BS: Weirdest Movie

Subject: RE: BS: Weirdest Movie
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Oct 03 - 05:04 PM

I believe there was a western called "Jesse James Meets Frankenstein" (or maybe it's the other way around). Anyone seen it? Now there's a weird premise...

I have wondered for years how audiences could put up with those interminable Jimmy Stewart movies where people talk and talk and talk and talk....and very little else ever happens. After all, even listening to Jimmy Stewart ramble on for a mere five minutes or so could easily drive me to considering death by gerbil inhalation.

I just don't get it.

It's a shame that Jimmy Steward and Woody Allen couldn't have done some movies together and see who could reduce the other to speechlessness first. What a scriptwriter's dream that would have been! I think they would have annoyed the hell out of each other.

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Weirdest Movie
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Oct 03 - 05:12 PM

Then too, if we could just get Jimmy back with a time machine and have him star opposite Jennifer Lopez...my, my, just think of the possibilities! Ben Affleck would soon be "history", as they say.

Subject: RE: BS: Weirdest Movie
From: TheBigPinkLad
Date: 01 Oct 03 - 05:38 PM

Hmmm ... I've watched so many weird movies. Surprised no one mentioned 'After Hours' a great flick. Bill Forsyth's 'That Sinking Feeling' was both weird and awful. 'The Brother from Another Planet' was strange. I loved the weirdness of 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead' and I thought it weird that in 'My dinner with Andre' the waiter didn't kill them both after the first ten minutes. I would have ...

weirdly yours ...

Subject: RE: BS: Weirdest Movie
From: Jeri
Date: 01 Oct 03 - 05:48 PM

Willie-O, see Anatomy of an Axe Murder (haha) about the Smuttynose murders. There's a link on that page to John Perrault's "The Ballad of Louis Wagner." Women axe murderers just seem more trendy than men.

Subject: RE: BS: Weirdest Movie
From: Peter T.
Date: 01 Oct 03 - 06:15 PM

I don't really understand the criticism of Jimmy Stewart. Even in "The Rare Breed" he was pretty interesting. A consummate actor: someone who can range from The Philadelphia Story to Vertigo is no slouch. His westerns (especially the ones from the Winchester Story on by Antony Mann) are extraordinarily good -- Stewart often playing against type.
I can't think of a pure talk, talk, talk movie of his (Bell, Book, and Candle comes to mind, which is a terrible movie, but it has good things in it, like Kim Novak in a tight dress, although it could be her dullest, most mannered performance ever).

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: BS: Weirdest Movie
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 01 Oct 03 - 06:59 PM

Luis Buñuel has done some weird ones. I've seen "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" (1972), "The Phantom of Liberty" (1974) and "That Obscure Object of Desire" (1977), all of which were weird, but after all these years, I find they sort of run together in my memory, so I'm not sure which is which.

One film I have in mind is about two men, a gynecologist and a pimp (!), who decide they are fed up with women, so they go set up housekeeping in a secluded country house to get away from them. It's mainly a satire on gender roles. It may be one of the 3 films I have just mentioned or a different one whose name I have forgotten. Does anyone recognize the plot?

Subject: RE: BS: Weirdest Movie
From: Joybell
Date: 01 Oct 03 - 07:51 PM

Thanks Mike and all is forgiven - the beer in the fridge and all.

I know we are all running off in all directions over this thread but how can you help it when favourite movies is such a passion- filled subject. What about Hertzog - everything he made was wierd. "Heart of Glass" is the one I find the weirdest. Were they really using human blood as the secret ingredient of their "Ruby Glass"?

Subject: RE: BS: Weirdest Movie
From: Naemanson
Date: 01 Oct 03 - 08:49 PM

"Drowning By Numbers" is the name, I think. There was a recent film with a similar name. The one I'm thinking of starts with a woman coming home to find her husband asleep in a bathtub with a naked woman. She seats herself at the head of the tub and then, after some quiet deliberation, gently pushes his head under the water. After drowning her husband she uses a wheelbarrow to deliever the husband's drunken lover to her home.

Her grown daughters learn of this event and each decides to drown their husband. The local coroner has a totally wierd son. In the end the coroner decides he knows what is going on and is about to put the finger on the women, figuratively and really, when they drown him.

My second nominee for totally wierd is "Pi". Never understood that one.

My daughter and I like to go to the video store and find those movies that are so bad they are good. "Death Race 2000" was one of those as was "Dead Space". These are movies where you can see the zipper in the monster suit.

Subject: RE: BS: Weirdest Movie
From: izzy
Date: 01 Oct 03 - 08:54 PM

2001. What is that weird ending supposed to mean?

Also Fitzcarraldo by Werner Herzog (Irishman tries to build an opera house in the middle of the Amazonian jungle).

Subject: RE: BS: Weirdest Movie
From: Sam L
Date: 01 Oct 03 - 08:55 PM

I once saw a film of william carlos williams's story The Witch, called "aura" I think, and it was dubbed through 3 or four languages, which gave it an odd, underwater quality. The story and subject didn't do anything special but it was charmingly weird.

I liked Gummo pretty well. I thought Henry And June was very weird and couldn't understand why it was made, unless with a hidden agenda to make some literary folk seem pretty grotesque and cartoonish. Was it like Barton Fink, without the mastery? Why would those guys make a lampoon of a witer like Clifford Odets who no one pays much attention to anyway? Biopics about writers and artists seem to harbor weird intentions, I guess.

No one has mentioned Storytelling. I liked Happiness, didn't get Magnolia much at all. Ponderous soundtrack, themes of forgiveness, frogs. I thought Shortcuts was weird, left out everything that could've mattered in each and every story line--why?

There were some other weird ones on my mind but I can't think of them now.

Subject: RE: BS: Weirdest Movie
From: GUEST,pdq
Date: 01 Oct 03 - 09:20 PM

Welcome back Fred! Glad ya found a cookie!

I would mention "The Magic Christian" except my girl friend made me leave soon after is started. What I saw was weird.

Subject: RE: BS: Weirdest Movie
From: alison
Date: 01 Oct 03 - 09:30 PM

another vote for "Eraserhead" and "Barton Fink"

and that absolutely awful "Vanilla sky" with Tom Cruise..... what the hell was that supposed to be about?

slainte

alison

Subject: RE: BS: Weirdest Movie
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Oct 03 - 11:31 PM

amelie.

billy the kid meets dracula.

Subject: RE: BS: Weirdest Movie
From: Metchosin
Date: 02 Oct 03 - 12:45 AM

Aw gee, I didn't find Fitzcarraldo nor The Magic Christian weird....wonder what that makes me? Fitzcarraldo is a wonderfully heroic epic of a fine madness, at least on the director's part to even make the film.

The Magic Christian was just a film that poked fun at people's greed and obsession with social status.

Subject: RE: BS: Weirdest Movie
From: Coyote Breath
Date: 02 Oct 03 - 01:49 AM

Oh I know there is a large gap between Baum's books and the film versions . I still LIKE the W of O, it just struck me as... strange.

Barton Fink, indeed. Eraserhead, yes! Brazil, definately. Here's another, maybe not so weird but very funny; Putney Swope.

CB

Subject: RE: BS: Weirdest Movie
From: MAG
Date: 02 Oct 03 - 01:50 AM

Just saw Cold Water Creek and it is stupid-weird. don't waste your money. I thought with Dennis Quaid it was worth a try. Wrong.

Fighting Temptations was also about the tritest hackneyed plot line ever but I ended up liking it anyway -- just the music, I think. went to see it just because of Chuck Larsen's bit part. Chuck was one of the prominent storytellers who dies last spring and he was the guy playing the nose flute at choir auditions. Weird.

Subject: RE: BS: Weirdest Movie
From: Little Hawk
Date: 02 Oct 03 - 12:38 PM

"The Magic Christian" was quite enjoyable, I thought.

Wouldn't it be great to see a double feature of "Billy the Kid Meets Dracula" and "Frankenstein vs Jesse James"? I wonder if the same studio made both films?

"Vanilla Sky" was pretty bad. Sort of an endurance test to sit through that one, although I found the dark-haired actress kind of interesting.

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Weirdest Movie
From: JennyO
Date: 02 Oct 03 - 12:38 PM

Has anyone yet mentioned "The Bedsitting Room" with Spike Milligan, Rita Tushingham and Peter Cook as God. Now that was weird!

Jenny

Subject: RE: BS: Weirdest Movie
From: GUEST
Date: 02 Oct 03 - 01:38 PM

Eraserhead, hands down. Having watched it three times (maybe more), once drug-influenced, twice(maybe more) not. My wife and I have a look that we send each other at certain unexplainable, un-understandable events that take place in our life together; the origin of this look is the first time we watched Eraserhead; a look that is befuddled, bemused and totally confused. Maybe one more time(maybe more) and I'll get it.
Most of David Lynch, most of John Waters, especially "Pink Flamingos"(actually watched it all the way through). "The Day of the Triffids"...I know I'm mixing weird movies that didn't work with ones that did, but just thinking about Eraserhead has me re-be-fuddled. "Memento" weird but good. Another vote for "Frogs"-reeeeallly bad! "The Incredible Two-Headed Monster", and "The Thing With Two Heads" (one with Casey Kasem the other with Rosie Greer), "The Brain That Wouldn't Die"...O.k. sci-fi is supposed to be weird, I agree...and there does seem to be a history of 'meant-to-be-bad' sci-fi movies, so....maybe more later pbb

Subject: RE: BS: Weirdest Movie
From: GUEST,stewball
Date: 02 Oct 03 - 03:03 PM

Anyone ev er see "El Topo"? I'd love to see it again, as i saw it when first released (1972?). Still haven't forgotten its weirdness.

I only got half way through "Mulholland" when my DVD player got sick and never recovered. I was getting sick, too.

Subject: RE: BS: Weirdest Movie
From: Mrrzy
Date: 03 Oct 03 - 11:35 AM

I saw Liquid Sky in college and thought it was the weirdest movie ever until just recently I saw something called Demonlover, about japanese cyberporn and french shinanigans amongst the people either funding a website or not... highly recommended as a very, very strange way to spend a couple of hours. NOT boring but certainly not what I would think of as "worth" seeing...

Subject: RE: BS: Weirdest Movie
From: GUEST
Date: 03 Oct 03 - 11:39 AM

picnic at hanging rock

terry gilliam's 12 monkeys

Subject: RE: BS: Weirdest Movie
From: LilyFestre
Date: 03 Oct 03 - 06:52 PM

The Rocky Horror Picture Show.....tons of fun to participate in, but the movie itself definately fits into my idea of a weird movie!!!! Do they still show it at the late late night movie theatres on a weekly basis? I used to go frequently in Rhode Island (there was quite the regular *if you could call us regular* crowd...haven't seen it being played in a theatre for years!

Michelle

Subject: RE: BS: Weirdest Movie
From: GUEST,Mickey191
Date: 03 Oct 03 - 07:51 PM

Eraserhead does it for me. Anyone recall the name of flic about an English kid who likes to poison people. Think he starts out with Mum because she coughs to much. Totally weird, but fascinating.

Subject: RE: BS: Weirdest Movie
From: Amos
Date: 03 Oct 03 - 08:10 PM

It is still going strong around here -- Barky, who just graduated from that phase, must have gone to it about eleven times, knew all the cues, borrowed our lighters, etc. Never quite grokked it myself.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Weirdest Movie
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 03 Oct 03 - 08:41 PM

Some people seem to be using weird to mean terrible, others to mean really worth seeing again because there is something you want to make sense of that you couldn't quite get the first time. The second meaning seems the interesting one to me, because it leads to people mentioning movies that are worth seeing.   

Saw one yesterday where I'm not sure which category it fitted in - "Adaptation." I suspect it's actually both - a movie where you need to see it a couple of times to work out what it's all about, but at the end it might turn out it's not really about much. But maybe...

But James Stewart boring? Talk boring in a movie? What I find boring is car chases and big explosions and special effects out of video games that keep on reminding you they are special effects. Good special effects are unobtrusive, so you take them as real, and find yourself at the end looking through the cast list to see who played that strange creature.

Subject: RE: BS: Weirdest Movie
From: GUEST,pdq
Date: 03 Oct 03 - 09:23 PM

McGrath - If you can find one post where the words "boring" and "talk" are found along with "Jimmy Stewart" in this thread, I will buy you any CD you want and pay shipping to Essex.

Subject: RE: BS: Weirdest Movie
From: MAG
Date: 03 Oct 03 - 10:27 PM

Thread creep here. I just (re)saw Gandhi last night, and the actress who played the British disciple -- Mirabehn? -- looked a lot like the tall blue thing on Farscape. Which I can only watch when visiting, as I have no TV. Was the same actress in Beach (w/ DiCaprio)? Now, that was weird -terrible. So was the faux-silent clip in the middle of Portrait of a Lady.

Subject: RE: BS: Weirdest Movie
From: LadyJean
Date: 03 Oct 03 - 11:38 PM

The title of the movie is, "Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter"! She also makes monsters, out of bits of dead people. It is truly unique.
"The Party" starring Peter Sellers is a strange movie, but it's hilarious. There's maybe 20 minutes of dialogue in the whole film, but Sellars is wonderfully funny.

Subject: RE: BS: Weirdest Movie
From: Sam L
Date: 04 Oct 03 - 12:27 AM

I thought Adaptation was quite coherent, first time through, and was pretty good. But I think it's logic outpaced the feel of it. Somehow the resolution didn't feel quite satisfying, despite that it was funny and observant and made sense.

   The Clan of The Cave Bear. Darryl Hannah plays a... what? I can't recall--a more evolved female among neanderthals? Finally someone had the guts to address these social issues of conflict between pre-historic evolutionary types. Darryl Hannah is generally fun for attempts to revive her career through weird choices.

   One thing I love about Jimmy Stewart talking in movies is the one raised arm, signaling that although he's just standing there, he may be about to do something, any minute. I suppose it's an old stagey acting device. C3PO may have learned it from Stewart--I think they were drinking buddies, before they made it big in film.

Weird early De Niro, called Hi Mom.

Eyes Wide Shut. How can so many naked women be so boring?

When I feel ill, and suspect I'm dying of something or other, a documentary about Jerry Garcia has a weird therapeutic effect, leaves me feeling pretty darn good.

   Jesco the dancing outlaw..

Other weird bits. In Gummo the actress Chloe Sevigny was also the wardrobe designer. Also, she has several times played a character who contracts an std on her first time. Kids, Last Days of Disco, and something I can't remember.

It's fun and weird what sorts of things actors return to in various roles, like Meryl Streep's collection of maternal issues.

Subject: RE: BS: Weirdest Movie
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 04 Oct 03 - 11:21 AM

Well, the word "boring" isn't actually used, pdq, but I think Little Hawk got the sense across fairly unambiguously:

"I have wondered for years how audiences could put up with those interminable Jimmy Stewart movies where people talk and talk and talk and talk....and very little else ever happens. After all, even listening to Jimmy Stewart ramble on for a mere five minutes or so could easily drive me to considering death by gerbil inhalation."

Subject: RE: BS: Weirdest Movie
From: Little Hawk
Date: 04 Oct 03 - 12:21 PM

Couldn't agree with you more about the dumb special effects movies, McGrath.

But regarding James Stewart...it's not the fact that he talks so much that bothers me. I often like movies with lots of dialogue. It's the way he talks that bothers me. :-) I'd almost rather die by skink inhalation than have to sit through 2 or 3 more hours of that. I think he has less charisma than Don Knotts.

It's a matter of taste, I guess. I love Bogart.

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Weirdest Movie
From: GUEST,pdq
Date: 04 Oct 03 - 12:33 PM

Sorry Little Hawk, but skinks are no longer common. Please inhale the common fence lizard, if you would.

About dialogue, there isn't much to a movie except action and dialogue. Charlton Heston and Jimmy Stewart are two of the most ingraciating speakers in the history of cinema. IMHO, of course.

Subject: RE: BS: Weirdest Movie
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 04 Oct 03 - 12:49 PM

And it's the way Jimmy Stewart talks that I find irresistible. Same with Bogart.

Subject: RE: BS: Weirdest Movie
From: GUEST,pdq
Date: 04 Oct 03 - 01:03 PM

Please add Charlton Heston to those two. All three can read a phone book and out-class most of the young snots in Hollywood today. Soylent Green and all of Heston's "Planet of the Apes" movies deserve a vote for weird. He was also Hitchcock's favorite American actor.

Subject: RE: BS: Weirdest Movie
From: Thomas the Rhymer
Date: 04 Oct 03 - 01:32 PM

"Vanilla Sky" is a verbatim remake of "Open Your Eyes"... try the origional... It is amazing to me how one can copy an interestingly obsure movie so closely... and spoil it so subtilly...

Subject: RE: BS: Weirdest Movie
From: GUEST,Peter Woodruff
Date: 04 Oct 03 - 05:05 PM

"Pi" is a wierd movie. So is "Hell comes to Frogtown," "A Boy and his Dog," "Tank Girl," "City of Lost Children," and "Cabeza da Vaca."

Subject: RE: BS: Weirdest Movie
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 04 Oct 03 - 06:49 PM

in·gra·ti·ate (ĭn-grā′shē-āt′) tr.v. in·gra·ti·at·ed, in·gra·ti·at·ing, in·gra·ti·ates. To bring (oneself, for example) into the favor or good graces of another, especially by deliberate effort.

GUEST,pdq: Is that the word you had in mind?

Subject: RE: BS: Weirdest Movie
From: GUEST,pdq
Date: 04 Oct 03 - 07:10 PM

I meant to say that Heston displays "grace" in the common (non-religious) sense of the word. Any help mastering the English language is always graciuosly appreciated, especially on Mudcat.

Subject: RE: BS: Weirdest Movie
From: Little Hawk
Date: 04 Oct 03 - 08:02 PM

Well, Gregory Peck was another actor with a marvelous way of speaking...

Subject: RE: BS: Weirdest Movie
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 04 Oct 03 - 08:28 PM

If weird means good in a way that surprises you, Preston Sturgess ranks high. Especially "Sullivan's Travels" (from which "O Brother Where Art Thou" took its title, and a key scene as well).

Subject: RE: BS: Weirdest Movie
From: GUEST,reggie miles
Date: 05 Oct 03 - 08:20 AM

Thanks Jim Nixon, I've been going nutz tryin' to figure out what the name of that movie was. I saw a piece of it on tv a while back and wanted to find a copy to watch at the video store but could not remember what it was called. The small amount of it that I saw would definitely qualify it as weird in my book. There's a writer in it who has a typewriter that comes alive.

Subject: RE: BS: Weirdest Movie
From: GUEST,reggie miles
Date: 05 Oct 03 - 08:55 AM

Oops! I meant Dixon, really!! It's early morning here and I'm not awake enough to be posting.

Subject: RE: BS: Weirdest Movie
From: Willie-O
Date: 05 Oct 03 - 05:31 PM

Vanilla Sky was the worst pointless excercise in something-or-other I've seen in a long long time. I couldn't sit through it, and there were a lot of occasions when there was nothing else on satellite...so I tried. Of course, I am predisposed to hate anything Tom Cruise is in. But after the wonderful "Almost Famous" I expected better of Cameron Crowe. It did have the other Cameron (Diaz) uttering the worst x-rated (or not x-rated) line I've ever heard in a movie: "I swallowed your come! Doesn't that mean something to you!?"

Liquid Sky was a kind of interesting movie--a low-budget sci-fi cultural critique of NYC drug culture which was a Russian made oddity for the time.

Subject: RE: BS: Weirdest Movie
From: SINSULL
Date: 05 Oct 03 - 06:39 PM

"Rhinoceras" (or ...us)with Gene Wilder.

I would love a copy and an explanation. Every time he turned around, someone turned into a rhino.

Subject: RE: BS: Weirdest Movie
From: Little Hawk
Date: 05 Oct 03 - 06:49 PM

Too bad he didn't live in Ontario. We could send him to the next Conservative Party leadership convention.

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Weirdest Movie
From: Charley Noble
Date: 05 Oct 03 - 08:08 PM

My all-time weird favorite remains LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD. If you'd like a recent review:click here

I'm not even sure why I like it.;~)

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: Weirdest Movie
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 05 Oct 03 - 08:49 PM

Around 1967-68, I was in a college production of Eugène Ionesco's "Rhinoceros," which was written around 1960. Existentialist philosophy and Theater of the Absurd was all the rage then. It hasn't held up very well, has it?

Anyway, our working hypothesis was that the rhinoceroses represented Nazis. Why, you might ask, was it necessary to resort to allegory when writing about Nazis in 1960? I'm wondering the same thing right now, and I don't have an answer.

Subject: RE: BS: Weirdest Movie
From: Charley Noble
Date: 05 Oct 03 - 09:36 PM

Ji,-

Not necessarily Nazis in 1960. We had our own home-grown Red-Scare witch-hunters.

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: Weirdest Movie
From: AliUK
Date: 05 Oct 03 - 10:17 PM

"High Plains Drifter" springs to mind as a weird, trippy movie. I always loved it purely as a western, but had to watch it several times to really get my head round it as it took several cliches and gave them a wicked twist, including Clint Eastwood´s amoral hero/anti-hero character. Speaking of Clint;the one where he plays a union soldier holed up in a southern girl´s school ( where he manages to shag more than one of them, even with only one leg) also stays in my mind as a weird movie. I remember seeing it for the first time on channel four when they had the red triangle movies ( remember those?). though the name completely escapes me now.