Tag Archives: Horror

List Candidates

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: THE SUBSTANCE (2024)

3 Comments

366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.

DIRECTED BY: Coralie Fargeat

FEATURING: , Dennis Quaid,

PLOT: An aging actress loses her job as hostess of an aerobics show on her 50th birthday and is recruited into trying a bizarre underground “anti-aging” substance, with instructions and regimens that must be followed precisely to avoid unwanted side effects.

Still from the substance (2024)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: In the third act, an unhinged black comedy emerges from the carcass of what to this point had merely been an odd, satirical horror movie.

COMMENTS: Incredibly, just about everything in Coralie Fargeat’s sophomore film—which mixes sledgehammer satire and comedy with clean ian interiors, squicky Cronenbergian body horror, and a third act tonal shift often described as “bonkers”—works. It’s a message movie that doesn’t spare the blood and guts or the leering nudity (the movie is of the view that you can’t satirize the male gaze without indulging it). The cinematography is ace, the soundtrack on point, the practical effects astonish, it never drags despite a almost 2.5 hour runtime, Qualley appears to be the most beautiful woman in the world, Quaid hams it up delightfully as an empty-suit corporate cad, and has never given a better performance. It’s both elevated horror and degraded horror, equally indebted to the art-house and the grindhouse, and it never goes halfway when it could instead go to twice the length you expect.

The high concept plot gives Fargeat space to make lots of obvious—but funny—jokes about men reduced drooling idiots when confronted with a beautiful woman, and why women might lust after that kind of power. We are a superficial species, after all. That’s why we fall for blatantly Faustian bargains, as when Moore’s Elisabeth Sparkle is offered the opportunity to create a “better version of herself” by picking up a packet of suspect medical gear from a back-alley beauty supply company. Set amidst L.A.’s glitz, the script addresses our obsession with surface beauty, but as it intensifies it peers deeper into human psychology. Sure, youth and beauty is associated with fame and success, but it’s also the inverse of decay and death: even slowly fading beauty like Elisabeth’s is a reminder of mortality. The scenario also invites concepts of split personality and addiction (there are a lot of needles here, and literally self-destructive behavior). Besides the satirical jibes at such follies, The Substance offers a good deal of heart and empathy. Moore reveals her (gracefully) aging body to public scrutiny in an uncomfortable nude scene, and is compensated with a wonderful scene in front of the mirror as she desperately attempts to achieve an impossible ideal of female beauty, despite the fact that it’s obvious to everyone but herself that she’s more than glamorous enough for the occasion.

The Substance‘s first two acts take place in an exaggerated reality that allows it to focus solely on satire and psychology. Just about everyone other than Moore and Qualley act like caricatures (Quaid is the lynchpin here). Why is the substance apparently offered to Elisabeth for free? Why are network TV aerobics programs so lucrative and influential? How does Sue manage to build that secret room, and why is there no super in her million-dollar apartment? What are the chances either Elisabeth or Sue are always the featured image on the billboard right outside her own window? And just how in the hell is this Substance supposed to work, in a biological/continuity of consciousness sense? You take everything on faith: details that are irrelevant to the main characters’ psychological realities are simply ignored. But your ability to suspend disbelief is shattered in the third act, which is a pure B-movie nightmare hallucination. The practical effects, which previously recalled Cronenberg, now look like a blend of Screaming Mad George’s work on Society,  Toxie from The Toxic Avenger, and something out of a freak movie—in fact, the entire finale resembles something that might result if Henenlotter were given a multi-million dollar budget for stage blood and access to an crack cinematographer. Even with those hints, the results are nothing you could possibly anticipate.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…while the film’s escalating weirdness eventually spirals out of control in the final sequence—it’s not quite camp; it’s more like John Waters- or Lloyd Kaufman-style trash—I was certainly never bored during the 140-minute runtime.”–Sonny Bunch, The Bulwark (contemporaneous)

The Substance [4K UHD]

The Substance [4K UHD]
  • The Substance [4K UHD]
Check Price
Capsules

CAPSULE: THE SAVAGE HUNT OF KING STAKH (1980)

Leave a comment

Dikaya Okhota Korolya Stakha

366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.

Srill from The Savage Hunt of King Stahk (1980)

DIRECTED BY: Valery Rubinchik

FEATURING: Boris Plotnikov, Elena Dimitrova, Albert Filozov, Roman Filippov, Valentina Shendrikova, Vladimir Fyodorov

PLOT: Andrej Bielarecki (Plotnitkov), a folklore scholar, arrives at the Janowski family castle in the Belarusian Swamp Firs region in 1900. Nadzieja (Dimitrova) is the last representative of her family, which is supposedly under a generational curse due to her ancestor killing King Stakh, a 15th Century nobleman who still roams the area with his retinue in a Wild Hunt. Bielarecki finds himself caught up in murders apparently committed by King Stakh and his retinue.

COMMENTS: The term “folk horror” has become a huge umbrella, providing a niche for discovery and rediscovery of quite a few movies, which is a good thing overall. But it’s beginning to become exhausted, often used as a marketing gimmick for horrors with relatively minor folk elements. That isn’t the case, fortunately, with King Stakh. Its folk horror bona fides are right in the title, referencing the folkloric motif of The Wild Hunt. Based on the novel King Stakh’s Wild Hunt by Belarusian author Vladimir Karatkievich (who collaborated on the screenplay with Rubinchik), Stakh uses the trappings of folklore and horror (the visuals are very atmospheric, shot by Tatyana Loginova with production design by Aleksandr Chertovich) to support what is ultimately, in the end, a mystery/historical incident with political undercurrents.

Deaf Crocodile brings out Stahk in a new restoration, in a standard or limited deluxe edition, for its first ever U.S. release (the deluxe edition is in a hard slipcase with a 60 page booklet with essays by Walter Chaw and Peter Rollberg). Fittingly, there is an introduction by Kier-La Janisse, who included Stakh in her 2021 documentary Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror. There are two complementary commentaries: Steven R. Bissette’s talk goes a bit more into the director and actors, while Mike (“The Projection Booth”) White touches on the book and reacts more  to the onscreen action. Also included is a video essay by film historian Evan Chester.

It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue, List Candidates

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: FROM MORN TO MIDNIGHT (1920)

1 Comment

Von morgens bis mitternachts

366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.

DIRECTED BY: Karlheinz Martin

FEATURING: Ernst Deutsch, Roma Bahn, Hans Heinrich von Twardowski, Lotte Stein, Frida Richard

PLOT: A bank cashier is so enchanted by a customer that he steals an enormous amount of money in hopes of persuading her to run away with him, but when he rejects him, he abandons his family, skips town, and reinvents himself, using the money in pursuit of earthly pleasures to diminishing returns.

Still from From Morn to Midnight (1920)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: One of the pre-eminent early examples of German expressionist filmmaking (no discussion of it is complete without mentioning its fellow 1920 release The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari), From Morn to Midnight delivers a healthy dose of abstract imagery and proto-surrealism, taking advantage of both the newness of the medium and its silence to tell its cautionary tale.

COMMENTS: The Cashier, the protagonist of From Morn to Midnight, doesn’t walk on to the screen, nor do we cut to him. No, director Karlheinz Martin dissolves in on our central character, summoning him to life in the middle of a bank vault as though he were being added to a holodeck program. We will later learn that this wretched figure has a home and an adoring family waiting for him there, but this first scene provides us with the real scoop: The Cashier exists purely for the purposes of this allegorical tale, and no pesky background or deeper characterization will be needed.

So begins a surprisingly didactic and moralistic story. Once the Cashier decides to break bad, he goes whole hog: ditching his family as callously as he can; making himself over from a bent and wrinkled old man into a spry, slick dandy; and spending all his ill-gotten gains on wine, women, and song. At every turn, he meets with disappointment. The money doesn’t bring him respect or pleasure. Intriguingly, his road-to-Damascus moment doesn’t work out, either; having forsaken his past sins, he is sold out by a gentle Salvation Army worker who turns him in the moment he mentions the reward for his capture. The final image—the Cashier dying in a crucifixion pose with the words “ECCE HOMO” flickering above him like a neon bar sign—is not exactly subtle.

Then again, absolutely nothing in From Morn to Midnight is subtle, because director Martin is  here to sell an art form more than a story. He piles on all the Expressionist touches in his arsenal. He places every scene in a black void, with only the most abstract simplistic props and scenic elements providing hints of location. What little set decoration there is takes the form of mismatched flats lined in hastily applied white paint, turning every setting into a chalk drawing. Even The Cashier’s trudge through a blizzard is charmingly minimalist, as he walks down a tightly curved pathway while confetti is thrown at him. The actors themselves become two-dimensional elements through heavy makeup and wildly outsized emotional displays. Dogville almost a century before Lars von Trier could get around to making it, From Morn to Midnight is fiercely presentational, and makes sure you know it.

Like any self-respecting morality play, The Cashier’s sad fate can be predicted from the outset. For one thing, throughout the course of the film, on-set clocks are counting down the inevitable march to midnight (a touch that might have inspired Peter Greenaway). Even more telling is an image so indelible that it not only repeats, but the same actress is called upon to fill multiple roles just so it can be summoned anew. For each character Roma Bahn portrays, whether it be a homeless waif on the steps of the bank, a floozy in a hotel bar, or that young Salvation Army officer, there comes a moment when her pretty face is transformed into a death skull. Her every appearance is a red flag that The Cashier fails to heed.

The story behind the film is refreshingly optimistic by comparison. Many of the cast, including lead actor Deutsch, were Jews who later escaped Germany to live and work in the United States. Meanwhile, the movie itself had a limited release in Germany and was thought lost for decades until copies were unearthed in Japan, where Expressionism’s similarities to Noh theater made From Morn to Midnight relatable. And today, through the wonders of public domain and the internet, it’s available for all to enjoy, in the original German or translated into English. In this morality play, at least, the love of film is a virtue.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Not a frame of From Morn to Midnight is wasted in creating a surreal atmosphere…  Its sets are so bizarre, so deliberately over the top that it overwhelms its own message. The audience can only take so much. No wonder theater owners balked at it.” – Lea Stans, Silent-ology

ADDITIONAL LINK OF INTEREST: A Cinema History provides a comprehensive review of the film, with extensive visuals and thoughtful analysis.

(This movie was nominated for review by Shane. [But not, you know, this Shane. Some other Shane.] Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)  

Capsules

CAPSULE: SPIDER BABY (2024)

Leave a comment

AKA Spider Baby, or the Maddest Story Ever Told

366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.

Beware

DIRECTED BY: Dustin Ferguson

FEATURING: Noel Jason Scott, Skylar Fast, Emma Keifer, Jennifer Moriarity, Peter Stickles, Cody J. Briscoe

PLOT: A family of three young adults suffer from “Merrye syndrome,” which causes them to slowly regress to a childlike (but homicidal) state; their kindly caretaker tries to protect them from scheming relatives seeking to seize their ancestral homestead.

Still from spider baby (2024)

COMMENTS: Despite what laypeople might assume, it is rarely a fun exercise to review a bad movie. There are, of course, exceptions. Movies that are bad, but unintentionally entertaining, can be eviscerated and celebrated in the same breath. It can be cathartic to unload on Hollywood product cynically dumped into theaters just to make a few bucks off unwitting dupes by people who should care more about their craft —these provide excellent excuses to flex your mordant prose muscles. And there are a small number of movies for which calling out their antisocial elements—be they misogynist, sadistic, exploitative, ignorant, or bigoted—feels like a public service. But most bad movies, unfortunately, were made with love by decent people doing the best with what they had to work with; these flicks inspire disappointment, not indignation. And disappointment rarely results in prose that’s a delight for either reader or writer.

But the issuance of a remake of a weird movie classic  like Spider Baby is newsworthy. And although the project feels wholly unnecessary, people are likely to be at least a little curious. Seeing the name of original director on the marquee as executive producer is encouraging; surely he would not leave his baby in the hands of ne’er-do-well filmmakers? Unfortunately, the new Baby goes wrong in just about every way imaginable; so much so that any analysis reads less like a meaningful critique and more like a particularly grisly cinematic autopsy report.

Ferguson has added entirely new scenes, and yet the new version somehow runs almost ten minutes shorter than the original. The film is padded with little home-movie style clips (a tribute to House of 1,000 Corpses, a movie this actually resembles more than its source) and many more senseless murders—as if a greater quantity of perfunctory killings could make up for the carefully orchestrated, individualizes fates that befell the original’s scant three victims. The four top credited actors are Beverly Washburn (Elizabeth in the original), Ron (great-grandson of Lon) Chaney, Robert Mukes, and . Each of them spent at most an afternoon on the project, filming meaningless death, flashback, or wraparound scenes. Stevens doesn’t even speak. The actual principals are no match for the originals. Nor is the camerawork, the setting (sunny Cali mansion instead of old dark country house), the continuity, the humor, or, really, anything. A few of the performances aren’t completely embarrassing (Moriarity is best), the credit sequence is well done, and the score is good (if used far to liberally, in an attempt to manufacture a spooky atmosphere not happening onscreen). But it’s like a community theater enactment a beloved classic, with no real individual take to offer. Great scenes are omitted, inconsequential ones are substituted. All that you really need to do is to compare the two renditions of the famous “playing spider with Uncle Peter” scenes. The original is a masterpiece of suspense worthy of , playful and subtle, conveying themes of bondage, incest, and sadism through the context of a villainess with the unknowable, morally ambiguous mind of a child. Even though some of the dialogue is lifted verbatim for the remake, this re-enactment is more like watching candid security footage from the VIP room of a B&D-themed strip club. Ferguson establishes no relationship (much less chemistry) between the characters, starts the scene in medias res, and ends it in sleaziest res.

Of course, there will be some generous and charitable folks who think that this younger sibling is not such a bad egg, and good for them, I guess. But my recommendation is to avoid; the fact that, despite the cult tie-in, this movie has almost no distribution, marketing, or reviews from sources besides us bolsters that warning. It would be all terribly depressing, but the bright side is that this microbudget remake helps us to appreciate the miraculous accomplishment of Hill’s original so much more. Hill may have been working in schlock, but he was a master schlock craftsman, able to wring memorable performances out of mediocre talent and genuine suspense out of thin, musty air.

On Pod 366, we incorrectly speculated that the advertised “BONUS black and white feature” was a copy of the original film. It is, in fact, merely a monochrome rendering of the remake. There are a lot of interviews and behind-the-scenes footage on the disc, however.

Spider Baby (2024) [Blu-ray]

Spider Baby (2024) [Blu-ray]
  • Blu-ray
Check Price