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 on the official site links.
IN THEATERS (LIMITED RELEASE):
White God (2014): A young Hungarian girl is forced to give up her beloved pet because of a citywide tax on half-breeds, and the castaway mutts rise up against their human masters. We sniff a political allegory. White God official site.
SCREENINGS – (Los Angeles, Cinefamily, Friday Mar. 27, Midnight):
Spider Baby (1967): Read the Certified Weird entry! In Los Angeles and looking to see a certified weird horror-comedy classic about a family of childlike cannibals, including a jailbait hottie who likes to “play spider” with avuncular visitors? Cinefamily has you covered at midnight. Also playing this week at this extremely weird venue: the restored version of the fantasy opera Tales of Hoffman (this Friday and all next week) and Sergei Parajanov‘s surreal classic The Color of Pomegranates (tomorrow, Saturday 28 only). Spider Baby at Cinefamily.
SCREENINGS – (New York City, Film Society of Lincoln Center, Thurs Apr. 2):
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Miss Osbourne (1981): Cinema bad-boy Walerian Borowczyk directed this sexy and surreal version of Dr. Jekyll as an orgy of perversion. It stars trash/art icon Udo Kier as the good doctor and contains explicit sex and graphic violence in a high art setting. Newly restored (could we see a DVD release soon?) Hopefully this isn’t all some delayed April Fools’ joke. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Miss Osbourne at Lincoln Center.
NEW ON DVD:
Another Girl Another Planet (1992): A sixty-minute experimental drama from Michael Almereyda, shot in “pixelvision” (a toy camera). The DVD includes two other shorts, Aliens and an adaptation of D.H. Lawrence’s The Rocking Horse Winner, plus a feature-length documentary on the 1995 Sundance Film Festival, all also shot in pixelvision. Buy Another Girl Another Planet.
Memory Lane (2012): A man kills himself over and over to visit the afterlife, where secrets about his fiancée‘s murder are gradually revealed. Super low-budget (I saw the figure $300 thrown about in all seriousness), but garnered halfway decent reviews for its mindbending scripting. Buy Memory Lane
Revolution 666 (2015): We’ll just quote from the product synopsis here: “A popular radio DJ plays a long-lost ‘Fab Four’ song, inadvertently creating a flesh eating zombie in a walrus costume.” OK, you got our attention. Buy Revolution 666
NEW ON BLU-RAY:
The Beyond (1981): Italian zombie-gore master Lucio Fulci’s most notorious exploitation film revolves around a woman who inherits a hotel that was built in a bad spot—over one of the seven gates to Hell. Grindhouse Releasing’s special edition includes an entire second Blu-ray full of extra features and a soundtrack CD. Buy The Beyond [Blu-ray]
FREE MOVIES ON SHOUT FACTORY TV:
Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979): Read Alfred Eaker’s review. Werner Herzog‘s take on take on Bram Stoker’s vampire classic is the latest free offering from Shout’s streaming service, A note about these Shout offerings: when you watch them in a web browser (streamed in cooperation with Hulu), you see fewer ads; if you view them through Shout’s own Roku channel, on the other hand, there are a raft of interruptive commercials. Watch Nosferatu the Vampyre free on Shout TV.
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.