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.
NEW ON DVD:
Condemned (2015): A slumming rich girl squats with her boyfriend in a condemned building where a virus is turning the disreputable residents into hallucinating homicidal maniacs. Critics didn’t like it (it earned a pathetic 14 on the Metacritic meter) but the “w” word did pop up a couple of times in reader reviews. Buy Condemned
“Man Seeking Woman: The Complete Season 1”: Critics repeatedly refer to this Jay Baruchel sitcom about a single man’s dating life as “surreal”: he goes on a date with an actual troll, attends a wedding in Hell, accidentally misplaces his penis, and so forth. The series survived a first season on deep cable’s FXX network and been renewed for a second. Buy “Man Seeking Woman: The Complete Season 1”
Over Your Dead Body (2014): The prolific Takashi Miike returns to straight horror for the first time in years for this tale of the production of a classic kabuki revenge drama, the adulterous backstage shenanigans of the cast, and the supernatural collision between the two. Released via Shout! Factory with no special features. Buy Over Your Dead Body
NEW ON BLU-RAY:
Over Your Dead Body (2014): See description in DVD above. At this writing the Blu-ray is actually listed at $2 cheaper than the DVD (a trend we’ve been seeing more of as Blu works its way towards being the standard physical format). Buy Over Your Dead Body [Blu-ray]
Valentino (1977): A fantastical biopic covering the life of silent screen sex symbol Rudolph Valentino (played by dancer Rudolf Nuryev). One of Ken Russell‘s least appreciated movies because, as Ken Hanke points out, “Russell fans greeted it somewhat tepidly, because it was much less experimental than his last three films... The rest of the world found it too experimental and over-the-top…” Buy Valentino (1977) [Blu-ray]
FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON SNAGFILMS:
The American Astronaut (2001): Read the Certified Weird entry! The first absurdist musical comedy space western, about the title character trying to hook up the Boy Who Actually Saw a Woman’s Breast with the Girl with a Vagina Made of Glass. I paid good money for a DVD of this film; a Mr. Stephenson later informed me it was available for free online, then was heard to say “hertz doughnut.” Watch The American Astronaut 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.