June @ 366 Weird Movies: TETSUO THE IRON MAN, LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS, more

[Rev. Powell]

Okay, there's a little May in this first post....

WHERE'S THE WEIRDNESS?: TOP 10 WEIRD MOVIES NOT (YET) AVAILABLE ON DVD (IN THE US): We list 10 of the strangest films not yet released on Region 1 DVD (and some that may never be released).  See if there are any titles you recognize and feel free to add weird suggestions!

THE QUIET (2005): "The Quiet rips the facade from blissful, suburban tranquility in the tradition of movies such as American Beauty and The Safety Of Objects."-PD

THE PILLOW BOOK (2996): Certified Weird!  "...a lovemaking/calligraphy session is interrupted by a gang of men dressed like ninjas, who seize the naked scribe and tie him to a chair, accusing him of being a graffiti vandal.  While Nagiko and Jerome make love in the bathtub, a maid stands in the background spinning plates on a long stick.  A middle-aged Asian man runs down Hong Kong streets in a diaper, with Japanese characters scrawled across his frame.  Human skin is flayed and literally made into a book.  Such things just don't happen in a normal movie."

TOD BROWNING'S OUTSIDE THE LAW (1920): "Puppy dogs and small boys begin to have effect on Silky, but it is not until she sees the shadow of the cross in her apartment that her tough facade gives way."-AE

[Rev. Powell]

More...

SLAUGHTERED VOMIT DOLLS (2006): "After setting fire to the priest's church, Angela descends into stripping and prostitution, spiraling ever more furiously hell-bound, with lots of blood, gore, heaving breasts, full frontal nudity, vomit of course, and—oh wait, we already covered that."-PD

WHAT DREAMS MAY COME (1998): "...it ends up playing like Orpheus as adapted by someone whose only previous experience was writing greeting cards for Hallmark."

FAQ: FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (2004): "Some of the weirdest bits in this pretty weird feature involve the Internet porn of the future; adult actresses remain fully clothed at all times, and since human contact is verboten in the Brave New World, a woman touching a man's bare chest is the height of salaciousness.  For reasons unknown, this forbidden erotica is created in an avant-garde visual style, set on red glowing Dali-esque alien landscapes, and features nearly subliminal English text (the movie is in French) flashing across the screen (words like "orgasm," "death" and "bastard" are legible)."

THE NEW NIGHTMARE THEATER WITH SAMMY TERRY: FIRST IMPRESSIONS (WITH EDISON'S FRANKENSTEIN: 1910): "Hosting inept schlock is something a horror host may have to endure occasionally, and it's not an issue providing one endures it through a sense of humor.  Of course, it is also preferable to find films that charmingly fit the 'so bad it's good' category as opposed to the 'so bad it's bad' category."--AE.  Bonus feature: watch Sammy Terry host Thomas Edison's 1910 FRANKENSTEIN and decide for yourself whether this horror host deserves to come back from the dead!

[Rev. Powell]

Is it just me or is it getting weird in here?

ST. CLARA [CLARA HAKEDOSHA] (1996): "There's the reporter on television with the puffy black hat who's always warning of impending nuclear or ecological disasters while carrying a lapdog or sporting a yellow raincoat; the constant talk of rebellion, as if the kids are a bunch of Marxist revolutionaries from the 1960s; the peculiar anecdotes their teachers tell about meeting Bobby Fischer and Edith Piaf; Uncle Elvis, a former psychic who lost his powers just as Clara will one day, who walks his pet goat through town like a dog; and there's the huge bird that crashes through the classroom window one day, somehow turning the sky blood red in the process."

RICKY (2009): "It's a serious and thoughtful movie with points to praise (particularly Lamy's performance); but, even as an experiment in deliberately inconsistent tone, it's hard to say the film works on the whole.  In the end, Ricky never really gets off the ground."

FINAL FLESH (2009): CERTIFIED WEIRD! "Using the slipshod craftsmanship of shoot-to-order pornography as a metaphor for a shoddily constructed universe, Final Flesh is actually a comedy of despairs where the Bomb is perpetually falling, God imprisons families in apartments and slips notes under the door, actors stumble over unfamiliar words, and the director can sometimes be heard calling out 'action!'"

TOD BROWNING'S THE MYSTIC (1925): "Because of the lack of usual Browning stars, The Mystic is an interesting, lesser known film in the director's canon.  Not only is it thematically related to his other films, but it also shows the idiosyncratic continuity of his taste in actresses and his ability to mold actors, whoever they were."-AE

[Rev. Powell]

More, more...

THEY SAVED HITLER'S BRAIN (1963/197?):  "The original Madmen of Mandoras footage is more enjoyable than the newly shot scenes, in the same way that herpes simplex I is more enjoyable than herpes simplex II." 

YOUR GUIDE TO MOSFILM IN ENGLISH ON YOUTUBE: "...the venerable Russian studio Mosfilm recently dumped a bonanza of Soviet-era films, many of which have rarely been seen in the West, onto YouTube: a fantastic service to lovers of world cinema, right?  The only catch is that they listed all the titles and descriptions in Russian, with no indication of which movies are subtitled in English (many are)... e're able to provide you at least with some titles, guidelines and recommendations on exploring the musty archives of Soviet films—there are some real treasures hidden there."

BLACK SWAN (2010): On appeal, Certified Weird!  "Black Swan's popular and critical success is almost as mysterious as the film's ambiguous resolution.  The movie seems too exploitative for arthouse crowd, yet nowhere near explicit enough for the grindhouse crowd."

TOD BROWNING'S MIRACLES FOR SALE (1939): "Of course, Browning had visited the con-within-the-backstage-con theme time and again, but the entire structure of Miracles for Sale is an illusion itself, making it a sublime curtain call for the director."-AE

[Rev. Powell]

Finishing up June...

THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS (1960): "Man-eating plant aside, the movie's greatest charm is the cast of crazy supporting characters that pop in and out of the story: the floral gastronome, Seymour's hypochondriac mom, an unlucky woman whose relatives are constantly dying, two flat-affect flatfeet (broad spoofs of the duo from 'Dragnet'), a pair of bouncy high school cheerleaders, a hooker who persistently tries to pick up a hypnotized trick, and a sadistic dentist and his masochistic patient (the latter played by Nicholson)."

DAYDREAM NATION (2010): "The performances from Dennings, Thompson, Lucas, and MacDowell are solid, but can't save the ridiculous dialogue or self-indulgent shooting style (not that I'm complaining about the myriad drawn-out, close-up shots of Dennings, but really, it's all a bit much). And it isn't even that weird!"-AK

TETSUO: THE IRON MAN (1989): Certified Weird!  "After a bloody melee and another spastic jig, he notices metallic coils boiling under the flesh of his forearm and a corrugated pipe sticking out of his ankle, and he escapes via one of Tsukamoto's favorite recurring effect, a breakneck-speed stop-motion dash through deserted streets.  Of course, he lands in a dream where his girlfriend sports a long flexible-pipe tail which she uses to sodomize him... all this in a mere twenty minutes, and his penis hasn't even turned into a drill bit yet."

THE MONSTER (1925): "The Monster is not great cinema, its not the best West, best Chaney, or best Old Dark House movie (James Whale would deliver that seven years later), but it is silent pulp and, in the right mindset, it can take you back to the days of milk duds and acne."-AE