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It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: THE BUBBLE (1966)

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AKA Fantastic Invasion of Planet Earth

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Michael Cole, Deborah Walley, Johnny Desmond

PLOT: When a storm, and his passenger’s birth pangs, force a charter pilot flying a pregnant woman and her husband to make a sudden landing during a storm, the travelers find themselves trapped in a strange community.

 

COMMENTS: Another brainchild of Arch Oboler, The Bubble is an odd little curiosity. Oboler had a surprise hit with the first American 3-D picture, Bwana Devil, in 1952. Fourteen years later, he tried to replicate this success, despite the subsequent boom and bust of the 3-D fad. Not only do The Bubble‘s technical gimmicks hearken back to the 50s, its plot derives heavily from another cheap sci-fi horror flick made ten years previously, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). But while Body Snatchers would earn a place in the American psyche, and become subject to numerous remakes (along with Night of the Living Dead, the zombie film these earlier efforts anticipate), The Bubble never gained quite the same degree of cultural cachet.

The Bubble begins in the heart of the action. A young married couple, Mark and Cathy, plan a brief stay in a remote mountain cabin before she gives birth to their first child. They hire a charter pilot, Tony Herric, to fly them to their destination but their plans go awry when they encounter unexpected bad weather and Cathy goes into labor. After losing radio contact, Tony makes a sudden descent onto what he thinks is a landing strip, but turns out to be a deserted stretch of road flanked by street lamps. Having no idea where they are, the trio seem to experience amazing luck when a cab pulls up out of nowhere.

“Cab, mister?” asks the driver.
Mark and Tony hurriedly explain how they need to get Cathy to a hospital ASAP.
“Cab, mister?” replies the driver, as though he hasn’t heard a word they’ve just said.

They manage to make it to the hospital, but since the baby is a month premature, the doctor insists on keeping him in a incubator for at least a week. While Cathy recovers in the hospital, Mark wanders empty streets, trying to find a working telephone. Having no luck, he finally runs into Tony at a bar that looks suspiciously like a saloon from a Western movie set. Here they encounter more odd behavior from the bartender. Like the cab driver, he’s a one trick pony. He polishes glasses and repeats the phrase, “What’ll it be, gents?,” but that’s it.

The 3-D action heats up a little when a cabaret dancer performs, her fishnet-stockinged legs projecting off the stage into the audience, which includes the very appreciative Tony. He then offers her a drink, and in an otherwise unexplained moment, the tray of beer bottles and glasses floats off the counter and flies across the room—

Continue reading IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: THE BUBBLE (1966) →

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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: DEMONIA (1990)

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Meg Register, Brett Halsey, Lucio Fulci, Lino Salemme

PLOT: An archeological dig unleashes vengeful ghosts. Still from Demonia (1990) WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE APOCRYPHA: It’s a matter of balance with Fulci: do the weird parts outweigh the boring parts? Consider Un Chien Andalou. That movie has a razor blade slicing an eyeball. Fulci (famous eye assassin, apparently settling a score from childhood where optometrists beat him and took his lunch money) has a cat jump up onto a woman’s face and chomp her eyeball out and eat it, amid a screaming swarm of clawing kitties. This, in a film that would play well next to a ade, complete with otherworldly dream logic and characters that act like anything but normal human beings with brains. Fulci is oft-capsuled in our pages, but never listed. One Fulci madhouse or another should ultimately claim the throne of weirdest, and we just as well might pick this one, if not The Beyond.

COMMENTS: Demonia is chock full of images you don’t see everyday. Fulci outdoes himself in his notoriously over-the-top death scenes. One notable flashback has a nun collect a fresh-born baby swaddled in blankets and then unceremoniously toss it into a flaming altar to burn. In a super-imposed effects shot, we see the baby’s arm amid crackling flames sticking out of the blankets as it uncurls its fist into a very distinct middle finger salute. So, there’s no shortage of off-the-wall death scenes. You could also pick the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it scene where a naked cultist nun ghost materializes brandishing a ghost-harpoon-gun, only to fire a very physical harpoon into some guy’s gut and quickly vanish.

The trouble with this title is the parts between the deaths: talky, boring, slow-paced, sloppily written. Fulci released Cat in the Brain, a parody with the director playing himself as a director who gets Hollywood hallucination fits after his sanity is taxed by directing endless gore scenes (a plot ripped off in Evil Ed) in the same year. Just sayin’. Fulci wasn’t exactly swinging for the pro leagues in 1990. In Demonia, Fulci is so low-effort between gore scenes that he might as well carry around a margarita to sip as he plays a police inspector who fruitlessly tries to solve these ghost murders.

What holds this movie back and divides Fulci fans? The acting is atrocious all around, the characters make no sense and are all dumb as cheese, the dialog is flat, the plot might as well be steered by dartboard, the low budget production makes everything look cheap and dirty, and Fulci phones in a performance of himself phoning it in. The first half hour’s slow pace almost kills it, but this is largely just set-up for characters that will later die to the ghost-nun rampage like so many roaches writhing in bug spray fumes. The second two-thirds grinds to the film’s advantage as the craziness starts to pile up. How many ways can we kill a person? How about tie this guy’s legs to two different trees so when you trigger the trap, they split him in two? The non-murder parts also have quirky details worth mentioning, Continue reading APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: DEMONIA (1990) →

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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: SCARLET WARNING 666 (1974)

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AKA It Happened One Weekend; It Happened on Sunday; Scarlet Love; Love Is Deep Inside; Rockey’s Style (?); Scarlet Love 666

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Beware

 

DIRECTED BY: Palmer Rockey

FEATURING: Palmer Rockey

PLOT: A detective, and his twin, investigate the murder of their sister at the hands of a money-worshiping cult.

Still from Scarlet Warning 666 (1974)

 

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: The eccentric Palmer Rockey exhibits a complete failure to communicate his intentions with the baffling Scarlet Warning 666. Is it a legitimate attempt at an occult thriller, an arty anthem of nonconformity, an avant-garde meta-movie spoof, or just an excuse to cast himself in awkward sex scenes with buxom women? You’ll have no idea. File it with After Last Season as one of those mysterious objects you can’t believe actually exists.

COMMENTS: Bruce (the good twin) is walking in the park, as he often does when investigating the death of his sister Jackie. Spread out on a yellow napkin, he discovers flowers and feathers covered in sticky stage blood. A clue? But what about the swinging knife? The pirate hat perched on the coffin? The totemic feathered rattle? The spinning plastic skull lit by a flashlight? The belly dancer? The silent topless woman with big “pineapples”? All clues?

No, the movie does not have a clue. This impenetrable mystery is the magnum opus of one Palmer Rockey. Rockey was not an idiot. He was an army veteran and, surprisingly, he had a Ph.D. and had translated theology books into German. He was also a huckster, a womanizer, and some kind of sui generis madman. The opening of the film brags that Rockey plays 54 different roles—7 in front of the camera, and 47 behind it—but on screen, there are only 2 or 3 (it is often near-impossible to distinguish which character he is portraying). The film did, apparently, did go under 7 different titles, however. After its disastrous reception after its four-walled debut, a devastated but defiant Rockey further tinkered with his masterpiece for two decades, adding narration and reshooting scenes (removing his ex-wife Cookie, the former female lead, whenever possible). He incorporates footage from a student film he shot in the 50s, which is positioned as a nightmare/flashback and has nothing whatsoever to do with the later scenes. Knowing that Rockey added exposition throughout the years in an attempt to make the plot more comprehensible makes you wonder how puzzling the original must have been. His later narration is particularly bizarre, as he engages in dialogue with a falsetto version of himself discussing the movie’s genius, but also disparaging his own actors and deflecting criticism by claiming that the entire movie is a satire of some kind.

If you like bad acting backed by bad singing (also courtesy of Rockey, naturally), mismatched film stocks, continuity errors, characters who appear without being introduced, randomly edited footage, and jarring sound edits, have I got the movie for you! Despite the added exposition, I doubt the film’s plot can be reconstructed even by the most dedicated scholars. There is an artistic intent here—Rockey depicts himself as a little guy, a nonconformist fighting an evil, greedy cabal—but it’s essentially undecipherable. We will simply note that it all ends on a bare stage with blue walls and a blue floor, which is either the site of a cult ritual or a symbolic psychodrama. A shirtless Rockey poses in front of spinning yellow wheel of justice while impassive bikini-clad women stand around in the background, and later spin in a circle dance. It segues into some kind of trial, followed by an action sequence of some variety with wrestling, gunplay, and a surprise twist reveal. All acted out in front of an idol of a plywood eagle inscribed in magic marker with a dollar sign. And as the credits roll, the audience leaves none the wiser as to what just went on.

Scarlet Warning 666 (or whatever name the movie was known by) was lost for years, whispered about by and a few lucky others who caught it at its Dallas premiere. The flame was kept burning by obscure record collectors, who treasured Rockey’s supremely awful lounge-rockabilly soundtrack, and wondered in vain about the movie that had inspired such a bizarre artifact. Grindhouse Releasing actually tracked down a copy of the current version of the film and, in 2026, finally put out a Blu-ray for the first time, so everyone could see this astounding monument to one man’s misplaced egotism. The release is filled with interviews, including fans Stang and Dead Kennedys frontman Jello Biafra, alongside contemporaneous witnesses like Rockey’s ex-wife Cookie and actor Ron DeSilva. But the portrait that emerges of the mysterious Rockey remains as inexplicable as Scarlet Warning 666‘s occult plot. The film, and the man, remain oddities of the weirdest stripe.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a study of storytelling madness that will either test the patience of even the most adventurous cult film explorer or make them dizzy with delight…  if one can make it past the first ten minutes of the film, there’s a chance for some fun to be had, with the movie gradually becoming an alt-universe ‘Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me’ as Rockey attempts to mix vanity, inscrutability, and desperation into a single offering of cinematic puzzling.”–Brian Orndoff, Blu-ray.com (Blu-ray)

I think this movie is weirder than average
I think this movie is better than average

Palmer Rockey's Scarlet Warning 666

Palmer Rockey's Scarlet Warning 666

  • Move over, Ed Wood and Tommy Wiseau. Stupefying, incomprehensible, and utterly insane, SCARLET WARNING 666 goes beyond THE ROOM and PLAN 9.

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It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: FLESH OF THE VOID (2017)

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Beware

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DIRECTED BY: James Florian Quinn

FEATURING: Man Without a Face, Kmsura, Dead Flesh, Elektriking

PLOT: The last words of a man on his deathbed are followed by a nihilistic nightmare seemingly representing humanity’s greatest fears.

COMMENTS: Flesh of the Void is a low-budget, experimental horror film that bagged an award for Best Overall Feature and a few nominations—including Best Cinematography and Best Director—at the Nightmares Film Festival in 2017. The fact that its cast is mostly anonymous should raise no eyebrows, considering that the movie includes sexually explicit material and extremely violent scenes.

Shot on both Super 8 and 16mm film, James Florian Quinn employs different techniques that give his work a timeless feel, such as black-and-white photography, film grain effects, intertitles, and a creep– and sleep—inducing soundtrack. In that sense, and in its frequent religious imagery, Quinn’s creation inevitably reminds one of ’s (in)famous experimental horror film Begotten (1991), which gives viewers a similar impression of being witness to an old, taboo recording.

Flesh of the Void has no linear plot or conventional narrative, but it does have a sort of theatrical structure, since it is divided into three acts alongside a prologue, an interlude, and an epilogue. It all begins with a surprisingly lyrical and unsettling monologue whispered by a dying man offscreen (“And it all started, to my dismay, soon to set in the state of decay. What just still was will never be again, as I’m still lying in my bed, breathing my last breath”). Then, chaotic images with occasional voiceover ensue, and the viewer is presented with a parade of grainy images depicting increasingly grotesque scenes.

At first, there seems to be a preoccupation with industrial, urban landscapes and the sinister occurrences taking place therein. Afterward, however, violent situations and religious imagery feature more prominently, without any clear links between them and the aforementioned urban landscapes—this overall meaninglessness perhaps being part of the movie’s presumably nihilistic message.

Such haphazard sequences often involve explicit sexual action, and because of these the viewer may get easily sidetracked. At the risk of waxing intellectual, one may regard the combination of sexuality and suffering that the movie presents as the tension between Eros and Thanatos, that is, the two opposing forces that make up human life, with Eros standing for (pro)creation and Thanatos standing for destruction and death. Indeed, whoever decides to watch Flesh of the Void will be assailed by disturbingly brutal situations—including cannibalism and rape—interspersed with numerous masturbatory scenes, often involving the clergy. The latter scenes—which look good on paper as representations of Eros—drag on unnecessarily. They would have greatly benefited from condensing, for their meaning—or lack thereof—is equally impactful after just a glimpse. Such lengthy scenes detract from the overall disquieting atmosphere of the movie and border on the gratuitous.

Nevertheless, occasional shots are genuinely enjoyable despite the budget limitations, especially at the beginning and the end of the film. There is also some respite from cruelty, sex, and interminable onanism in the interlude (titled “Agony”), which is the most theatrical part of Flesh of the Void, with actors moving in ways reminiscent of Greek tragedy at times. This is the most eeriely intriguing and even—dare I say it—tranquil part of the movie, taking place between two acts that feature a great deal of the above-mentioned perversities.

Those who relish experimental movies that feel like inexplicable waking nightmares, no matter how low their budget, may be inclined to give Flesh of the Void a shot. Yet, I must give them a heads-up that their patience is going to be tested, and possibly not rewarded, for the movie as a whole frequently meanders. While opinions will surely differ, for me the nihilistic takeaway from Flesh of the Void seems to be that religious systems and promises of an afterlife are hollow, and we should only believe in the reality of human suffering and the void of death. Suitably for this interpretation, the black-and-white cinematography of the movie is maintained until the very end, when blood suddenly gushes in a vivid red. Cheerful stuff!

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“This film is not for everyone… [Quinn’s] hellishly depraved and nauseating depictions of the macabre were, in a weird way, eerily satisfying. Because when you really stop and think about it, death is no doubt the scariest thing that will ever happen to us,” Jared Letourneau, The Horror Syndicate

(This movie was nominated for review by Vlad Gligor, who called it “very similar to Begotten.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

I think this movie is weirder than average
I think this movie is better than average

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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: THE GREEN ELEPHANT (1999)

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DIRECTED BY: Svetlana Baskova

FEATURING: Sergey Pakhomov, Vladimir Epifantsev, Aleksandr Maslaev

PLOT: Two ex-military officers are thrown into a prison cell.

Still from The Green Elephant (1999)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Not only does it contain extreme grotesqueries, but it is in essence a comedy of the absurd, and a highly disturbing one.

COMMENTS: Let’s start with a bit of context. A “parallel cinema” emerged In the late Soviet Union of the 80s 1. Within this cinematic landscape an even smaller underground movement was formed, known as necrorealism. With a name parodying the dominant social realism of its country, this alternative cinema showcased decomposition as a metaphor for social decay. Yevgeny Yufit is considered its main representative. Necrorealism’s aesthetic legacy continued into succeeding years through the works of two deeply subversive auteurs: Svetlana Bascova and Oleg Mavromatti2.This work is pivotal for a comprehensive understanding of their style, as Bascova and Mavromati’s  worldviews and creative talent merge: Svetlana directs and Oleg produces. Let’s examine the monster they have created.

The plot revolves around two unnamed ex-military officers thrown into prison for indeterminate reasons. The first act observes them in their claustrophobic cell, as the more loquacious annoys the other with his constant blabber. The stories become increasingly disgusting, hinting at what it may come.

Their prison reveals itself as a hellscape where bodily fluids, excrement, and secretions subvert our characters’ dignity until their total mental and physical annihilation. The deteriorating walls of their cell, the broken pipes, and a dirty toilet bowl mirror their decline. the depravities begin, as in a comedy of the absurd, without a clear reason. The first forty minutes aren’t disturbing in terms of graphic content (yet), but scenes of coprophilia and coprophagia will trigger more than a few gag reflexes.

The second act leaves the dirty cell behind for a similarly dimly- lit room with a sewer-like open trapdoor in the middle. The supervisors bring in the trapdoor to humiliate the prisoners even further. But nobody is really in control here. The dynamic shifts unexpectedly, chaos ensues (violence, gore, rape, necrophilia) and everyone is exposed as equally doomed as this tragic fable comes to its conclusion. If the first half disgusts, the second half is dizzying. This is visceral cinema at its wildest.

This movie doesn’t just attack our senses; it also to deconstructs ideals regarding the military complex and the people that service it. it becomes clear later on that we are in the Soviet Union of the 80s, a few years before its collapse. However, even if the sociopoitical background is specific, the commentary extends to a wider critique against militarism.

From a technical standpoint, this work is amateurish, albeit expressive. The snuff film quality of the shots, along with realistic—for the most part—special effects are discomforting. The extensive use of enclosed spaces creates a certain theatricality.

Of course, despite its political undertones, this movie is not for everyone. If you are a fan of extreme cinema, though, able to stomach ‘s cinema of sepsis, then perhaps it is for you. This bizarre movie has become a cult phenomenon in Russia, inspiring a talk of a sequel, a video game adaptation, and memes. Perhaps it speaks to the Russian psyche.

  1. You can learn more about parallel cinema and necrorealism through the informative essay by Eugene Vasiliev on this site. ↩︎
  2. Mavromatti directs weird movies till today by the way, having  released a hilarious series of vlog-spoofs (in Russian, of course) throughout the last decade. ↩︎