Tag Archives: Psychedelic

Capsules

CAPSULE: FEVER NIGHT AKA BAND OF SATANIC OUTSIDERS (2009)

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DIRECTED BY: Jordan Harris, Andrew Schrader

FEATURING: Peter Tullio, Philip Marlatt, Melanie Wilson

PLOT: Three young would-be occultists head to the woods to perform a Satanic ritual and (not surprisingly) get more than they bargained for.

Still from Fever Night AKA Band of Satanic Outsiders (2009)

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: It’s got a few great psychedelic/Satanic sequences that wouldn’t be out of place in a black metal music video, but overall it’s not strong enough to contend as one of the best weird movies of all time.

COMMENTS: The soundtrack to Fever Night AKA Band of Satanic Outsiders is made up of grungy psychedelic garage rock rather than the black/death metal stylings the flick’s devil-worshiping premise would lead you to expect. This movie is full of small stylistic surprises like that, along with some big bombastic ones. Fever Night starts with a humorous mock disclaimer implying that you’re watching a videocassette, then segues to the words “BAD PEOPLE” spelled out in squirming worms, followed by voice-overs of the main characters as they argue over what is the most Satanic meat (“so, Satan’s a goat? I always thought Satan was a pig”). We then see our three occult protagonists and get our next shock: these are some clean-cut cultists. Warren wears a tie, Elliot sports a red letterman’s jacket, and cute Terry has a wholesome Katie Holmes thing going on. These are the best-groomed Satanic outsiders you’ll ever meet, Satanic outsiders you wouldn’t be afraid to bring home to Mom for dinner. It’s an intriguingly strange setup, but I’m afraid the rest of the movie can’t quite deliver on that promise. The three teens go into the woods, conduct their blood-drinking ritual, and then one of them falls into a coma; the next half-hour is composed of ersatz Blair Witch Project wanderings in the woods, with disappearing bodies, mysterious bird carcasses, and interpersonal squabblings. This is where Fever Night lost me. While it would be creepy to be caught out in the woods with unexplained spooky sounds and distant lights accosting you at every step, it’s not nearly as scary to watch the same things happen to amateur actors bathed in stage lights (that’s exactly why the aforementioned Witch Project put everything in the first person perspective). Fortunately, the discovery of a bleeding cow skull leads to an explosive psychedelic montage full of solarization effects and rapid-fire editing of full of flying animal skulls and pentagrams (and I swear I caught an almost subliminal still of the Devil from Häxan). The film’s next two acts are devoted to killing off the remaining two characters (although whether they remain dead is up for debate) via devilish tableaux that incorporate camping nymphettes, redneck rapists, animal-headed individuals, more fast-cutting music video audition interludes, revenants, and protagonists sucked into the sky and incorporated into nebulae. Psychologically relevant homophobia pervades the ironic horror denouements, making Fever Night especially uncomfortable for the target audience of young heterosexual males. Fever Night is a weak tab, but it does have detectable psychotronic activity. If I were looking for a lysergic campfire movie for the weekend, I’d drop a big dose of I Can See You instead.

Fever Night AKA Band of Satanic Outsiders (which, by the way, is the actual onscreen title, AKA and all) truly divides viewers. On the one hand, the average horror fan, the kind who post one to two sentence reviews on IMDB, Amazon or Netflix and favor the word “suck,” tends to hate the movie both for its slow opening and for the surreal confusion of its ending. The horror press, on the other hand, was effusive in its praise (given the dreck that passes for low-budget independent horror, you have to understand how fresh anything that’s even a little bit different will appear to anyone confined to the blood beat). Personally I didn’t enjoy Fever Night very much and even considered giving it a “Beware” rating, but I do see a lot of its strengths, and won’t recommend against it. Ironically, most of the positive reviews liked the structured first part of the movie the best, and thought that the flick went off the rails when the hallucinations and surrealism started taking over. My criticism was exactly the opposite: I wish the directors had moved more of the trippy goodies up front. My interest waned while the movie wandered around in the woods, jumping at every snapping twig, and the movie never really pulled me all the way back in.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…like an acid trip riff on ’70s Luciferian classics like The Devil’s Rain and Race with the Devil… a fiesty, surprisingly funny, and very stylish offering that deftly sidesteps the usual pitfalls of boring camerawork and amateurish performances.”–Mondo Digital (contemporaneous)

List Candidates

LIST CANDIDATE: BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW (2010)

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Beyond the Black Rainbow won 2015’s reader-determined “List Candidate” tournament and was placed on the List of the 366 Best Weird Movies of All Time. The official entry is here.

DIRECTED BY: Panos Cosmatos

FEATURING: Michael Rogers, Eva Allan, Scott Hylands, Marilyn Nory

PLOT: Within the depths of a mysterious, retro-utopian health clinic, a troubled psychologist attempts to treat a silent young woman with telekinetic powers, but she keeps trying to escape.

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: Weird story, weird characters, weird weird visuals: Beyond the Black Rainbow definitely has weirdness in spades. At times it is overly self-satisfied in its ambiguity, but overall it’s a strong psychological thriller that revels in the bizarre.

COMMENTS: Opening with a creepily soothing informational video reminiscent of something out of the Dharma Initiative, Beyond the Black Rainbow immediately sets a dark and cryptic tone. The kindly Dr. Mercurio Arboria believes he has created a center for peace, understanding, and mind-opening advancement of the human race. Years later, his haven seems deserted, with only the mute and magical Elena seen in its cells. She is quiet but tightly coiled, ready to burst both mentally and physically. She holds Dr. Arboria’s protégée Barry Nyle in deep sway, but her importance to the institution is unclear. Through a surreal and unforthcoming flashback sequence her connection to Dr. Arboria and Nyle is expressed, though her telekinetic abilities remain something of a mystery. Her eventual escape prompts Nyle to take serious action.

Writer/director Panos Cosmatos draws from trippy horror-thrillers of the 70’s and 80’s to create his mood, with flashes of Altered States, 2001, Scanners, and the like. The pace is measured, with asides to Nyle’s dreary home life paired with closer views into the stark, enigmatic complex of Arboria. White walls intersect in a maze of cells and hallways, black panels reveal hidden objects, colored lights and energy pyramids glow in the dark—all while eerie synthesizers pulse over the soundtrack. The close shooting style lends the film a claustrophobic, tense atmosphere that is increased as the visuals become stranger and more abstract. Psychedelic colors swirl and coalesce, while a cult ritual is acted out in severe black and white and uncanny slow motion. Mutants in latex suits roam the hallways, and, oh yeah, heads explode!

As supposed psychologist Barry Nyle, star Michael Rogers wears his own face like a mask—impenetrable and unreal. His manner is cool and calculated, whether he’s murdering his own mentor or talking to his confused wife. His sadistic, violent nature is fully revealed through physical transformation, resulting in a chilling slasher chase during the film’s climax as Nyle hunts down Elena. Elena herself starts off as a typical waifish victim, silent and impassive. As her anger and determination rise, she becomes more self-assured and by the end is definitely a character to root for, a new-age Final Girl who values her freedom more than her revenge.

Beyond the Black Rainbow is in some ways high-minded and inaccessible, but its gorgeous and dreamlike visuals combined with its haunting electronic score and intriguing premise make for an engrossing and all-around weird experience. Its horror-thriller undertones and 1980s influences are well-incorporated, though some of its actual story/script elements are messy.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…unless you’re among those who still drop acid as a midnight-movie apéritif, your enjoyment of this retro oddity remains far from guaranteed.”–Jeannette Catsoulis, The New York Times (contemporaneous)

Canonically Weird (The List)

128. YELLOW SUBMARINE (1968)

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“The Lennon/McCartney songs used in the film seem to have been conceived and brought forth in the pure simple spirit of mystical innocence, like the works of Chagall. And, like Chagall’s works, the film tries to include everything in the world to make up its own cosmos. The animation style ranges from storybook simplicity to pop art and psychedelic shimmer.”–Punch magazine

Must See

DIRECTED BY: George Dunning

FEATURING: Voices of Paul Angelis, John Clive, Geoffrey Hughes, Peter Batten, Dick Emery

PLOT: The music-hating Blue Meanies freeze the residents of the idyllic undersea kingdom of Pepperland. Only Admiral Fred escapes in his Yellow Submarine; he travels to Liverpool to enlist the assistance of the Beatles to deal with the threat. After a sailing through several surreal seas, the lads eventually reach Pepperland and use the power of music to defeat the menace.

Still from Yellow Submarine (1968)

BACKGROUND:

  • Yellow Submarine was animator/director George Dunning’s only feature length work. His job here consisted mainly of supervising the 200+ contributing artists who worked on the film.
  • In 1968 the Beatles were disenchanted with movies after the mediocre reception to their self-produced television special Magical Mystery Tour (1967). They were still under contract to United Artists to produce another film and, despite the fact that they weren’t happy with the Americanized Beatles animated TV show, they saw lending their images and four new songs to a cartoon movie as a good way to fulfill their bargain. They liked the finished product well enough to agree to appear in a live-action epilogue.
  • The script was co-written by Erich Segal, a professor of classics at Yale who had never even heard of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” when he was hired for the project. Segal later wrote the deplorable novel Love Story, which was turned into an even more deplorable movie.
  • Liverpool poet Roger McGough also worked on the script, supplying many of the jokes and puns, but did not receive a screenwriting credit.
  • Peter Batten, who voiced George, was discovered by the producers in a pub and cast because he sounded like Harrison. He was later found to have deserted the British army during WWII and was arrested before filming was completed; his remaining lines were recorded by Paul Angelis (who also voiced Ringo).
  • The “Hey Bulldog” segment was cut for American theatrical release.
  • A 3-D motion capture remake was planned by Disney but scrapped in 2011, to the delight of thinking people everywhere.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: Picking out a favorite frame from Yellow Submarine is like picking a favorite note from Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. The psychedelic submersible of the title should probably be featured, but what bizarre pop-art backdrop should it be floating past—the gray and grimy industrial wastes of Liverpool, the optical netherworld of the Sea of Holes, or the lysergic bestiary of the Sea of Monsters? We selected the moment the sub transforms itself into a Zippo lighter to re-enact an old slapstick routine with a giant purple boxing beast, but we wouldn’t put up an argument with just about any random image anyone wanted to champion.

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Blurring the line between a children’s story and a hashish-fueled daydream, Yellow Submarine is a riot of color and visual imagination sure to delight kindergartners and stoners alike. You don’t even have to picture yourself in a boat on a river with tangerine trees and marmalade skies—over a hundred animators worked for almost a year to paint those vistas for you better than your feeble imagination could ever manage.

Original trailer for Yellow Submarine

COMMENTS: We often think of the Sixties in terms of revolutions: the sexual revolution, the civil Continue reading 128. YELLOW SUBMARINE (1968) →

Canonically Weird (The List)

122. BARBARELLA (1968)

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Recommended

AKA Barbarella, Queen of the Galaxy

“Barbarella, pyschedella,
There’s a kind of cockleshell about you…”
–Lyrics from Barbarella‘s theme song

DIRECTED BY: Roger Vadim

FEATURING: , , Anita Pallenberg, Milo O’Shea, Marcel Marceau, ,

PLOT: A wide-eyed aviatrix known as Barbarella must travel to the outer reaches of the peaceful galaxy to stop rebellious scientist Durand-Durand from unleashing his weapon, the Positronic Ray. She is rescued from a gang of dolls with razor-sharp metal teeth by a man who teaches her the ways of physical love, then befriends a blind angel. Her search leads her into conflict with the Grand Tyrant in a sinful city of the future.

Still from Barbarella (1968)

BACKGROUND:

  • Based on the French comic series of the same name, Barbarella‘s screenplay features her creator Jean-Claude Forest among its many credits, as well as novelist  (who also worked on the scripts for Dr. Strangelove and Easy Rider, among others).
  • The entire film was shot on a soundstage in Italy, meaning that the wondrous, complex sets were built from scratch for every scene. An oil wheel projector was used to create the trippy, amorphous backgrounds that visually expanded the limited space into larger territory. Several of the Italian actors are dubbed in English.
  • Among the many cut sequences from the final product is a titillating love scene between Jane Fonda and Anita Pallenberg. Publicity stills of the scene exist but it was never actually filmed.
  • At the time Barbarella was shot, star Jane Fonda was married to director Roger Vadim, known as the man who discovered (and married/divorced) the young Brigitte Bardot.
  • The bands Duran Duran and Matmos took their names from this film.
  • Barbarella was a flop on release. It was re-released in 1977 to cash in on the space opera craze started by Star Wars, with most of the nudity removed to create a PG rated version entitled Barbarella, Queen of the Galaxy.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: For many, Fonda’s titillating anti-gravity striptease over the opening credits is the highlight, or her sweaty orgasmic torture under the deadly Excessive Machine. For me the most remarkable visual moment is the Great Tyrant’s Chamber of Dreams, wherein Barbarella runs around in confusion, backed by fantastic lava-lamp patterns and floating bubbles as a rambling xylophone score tinkles over the action.

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Merging elements of sex-romp comedy, ludicrous science fiction, and death-defying action-adventure with memorably psychedelic imagery, Barbarella is a series of disjointed sequences that get stranger and stranger as the story progresses. The wild costumes, over-saturated color schemes, goofy dialogue, and sly winks to the audience are punctuated with weird little details, from deadly animatronic dolls to a hair-raising futuristic sex scene with minimal physical contact.


Original trailer from Barbarella (1968)

COMMENTS: Set in a wildly distant future where war and violence no longer exist, everyone has Continue reading 122. BARBARELLA (1968) →