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List Candidates

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: UNICORN BOY (2023)

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DIRECTED BY: Matty Kiel

FEATURING: The voices of Matty Kiel, Maria Bamford, Sethword, Harold Perrineau, Cindy Paola, ,

PLOT: After a poorly thought out break-up and a concussion sustained in in a café bathroom, Matt travels to a unicorn dimension.

Still from Unicorn Boy (2023)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Anyone who wondered what a mash-up of Hieronymus Bosch and Lisa Frank might look like need wonder no longer.

COMMENTS: Shamans of yore sought vision by pushing their bodies to extremes: employing drugs and self-privation in pursuit of higher awareness. Matt’s methods are softer, and manifest softer visions—ones of pastel bug- and fish-monsters fusing together in sexual pulsation, or uptight unicorn citizens grumbling about the profusion of rainbow vomit staining the roads of their “perfect” city. Mostly, though, Matt has visions of rainbow vomit, beginning with a sudden visitation from Prince Purpleton (perhaps the doofiest unicorn imaginable), who stomps onto Matt’s couch, spatters his pastel weirdness about, and disappears as abruptly as he appeared.

Unicorn Boy mixes equal parts anxiety and vibrant vomit, which is to say, there is a seemingly endless stream of each. Matt is working through some Things, and it is while trying to discuss these Things with his grandly moustachioed buddy Sethward that he himself becomes sick in a trendy café, escapes to the restroom, and probably endures brain damage. The remainder of the film follows his adventures in the unicorn world and his subsequent pursuits of further addlement through yoga to resolve the unicorn plot line.

I’ve long maintained that animation is at its best when it creates a reality above, beyond, or outside our own, and Matty Kiel doesn’t disappoint. Purpleton and the fellow denizens of a magical realm squish around their oddball business, fusing (or is it shunting?) with others, with the ever-present risk of blacklight-ready rainbow spew keeping us on our toes. The protagonist’s troubles are relatable, providing a recognizable emotional mush for which the technicolor flights of goo are a reasonable visual extension. His fantastical visions suffer as he does, suppressing their depressing desires lest a burst of violently colorful, demanding bugs spring forth from within. Even the unicorn realm demands  wholesomeness and positivity.

Unicorn Boy is a cringe-y melodrama, a slice of life, and therapy through narrative. Judging from the character names and video clips in the credits, Matt in 2016 evolves into Matty in 2023, having endured some small-bore (though impactful) troubles of the heart. From his mind’s black box he creates a cute-‘n-gross voyage of personal growth. And while its ultimate message of love and acceptance is nothing new, its means are rather unique. Matty Kiel, and their Matt-in-movie manifestation, line their path to wisdom with splotches of sparkly spew. Not classically shamanistic, perhaps, but it gets the job done.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Age 14+ Personal growth, rainbow-barfing unicorns in animated indie… For viewers who don’t like gross-out humor or surrealism, the imagery might be unpleasant—but that’s also the point, since even the characters call out how gross the land’s magic is.”— Monique Jones, Common Sense Media (contemporaneous)

Unicorn Boy [DVD]

Unicorn Boy [DVD]

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CAPSULE: ELDORADO (2012)

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Beware

DIRECTED BY: Richard Driscoll

FEATURING: Richard Driscoll, Darren Morgan, , Jeff Fahey, , , , Brigitte Nielsen, , Rik Mayall, Sylvester McCoy, , David Carradine (archival footage)

PLOT: Oliver and Stanley Rosenblum, a Blues Brothers tribute act, accidentally find themselves in Eldorado, where the Sawyer-style family ruling the roost has big plans for the town’s 200th anniversary.

Still from Eldorado (2012)

COMMENTS: I can be very forgiving if a movie has competent sound design: balanced dialogue audio, fleshed-out aural background, and adequate-to-good music. Eldorado failed me here, and in many other ways. This makes sense when you know a bit of history behind the movie: writer / director / producer / &c. Richard Driscoll apparently hoped to succeed in a Producers-style gambit, claiming a big movie whilst making it on the cheap. Sound design, surely, suffers from this underinvestment—but what are Eldorado‘s merits?

These include, and are probably limited to, the following:

  • Darryl Hannah as “The Stranger”, and her delivery of the titular poem by
  • A surprisingly touching reunion of Vietnam veterans, from Jeff Fahey and Bill Moseley
  • An homage to a famous Laurel & Hardy bit
  • Michael Madsen’s face, ever over-reacting in that roguish Madsenian manner
  • Peter O’Toole proving that even in his don’t-give-a-damn super-annuation, his floor of quality is higher than many actors’ ceilings

The rest is, alas, little more than a tedious curio with occasional blasts of badly mixed sound, music, and FX. There’s plenty that’s gross (though well within the average 366er’s tolerance), plenty that’s derivative (the fine line here being that much of said spoofing is by design), and plenty of questions—the most looming of which is, “Why, oh why?”—and the answer comes back: for tax fraud.

It would be remiss of me to recommend this to anyone—ever—except for the most die-hard of Rik Mayall fans. A curious actor, to say the least, and woefully underused. His performance as Mario the Chef transcends the surrounding doofery; and that’s even bearing in mind it consists mostly of lip-synching to a couple of pop-opera tunes. Had Eldorado been put completely under his creative direction, we may have had one of the grandest monstrosities of the new century.

Instead we don’t.

We have Eldorado.

_________________________________________________

Reviewer’s Addendum: Apparently I watched the 90-minute “Director’s Cut”, which I feel is more than sufficient despite being half-an-hour shorter than an earlier release.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“To say that Eldorado’s cast is eclectic is more than somewhat of an understatement. Quite how Mr Driscoll coerced such a parade of (one-time) A-listers to appear in his ‘Mamma Mia for horror fans’ (the filmmaker’s description – not mine) is beyond me. Surely they didn’t all need the money?  But you certainly get more than you bargain for with this ‘B’ movie: Daryl Hannah, Michael Madsen and David Carradine (in his last albeit brief role) reuniting from ‘Kill Bill’. Jeff Fahey, Patrick Bergin and Brigitte Nielsen – who deserves a special mention for miming Ottis Redding’s ‘Respect’ in a hair salon whilst kitted out in stockings and suspenders. Throw a cameo by Caroline Munro into the melting pot and you sure have one big steaming pot of erm, surrealism.”–Paul Worts, Fleapits and Picture Palaces

(This movie was nominated for review by nc, who described it as “an incomprehensible mess, a hypnotically bad fever dream, a film so bad it’s hard to believe it even exists.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue, List Candidates

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: SPERMULA (1976)

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L’Amour est un fleuve en Russie

DIRECTED BY: Charles Matton

FEATURING: Dayle Haddon, ,

PLOT: A secret society, said to have developed supernatural powers, mysteriously disappears from New York in 1937, then reappears years later in rural France to spread their anti-love ideology.

Still from Spermula (1976)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Spermula has the unique advantage of being two very unusual and completely different movies; at least one version should make the cut. As conceived by the director, the original is art-house erotica about a cult of libertines who attain a higher plane of existence through renunciation of art and all emotional attachments, including love. The exact nature of their secret society remains vague, and with their elusive backstory, dedication to “immodesty” and disgust with l’amour, even the other characters in the film routinely refer to the protagonists as “weird.” The film was later redubbed for Americans as a softcore comedy.

COMMENTS: As if Ingrid (Haddon) and her cohort of glamorous female companions weren’t strange enough—either as psychic cultists or aliens in human form—the town they arrive in is already a pretty weird place. Run by a corrupt, model plane-obsessed mayor, Monsieur Grop, the residents all connect through a tangled web of political and personal relationships. As the Spermulites insinuate themselves into this incestuous milieu, Grop enlists their next door neighbor to figure out what’s going on with the suspicious new residents.

The Spermulites quickly identify the most repressed citizens as their targets: the cardinal’s submissive housekeeper; Madame Papadéus, a widow obsessed with turning her son into the spitting image of her dead hairdresser husband; Grop’s wife, who exists in an uneasy love-hate relationship with her husband. Caught among them all is Werner (Kier), the mayor’s equally shady assistant scheming to increase his own power.

Determined to marry Sala, Madame Papadéus’ daughter, little does Werner realize she’s already engaged in an affair with the gardener, along with her sister, Liberte (a woman who lives up to her name). Their cousin, Cascade, a Cinderella figure used by her family as a maid, conducts her own secret liaison with an artist, and the couple’s genuine feelings for each other prove highly problematic for the Spermulites’ mission.

The town’s residents also exist in a fraught dichotomy with Ruth’s, the local cabaret run by a black woman. As one of the performers, Ivan the magician (Pieral), candidly states, some people only care Continue reading APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: SPERMULA (1976) →