASTE (1987)
DIRECTED BY: Peter Jackson
FEATURING: Peter Jackson, Pete O’Herne, Terry Potter, Mike Minett, Craig Smith, Doug Wren
PLOT: The citizens of the sleepy town of Kaihoro, New Zealand are killed and packed into boxes by alien operatives marketing a new intergalactic fast-food taste sensation; only a crack squad of fearless Ministry operatives stands between them and total world harvestation.
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Even if we were at movie zero, Peter Jackson’s debut wouldn’t qualify. It’s gross and, considering the budget, very well made, but it’s more silly than strange. It is also hilarious, and the only really weird thing about it is how often it manages to be simultaneously charming and disgusting.
COMMENTS: Directorial debuts are always interesting, if only to see a filmmakers’ interests and techniques in their beginnings. Peter Greenaway planted his flag early with The Falls, establishing himself as an obtuse, technically brilliant painter-turned-documentarian-turned-narrative filmmaker. Quentin Tarantino threw down his gauntlet with Reservoir Dogs, and has pursued a path between hyper-violence and hyper-loquaciousness ever since. And then there’s Peter Jackson. With Bad Taste, he somehow established how he would not turn out. Tone-wise, it would be difficult to find a film further from his beautiful first foray into the “main(er)stream” (1994’s Heavenly Creatures), or his towering fantasy achievement, The Lord of the Rings trilogy. In fact, the only connections one could reasonably find between Bad Taste and his popular Tolkien adaptations are staggering competence and New Zealand locations.
A desperate call for help, listened to by a no-handed man. The Minister is panicking and wants to call in the army and air force to deal with the murderous menace; the no-handed man says no: “I think this is a job for real men.” Those real men are none other than Derek (Peter Jackson), Barry, Frank, and Ozzy. Their job: keeping mankind safe from any and all extraterrestrial threats. The enemy: alien harvesters working for “Crumbs Crunchy Delights”, who have killed, chopped, and packed the inhabitants in the small town of Kaihoro. The aliens hope to get a permit to serve humanity, in all its deliciousness, to hungry interstellar fast food connoisseurs. Will our hometown heroes save the day, or will Lord Crumb (Doug Wren) and his swarms of alien goons escape with the samples? One thing’s certain: never before have inhuman monsters underestimated a gang of New Zealand lads so completely.
Bad Taste is a mountain of silly gore that amuses as it grosses out. The movie constantly reinforces the cheekiness of the premise, and the tone never slips into “grisly.” Its most (in)famous scene—the secondhand dinner enjoyed by the third-class aliens in their base—is about as far as Bad Taste pushes its… bad taste. Overall, though, it plays like a nonsense romp through alien-invasion-sci-fi-action. With the bulk of the movie a showdown between the boys and the alien horde, we enjoy a lot of well-executed amateur stunts and gags. That being said, there’s nothing too “weird” here, but “wacky”–most definitely.
To justify, if only slightly, the film’s “Recommended” status, let me say straight-up that this is neither one of the better movies out there, nor even one of the better Peter Jackson movies out there (nor, even, the best low-budget sci-fi movie out there). Before watching it for this review, the last time I’d seen it was during my high school days when I was beginning my exploration of offbeat cinema. The movie, made in 1987 for very little money, has held up astonishingly well, and I’m almost always pleased to boost movies made for the sake of making movies. The subject matter is ridiculous, definitely, but that’s part of its charm. Bad Taste earns its recommendation because it shows what a handful of talented artists can do if they put their minds to it. It doesn’t over-stay its welcome, it’s full of life, and its ample bad taste is more than matched by its charm.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
LIST CANDIDATE: HITLER LIVES! (2017)
DIRECTED BY: Stuart Rowsell
FEATURING: Morte, Jay Katz, Chris Sadrinna
PLOT: The deteriorating, practically zombified body of Adolf Hitler shuffles around a bunker deep underground, his nightmares and visions of past associates interrupted only by visits from a faithful henchman and his telecommunications with Dr. Mengele, who has unsettling plans to permanently immortalize the erstwhile Führer.
WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: Hitler Lives! is definitely weird, with hallucinated marionette memories, decomposing visuals mimicking the decomposing Hitler, and an ending that cannot be un-watched (much like most of the movie). The lack of polish, although sometimes smacking of amateurism, is stylistically effective; kind of like if Jörg Buttgereit started a movie promised a tiny budget, but instead was given no budget.
COMMENTS: Wikipedia tells us that “Adelaide is the capital city of the state of South Australia, and the fifth-most populous city of Australia. In June 2016, Adelaide had an estimated resident population of 1,324,279.” What that opening blurb does not mention is that one of those 1.3 million people was none other than Adolf Hitler. Perhaps that is unsurprising, as the former dictator was busy slowly decomposing in an underground bunker in 2016. That, in brief, is the premise of Stuart Rowsell’s zero-budget trash horror weirdness, Hitler Lives! In a string of un-unseeable scenes taking place over an unclear amount of time, we get to watch, in horror spiced with disgust, as Hitler shuffles around in mostly solitary agony.
Beginning topside, two construction workers zip down into a tunnel as one of them regales the other with an anecdote about his grandfather helping to transport Adolf Hitler from the Antarctic hideaway to which he escaped after Germany’s fall. The colleague meets the once powerful demagogue, who is now scarcely able to move and hooked up to some ominous, boiler-looking device. After the worker is killed to fuel the boiler, things get grislier as Hitler hallucinates, hacks, stumbles around, and is increasingly distressed about Doctor Mengele’s new plan for their immortality.
So, we’ve got a few standard items here: Hitler did not die at the end of World War II; weird science has come to the Führer’s rescue; and at least one Nazi ended up in Argentina (Dr. Mengele). Director Stuart Rowsell, a special effects man by trade, twists those tropes into perhaps the least palatable presentation possible. Dorff’s doomed colleague immediately smells gangrene upon entering the bunker, and we almost can, too. The atmosphere on-screen is stifling, and the visuals look as decayed and dripping as Adolf’s rotting body. A video screen displays constant Nazi propaganda, and Hitler’s wistful musings about Wagner and success are constantly interrupted by creepy, strangely-voiced marionettes of his past henchmen (Göring, von Ribbentrop, and Hess are among the Nazi superstars we see puppetized) as well as unnerving videophone calls from Doctor Mengele. And did I mention aliens? They appear very briefly, but allow for what is one of the most… memorable endings I’ve endured in a while.
As you saw at the top of this review: Beware. We’re running precipitously low on slots, but as much as it was a trial at times, Hitler Lives! has earned, through slime, ickiness, outlandishness, and puppetry, serious consideration for Certified status. I’ve mentioned it had no budget, which is a bit of a lie: a whopping 150,000 Australian dollars were funneled into this. Impressively small change, yes, particularly considering how thoroughly real (in its surreal, unsettling way) Hitler Lives! feels. Perhaps the weirdest thing of all, however—and I say this with considerable reservation—is that by the end, the movie somehow makes the viewer pity the walking corpse on display. This feeling dissipates quickly once one leaves the rancid bunker, but the fact that human sentiment could be so upended for 80 minutes is impressive.
THE DIRECTOR SAYS:
“…the film was never stage managed for the mainstream – it was designed and written for the alternative fringe of the ‘strange film’ loving audience …. so the film is what it is – a messed up surreal trash exploitation film made on a limited budget of next to zero, that only ‘the audience of the weird’ and strange film could understand and enjoy!
Hitler Lives! was made for the weirdest audience that exists.
Hitler Lives! is available to watch on USA Streaming websites such as iTunes, Amazon, Vudu, XBox and Google Play …. visit www.hitlerlives.com for updates on more VOD/Streaming … as of yet there is no official DVD/Blu Ray release – maybe there will be a release in a year or so, depending on interest and demand…”–Stuart Rowsell
316. SAVE THE GREEN PLANET! (2003)
Jigureul jikyeora!
“I sometimes feel as if movies from all over the world have melted inside me.”–Joon-Hwan Jang
DIRECTED BY: Joon-Hwan Jang
FEATURING: Ha-kyun Shin, Yun-shik Baek, Jae-yong Lee, Jeong-min Hwang
PLOT: Aided by Sooni, a lovelorn acrobat, Byung-goo abducts Kang, a pharmaceutical company executive, believing him to be a high-ranking agent of a group of aliens from Andromeda bent on eradicating the earth. As a pair of detectives close in on Byung-goo, the delusional man tortures the businessman in the basement of his remote cabin, hoping to force him to use his “royal DNA” to contact the prince of the Andromeda galaxy. Kang escapes but is recaptured and hobbled, and begins to play a psychological game with his tormentor, pretending to cooperate to avoid further injury.
BACKGROUND:
- Jang says the scenario for Save the Green Planet! was inspired by an Internet post suggesting Leonardo DiCaprio was an alien in combination with his fondness for (and dissatisfaction with) Stephen King’s Misery.
- This was Joon-Hwan Jang’s debut feature. He has made two movies since, a crime feature and a historical drama, neither of have shown significant weirdness or drawn many eyeballs outside of South Korea.
INDELIBLE IMAGE: Byung-goo’s homemade alien hazmat suit: a trash bag poncho with a modified miner’s helmet rigged with blinking gizmos (including a rear view mirror that bobbles up and down) of uncertain purpose and utility. The first time you see him outfitted in this garb, you know exactly who you’re dealing with.
THREE WEIRD THINGS: One bullet, one bee; ghost mom with meth; aliens did kill the dinosaurs
WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: The first two thirds are a demented genre mashup of sci-fi, comedy, horror, thriller, and action elements whose rambunctiousness is aimed squarely at midnight movie audiences. But it’s the final act, which shifts to an even madder perspective and goes so far as to outright steal scenes from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)—while still managing to feel original—that puts it over the top.
English-language trailer for Save the Green Planet!
COMMENTS: Despite a sometimes (and sometimes not) predictable Continue reading 316. SAVE THE GREEN PLANET! (2003)
312. MOTHER! (2017)
“And the nations were angry, and thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that thou shouldest give reward unto thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and them that fear thy name, small and great; and shouldest destroy them which destroy the earth.”–Revelation 11:18
DIRECTED BY: Darren Aronofsky
FEATURING: Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Michelle Pfeiffer, Ed Harris, Brian Gleeson, Domhnall Gleeson, Kristen Wiig
PLOT: A writer and his wife live alone, rebuilding a house where the man used to live before it burned down. One day, a stranger shows up at their door and the husband invites him to stay, against the woman’s wishes. More uninvited guests arrive, first the family of the original man, and then hordes of the writer’s adoring fans, sowing complete chaos in the home just as the woman gives birth.
BACKGROUND:
- Darren Aronofsky says he wrote the first draft in “a fever dream” in just five days.
- Per Aronofsky, 66 of the film’s 115 minutes are closeups of Jennifer Lawrence.
- 20th Century Fox passed on distributing the film due to a controversial scene.
- The movie received a rare “F” rating on CinemaScore (which measures audience reactions). Fewer than 20 movies have ever received such a low score.
INDELIBLE IMAGE: We won’t mention the scene that makes the most impact for fear of spoiling your reaction. (You’ll know it when you see it). That leaves us looking for a second place image to fill this space; we’ll go with the vagina-shaped wound that develops out of a bloodstain on the house’s hardwood floor.
THREE WEIRD THINGS: Urine-Seltzer; toilet heart; crowd-surfing baby
WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Writer/director Aronofsky lets this movie go all to hell—mother! is his most irrational and difficult film, and also his most provocative, with one scene in particular that sent ’em packing to the exits. It’s a Hollywood offering with an outsider’s brashness, transgressing society’s norms—mostly by blaspheming against coherent realist narrative, the biggest taboo of all. Outraged moviegoers who came to see megastar Jennifer Lawrence’s horror film got a puzzling, punishing allegory instead. mother! was an all-too-rare “event movie” in the weird genre.
Original trailer for mother!
COMMENTS: The first act, with uninvited house guests arriving in Continue reading 312. MOTHER! (2017)