Strange, absurd and surrealistic movies

[JohnL]

How about The Forbidden Zone. Herve Villacheze(sp?) as the king of an alternate dimension. Cardboard sets (literally!), a topless princess, a frog-headed butler, a guy playing the pat of a teenage girl...

[Tilebreaker]

Make sure you try his Tv series "Twin Peaks" you can find it collected.  Make sure it's not "Twin peaks- fire walk with me" which was a movie based on the series.

[Derf]

You might also try Dr. Seuss's only live action film, "The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T." I truly enjoyed most of the movies that have been listed so far (anything from Terry Gilliam is bound to have some interesting imagery, though "Fisher King" was a bit disappointing to me), and I think any movie with Dr. Seuss-like sets in live action would fit what you're looking for.

[Bernie]

I can second these choices:  Greasers Palace, Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas

Also, if you can find it, also by Robert Downey (Sr. not Jr.) -- Pound (a film he made between Putney Swope and Greaser's Palace, the whole thing takes place in a dog pound, all the dogs being played by members of his repetory company)

The 1930s exploitation classic, Maniac -- totally bizarre.

The Ruling Class with Peter O'Toole -- the first half is hysterically funny, the second half -- well you have to see it....

Performance

[nobody]

"Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" was a great movie. I saw it twice this weekend, which is a really unheard of move for me. Go see it, if you can find a theater that's playing it. It's great.

[Ellie]

Harold and Maude..hilarious. Although I had a hard time believing the age difference between them.

[Bernie]

Oh, no, you can believe it - it was a real age difference!

[Ellie]

Actually what I meant was...Wow what an age difference!

[Ash]

Speaking of David Lynch...."The Lost Highway" is one freakin' bizarre movie!

I had to watch it twice in a row to figure it out.

[Leah]

a clockwork orange... definitly a good movie

[Vermin Boy]

Don't forget Mulholland Drive. I watched it with a friend, and after it ended, we literally spent about half an hour in silence, each trying to piece together what we saw.

Then, of course, Eraserhead is in a class of its own... No way around it: David Lynch rocks.

[raj]

*Spoiler* (I guess)



Even though she was covered up, the scene of them in bed made me sick.  Ugh.

[trekgeezer]

Incubus - 1966  Starring William Shatner. For some reason they thought  it would be neat to have all the dialogue in Esperanto.  No s**t!  They showed it on SciFi last year, they spent some money remastering it . It hadn't been seen in  almost 40 years.

[peter johnson]

Cripes, fellows, I mean nobody has mentioned the REAL CLASSICS here.
Given the category, how can you leave out Bunuel's & Salvador Dali's collaboration(s) "Un Chien Andalou(The Andalusian Dog)"?  Or Jean Cocteau's "Le Sangre de Poete(Blood of a Poet)?
Blood of a Poet(1934/French):  A boy is rescued from a potentially fatal snowball fight by an insect-winged Negro giant with bug-eyes who appears in the middle of a snowstorm.  A hand grows a mouth and speaks.  A man falls through a mirror that becomes liquid.  This is the easy stuff . . .
Andalusian Dog(1929/Spanish):  A man slits open the eyeball of a woman as a razor-like cloud crosses a full moon in the sky.  Ants pour from a severed hand.  A man appears pulling a grand piano and the rotting corpses of donkeys.  A bare breast morphs into a sea urchin(And do remember, this is 1929).  Again, the easy stuff . . .
Cocteau's "Orpheus" is good too (1952 or so).  Beatniks ride their scooters through another liquid mirror into -- well, who knows where?
I dig the guy who mentioned "The Forbidden Zone" -- I agree.
Vermin can do better than Mulholland Drive, I know!!
Other old movies that fit here:
Anything by Carl Dreyer:  Vampyr, The Passion of Joan of Arc, etc.
Anything by Fritz Lang:  Metropolis, Seigfried, M, etc. etc.
Man, I'm rediscovering silent pictures and '30's pictures in a big way.  You can't beat some of this bizarre surreal absurd imagery!!
peter johnson

[Lee]

Well if it's strange you are looking for, "The Pale Sky" is pretty odd. A man wakes up from a coma to find out that his penis has been donated to another patient. He goes looking for him.