Our weekly look at what’s weird in theaters, on hot-off-the-presses DVDs, and on more distant horizons…
Trailers of new release movies are generally available at the official site links.
IN DEVELOPMENT (completed, pre-release):
The Bad Batch (2016): The logline is promising: “a dystopian love story in a Texas wasteland and set in a community of cannibals.” Ana Lily Amirpour did so well with her Iranian vampire-western debut, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, that Keanu Reeves and Jim Carrey signed on to her sophomore feature. Let’s hope she can keep the momentum up (and ramp up the weirdness). Batch was partially filmed in the desert communities of Slab City and Bombay Beach, using local eccentrics as extras. The mainstream pop-culture panel embedded below used the word “weird” three times when discussing the casting. Ion Cinema’s report on The Bad Batch.
The Greasy Strangler (2016): Hard to tell what the plot of this odd-looking horror/comedy will be, but it involves a disco walking tour and the title character. Director Jim Hosking financed this debut feature after his weird “G is for Grandad” segment from The ABCs of Death 2 wowed the guys with the purse strings. Strangler debuts in the “Midnight” category of the 2016 Sundance Film Festival; other entries that could be of interest are Rob Zombie‘s killer clown horror 31, Rich Fox’s psychosexual thriller The Blackout Experiments, and Danny “Oddsac” Perez‘s paranoid stoner horror Antibirth (starring Chloë Sevigny and Natasha Lyonne). Sundance Festival 2016 Midnight Films announcement.
NEW ON DVD:
Tokyo Tribe (2014): Shion Sono’s latest (well, one of his latest) is described as a “yakuza-street gang-hip hop-musical epic.” Set in an alternate Japan, almost all of the dialogue is rapped. Buy Tokyo Tribe
Yakuza Apocalypse (2015): Takashi Miike‘s latest (now there’s a referent we have to refresh every couple of months) is about a new yakuza boss who finds his rival is a vampire. This is the best-distributed Miike movie since 2010’s 13 Assassins, which does not guarantee that it will be one of his best, but which is nonetheless encouraging. Buy Yakuza Apocalypse
NEW ON BLU-RAY:
Tokyo Tribe (2014): See description in DVD above. Buy Tokyo Tribe [Blu-ray]
FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON SNAGFILMS:
Mondo Hollywood (1967): This 2005 restoration of a 1960s mondo classic opens with a note explaining that the film was initially banned in France for “perversities, including drugs & homosexuality” and for “the psychology of its editing.” What follows is a parade of hippies, strippers, lesbians, LSD freaks, reactionary anti-Communist politicians, professional skydivers, gurus, circus performers, and celebrities, capturing the zeitgeist of America’s craziest decade from the viewpoint of its craziest town. Watch Mondo Hollywood free on SnagFilms.
What are you looking forward to? If you have any weird movie leads that I have overlooked, feel free to leave them in the COMMENTS section.