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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: EBONY & IVORY (2024)

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EBony & Ivory is currently available for purchase or rental on video-on-demand.

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Gil Gex,

PLOT: Stevie arrives by rowboat in Scotland to stay with fellow musical legend Paul at his “Scottish cottage”; they go swimming, look at sheep, and have hot chocies and foot strokies, but never actually get around to (directly) composing the title song.

Still from EBONY AND IVORY (2024)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: If you’ve seen one Jim Hosking movie, then this is another one. Let there be no doubt about that. This is a Jim Hosking movie with Jim Hosking humor. Jim Hosking fans will approve.

COMMENTS: Blind (?) Stevie arrives on the beach in a rowboat, wearing a fur coat and lugging three suitcases. Paul calmly stands on the beach awaiting him. A synthpop tune plays; it doesn’t sound like anything Wonder or McCartney would write. “How was your journey?” asks Paul. Stevie responds that it was a very, very, very, very long journey, then repeats himself so there will be no doubt. Paul chuckles. Stevie asks, accusingly, “So, it’s funny, is it?” “Yes, it’s funny,” Paul replies. It isn’t. Or is it?

Jim Hosking has a unique formula to which he’s unreservedly, suicidally dedicated: a base of mundane absurdity, with frequent grossout moments and infrequent bursts of surrealism. His anti-comedy tricks include characters who are simultaneously childlike and obscene and who describe their interior thoughts like particularly unimaginative narrators, long-winded repetition of unfunny dialogue until it (hopefully) becomes funny, and deliberately flat performances that occasionally express a single emotion—aggravation. Oh, and he also favors oversized prosthetic penises. If you’re a Jim Hosking newcomer, see The Greasy Strangler first—because, as outlandish and off-putting as it may be, it’s more approachable than Ebony & Ivory. If you find that one amusing, there’s a good chance you’ll also enjoy this lower-key, slightly less transgressive offering.

Stevie is easily irritated, given to bursts of profanity and shouting most of his dialogue, and usually found picking an unnecessary fight with Paul. Paul (the cute one, the one the girls go mad for) is generally easygoing, although Stevie can provoke him. They have no character development to speak of. They mention (but don’t actively pursue) musical collaboration. Despite constantly arguing, they do somehow become fast friend at the end. They eat, drink, smoke joints, argue, go swimming in the nude, and stare at an expressionless sheep for entertainment. Running gags include spitting out the phrase “Scottish cottage,” discussing vegetarian ready-meals, background music that conspicuously does not match the mood of the scene, Stevie’s blindness, and hot chocies and foot strokies. There’s also a 5+ minute sequence where Paul tries to explain the nickname “doobie woobie,” a pseudo-sex scene, and a strange marijuana-inspired dream sequence. The movie gets much weirder at the end, with the pair randomly dressing like “ghosts from yesteryear” and communing with a massive bullfrog, followed by a climax with perfectly harmonious black and white sheep, which must be seen to be disbelieved.

Ebony & Ivory features only two characters, trapped together in basically one location for 90 minutes, which means that you really have to jive with the comedy style, or be bored out of your mind. It’s a cult item that’s beyond the power of recommendation. If you’re at all intrigued by this description, you’ll probably like it. If you’ve seen and enjoyed Hosking’s other work, you’ll probably like it. But if you don’t find endless repetition of catch phrases hilarious, you’ll probably want to give it a very, very, very, very wide berth.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“It’s hard to tell if it’s the best or worst movie of the year, largely because it’s so wantonly weird that it erases the distinction between the two… a niche offering with a genuinely avant-garde spirit, and if that limits its appeal (and it will!), adventurous moviegoers will find it to be a unique descent into a bizarro world of eccentric catchphrases and demented flights of fancy. No matter what the next five months bring, you won’t see a crazier 2025 film.”–Nick Schager, The Daily Beast (contemporaneous)

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FANTASIA 2025: APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: BUFFET INFINITY (2025)

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Weirdest!

DIRECTED BY: Simon Glassman

FEATURING: Kevin Singh, Claire Theobald, Donovan Workun, Ahmed Ahmed, and the voice of Simon Glassman

PLOT: An all-you-can-eat restaurant competes with neighboring stores at a strip mall as a sinkhole appears, strange noises plague the area, citizens go missing, and an occult presence seeps into the transmission.

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: A narrative told through channel-surfing and a combo platter of the ridiculous and the sinister make Buffet Infinity a necessary addition to the Apocrypha menu.

COMMENTS: Westridge County is small, down at the heel, and more than a little boring. The local TV stations showcase a cavalcade of staid businesses: a doggie daycare on the verge of collapse, a pawn shop with a worryingly growing inventory, an insurance broker ready to cover questionable life events, a sandwich shop offering several types of sliced pig along with its signature sauce, a shyster lawyer happy to capitalize on his bitterness, a used car dealership suffering a violent aversion to high prices, and a buffet with suspiciously good deals and no apparent staff. Surfing the area’s TV broadcasts for one-hundred minutes, however, we glean the story of how Westridge County becomes increasingly derelict, dangerous, and decimated.

Simon Glassman is a fellow of who remembers, and, in a way, is nostalgic for a particular broadcast phenomenon which has all but disappeared. His chronicle of Westridge County’s collapse from crummy to cursed cranks true-to-life advertisements and news flashes one further turn on the dial to the absurd. The passive-aggressive war between Buffet Infinity (where something possibly extraterrestrial, and certainly evil, is going on) and Jenny’s Sandwich Shop ratchets up snarkily; though both cheerfully announce the ample parking “in the front”. (The sinkhole growing in the back-lot is the first indication something’s a bit off.) Public service warnings from “The Westridge Society for Religious Freedom” sound typo-ridden alarm bells about an impending supernatural intrusion that will rob the county of its people. But Ahmed Ahmed, the bad-rapping proprietor of the pawn shop, is ready to raise spirits through low prices on goods ranging from sound blockers to personal defense.

Glassman pulls aside the curtains drape by drape, with each surf through the channels unveiling a little more tension and a little more desperation. Glassman remarked during the Q&A session following Buffet Infinity that the film is ultimately just him dumping on a local strip mall. This much is certainly true, but the movie is much more. It dissects quotidian fears and challenges, with a heartier and heartier dose of the surreal, culminating in absurdly large portions of spectacle.

So head on down to Buffet Infinity! Its eighteen-to-twenty staff, each with their own homes and government ID numbers, will serve up platefuls of curious delights in the ever-expanding dining facility.

Just don’t enter the door marked “Prohibited”.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“What begins as a satire of small-town local television quickly spirals into a hallucinatory, absurdist descent into the mind of a community being devoured by its own identity. This is weird cinema at its best: committed, chaotic, and unnervingly hypnotic.” — Chris Jones, Overly Honest Reviews (festival screening)

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FANTASIA 2025: APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: F*CKTOYS (2025)

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DIRECTED BY: Annapurna Sriram

FEATURING: Annapurna Sriram, Sadie Scott, Damian Young, François Arnaud, Brandon Flynn

PLOT: A sex worker learns she’s under a curse, and must come by one-thousand dollars for a sacrificial ritual to banish the black magic.

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Sure, sure, it’s got leather-bondage cops, ritual sacrifice, a golden phallus, and so on. But what truly makes F*cktoys an odd duck is that its dirty NC-17 veneer encloses a warm-hearted romantic comedy adventure that shines through from underneath the sleaze.

COMMENTS: Outside the cinema, an individual in a hazmat suit haphazardly scrubbed any and all surfaces with a cleaning brush. The doors opened, and the house was packed by jolly rowdies from all different walks of life. (Some of them rather different indeed.) Much scurrying to and fro, as Fantasia staff ushered key people to key places. A hush, and a roar, and the presenter intoned the title “F*cktoys!” (without the asterisk.) Enter Annapurna Sriram, beaming with excitement. Few could deny her her joy, for she was about to exhibit her film to a Fantasia audience—an audience that couldn’t have been a better fit for F*cktoys if it had been lab-grown for the purpose.

Our hero’s journey begins, ends, and never departs from the mystical alternate 1990s reality of “Trashtown.” There is plenty of trash, scattering the roadways, littering overgrown industrial facilities, and filling the sordid interiors. The plucky heroine, known only as AP, receives shocking news from a shockingly fabulous fortune teller: she must somehow gather a wad of cash (and a baby goat) to rid herself of ill fortune. With her good friend Danni in tow (unexpectedly, as AP was fairly sure this buddy had snuffed it), she rides, hustles, and endures many trials on her path to deliverance.

That path is strewn with odd sex, odd venues, and oddballs. Danni takes a gig catering to sexuo-philosophical celebrity James Francone (not to be confused with a similarly named individual), shutting him up about his water-coloring through use of a lubed fist. AP’s client-friend Robert apologizes for culminating so quickly (but then, “I’m, like, 90% gay”). A robbery (hah) goes awry, the screw turns, and AP is forced to cater to a mysterious gentleman known as “The Mechanic”: a true sweetheart, and loving to the core—apart from his penchant for sexual mutilation.

This all unfurls to the beat of a bouncy quest-comedy, with AP haplessly—but cheerily—sliding from one fun or strange or dangerous set piece to the next. Special note should be made of Sadie Scott’s performance as the best friend, Danni. Gender-ambiguous, rough-and-tumble, their energy and zeal makes them reminiscent of Toyah Willcox’s “Mad” character from Derek Jarman‘s Jubilee. Danni’s tragic fate is equaled in intensity only by their love of AP (and of donuts).

As befits a journey on a moped, F*cktoys is a bit of a bumpy ride. Most of its parts work, however—the extended Robert-ex-machina scene alone is worth the price of admission—and overall, the pieces fit together with cheerful clunk and whirl. It was made lovingly for our kinds of people,  kinds of people: joyful perverts, joyful outcasts, and joyful subversives. So if you want to smooth the corners of some square in your life, trick them into a F*cktoys screening and watch as they uncomfortably squirm their prudishness away.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“The story of a Southern sex worker’s bizarre adventures trying to reverse a curse remains witty and watchable for its entire running time, juggling an abundance of strange characters and story threads en route to a surreal and unexpectedly heartfelt ending.”–Murtada Elfadl, Variety (contemporaneous)

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FANTASIA 2025: APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: THE DEVIL’S BRIDE (1974)

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Velnio nuotaka

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DIRECTED BY: Arunas Zebriunas

FEATURING: Gediminas Girdvainis, Vasyl Symchych, Regina Varnaite, Vaiva Mainelyte, Regimantas Adomaitis

PLOT: Cast down from Heaven, minor demon Pinchiukas tricks an Earthly miller into signing away his daughter.

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Featuring a bumbling God, a prancy little devil, and non-stop rock and roll and orchestra, this Cold War relic bubbles over with breezy “what the Hell?” charm.

COMMENTS: I don’t always watch devil-summoned naiads pursue a hunky suitor, but when I do, I prefer them on horseback. At a slightly too-long seventy-five minutes, The Devil’s Bride catches the eye and raises the eyebrow from the start, commencing its cavalcade of song and dance with a gilded frame bounding the Lord and a host of singing cherubim. God dozes on and off, with the angels discovering the temptations of feasting, drinking, and smooching during their brief moments without supervision. Cue the music transition from the classic big blast hymnal choir. At one point, God’s thronal bell loses its clapper, and chaos ensues for just too long while he attempts to fix it. By the time he rings it to restore order, several of the Heavenly host are ripe for a fall: lady angels losing grace in go-go dance outfits, fellow angels done up in full 19th-century foppery. And we meet our anti-hero, Pinchiukas, fallen into a pond, depressed and ready to begin scheming.

Some of my confusion about the plot flow stems certainly from a regrettable lack of knowledge about Lithuanian folklore. (Some, too, doubtless from the punch-drunk mental state I was in after very little sleep the preceding night.) Are gay angels a recognized aspect of Soviet Lithuanian Catholic doctrine? Who is that incessantly aria-ing blonde on the boat who immediately falls for the homely miller? How is it the local swain so swiftly seduces—and is seduced by—the daughter? (Was it his manly-but-romantic chomping of a daisy flower head that clinched the deal)? What is up with that elaborate gold-carved window frame on the mill exterior? How about those disembodied black-elbow-gloved hands at the devil’s beck and call? And why is a devil, but not an angel or God, bound so scrupulously by legal contract verbiage?

This final question is one I have for supernatural folktales more broadly. Suffice to say, the questions raised are as superfluous as any answers that might be furnished by a more illuminated viewer.

Despite stalling out on occasion, and despite the repetitiveness of every one of the songs, The Devil’s Bride is a romp that borders on the madcap, particularly thanks to leading man Gediminas Girdvainis as the little devil. It was pleasant to observe that, confused though I was about the occult mechanics, the portrayal of “evil” was ultimately sympathetic. Ne’er shall I forget his pomp and ridiculousness on the day of his wedding, with fancy chapeau, hunting-red jacket, and his sheer, skin-tight white leggings. Comely daughters and swains the world over, beware the appeal of the devil in tights.

The Devil’s Bride is restored and presented by Deaf Crocodile, available now in a limited edition Blu-ray, with a standard edition scheduled for a mid-September release.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a 78-minute audio-visual barrage of ideas, music, and chaotic storytelling that is not for the faint of heart… feels somehow both like an Eastern Bloc Babes in Toyland style fantasy and also as if Jodorowsky made a musical… I’ll be damned if I’ll ever forget it.”–J. Hurtado, Screen Anarchy (festival screening)