Tag Archives: Unicorn

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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: UNICORN BOY (2023)

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DIRECTED BY: Matty Kiel

FEATURING: The voices of Matty Kiel, Maria Bamford, Sethword, Harold Perrineau, Cindy Paola, ,

PLOT: After a poorly thought out break-up and a concussion sustained in in a café bathroom, Matt travels to a unicorn dimension.

Still from Unicorn Boy (2023)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Anyone who wondered what a mash-up of Hieronymus Bosch and Lisa Frank might look like need wonder no longer.

COMMENTS: Shamans of yore sought vision by pushing their bodies to extremes: employing drugs and self-privation in pursuit of higher awareness. Matt’s methods are softer, and manifest softer visions—ones of pastel bug- and fish-monsters fusing together in sexual pulsation, or uptight unicorn citizens grumbling about the profusion of rainbow vomit staining the roads of their “perfect” city. Mostly, though, Matt has visions of rainbow vomit, beginning with a sudden visitation from Prince Purpleton (perhaps the doofiest unicorn imaginable), who stomps onto Matt’s couch, spatters his pastel weirdness about, and disappears as abruptly as he appeared.

Unicorn Boy mixes equal parts anxiety and vibrant vomit, which is to say, there is a seemingly endless stream of each. Matt is working through some Things, and it is while trying to discuss these Things with his grandly moustachioed buddy Sethward that he himself becomes sick in a trendy café, escapes to the restroom, and probably endures brain damage. The remainder of the film follows his adventures in the unicorn world and his subsequent pursuits of further addlement through yoga to resolve the unicorn plot line.

I’ve long maintained that animation is at its best when it creates a reality above, beyond, or outside our own, and Matty Kiel doesn’t disappoint. Purpleton and the fellow denizens of a magical realm squish around their oddball business, fusing (or is it shunting?) with others, with the ever-present risk of blacklight-ready rainbow spew keeping us on our toes. The protagonist’s troubles are relatable, providing a recognizable emotional mush for which the technicolor flights of goo are a reasonable visual extension. His fantastical visions suffer as he does, suppressing their depressing desires lest a burst of violently colorful, demanding bugs spring forth from within. Even the unicorn realm demands  wholesomeness and positivity.

Unicorn Boy is a cringe-y melodrama, a slice of life, and therapy through narrative. Judging from the character names and video clips in the credits, Matt in 2016 evolves into Matty in 2023, having endured some small-bore (though impactful) troubles of the heart. From his mind’s black box he creates a cute-‘n-gross voyage of personal growth. And while its ultimate message of love and acceptance is nothing new, its means are rather unique. Matty Kiel, and their Matt-in-movie manifestation, line their path to wisdom with splotches of sparkly spew. Not classically shamanistic, perhaps, but it gets the job done.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Age 14+ Personal growth, rainbow-barfing unicorns in animated indie… For viewers who don’t like gross-out humor or surrealism, the imagery might be unpleasant—but that’s also the point, since even the characters call out how gross the land’s magic is.”— Monique Jones, Common Sense Media (contemporaneous)

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Unicorn Boy [DVD]

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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: UNICORN WARS (2022)

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Unicorn Wars is currently available for VOD rental.

DIRECTED BY: Alberto Vázquez

FEATURING: Voices of Jon Goirizelaia, Jaione Insausti, Itxaso Quintana, Ramón Barea

PLOT: Cuddly teddy bears are at war with mysterious unicorns; meanwhile, simians are undertaking a sinister ritual.

WHY IT SHOULD MAKE THE APOCRYPHA: If rainbow caterpillars devouring Snuggly’s oozing form doesn’t do it for you, Unicorn Wars has plenty more madness to share—most of it far more disturbing.

COMMENTS: Dark visions come in all colors, it seems, as proved by Alberto Vázquez’s latest animated feature, Unicorn Wars. Traditionally a medium for children’s and family films, cartoons have a lesser-appreciated history as a means of capturing distress and madness which, for various reasons, may be impossible to convey with live-action, even when heavily injected with unsettling practical effects or CGI. Be they Gerald Scarfe’s vivid grotesques from Pink Floyd: the Wall,  or Ralph Bakshi‘s racially-charged brutality in Coonskin, or ‘s and Cristóbal León‘s eerie stop-motion in The Wolf House, or Vázquez’s own dark flights of fantasy in Birdboy, animation can be a sure-fire way to capture the uncapturable, and to illuminate some of the most harrowing imaginings put to screen. Unicorn Wars joins this canon of wrenching, disturbing fare. And it does it with cutesy teddy bears.

Bluey and Tubby are brothers in boot camp. Their bunk-mates include Pompom, the Cuddly-Wuddly twins, and Coco, the grizzled teddy who has seen it all. Under the harsh mentorship of their drill sergeant (“Here, ‘cuddles’ are made of steel, blood, and pain!”), the latest recruits are preparing for a mission into the heart of the nearby forest to investigate the fate of lost outpost. Bluey is driven by ambition and insecurity, striving to be the best, and tormenting his brother Tubby. Meanwhile, in the forest, María the unicorn seeks her lost mother, last seen in what is perhaps a vision: a viscous dream of ill-formed goo and an all-consuming monster. The new teddy troops are dispatched, ultimately setting into motion a final confrontation between the teddy bears and the unicorns.

Unicorn Wars is dark, dark, dark, but it presents itself as, perhaps, something of a comedy-of-incongruity. (The humor is of the type found in the needlessly unsavory “Happy Tree Friends.”) Vázquez puts his boot-campers through the typical montage motions: dehumanizing treatment, callous mental conditioning (the hymnal chant, “Dead Unicorn, Good Unicorn”, well illustrates the mindset of these pastel-painted patriots), and violent rivalries. The mood shifts resolutely away from uneasy comedy once the troupe enters the woods and messily devour a clutch of rainbow-toned caterpillars. The ensuing psychedelic frenzy, rendered in all the colors of the blacklight rainbow, is when Unicorn Wars kicks into full sprint, removing any hope for the characters—and viewer.

I will readily admit that this is one of the most harrowing movies I’ve seen. Jaundiced though both my eyes have become over the years, I was still speechless and immobile all through the climactic finale, where teddy bear massacres unicorn, unicorn gore teddy bear, and brother destroys brother. Were it not for its many moments of deeply troubling events, and occasional blasts of sickening horror, I would have “Recommended” Unicorn Wars. As it stands, I can only warn potential viewers: this is heart-wrenching, eye-glazing drama, soaked in bright pinks, powder blues… and reds.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Provocative, bright, weird, and completely out of left field, Unicorn Wars is one hell of a drug..” -Kate Sánchez, But Why Tho? (contemporaneous)

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    Canonically Weird (The List)

    209. BLACK MOON (1975)

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    “I see it as a strange voyage to the limits of the medium, or maybe my own limits.”–Louis Malle on Black Moon

    Weirdest!

    DIRECTED BY:

    FEATURING: , Therese Giehse, ,

    PLOT: A young woman is driving a car during a shooting war between the sexes. Escaping from a checkpoint where male soldiers are executing females, she finds refuge at an old farmhouse inhabited by a batty old woman, a mute brother and sister, a band of nude animal-herding children, and a unicorn. Initially rejected by the chateau’s residents, she gradually finds herself becoming part of this strange alternate society.

    Still from Black Moon (1975)
    BACKGROUND:

    • Although Louis Malle had dabbled in light surrealism before with the whimsical Zazie dans le Metro (1960), there was nothing in the respected director’s then-recent oeuvre (mostly documentaries and historical pieces like 1974’s Vichy drama Lacombe, Lucien) to prepare his audience for the bizarreness of Black Moon. Sven Nykvist won a Caesar for his cinematography, but the film was mainly a commercial and critical failure, and quickly lapsed from circulation.
    • Black Moon was a transitional work in Malle’s move from France to the USA. He shot the film in France, at his own estate near Cahors, but in the English language, with a British, American and Canadian actor in the cast. After this movie, the director went to America where he scored a series of critical successes with Pretty Baby, Atlantic City and My Dinner with Andre.
    • Joyce Buñuel, Malle’s co-writer, was ‘s daughter-in-law.
    • Therese Giehse, who plays the bedridden woman, died before the movie was released, and Black Moon is dedicated to her. Malle credited her with partly inspiring the idea for Black Moon by suggesting he make a movie without dialogue (although the eventual script did have dialogue, it is sparse and often nonsensical).

    INDELIBLE IMAGE: Appropriately for a dream-movie, the indelible image is an imaginary one; it’s the transgressive event you see transpiring in your mind’s eye the minute after the film officially ends on a provocative freeze-frame.

    THREE WEIRD THINGS: Gender genocide; portly unicorn; resurrection by breast milk.

    WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Black Moon concerns a young girl’s flight from an absurd world—where camo-clad men line up female prisoners of war and execute them, while the gas mask-wearing ladies returning the favor to their male captives—into a totally insane one. The movie is an unexpected assay of the irrational from nouvelle vague auteur Louis Malle, and although it’s congenitally uneven, it makes you wonder how wonderful it would have been if every master director had indulged himself by unleashing one unabashedly surreal film on the world.


    Original trailer for Black Moon

    COMMENTS: A frayed fairy tale set in no time or place in particular, Continue reading 209. BLACK MOON (1975) →

    List Candidates

    LIST CANDIDATE: BLACK MOON (1975)

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    Black Moon has been promoted onto the List of the 366 Weirdest Movies Ever Made. Comments on this post are closed; please visit Black Moon‘s official Certified Weird entry.

    Weirdest!

    DIRECTED BY: Louis Malle

    FEATURING: Cathryn Harrison, Therese Giehse, Alexandra Stewart,

    PLOT: A 15-year old girl flees a shooting war between the sexes and ends up at a farm estate inhabited by a bedridden old woman, a brother and sister both (like her) named “Lily,” a gang of naked children who herd pigs and sheep, and a unicorn.

    Still from Black Moon (1975)

    WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST:   If we were making a list composed only of European-style arthouse surrealism, Black Moon would easily make the List.  Here at 366, Black Moon has to fight for its space not only with other Buñuel-based concoctions, but also with the mutant species of crazed B-movies, the maddest of midnight movies, and intentional and unintentional oddities of every stripe; the competition makes this (admittedly very weird) experimental art movie a more marginal choice.

    COMMENTS:  Mercurial auteur Louis Malle (Au Revoir les Enfants) had dabbled in light absurdity with 1960’s Zazie dans le Metro, but audiences weren’t prepared for the sudden onslaught of full-on surrealism he unleashed in 1975 with Black Moon.  The movie concerns a young girl’s flight from an absurd world—where camo-clad men line up female prisoners of war and execute them, with gas mask-wearing ladies returning the favor to their male captives—into a totally irrational one.  With Malle behind the camera, we know that this will be a deliberate, quiet, beautifully-shot film.  Indeed, there are lots of long atmospheric shots and no dialogue at all for the first fifteen minutes, until Lily, the fleeing girl, finally comes upon the villa hidden deep in the woods and meets its insane inhabitants.  Her adventures are loosely inspired by that old weird warhorse, “Alice in Wonderland.”  There’s a pig /baby that may be an explicit reference to “Pig and Pepper,” and the characters Lily meets have the casually insulting demeanors of the denizens of Wonderland: the bedridden old lady says she looks “stupid… and she has no bosom, no bosom at all!’  In a Caroll-esque exchange, the unicorn accuses her of being “mean” for trampling some daisies (who, disturbingly, scream), while the myth is munching down on the selfsame flowers.  But don’t let the Alice references confuse you into supposing Malle’s film is a light absurdist comedy; although Continue reading LIST CANDIDATE: BLACK MOON (1975) →