Tag Archives: Shocking

Canonically Weird (The List)

148. SWEET MOVIE (1974)

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“Not everything can be explained.”–Potemkin in Sweet Movie

Beware

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Carole Laure, , ,

PLOT: A billionaire marries a virgin beauty contest winner. Meanwhile, a Socialist ship captain sails down an Amsterdam canal with a Marx masthead and hold full of sugar and candy. The virgin escapes her wedding night and goes on a sexual odyssey around the world, while the ship captain lures a proletariat man and four children onto the ship and kills them.

Still from Sweet Movie (1974)
BACKGROUND:

  • Yugoslavian Dusan Makavejev made some highly regarded movies in the beginning of his career, but he really came to international notice when his strange psychosexual documentary WR: Mysteries of the Organism (1971) was banned in his home country and he was exiled from the relatively liberal Communist state for making it. Makavejev landed in Canada where he made Sweet Movie. After the outraged reaction to this provocation, Makavejev did not direct a feature again for seven years.
  • Makavejev was a devotee of psychoanalyst William Reich (the “WR” of WR: Mysteries of the Organism). Reich began his career as a controversial but serious psychologist advocating total sexual freedom, but descended into madness and crankery in his later years when he claimed to have discovered a mysterious invisible energy named “orgone” that could cure cancer, among its other godlike properties. The film’s orgy performed by members of the Vienna Actionists’ commune under the leadership of performance artist Otto Mühl, who was also a follower of Reich’s teachings.
  • Makavejev turned down an invitation from Francis Ford Coppola to direct his script for Apocalypse Now to make Sweet Movie.
  • The black and white footage of corpses being disinterred is actual archival footage shot by the Nazis when they discovered the mass graves of the Katyn massacre, where the Soviets had murdered 22,000 Poles on Stalin’s orders in 1940.
  • The story was originally intended to follow the adventures of Miss World. Actress Carole Laure felt pressured on the set to perform sexual acts that made her uncomfortable, and she quit the production after shooting a scene in which she fondled a man’s flaccid penis. She later complained that the film was edited to make it appear that she engaged in more sexual activity than she actually had. To fill out the running time, Makavejev added the plot with Anna the ship captain.
  • The Polish government revoked actress and cabaret singer Anna Prucnal’s passport because of her involvement with Sweet Movie, and she was unable to return home for seven years.
  • Sweet Movie was banned in Britain (and in many other countries). In the United States it played with 4 minutes of scatology cut out.
  • Sweet Movie was one of two films selected as among the weirdest movies of all time in 366 Weird Movies 4th Reader’s Choice poll.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: After watching Sweet Movie, you’ll wish, in vain, that you could wash some of the images out of your mind—particularly the commune feast featuring food in all its forms, pre- and post-digestion. There are other moments that are strikingly beautiful, for example, Anna Planeta and Potemkin making love in a vat of sugar as a white mouse crawls over their bodies. For the most memorable image, however, we’ll go with the film’s first and funniest shock: the wedding night, when, after rubbing his new bride down with isopropyl alcohol while she clutches a crown of Christmas lights between her thighs, Mr. Dollars reveals his uniquely pimped-out phallus.

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Mixing beauty with disgust like sugar mixed with blood, Sweet Movie is a confused concoction of politics, sex, excreta, and Reichian psychology. Exiled director Dusan Makavejev abandoned all reason to make this movie, a fact which ironically makes its stabs at political satire ring hollow. Still, as a strange cinematic thing, Sweet Movie has an undeniable freak show appeal for those with strong stomachs: just be prepared for a cavalcade of unsimulated urine, puke, feces, mother’s milk, and pedophilia.


Unofficial 2013 trailer for Sweet Movie (made by Chelsea Sweetin of Montreal’s “Garden Scene Evenings”)

COMMENTS: Dusan Makavejev must have been very confused when he was making Sweet Movie, but probably even more so when he was editing Continue reading 148. SWEET MOVIE (1974) →

Capsules

CAPSULE: BLOODSUCKING FREAKS (1976)

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AKA The Incredible Torture Show

Beware

DIRECTED BY: Joel Reed

FEATURING: Seamus O’Brien,

PLOT: A sadist who runs a Grand Guignol off-off-Broadway show as a cover for his white slavery ring kidnaps a theater critic and a ballerina to design his greatest production yet.

Still from Bloodsucking Freaks (1976)

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: I don’t think Bloodsucking Freaks is all that weird, although I have trouble convincing my maiden aunt of that fact. The problem is one of definition: many people out there identify “immoral” or “shocking” as “weird,” while I consider shock films to be a distinct, if occasionally overlapping, category from weird movies. Essentially, Bloodsucking Freaks is just cheaply made, misogynist, grindhouse soft porn, peppered with some intentional and some unintentional comedy, a bit bizarre only because it goes to the absurdest extremes in its quest to shock the viewer.

COMMENTS: A naked girl has her hand cut off with a hacksaw and her eye pulled out of its socket while a live audience chuckles at her. A naked girl has her teeth pulled out one by one with pliers. A naked girl has a hole drilled in her skull, then her brain is sucked out through a straw. That’s pretty much all there is to Bloodsucking Freaks; there’s a thin plot tying these violations together, and torturers Sardu (the tall, fey one) and Ralphus (the smelly-looking dwarf who can’t act) make bad puns in between atrocities (“I bet you an arm and a leg…”). Still, the film obviously exists for no other reason than to show naked women humiliated, tortured and dismembered.

But, it’s a comedy, so that’s OK. (Seriously, this is people’s defense of the film: it’s intended as comedy, so we shouldn’t be offended. These same fans would presumably champion a Ku Klux Klan white supremacist screed, if it’s presented in the form of a humorous monologue). The problem with Bloodsucking Freaks, of course, is all one of attitude and context. Nudity isn’t controversial, graphic violence isn’t categorically offensive, and even mixing the two doesn’t automatically create offense. Freaks’ sin is that its main purpose is to give men who watch it an erection from watching women being tortured. The movie’s constant parade of nude, nubile victims have no personalities; they rarely object to the torture, or plead with their captors, and never hint at having jobs or families or any existence outside of the dungeon. For the most part their cries of pain are indistinguishable from a porn actresses’ faked orgasmic moans. When a woman is tortured via electrocution administered through nipple clips, her writhing appears to come from a sensation very different from agony.

Male arousal isn’t a matter of free choice or will; being exposed to sexual images causes the male libido to click into readiness, and Freaks’ main calling is to relentlessly associate that stirring in the loins with expressions of wanton cruelty. I’m no politically correct critic who searches out nude scenes so I can howl about the “objectification” of women, but when Sardu eats dinner using a naked woman as a table or tosses darts at a bulls-eye painted on a lass’ backside, it’s hard to argue that there isn’t some slight, perhaps unconscious objectification of women going on here.

But the most offensive issue with Bloodsucking Freaks isn’t its pornographic nature, but its refusal to own up to its own obscenity. The movie contains witty black jokes: a box of white slaves marked “fragile,” Sardu and Ralphus’ grossed-out reactions to the doctor’s brand of “elective neurosurgery,” and the unforgettable line “her mouth will make an interesting urinal.” But the purpose of putting such gibes into the script at all is to provide an excuse to watch swomen being symbolically punished and brutalized. Men can claim to watch Bloodsucking Freaks for the comedy the way that they used to pretend to read Playboy “for the articles.”

The movie is in self-denial; it holds itself at arm’s length and pretends its images don’t mean the things they quite obviously do. In the opening moments of the movie Sardu congratulates the attendees at his off-Broadway torture show on their “courage” in watching a nude blonde’s fingers crushed in a vise, then argues “this is just a theatrical presentation, a show, which offers no reality, not a fraction of reality, and just allows us, you and me, to delve into our grossest fantasies…” That’s writer/director Reed speaking directly to the movie audience, preemptively disowning his own vile tableaux by arguing they have no power or meaning, granting viewers permission to indulge the most loathsome parts of themselves. More perceptive, however, are the lines he wrote for the theater critic: “No true actor would submit to engage in such trash.” In advice I wish I could follow, he continues, “If I were to review your so-called show, even badly, I fear some of my readers might come just out of curiosity.”

I have no doubt that many of you will want to see Bloodsucking Freaks after reading this review. Watching a truly filthy movie is something of a rite of passage, and it won’t turn you into a rapist. It’s not my job to tell you not to see it, just to give you fair warning that its reputation is not exaggerated: this movie can scar your soul, and you will see things you may wish you could forget. But if you don’t mind watching something Ted Bundy probably masturbated to, then by all means, have at it.

Many people believe Entertainment produced Bloodsucking Freaks (they did not make it but only distributed it, buying the rights and re-releasing the movie to drive-ins in 1983 with a brilliantly cynical campaign that included tipping off “Women Against Pornography” on what theaters to picket). Troma is responsible for the special edition “director’s cut” DVD, however, with an audio track provided by torture porn impresario Eli Roth. Roth’s sarcastic commentary, which compares the movie to Taxi Driver and muses about the symbolism of the caged cannibal women, starts out amusing, but the mockery wears thin (just how much trash should the director of Hostel be talking, anyway?) Roth’s insincerity is a typical approach to Bloodsucking Freaks, though: cover up a guilty erection with the lowest form of wit.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a boffo presentation is arranged out of Busby Berkeley, Hi, Mom! and Theater of Blood, borrowing Herschell Gordon Lewis’s electric organ while building toward the image of the chained reviewer kicked in the mouth by the topless ballerina… a manifesto for an immoral cinema…exists in that disconcerting crossroads of loathsome exploitation and annihilating art.”–Fernando F. Croce, Cinepassion.org

(This movie was nominated for review by Lee Townsend, who said “this distorted my mind many years ago and let me realize what weird really was.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

List Candidates

LIST CANDIDATE: SWEET MOVIE (1974)

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Sweet Movie has been upgraded to the List of the 366 Best Weird Movies of all time. This initial review is kept here for archival purposes. Please leave comments on Sweet Movie‘s official Certified Weird entry page.

Beware

DIRECTED BY: Dusan Makavejev

FEATURING: Carole Laure, Anna Prucnal, Pierre Clémenti,

PLOT: Two alternating stories: in one a virgin beauty queen escapes from her millionaire

Still from Sweet Movie (1974)

husband and his solid gold penis, while in the other a Socialist sea captain sails down an Amsterdam canal with a hold full of sugar and candy.

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Any movie where a virgin beauty queen is frightened on her wedding night by her billionaire husband’s solid gold penis is certainly weird enough to qualify for the List. My hesitation in anointing it as one of the 366 most notable weird movies of all time my belief that this is a really bad movie—not just a grotesque and disgusting film, but an empty, morally bankrupt, and frequently dull one, as well. (Despite it’s Criterionization, Sweet Movie‘s uninspiring 6.3 rating on IMDB coupled with a mediocre 47% positive on Rotten Tomatoes supports my suspicion that it’s not a film many people can admire). Sweet Movie, which glories in loving depictions of urine, feces, puke and blood, is like an arthouse version of Pink Flamingos, only with a puffed-up self-importance in place of that movie’s radical humor. The film has its defenders, who are encouraged to speak up in the comments section—because it will take some convincing for us to honor this greatly reviled provocation with a spot on the List.

COMMENTS: Sweet Movie mixes shock aesthetics with an unfocused political polemic; like blood and sugar, the two strategies prove immiscible, and so it’s like getting two bad movies for the price of one. It starts out with a promising satirical idea. A chastity belt manufacturer is holding a beauty contest, the prize being marriage to the richest man in the world. The winning contestant, beauteous Carole Laure, even has a glowing hymen! In an unrelated plotline, a ship is cruising down a canal in Amsterdam with a bust of Karl Marx jutting from the prow; a man dressed as a Potemkin-era Russian sailor tries to get the attention of captain Anna Prucnal from the shore. The movie quickly goes off the tracks, however, when “Miss Monde” escapes from her Continue reading LIST CANDIDATE: SWEET MOVIE (1974) →

Canonically Weird (The List), Shorts

117. UN CHIEN ANDALOU (1929)

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An Andalusian Dog

“No idea or image that might lend itself to a rational explanation of heany kind would be accepted… We had to open all doors to the irrational and keep only those images that surprised us, without trying to explain why.”–Luis Buñuel on Un Chien Andalou

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DIRECTED BY: Luis Buñuel

FEATURING: Simone Mareuil, Pierre Batcheff

PLOT: A man slits open a woman’s eyeball with a straight razor. “Eight years later” another man visits the woman in her apartment and apparently tries to rape her, but finds himself tied to two grand pianos bearing dead donkeys and priests. After further absurd adventures the woman walks through her apartment door and finds her lover on the beach; the happy couple stroll along, though “in spring” they are seen buried in the sand up to their waists, apparently dead.

Still from Un Chien Andalou (1929)

BACKGROUND:

  • Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí co-wrote the scenario; each of them would reject an idea suggested by the other if they thought it made too much sense. The concept for the film arose when Buñuel described a dream he had about a cloud slicing the moon like a razor, and Dalí countered with a dream about a man with ants crawling from a hole in his hand.
  • Buñuel appears as the man who sharpens the razor in the opening scene. Dalí appears as one of the priests who finds himself surprised to be tied to a piano.
  • Un Chien Andalou debuted as part of an avant-garde double feature alongside Man Ray’s Les mystères du château de Dé. Buñuel and Dalí reportedly hid behind a curtain and carried rocks in his pocket to defend themselves in case the audience rioted, but were disappointed when the movie was well-received.
  • Un Chien Andalou is sometimes called the first “Surrealist” film. Germaine Dulac’s The Seashell and the Clergymen had debuted a year earlier, but the film’s Surrealist screenwriter Antonin Artaud denounced Dulac’s finished work as distorting his views, and even staged a riot at the film’s opening in protest. Still, Man Ray and Rene Clair had produced films that could easily be called “Surrealist” as early as 1924. There is no doubt that if it was not the first, Un Chien Andalou was at least the most memorable and influential of this small group of experimental films from the 1920s.
  • Un Chien Andalou is widely considered to be one of the most important movies ever made. Roger Ebert called it “the most famous short film ever made,” it is listed in 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, and it tied for #28 in Sight and Sound’s influential poll of the greatest films ever made (1992 edition), among other honors.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: We chose an indelible image for every movie that makes the List of the 366 Best Weird Movies, and the choice is not always obvious. Un Chien Andalou is a relief in that there’s no possible controversy over our selection of the eyeball slitting sequence as the film’s unforgettable moment. This is one of the most iconic moments in all of cinema; no one can watch it without wincing. It is also the film’s only obvious metaphor: the razor is Un Chien Andalou and the eye is the spectator, and this is what the one intends to do to the other.

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: The word “surreal” is thrown about a lot when talking about unusual


Short clip from Un Chien Andalou

films. Un Chien Andalou is the real deal, the original Surrealist sensation whose impact all the others have been trying to imitate to for almost a century. It is the undiluted essence of the pure unconscious spilled onto celluloid like vitreous humor. At a mere 17 minutes it’s the perfect length for a pure Surrealist movie; it hits hard and never overstays its welcome. It’s shocking, disturbing, full of marvels and uncomfortably hilarious; in other words, weird, weird, weird.

COMMENTS: A cloud hits the moon. Eyeball jelly oozes around a straight razor. A man rides a Continue reading 117. UN CHIEN ANDALOU (1929) →

Canonically Weird (The List)

65. MANIAC (1934)

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AKA Sex Maniac

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

“Unless you regularly do mushrooms and go to Lady Gaga concerts with your good friend Crispin Glover, then watching Maniac is guaranteed to be the weirdest experience you have ever had.”–ad copy for the Rifftrax version of Maniac

DIRECTED BY: Dwain Esper

FEATURING: Bill Woods

PLOT:  An on-the-lam vaudevillian kills and impersonates his mad scientist employer, driving himself mad in the process.

Maniac (1934)

BACKGROUND:

  • Dwain Esper was a successful building contractor who, it is rumored, only got into the movie business when he came into possession of a cache of filmmaking equipment that was abandoned in a foreclosed property.  He worked outside the film distribution system, taking his exploitation movies on the road and showing them in rented venues, accompanied by lurid advertisements promising forbidden fruit for “adults only.”  Esper obtained the rights to Tod Browning’s Freaks from MGM for a song, and took the movie on the road with his other exploitation hits.  Other films he directed or produced had titles such as Marihuana, the Weed with Roots in Hell and How to Undress in Front of Your Husband.
  • Made outside of the Hollywood system, Maniac was not subject to the Hays Production Code, although it probably ran afoul of most local censorship laws.  Audacious directors like Esper deliberately put racy material into their films that the major studios could not touch.  Maniac contains a scandalous amount of nudity, which had been extremely rare in motion pictures up until that time and was banned outright when the Hays Code began to be enforced in 1934.
  • The film incorporates (steals) footage from Maciste in Hell (1925), and reportedly also from Häxan (1920) and Fritz Lang‘s Sigfried (1923), for its delirium sequences.
  • Named one of the 100 Most Amusingly Bad Movies Ever Made in The Official Razzie Movie Guide.
  • One gruesome scene involving a cat’s eyeball appears to be a real case of animal abuse, but is almost certainly a convincing illusion.
  • The movie’s ending rips off the Edgar Allen Poe short story “The Black Cat.”

INDELIBLE IMAGE: There are lots of strange, unexpected sights to be seen in this time capsule of man’s freakish desires, but you won’t forget the cat’s eyeball.

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD:  Maniac promises to show us the life of a madman as a shameless pretext for delivering multiple shock scenes in an “educational” context, but the final product is so disjointed, feverish and crazily assembled that it seems to be the work of an actual madman.


Scene from Maniac

COMMENTS: Most bad movies are just bad.  A rare breed are so bad they’re “unintentionally” Continue reading 65. MANIAC (1934) →