For the site, I'm going to have all the films ranked in the Abstract List here, with a link for easy access to the reviews. The original, full thoughts on how the blog works can be found here. For this however, I'll just add from it the following rankings found on all the reviews but with new descriptions that suit my thoughts on this blog now:
Potential Examples – A Chinese Ghost Story; Ichi the Killer; Lady In The Lake
A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies/Series) follows on that one of my first loves, horror stories, should have their own segment. Any which qualify for the abstract list will not be included and numbered as such to avoid confusion, whilst this will be more inclined towards the more obscure and peculiar sides of a genre which can have a lot of dreck but also a lot of idiosyncrasy. Horror tales have existed since the start of cinema, let alone television, in many countries and formats, so its going to bring up some fascinating work as well as a lot that perplexes.
Ephemeral Archives is for the strange aspects of motion picture history that count in none of the above and may not even be covered in most blogs. Some, like cancelled television series, make sense but this is to dive into the curiosities and dismissed territories of motion images, from the instructional videos to conspiracy documentaries, that have been forgotten or get cut together in compilation videos by the likes of Everything is Terrible to American Genre Film Archive. Think of it as all the material which is churned out each year since the medium's origins, scutanised with a morbidness and hopefully with a few gems found along the way. It is not necessarily work to be tracked down for you the reader to watch, but my interest in just how much was released on video, DVD etc.
The blog will also include old Archive materials, be they old work of mine from the long gone blog Videotape Swapshop, unfinished notes and other materials. It might seem vain to upload any old notes, but especially contrasted with newer reviews, it would be fascinating to paint a picture of a work being reviewed in what stuck out in the past.
Death Bed: The Bed That Eats (George Barry, 1977) - Review
The legendary man eating bed film. Not the joke others make it out to be, but a self aware and idiosyncratic gem which literally came from a dream and suddenly appeared in public awareness, after bootlegged obscurity, like one too.
Forbidden Room, The (Guy Maddin and Evan Johnson 2015) - Review
After performing seances for the souls of lost or unfinished films, one of Canada's best imports (with co-director Evan Johnson in tow) gets possessed as a result, and spills out a Chinese puzzle box, starting with a group of men in a submarine that somehow leads to vampiric bananas and Udo Kier's mustache.
Gozu (Takashi Miike, 2003) - Review
Ozaki in Wonderland. Where one yakuzu looking for his mentor's body encounters cow headed creatures, strange tracksuit wearing old men obsessed with the weather, excessive lactation and unexpected use of ladles.
Hausu (Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1977) - Review
Everyone's favorite Japanese oddity involving watermelon heads, homicidal futons and people turning suddenly into a pile of bananas. The tale of schoolgirls being terrorized by a haunted house made to be a blockbuster for Japan and fed by the imagination of the director's teenage daughter.
Heroic Purgatory (Yoshishige Yoshida, 1970) - Review
Yoshida's cryptic psychodrama, stuck outside of time, where a communist cell cannibalizes its own.
Inferno (Dario Argento, 1980) - Review
The sequel to Suspiria (1977) manages to equal the original film's colour saturated delirium as you follow multiple characters, not just one, learn of the the Three Mothers who torment the world when figures accidentally learn of their existence, and try to avoid being eaten to death by rats.
Last Year At Marienbad (Alain Resnais, 1960) - Review
One of the shining lights of French New Wave cinema and a shining light of modern French literature Alain Robbe-Grillet collaborate on a puzzle about a man called X who may have known a woman called Y a year ago but cannot be sure, lost in a hotel that seems to be stuck in a time loop. The result led to debates to what cinema was back when it was premiered in French cinema and still raises questions today.
Szindbád (Zoltán Huszárik, 1971) - Review
The dying memories of a womaniser in turn-of-the-century Hungary as seen in a kaleidoscope of visuals, thoughts and sensuality.
Things (Andrew Jordan, 1989) - Review
Two Canadian horror film fans decide to make a film but have no idea how to. Thus a legendarily and infamous shot-on-video movie was born where people assault rubber bugs with an electric drill, a Salvador Dali painting presumed lost is found in someone's home, and the saturated VHS de-gloss as you watch it will mess with your eyes. Probably the only film where a porn star, Amber Lynn, technically qualifies as a overseeing narrator of the film as a reporter but is more interested in talking about the legal issues with Night of the Living Dead (1968) instead of making sense of it all.
Two Or Three Things I Know About Her (Jean-Luc Godard, 1967) - Review
Jean-Luc Godard assesses France in 1967, turning cinema into an audio-texture essay that you'd have never seen back when it was first released and will never see from anyone else baring Godard himself.
Week End (Jean-Luc Godard, 1967) - Review
Godard follows a scorched earth policy on mainstream art cinema, which he wouldn't return to until 1980, by showing two hateful bourgeoisie get trapped in the weird Wonderland of French countryside motorways.
The Wolf House (Joaquín Cociña and Cristóbal León, 2018) - Review
A critique of the infamous colony set up in Chile by ex-Nazi Paul Schäfer by way of a faked propaganda fairy tale told from their perspective. All entirely told through stop motion, paper-mâché, and literally animating the walls and furniture.
Dogtooth (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2009) - Review
A Greek couple decides to keep their three adult children enclosed in their own closed in and controlled environment within their house and garden, where language is different from ours, domesticated cats are savage monsters and a videotape of a Stallone film can ruin this tiny reality completely.
Evil Dead Trap II (Izô Hashimoto, 1992) - Review
In which the messy body horror-slasher prequel is ditched entirely for a slow burn, increasingly off toned drama about a female projectionist who kills other women, her vain female reporter friend and a mysterious married man are caught in a romantic love triangle. Than things get weird in the final act when chronology decides to eat itself.
Evil Within, The (Andrew Getty, 2017) - Review
The story of Andrew Getty, heir of the legendary Getty family, who spent years and most of his own personal fortune to take his nightmares and create a horror film from them, a film finished beyond his abrupt death. The film itself? Questionable depiction of learning disabilities, erratic plotting, incredible practical effects, and utterly unique.
Evolution (Lucile Hadžihalilović, 2015) - Review
Nautical themed body horror of the subtlest sort filtered through a feminist and feminine lenses, of motherhood and starfish suckers.
Eyes Without A Face (Georges Franju, 1960) - Review
Franju's legendary horror film, appearing on cult and art film fans' viewing lists equally, follows a surgeon desiring to rectify a disfigurement of his daughter by way of kidnapping other young women and removing their faces from an improvised skin transplant.
Fall of the House of Usher, The (James Sibley Watson and Melville Webber, 1928) - Review
Not to be confused with the Jean Epstein film from the same year, this is an abstract take on the Edgar Allen Poe story that drifts off from the original text into something of its own.
Flexing With Monty (John Albo, 1994/2010) - Review
John Albo's once unfinished and unavailable revenge tale oddity in which Trevor Goddard flexes his muscles and humps a polar bear in arseless leather chaps, all whilst his brother played by Rudi Davis has strange dreams about his mother and becoming pregnant, and Sally Kirkland bares all as a nun with a strange view of environmental issues and Christian dogma who slips into their lives.
Flying Luna Clipper, The (Ikko Ono, 1987) - Review
Made entirely from 8-bit technology of a video game console only released in Japan, this hour long film follows the ultimate dream vacation where your fellow passengers are animal people or have fruit for heads.
Footprints On The Moon (Luigi Bazzoni (and Mario Fanelli), 1975) - Review
An obscure gem of the seventies Italian genre boom. Somehow it manages to make its moon themed title make sense despite being set completely on Earth and about a woman who cannot remember the few days before, adding to its mysterious tone. Also includes an unexpected Klaus Kinski cameo.
Funeral Parade of Roses (Matsumoto Toshio, 1969) - Review
A picture of Japan's left wing and gay/transgender communities in the late 60s, through a myth inspired story of jealousy, direct questions to the actors about gender orientation, avant-garde techniques and sped up cat fights.
Jar, The (Bruce Toscano, 1984) - Review
The bizarre independent one-off where a man acquires a jar with a pickled creature within it, only to be unable to get rid of it and find himself hallucinating many a scenario.
Keyhole (Guy Maddin, 2011) - Review
Guy Maddin's crime drama haunted house film, replete with taxidermy wolverines and perversity for all the family.
Lemonade Joe (Oldřich Lipský, 1964) - Review
Czeck musical western parody of silent cinema and Western consumerism.
Malatesta's Carnival of Blood (Christopher Speeth, 1973) - Review
A carnival where Hervé Villechaize suddenly appears at the shooting gallery and cannibals who watch old silent movies lived underground beneath the Tunnel of Love.
Mononoke (Kenji Nakamura, 2007/TV Series) - Review
A spin-off of another horror anthology series which became more famous by itself, in which a mysterious medicine man travels around period Japan exorcising monsters and ghosts that have transgressed the barriers between them and the mortal. One for the eyes.
Nightmares Come at Night (Jesús Franco, 1970) - Review
Franco's tale of hallucination, murder and sex built as if from pieces of every film from those he just made in 1970, yet its own curious creation.
Ninth Configuration, The (William Peter Blatty, 1980) - Review
The Exorcist author's difficult writer/director debut about theology, altruism, Robert Loggia in a space suit, and re-staging Shakespeare's plays with an entire cast of dogs.
Nude Vampire, The (Jean Rollin, 1970) - Review
Suicide cults, pulp influences, deer masked guards, vampires with torches attacking a country home, and somehow a more plot driven film from Jean Rollin is actually more unconventional than the more minimalist films he made.
O is for Orgasm (Bruno Forzani and Héléne Cattet, 2012) - Review
From the anthology film The ABCs of Death. The directors of Amer (2009) depict an act of lovemaking that takes a turn for the worse. Whether anyone emits bubbles from their mouth when they orgasm or not for real shouldn't spoil the short.
Paprika (Satoshi Kon, 2006) - Review
Tragically the last film of the legendary Satoshi Kon, still young in his later forties in the anime industry, a conspiracy sci-fi adventure about a machine that lets people enter other's dreams for therapy and what happens if criminals use it to blurring reality, leading to a sumptuous audio-visual buffet of surrealism.
Pi (Darren Aronofsky, 1998) - Review
Before embarrassing himself with mother! (2017), Aronofsky's tale of a mathematician who may have discovered God's True Name was the idiosyncratic and existential film he should be more known for.
Prisoner, The (Patrick McGoohan, Pat Jackson, Don Chaffey, David Tomblin, Robert Asher and Peter Graham Scott, 1967-68/TV Series) - Review
The legendary and bizarre ITV series, and Patrick McGowen's personal existential oddity, as he wanders The Village and wonders who No. 1 is.
Psyched by the 4D Witch (A Tale of Demonology) (Victor Luminera, 1973) - Review
Urban myth tells that this was a film reel found on the site where the Manson family lived. The truth - a deranged collage of softcore scenes which feel like the hardcore is cut out, in which a nubile collage student accidentally becomes the conduit for a 17th century witch who pulls her to perversion - is evidence of it being stranger than fiction.
Régime sans pain (Raul Ruiz, 1985) - Review
Once a music video project between legendary workaholic Chilean director Raul Ruiz and the musical duo Angel & Maimone; the final result turned into a feature long dystopian drama of a former ruler, wiped of his memories, re-entering the competition to become the new ruler even if it means having to borrow the right clothing from a dead man in a burning car, and relearning to sing through a monk's convent who only allow parrots now as members.
Repulsion (Roman Rolanski, 1965) - Review
Polanski's legendary psychological horror film about Catherine Deneuve losing more and more of her sense of reality in a London flat.
Rubber (Quentin Dupieux, 2010) - Review
A celebration of the "no reason" in cinema by way of a sentient car tire that can blow peoples' heads off with psychic powers. Part of the "no reason" monologue that starts the film is now the blog's motto.
Shogun Assassin (Robert Houston & Misumi Kenji, 1980) - Review
The first parts of a legendary samurai film series, based on a legendary manga, gets re-made for an American audience. The result, with its eighties synth and emphasis on decapitations, turned out to be unexpectedly hypnotic and wonderful as a result.
Strange Hostel of Naked Pleasures, The (Marcelo Motta and José Mojica Marins, 1976) - Review
Letting legendary Brazilian horror figure Coffin Joe run a hostel will naturally lead to horror, ruminations of death, recycled footage, an inflamed colour palette and a monologue about existence placed over images of model planets hung on wire.
Teenage Hooker Became A Killing Machine (Gee-woong Nam 2000) - Review
Art house, shot on video aesthetic, splatter, softcore and all manner of things stewed together in a one hour oddity about a teenage hooker who, as the title says, is turned into a killer cyborg.
Under The Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2013) - Review
Scarlett Johansson is an alien siren who tempts men in urban Scotland in one of the most unnerving and sensory British films made in a long while.
Uzumaki (Higuchinsky, 2000) - Review
A deeply flawed but utterly admirable attempt to adapt Junji Ito's legendary manga about a small Japan town gripped in the evil influence of the spiral symbol.
Valhalla Rising (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2009) - Review
Mads Mikkelsen storms the Scottish highlands in a mystical Viking film.
Videodrome (David Cronenberg, 1983) - Review
If you watch too much violent television, you end up with a vaginal cavity growing in your chest people can stick pulsating VHS tapes into, and wind up in the middle of a political conspiracy involving television being the mind's eye.
City of the Living Dead (Lucio Fulci, 1980) - Review
The beginning of Lucio Fulci's Gates of Hell trilogy, expect teleporting zombies, maggot rain and the same dread of a HP Lovecraft story.
Clowns, The (Federico Fellini, 1970) - Review
The legendary Italian director's ode to the history of clowns, made for television but losing none of his extravagance.
Computer Chess (Andrew Bujalski, 2013) - Review
When early eighties computer systems designed to play chess develop self awareness and there's an inexplicable amount of cats in your hotel corridor.
Dead Leaves (Hiroyuki Imaishi, 2004) - Review
Imaishi's debut follows two amnesiacs attempted a prison break on the moon, already running out of the starting gate with the brand of manic energy, likable and strange characters, and poo jokes he'd used to make smash hit anime shows like Kill la Kill (2012).
Death May Be Your Santa Claus (Frankie Dymon Jr, 1969) - Review
One if not the only works from the British side of the Black Power movement of the time, tackling the issues of race in late sixties Britain and miscegenation through documentary footage, inter-cutting monologues and unexpected penis eating.
Death of Stalinism In Bohemia, The (Jan Švankmajer, 1991) - Review
The end of communism and the Soviet Union's influence on his home country leads the legendary animator/director to make his sole, openly political animation where the statue of Stalin gives birth to Czech communist party leaders directly from his head, and clay figures are made and then hung in a cyclical conveyor belt.
Death Powder (Shigeru Izumiya 1986) - Review
The sole directorial credit of folk singer/actor Izumiya and one of the first Japanese cyberpunk films to be made. Sperm are superimposed on images of buildings, and that's even before a character gets hit by a hallucinogenic mutation powder and the film becomes one long dream sequence.
Death Spa (Michael Fischa, 1989) - Review
A gym becomes possessed by the co-owner's ex-wife. Or is it just her twin brother responsible for the tiles flying off the walls in the women's showers?
Dementia [The "Daughter of Horror" Cut] (John Parker, 1955) - Review
From the bowels of American independently made films and grindhouse cinema, director-writer John Parker only made one film, about a woman going through a film noir nightmare where cops have her abusive father's face and a trip to a jazz club suddenly drift off into a graveyard journey, only to vanish from existence.
Rise And Fall Of A Small Film Company (Jean-Luc Godard, 1986) - Review
Dug up from the vast back catalog of Godard's prolific career and restored for public viewing, a French TV series episode at a feature length which promised an adaptation of James Hadley Chase's crime novel The Soft Centre, but instead gives you a meta-farce with Jean-Pierre Léaud creating ritualistic extra casting sessions whilst Jean-Pierre Mocky as his producer laments not being able to fund even a cheap TV production.
Sadist With Red Teeth, The (Jean Louis Van Belle, 1970) - Review
One man believes he is a vampire, and as his doctors push him into becoming one, the director above this plays with the content like a mischievous child.
Santa Sangre (Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1989) - Review
Jodorowsky's psychodrama about a man who has to act as the arms of his mother, violent and as dynamic as a carnival.
Scanners (David Cronenberg, 1981) - Review
Cronenberg's almost dreamlike sci-fi thriller about psychics and Michael Ironside chewing scenery like a boss.
Seconds (John Frankenheimer, 1966) - Review
A paranoid, sobering sci-fi drama that came out-of-nowhere from the Hollywood studios, where a man is offered the chance to becoming Rock Hudson but still finds his life meaningless.
See You In Hell, My Darling (Nikos Nikolaidis, 1999) - Review
Two women, and their shared male lover, find themselves in purgatory in the form of a lavish home with a swimming pool, unable to leave and still with the money they stole coming in-between them.
Shivers of the Vampires (Jean Rollin, 1971) - Review
A newly married couple meet the wife's cousins only to discover a nest of vampires. One of the many films French cult director Jean Rollin that'll end up on the Abstract List.
Skullduggery (Ota Richter, 1983) - Review
Bizarre Canuxploitation slasher more concerned with bizarre background jokes, Dungeon & Dragon paranoia and smoking gorilla doctors than the slice-and-dice tropes.
Spasmo (Umberto Lenzi, 1974) - Review
Lenzi's giallo film is a little off compared to its peers. Female mannequins are abruptly appearing around the Italian countryside in mock murder positions whilst Robert Hoffmann wonders why an assassin he killed during an adulterous night with a woman has suddenly vanished without trace from the hotel bathroom floor.
Taxidermia (György Pálfi, 2006) - Review
Following three generations of men in a single family, Hungarian director Pálfi by way of porn inserts, vomiting, taxidermy, speed eating and various taboos tackles the history of his country from World War II, the era of communism and the era after communism.
Tetsuo II: Body Hammer (Shinya Tsukamoto, 1992) - Review
Tsukamoto's divisive first sequel to Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989) which may have more virtue than it has credit for.
Touch of Death (Lucio Fulci, 1988) - Review
A Lucio Fulci deep cut from later in his career; feeling like it was made in another dimension, his comedic horror splatter farce in which a man dates lonely, rich women and murders them for their wealth.
TV Wheel, The (1995/TV Pilot) - Review
The failed TV pilot for Mystery Science Theatre 3000 creator Joel Hodgson's peculiar recreation of live comedy from his youth: sticking future figures of American comedy like director Paul Feig on a giant revolving stage with added puppets.
Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1959) - Review
The greatest film ever made according to Sight & Sound magazine, in which James Stewart becomes obsessed with recreating a woman in an eerie metaphor for perception corrupting one's mind in a melodrama Hitchcock potboiler.
Visitor, The (Giulio Paradisi (as Michael J. Paradise), 1979) - Review
The world is threatened by a young girl, armed with a pet bird and potent psychic powers, and a shady group of businessmen, and its down to the director of The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Franco Nero in a cameo as Space Christ to stop them. Cue exploding basketballs, ice skating accidents, and enough New Age stream of consciousness dialogue to cause one's head to spin.
Wild Boys, The (Bertrand Mandico, 2017) - Review
Bertrand Mandico's debut feature film, a tropical adventure film about boys (played by women) become women, whilst frolicking among the very suggestive wildlife.
Wild Palms (Peter Hewitt, Keith Gordon, Kathryn Bigelow and Phil Joanou, 1993) - Review
A bizarre post-Twin Peaks sci-fi mini series in which Jim Belushi must overcome cyber-immortality, hologram addiction, a sociopathic son, old flames and dreams of rhinoceroses inexplicably appearing in his kitchen.
Zardoz (John Boorman, 1974) - Review
The one and only infamous film from the director of Deliverance (1972) who got to make whatever film he wanted after that one did so well. What he gave us was Sean Connery in orange bikini briefs overcoming a giant floating stone head, New Age dialogue, a psychic and bored intelligentsia and Charlotte Rampling demonstrating his ability to get an erection in front of a large crowd. Some may be surprised by how low it is on the Abstract List, but that says for me how high the bar is for a movie to get up the rankings if this is at the bottom.
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Just because some of the films I've covered have been given None on the Abstract Rating scale doesn't mean they're not of interest. These are the ones that might intrigue as well*:
Aaaaaaaagh! (Steve Oram, 2015) - Review
A world in which England everyone acts like a primate yet still had washing machines and television.
Blind Woman's Curse (Teruo Ishii, 1970) - Review
Ishii's delirious chambara tale of ghost black cats, freak shows and Meiko Kaji
Blood Beast (Fabrice A. Zaphiratos, 1983) - Review
The curious Wisconsin based tale of a woman whose sexual desires explode into a murderous samurai stalking a family during a very hostile Christmas reunion.
The Bloodettes (Jean-Pierre Bekolo, 2005) - Review
A Cameroonian sci-fi tale in which two women find themselves having to dispose a body of a politician in a dystopian metropolis, leading to them being in the midst of a blackmail scheme that requires their smarts and the sacred art of the Mevoungou, a (real life) African custom derived from the female sex, for them to overcome
Blood Feast 2: All U Can Eat (Herschell Gordon Lewis, 2002) - Review
The legendary cult innovator of the splatter film finally makes a sequel to the 1963 film that created the sub genre; a bizarre quasi-remake with added humour, psychobilly music and nudity in which the grandson of the original antagonist is possessed to recreate the blood feast from fresh victims for a wedding reception.
Corpse Eaters (Donald R. Passmore and Klaus Vetter, 1974) - Review
A curious Canadian zombie splatter film from the bowls of seventies exploitation film making, a reminder to never go to a graveyard with friends and accidentally reenact a black magic ritual among the dead.
Dark Backwards, The (Adam Rifkin, 1991) - Review
Garbage man and failed comedian Marty Malt suddenly becomes an overnight sensation when a third arm grows out of his back.
Decent Woman, A (Lukas Valenta Rinner, 2016) - Review
A housemaid for a rich family finds harmony when she joins a New Age nudist commune in the neighborhood. Unfortunately when the rich suburbanites takes offense to their existence, this Argentinian farce inspired by the Greek Weird Wave of cinema shows when the conflict ramps up.
Abstract Rating:
High (Completely Unique) - The truly bizarre. The strange. The unrepeatable. Works which play with mood, structure, music, style, content or as many factors existent in ways you've never seen in film/motion art on purpose or by accident. They are films which create their own rules for themselves, even if they rift on the conventions of genre or areas within cinema’s canon that already exist. You won't forget them.
Potential Examples – Satantango and the later films of Bela Tarr; Kenneth Anger, Guy Maddin
Medium (Break Conventions) - Those that go against any conventions but still retain a lot of the style and moods of other films. They are not on the level of the ‘High’ entries, whose abstractness/weirdness is fully embraced, but the ‘Medium’ entries still push themselves to unexpected areas, and that doesn’t even mention the unintentional creations that manage to dumbfound the viewer by their accidents and mishaps.
Potential Examples – Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris; The Holy Mountain; Riddles of the Sphinx, Horrors of Malformed Men
Low (Flirt With Breaking Conventions) - Films that only exhibit some traits of the ideas I am exploring with this list. They are genre films, they are possibly experimental, they can be any type of film, but in comparison to the films in the higher ranks, wouldn't qualify for them. They may be great films, terrible films, but the ones that managed to make my list for clear reasons above the rest.
Potential Examples – A Chinese Ghost Story; Ichi the Killer; Lady In The Lake
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Types of Review
Not everything will be a film being covered for the Abstract list, and rather than have the blog entries not have the review's name, I will use the following to clarify which are which:
Abstract Film Candidates will not have any sub title to them in the technical information (director, cast, country of origin etc.), but will have the Abstract Spectrum and Rating scores at the end of the review.
Obscurities, Oddities and One-Offs will cover work that is not abstract but are idiosyncratic and odd pieces in the history of motion image history, from the curious tangents of famous directors, infamous disasters to peculiar experiments, and anything that lives up to those three terms in the name.
Canon Fodder will denote work which involves neither of the above but covers work from directors and figures of interest (actors etc.) who have contributed to the Abstract List and produced obscurities of note in their CVs, making sure to cover everything if available.
The blog will also include old Archive materials, be they old work of mine from the long gone blog Videotape Swapshop, unfinished notes and other materials. It might seem vain to upload any old notes, but especially contrasted with newer reviews, it would be fascinating to paint a picture of a work being reviewed in what stuck out in the past.
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Rankings
HIGH
*Corpus Callosum (Michael Snow, 2002) - Review
The Canadian avant-garde filmmaker explores the possibilities of digital animation to distort and pervert an office environment.
After Last Season (Mark Region, 2009) - Review
The one-off anti-film with primitive computer effects, anti-dialogue and cardboard props, or a personal mystical/sci-fi production? Probably both at the same time, but either way its meant to be a tale of a killer stalking a medical campus even if the results onscreen may vary in interpretation.
Alice (Jan Švankmajer, 1988) - Review
Švankmajer's adaptation of Alice in Wonderland is naturally the most surreal of them all, replete with a tactile world on display.
Amer (Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani, 2009) - Review
The experimental interpretation of Italian giallo films designed to be an audio and visual sensory experience to overwhelm the viewer. Watch it on the biggest screen possible.
Anti-Clock (Jane Arden and Jack Bond, 1979) - Review
A post-punk avant-garde drama in which, through the power of video and television screen technology, a man is put through an experimental therapy which filters through his memories and time itself.
Beyond, The (Lucio Fulci, 1981) - Review
One of the gates of Hell opens in New Orleans, leading to the most well known of Lucio Fulci's films, a dreamlike nightmare which gladly disregards logic for a chilling atmosphere.
Boogiepop Phantom (Takashi Watanabe, 2000) - Review
A piece of the vast franchise based around Kouhei Kadono's light novel series, of an unknown Japanese city filled with people mutating with strange abiltiies, horrifying entities stalking the back alleys and a figure known of Boogiepop a possible being of death. A TV anime series told in non-linear order, with context missing without the source material, but effective, backed by incredible plotting and music, and utterly exceptional.
Boro in the Box (Bertrand Mandico, 2011) - Review
Bertrand Mandico's biography of Polish filmmaker Walerian Borowczyk...if Borowczyk was born as a wooden box which grew limbs and a torso, and spent his time in Poland and French directing his erotic cinema with a living film camera...
Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The (Robert Wiene, 1920) - Review
One of the foundations of abstract cinema and subconsciously why I've ended up writing this blog in the first place. Somnambulists, murder, unsettling set design, and a twist done better than many films that borrowed it nearly a century later.
Cowards Bend The Knees (Or The Blue Hands) (Guy Maddin, 2003) - Review
The one-off anti-film with primitive computer effects, anti-dialogue and cardboard props, or a personal mystical/sci-fi production? Probably both at the same time, but either way its meant to be a tale of a killer stalking a medical campus even if the results onscreen may vary in interpretation.
Alice (Jan Švankmajer, 1988) - Review
Švankmajer's adaptation of Alice in Wonderland is naturally the most surreal of them all, replete with a tactile world on display.
Amer (Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani, 2009) - Review
The experimental interpretation of Italian giallo films designed to be an audio and visual sensory experience to overwhelm the viewer. Watch it on the biggest screen possible.
Anti-Clock (Jane Arden and Jack Bond, 1979) - Review
A post-punk avant-garde drama in which, through the power of video and television screen technology, a man is put through an experimental therapy which filters through his memories and time itself.
Beyond, The (Lucio Fulci, 1981) - Review
One of the gates of Hell opens in New Orleans, leading to the most well known of Lucio Fulci's films, a dreamlike nightmare which gladly disregards logic for a chilling atmosphere.
Boogiepop Phantom (Takashi Watanabe, 2000) - Review
A piece of the vast franchise based around Kouhei Kadono's light novel series, of an unknown Japanese city filled with people mutating with strange abiltiies, horrifying entities stalking the back alleys and a figure known of Boogiepop a possible being of death. A TV anime series told in non-linear order, with context missing without the source material, but effective, backed by incredible plotting and music, and utterly exceptional.
Boro in the Box (Bertrand Mandico, 2011) - Review
Bertrand Mandico's biography of Polish filmmaker Walerian Borowczyk...if Borowczyk was born as a wooden box which grew limbs and a torso, and spent his time in Poland and French directing his erotic cinema with a living film camera...
Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The (Robert Wiene, 1920) - Review
One of the foundations of abstract cinema and subconsciously why I've ended up writing this blog in the first place. Somnambulists, murder, unsettling set design, and a twist done better than many films that borrowed it nearly a century later.
Cowards Bend The Knees (Or The Blue Hands) (Guy Maddin, 2003) - Review
The Canadian director tackles sexual desires, revenge, murder and ice hockey. Originally split into a series of peepholes to see the whole story and manages to make murder and a scene of fisting seem poetic in a silent film influenced aesthetic.
Death Bed: The Bed That Eats (George Barry, 1977) - Review
The legendary man eating bed film. Not the joke others make it out to be, but a self aware and idiosyncratic gem which literally came from a dream and suddenly appeared in public awareness, after bootlegged obscurity, like one too.
Forbidden Room, The (Guy Maddin and Evan Johnson 2015) - Review
After performing seances for the souls of lost or unfinished films, one of Canada's best imports (with co-director Evan Johnson in tow) gets possessed as a result, and spills out a Chinese puzzle box, starting with a group of men in a submarine that somehow leads to vampiric bananas and Udo Kier's mustache.
Gozu (Takashi Miike, 2003) - Review
Ozaki in Wonderland. Where one yakuzu looking for his mentor's body encounters cow headed creatures, strange tracksuit wearing old men obsessed with the weather, excessive lactation and unexpected use of ladles.
Hausu (Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1977) - Review
Everyone's favorite Japanese oddity involving watermelon heads, homicidal futons and people turning suddenly into a pile of bananas. The tale of schoolgirls being terrorized by a haunted house made to be a blockbuster for Japan and fed by the imagination of the director's teenage daughter.
Heroic Purgatory (Yoshishige Yoshida, 1970) - Review
Yoshida's cryptic psychodrama, stuck outside of time, where a communist cell cannibalizes its own.
Inferno (Dario Argento, 1980) - Review
The sequel to Suspiria (1977) manages to equal the original film's colour saturated delirium as you follow multiple characters, not just one, learn of the the Three Mothers who torment the world when figures accidentally learn of their existence, and try to avoid being eaten to death by rats.
Last Year At Marienbad (Alain Resnais, 1960) - Review
One of the shining lights of French New Wave cinema and a shining light of modern French literature Alain Robbe-Grillet collaborate on a puzzle about a man called X who may have known a woman called Y a year ago but cannot be sure, lost in a hotel that seems to be stuck in a time loop. The result led to debates to what cinema was back when it was premiered in French cinema and still raises questions today.
Lost Highway (David Lynch, 1997) - Review
David Lynch examines the mind of a potentially guilty husband and skewers noir into the realms of nightmare fuel. If a man is in front of you and in your house at the same time, something is very wrong.
Night is Short, Walk On Girl (Masaaki Yuasa, 2017) - Review
Anime God Masaaki Yuasa returns to the world of The Tatami Galaxy (2010) with a night's worth of drinking across the town, the God of Used Books and illegal musical theater performances.
Night To Dismember, A (Doris Wishman, 1983) - Review
When your film is almost completely destroyed in a fire due to a disgruntled film development lab employee, most would give up and make another movie. The Queen of Sexploitation Doris Wishman however finishes the film which what odds and ends she has left at hand and everything becomes delirious in her tale of a family trying to gaslight their sister released from a mental institution, a killer is on the loose, and voices are coming from the hat box.
Possession (Andrzej Żuławski, 1981) - Review
Based on the break up of his first marriage, Żuławski created one of the most well known, notorious and acclaimed cult films about a couple breaking apart. Romancing of a literal monster sits side-by-side with externalized anguish acted out by Isabelle Adjani and Sam Neill.
Rubber's Lover (Shozin Fukui, 1996) - Review
David Lynch examines the mind of a potentially guilty husband and skewers noir into the realms of nightmare fuel. If a man is in front of you and in your house at the same time, something is very wrong.
Night is Short, Walk On Girl (Masaaki Yuasa, 2017) - Review
Anime God Masaaki Yuasa returns to the world of The Tatami Galaxy (2010) with a night's worth of drinking across the town, the God of Used Books and illegal musical theater performances.
Night To Dismember, A (Doris Wishman, 1983) - Review
When your film is almost completely destroyed in a fire due to a disgruntled film development lab employee, most would give up and make another movie. The Queen of Sexploitation Doris Wishman however finishes the film which what odds and ends she has left at hand and everything becomes delirious in her tale of a family trying to gaslight their sister released from a mental institution, a killer is on the loose, and voices are coming from the hat box.
Possession (Andrzej Żuławski, 1981) - Review
Based on the break up of his first marriage, Żuławski created one of the most well known, notorious and acclaimed cult films about a couple breaking apart. Romancing of a literal monster sits side-by-side with externalized anguish acted out by Isabelle Adjani and Sam Neill.
Rubber's Lover (Shozin Fukui, 1996) - Review
Scientists lose their minds trying to invoke psychic powers in patients - using drugs and full rubber costumes - to their regret in a black-and-white cyberpunk epic.
Suspiria (Dario Argento, 1977) - Review
Jessica Harper enrolls at a German ballet school only for murders to take place, a secret black conspiracy to be responsible and Italian prog rock to kick off playing as she goes along. Suspiria has been proven by many accounts to be an Abstract canon film that has as large a female fanbase as it does a male one...The dying memories of a womaniser in turn-of-the-century Hungary as seen in a kaleidoscope of visuals, thoughts and sensuality.
Two Canadian horror film fans decide to make a film but have no idea how to. Thus a legendarily and infamous shot-on-video movie was born where people assault rubber bugs with an electric drill, a Salvador Dali painting presumed lost is found in someone's home, and the saturated VHS de-gloss as you watch it will mess with your eyes. Probably the only film where a porn star, Amber Lynn, technically qualifies as a overseeing narrator of the film as a reporter but is more interested in talking about the legal issues with Night of the Living Dead (1968) instead of making sense of it all.
Two Or Three Things I Know About Her (Jean-Luc Godard, 1967) - Review
Jean-Luc Godard assesses France in 1967, turning cinema into an audio-texture essay that you'd have never seen back when it was first released and will never see from anyone else baring Godard himself.
Week End (Jean-Luc Godard, 1967) - Review
Godard follows a scorched earth policy on mainstream art cinema, which he wouldn't return to until 1980, by showing two hateful bourgeoisie get trapped in the weird Wonderland of French countryside motorways.
The Wolf House (Joaquín Cociña and Cristóbal León, 2018) - Review
A critique of the infamous colony set up in Chile by ex-Nazi Paul Schäfer by way of a faked propaganda fairy tale told from their perspective. All entirely told through stop motion, paper-mâché, and literally animating the walls and furniture.
MEDIUM
964 Pinocchio (Shozin Fukui, 1991) - Review
A brainwashed male sex slave slowly regains his memories. Chaos, psychological breakdowns, excessive amounts of vomit and running through a crowded city street chained to a metal pyramid ensures.
ABCs of Death 2, The (Various, 2014) - Part 1, Part 2
Mostly not abstract, less weirder films than the original anthology, but Robert Morgan proves animation is the stuff of nightmares and Todd Rohal has the strange idea of crossing slapstick comedy with digital effects and comically exaggerated noses.
Alipato: The Very Brief Life of an Ember (Khavn, 2016) - Review
The punk, morbidly humorous and insanely unconventional story of a child gang and the subsequent tale when their leader when he leaves jail as an adult as made by a one-off Filipino filmmaker.
Beast Pageant, The (Albert Birney and Jon Moses, 2010) - Review
A lo-fi musical horror-fantasy in which a sad tuna factory employee grows a small singing cowboy out of his side, leaves his giant TV and ventures into mystical woodlands through a hole in his wall.
Blind Beast (Yasuzo Masumura, 1969) - Review
A woman is kidnapped by a blind son and his doting mother, forced to live in a art studio where there are giant women's body parts made of plaster lining the wall and two giant plaster female torsos in the middle. Based on a Edogawa Ranpo story, an author who'll likely get a few films based on his material on this Canon.
Bobby Yeah (Robert Morgan, 2011) - Review
A rabbit eared humanoid's fatal curiosity leads to a stop motion nightmare which will never let you look at pink fur walls and meat in the same way again.
Branded To Kill (Seijun Suzuki, 1967) - Review
Climax (Gaspar Noé, 2018) - Review
The very divisive director Noé, even on this blog, returns with the events of when a dance trope has their punch bowl spiked. Cue madness, horror and transgression = biggest positive reviews of his career.
Container (Lukas Moodysson, 2006) - Review
The existential ruminations of an acclaimed Swedish art house director, the world of a transgender man living in a grungy apartment full of bric-à-brac monologued by Jena Malone.
Cosmos (Andrzej Żuławski 2015) - Review
The final film of Andrzej Żuławski takes the mystery and comedy of error genres and turns them into chaotic absurdity abound in random objects being found hanging off string and emotional angst being channeled through a Donald Duck impersonation.
Détective (Jean-Luc Godard, 1985) - Review
A brainwashed male sex slave slowly regains his memories. Chaos, psychological breakdowns, excessive amounts of vomit and running through a crowded city street chained to a metal pyramid ensures.
ABCs of Death 2, The (Various, 2014) - Part 1, Part 2
Mostly not abstract, less weirder films than the original anthology, but Robert Morgan proves animation is the stuff of nightmares and Todd Rohal has the strange idea of crossing slapstick comedy with digital effects and comically exaggerated noses.
Alipato: The Very Brief Life of an Ember (Khavn, 2016) - Review
The punk, morbidly humorous and insanely unconventional story of a child gang and the subsequent tale when their leader when he leaves jail as an adult as made by a one-off Filipino filmmaker.
Beast Pageant, The (Albert Birney and Jon Moses, 2010) - Review
A lo-fi musical horror-fantasy in which a sad tuna factory employee grows a small singing cowboy out of his side, leaves his giant TV and ventures into mystical woodlands through a hole in his wall.
Blind Beast (Yasuzo Masumura, 1969) - Review
A woman is kidnapped by a blind son and his doting mother, forced to live in a art studio where there are giant women's body parts made of plaster lining the wall and two giant plaster female torsos in the middle. Based on a Edogawa Ranpo story, an author who'll likely get a few films based on his material on this Canon.
Bobby Yeah (Robert Morgan, 2011) - Review
A rabbit eared humanoid's fatal curiosity leads to a stop motion nightmare which will never let you look at pink fur walls and meat in the same way again.
Branded To Kill (Seijun Suzuki, 1967) - Review
An assassin with a rice fetish finds himself being targeted by his own group in the legendary Japanese cult film that may have influenced anyone from videogame developers to Jim Jarmusch while showing it's director's complete disregard for convention. A film that stands above others for having its director dismissed by the film company he was working for because of it.
Climax (Gaspar Noé, 2018) - Review
The very divisive director Noé, even on this blog, returns with the events of when a dance trope has their punch bowl spiked. Cue madness, horror and transgression = biggest positive reviews of his career.
Container (Lukas Moodysson, 2006) - Review
The existential ruminations of an acclaimed Swedish art house director, the world of a transgender man living in a grungy apartment full of bric-à-brac monologued by Jena Malone.
Cosmos (Andrzej Żuławski 2015) - Review
The final film of Andrzej Żuławski takes the mystery and comedy of error genres and turns them into chaotic absurdity abound in random objects being found hanging off string and emotional angst being channeled through a Donald Duck impersonation.
Détective (Jean-Luc Godard, 1985) - Review
Godard crafts a multi-narrative crime yarn whilst experimenting with sound, image, text and asking why pornography is called 'x-rated'.
Devil Story (Bernard Launois, 1985) - Review
Probably one of the films on this list that doesn't make any lick of sense even if you try to make up a rational plot for it. A man decides to try to shot a black horse repeatedly with a shotgun, a woman is terrified by a malformed man wearing a Nazi uniform jacket, and the film even throws in a mummy and a shipwrecked boat full of treasure for good measure. Nanarland fans should take interest or already have the French DVD release in their collection.
Devil Story (Bernard Launois, 1985) - Review
Probably one of the films on this list that doesn't make any lick of sense even if you try to make up a rational plot for it. A man decides to try to shot a black horse repeatedly with a shotgun, a woman is terrified by a malformed man wearing a Nazi uniform jacket, and the film even throws in a mummy and a shipwrecked boat full of treasure for good measure. Nanarland fans should take interest or already have the French DVD release in their collection.
Dogtooth (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2009) - Review
A Greek couple decides to keep their three adult children enclosed in their own closed in and controlled environment within their house and garden, where language is different from ours, domesticated cats are savage monsters and a videotape of a Stallone film can ruin this tiny reality completely.
Evil Dead Trap II (Izô Hashimoto, 1992) - Review
In which the messy body horror-slasher prequel is ditched entirely for a slow burn, increasingly off toned drama about a female projectionist who kills other women, her vain female reporter friend and a mysterious married man are caught in a romantic love triangle. Than things get weird in the final act when chronology decides to eat itself.
Evil Within, The (Andrew Getty, 2017) - Review
The story of Andrew Getty, heir of the legendary Getty family, who spent years and most of his own personal fortune to take his nightmares and create a horror film from them, a film finished beyond his abrupt death. The film itself? Questionable depiction of learning disabilities, erratic plotting, incredible practical effects, and utterly unique.
Evolution (Lucile Hadžihalilović, 2015) - Review
Nautical themed body horror of the subtlest sort filtered through a feminist and feminine lenses, of motherhood and starfish suckers.
Eyes Without A Face (Georges Franju, 1960) - Review
Franju's legendary horror film, appearing on cult and art film fans' viewing lists equally, follows a surgeon desiring to rectify a disfigurement of his daughter by way of kidnapping other young women and removing their faces from an improvised skin transplant.
Fall of the House of Usher, The (James Sibley Watson and Melville Webber, 1928) - Review
Not to be confused with the Jean Epstein film from the same year, this is an abstract take on the Edgar Allen Poe story that drifts off from the original text into something of its own.
Flexing With Monty (John Albo, 1994/2010) - Review
John Albo's once unfinished and unavailable revenge tale oddity in which Trevor Goddard flexes his muscles and humps a polar bear in arseless leather chaps, all whilst his brother played by Rudi Davis has strange dreams about his mother and becoming pregnant, and Sally Kirkland bares all as a nun with a strange view of environmental issues and Christian dogma who slips into their lives.
Flying Luna Clipper, The (Ikko Ono, 1987) - Review
Made entirely from 8-bit technology of a video game console only released in Japan, this hour long film follows the ultimate dream vacation where your fellow passengers are animal people or have fruit for heads.
Footprints On The Moon (Luigi Bazzoni (and Mario Fanelli), 1975) - Review
An obscure gem of the seventies Italian genre boom. Somehow it manages to make its moon themed title make sense despite being set completely on Earth and about a woman who cannot remember the few days before, adding to its mysterious tone. Also includes an unexpected Klaus Kinski cameo.
Funeral Parade of Roses (Matsumoto Toshio, 1969) - Review
A picture of Japan's left wing and gay/transgender communities in the late 60s, through a myth inspired story of jealousy, direct questions to the actors about gender orientation, avant-garde techniques and sped up cat fights.
Ganja & Hess (Bill Gunn, 1973) - Review
Originally hesitant to make a Blaxploitation vampire film, playwright and author Bill Gunn however takes advantage of the offer to make an artistic horror-drama about addiction. It took decades, after his death, for his original version to be available but the result is hallucinatory.
Gdgd Fairies (Sōta Sugahara 2011-13) - Review
One of the first, and still best, anime micro-series in which three fairies (one simple, one mischievous, one morbid) mess about with magic whilst the animators have a field day with cheap, deliberately bad animated figures, and the actresses improvise and mess up improvised lines.
Immortal One, The (Alain Robbe-Grillet, 1963) - Review
Originally hesitant to make a Blaxploitation vampire film, playwright and author Bill Gunn however takes advantage of the offer to make an artistic horror-drama about addiction. It took decades, after his death, for his original version to be available but the result is hallucinatory.
Gdgd Fairies (Sōta Sugahara 2011-13) - Review
One of the first, and still best, anime micro-series in which three fairies (one simple, one mischievous, one morbid) mess about with magic whilst the animators have a field day with cheap, deliberately bad animated figures, and the actresses improvise and mess up improvised lines.
Immortal One, The (Alain Robbe-Grillet, 1963) - Review
The debut of the legendary novelist, director and Last Year At Marienbad (1961) screenwriter. A man meets a woman in Istanbul, Turkey, only for her not to appear as she was before.
Jar, The (Bruce Toscano, 1984) - Review
The bizarre independent one-off where a man acquires a jar with a pickled creature within it, only to be unable to get rid of it and find himself hallucinating many a scenario.
Keyhole (Guy Maddin, 2011) - Review
Guy Maddin's crime drama haunted house film, replete with taxidermy wolverines and perversity for all the family.
Lemonade Joe (Oldřich Lipský, 1964) - Review
Czeck musical western parody of silent cinema and Western consumerism.
A carnival where Hervé Villechaize suddenly appears at the shooting gallery and cannibals who watch old silent movies lived underground beneath the Tunnel of Love.
Mononoke (Kenji Nakamura, 2007/TV Series) - Review
A spin-off of another horror anthology series which became more famous by itself, in which a mysterious medicine man travels around period Japan exorcising monsters and ghosts that have transgressed the barriers between them and the mortal. One for the eyes.
Nightmares Come at Night (Jesús Franco, 1970) - Review
Franco's tale of hallucination, murder and sex built as if from pieces of every film from those he just made in 1970, yet its own curious creation.
Ninth Configuration, The (William Peter Blatty, 1980) - Review
The Exorcist author's difficult writer/director debut about theology, altruism, Robert Loggia in a space suit, and re-staging Shakespeare's plays with an entire cast of dogs.
Nude Vampire, The (Jean Rollin, 1970) - Review
Suicide cults, pulp influences, deer masked guards, vampires with torches attacking a country home, and somehow a more plot driven film from Jean Rollin is actually more unconventional than the more minimalist films he made.
O is for Orgasm (Bruno Forzani and Héléne Cattet, 2012) - Review
From the anthology film The ABCs of Death. The directors of Amer (2009) depict an act of lovemaking that takes a turn for the worse. Whether anyone emits bubbles from their mouth when they orgasm or not for real shouldn't spoil the short.
Paprika (Satoshi Kon, 2006) - Review
Tragically the last film of the legendary Satoshi Kon, still young in his later forties in the anime industry, a conspiracy sci-fi adventure about a machine that lets people enter other's dreams for therapy and what happens if criminals use it to blurring reality, leading to a sumptuous audio-visual buffet of surrealism.
Pi (Darren Aronofsky, 1998) - Review
Before embarrassing himself with mother! (2017), Aronofsky's tale of a mathematician who may have discovered God's True Name was the idiosyncratic and existential film he should be more known for.
Prisoner, The (Patrick McGoohan, Pat Jackson, Don Chaffey, David Tomblin, Robert Asher and Peter Graham Scott, 1967-68/TV Series) - Review
The legendary and bizarre ITV series, and Patrick McGowen's personal existential oddity, as he wanders The Village and wonders who No. 1 is.
Psyched by the 4D Witch (A Tale of Demonology) (Victor Luminera, 1973) - Review
Urban myth tells that this was a film reel found on the site where the Manson family lived. The truth - a deranged collage of softcore scenes which feel like the hardcore is cut out, in which a nubile collage student accidentally becomes the conduit for a 17th century witch who pulls her to perversion - is evidence of it being stranger than fiction.
Régime sans pain (Raul Ruiz, 1985) - Review
Once a music video project between legendary workaholic Chilean director Raul Ruiz and the musical duo Angel & Maimone; the final result turned into a feature long dystopian drama of a former ruler, wiped of his memories, re-entering the competition to become the new ruler even if it means having to borrow the right clothing from a dead man in a burning car, and relearning to sing through a monk's convent who only allow parrots now as members.
Repulsion (Roman Rolanski, 1965) - Review
Polanski's legendary psychological horror film about Catherine Deneuve losing more and more of her sense of reality in a London flat.
Rubber (Quentin Dupieux, 2010) - Review
A celebration of the "no reason" in cinema by way of a sentient car tire that can blow peoples' heads off with psychic powers. Part of the "no reason" monologue that starts the film is now the blog's motto.
Shogun Assassin (Robert Houston & Misumi Kenji, 1980) - Review
The first parts of a legendary samurai film series, based on a legendary manga, gets re-made for an American audience. The result, with its eighties synth and emphasis on decapitations, turned out to be unexpectedly hypnotic and wonderful as a result.
Strange Hostel of Naked Pleasures, The (Marcelo Motta and José Mojica Marins, 1976) - Review
Letting legendary Brazilian horror figure Coffin Joe run a hostel will naturally lead to horror, ruminations of death, recycled footage, an inflamed colour palette and a monologue about existence placed over images of model planets hung on wire.
Teenage Hooker Became A Killing Machine (Gee-woong Nam 2000) - Review
Art house, shot on video aesthetic, splatter, softcore and all manner of things stewed together in a one hour oddity about a teenage hooker who, as the title says, is turned into a killer cyborg.
Under The Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2013) - Review
Scarlett Johansson is an alien siren who tempts men in urban Scotland in one of the most unnerving and sensory British films made in a long while.
Uzumaki (Higuchinsky, 2000) - Review
A deeply flawed but utterly admirable attempt to adapt Junji Ito's legendary manga about a small Japan town gripped in the evil influence of the spiral symbol.
Valhalla Rising (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2009) - Review
Mads Mikkelsen storms the Scottish highlands in a mystical Viking film.
Videodrome (David Cronenberg, 1983) - Review
If you watch too much violent television, you end up with a vaginal cavity growing in your chest people can stick pulsating VHS tapes into, and wind up in the middle of a political conspiracy involving television being the mind's eye.
White of the Eye (Donald Cammell, 1986) - Review
A series of murders may be linked to a woman's spouse, leading to madness, uncomfortable past histories being evoked and "hot dogs" being used in unexpected ways. From the co-director of Performance (1970), and produced by the Cannon Group, the same company that brought us the American Ninja films.
Yurikuma Arashi (Kunihiko Ikuhara 2015/TV Series) - Review
The romantic love between schoolgirls and girl-bears that dares not speak its name.
Z is for Zetsumetsu (Yoshihiro Nishimura, 2012) - Review
From the anthology film The ABCs of Death. Japanese Dr. Strangelove rants about his nation loving tangerines as naked people promote and eat dishes of the national cuisine, whilst a battle between a Nazi dominatrix with a giant knife penis fights a half burnt-alive female cop who can fire vegetables from an intimate place. I'm not going to attempt to explain it or get into the eyebrow raising political references. It can only come from the director of Tokyo Gore Police (2008) when he doesn't need to follow a plot.
Yurikuma Arashi (Kunihiko Ikuhara 2015/TV Series) - Review
The romantic love between schoolgirls and girl-bears that dares not speak its name.
Z is for Zetsumetsu (Yoshihiro Nishimura, 2012) - Review
From the anthology film The ABCs of Death. Japanese Dr. Strangelove rants about his nation loving tangerines as naked people promote and eat dishes of the national cuisine, whilst a battle between a Nazi dominatrix with a giant knife penis fights a half burnt-alive female cop who can fire vegetables from an intimate place. I'm not going to attempt to explain it or get into the eyebrow raising political references. It can only come from the director of Tokyo Gore Police (2008) when he doesn't need to follow a plot.
LOW
Aenigma (Lucio Fulci, 1987) - Review
Later day Fulci. Where, when a girl is put into a coma by a terrible prank, she develops psychic powers to punish those responsible. Queue a woman being covered entirely in snails.
Alps (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2011) - Review
Lanthimos' lesser known film about a small group who act as surrogates for the recently deceased for families.
Automatic at Sea (Matthew Lessner, 2016) - Review
In which, stuck on a private island with a rich playboy with an obsession for doing inappropriate things with bicycles and having abrupt costumes for mowing the lawn, Livia Hiselius' Eve becomes the conduit for director Matthew Lessner to subvert the subjective female psychodrama.
Baccano! (Takahiro Omori, 2007/TV Series) - Review
A cult thirties American gangster and fantasy anime series with lashings of ultra-violence and a plot shuffled around like a pack of cards which keeps it's viewers on it's toes.
Bad Girls Go To Hell (Doris Wishman, 1965) - Review
Later day Fulci. Where, when a girl is put into a coma by a terrible prank, she develops psychic powers to punish those responsible. Queue a woman being covered entirely in snails.
Alps (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2011) - Review
Lanthimos' lesser known film about a small group who act as surrogates for the recently deceased for families.
Automatic at Sea (Matthew Lessner, 2016) - Review
In which, stuck on a private island with a rich playboy with an obsession for doing inappropriate things with bicycles and having abrupt costumes for mowing the lawn, Livia Hiselius' Eve becomes the conduit for director Matthew Lessner to subvert the subjective female psychodrama.
Baccano! (Takahiro Omori, 2007/TV Series) - Review
A cult thirties American gangster and fantasy anime series with lashings of ultra-violence and a plot shuffled around like a pack of cards which keeps it's viewers on it's toes.
Bad Girls Go To Hell (Doris Wishman, 1965) - Review
A woman goes through a downward spiral of sexual molestation and murder, brought to us by the late Queen of Sexploitation and Sixties lounge aesthetics.
Black Cat, The (Lucio Fulci, 1981) - Review
Bowl of Oatmeal, A (Dirs. Dietmar Post, Lawrence Gise, Matthew Bezanis, David White, Leslie Hucko and Hsia-Huey Wu, 1996) - Review
That weird morning when the bowl of oatmeal you make starts to talk to you...
Cafe Flesh (Stephen Sayadian (with Mark S. Esposito), 1982) - Review
Stephen "Rinse Dream" Satyadian's legendary dystopian porno film about Sex Negatives, and the live sex shows in bunkers involving the few Sex Positives still in existence.
Celine and Julie Go Boating (Jacques Rivette, 1974) - Review
Rivette's most popular film, a three hour magical realistic romp following two women and a mysterious house.
Black Cat, The (Lucio Fulci, 1981) - Review
Lucio Fulci reinterprets the Edgar Allen Poe story by way of a giallo-like supernatural murder mystery, one where Patrick Magee gets to show off his acting prowess against a Satanic black moggy. Deceptively strange as a film especially when its as less known as other Fulci horror pictures.
Bowl of Oatmeal, A (Dirs. Dietmar Post, Lawrence Gise, Matthew Bezanis, David White, Leslie Hucko and Hsia-Huey Wu, 1996) - Review
That weird morning when the bowl of oatmeal you make starts to talk to you...
Cafe Flesh (Stephen Sayadian (with Mark S. Esposito), 1982) - Review
Stephen "Rinse Dream" Satyadian's legendary dystopian porno film about Sex Negatives, and the live sex shows in bunkers involving the few Sex Positives still in existence.
Celine and Julie Go Boating (Jacques Rivette, 1974) - Review
Rivette's most popular film, a three hour magical realistic romp following two women and a mysterious house.
City of the Living Dead (Lucio Fulci, 1980) - Review
The beginning of Lucio Fulci's Gates of Hell trilogy, expect teleporting zombies, maggot rain and the same dread of a HP Lovecraft story.
Clowns, The (Federico Fellini, 1970) - Review
The legendary Italian director's ode to the history of clowns, made for television but losing none of his extravagance.
Computer Chess (Andrew Bujalski, 2013) - Review
When early eighties computer systems designed to play chess develop self awareness and there's an inexplicable amount of cats in your hotel corridor.
Dead Leaves (Hiroyuki Imaishi, 2004) - Review
Imaishi's debut follows two amnesiacs attempted a prison break on the moon, already running out of the starting gate with the brand of manic energy, likable and strange characters, and poo jokes he'd used to make smash hit anime shows like Kill la Kill (2012).
Death May Be Your Santa Claus (Frankie Dymon Jr, 1969) - Review
One if not the only works from the British side of the Black Power movement of the time, tackling the issues of race in late sixties Britain and miscegenation through documentary footage, inter-cutting monologues and unexpected penis eating.
Death of Stalinism In Bohemia, The (Jan Švankmajer, 1991) - Review
The end of communism and the Soviet Union's influence on his home country leads the legendary animator/director to make his sole, openly political animation where the statue of Stalin gives birth to Czech communist party leaders directly from his head, and clay figures are made and then hung in a cyclical conveyor belt.
Death Powder (Shigeru Izumiya 1986) - Review
The sole directorial credit of folk singer/actor Izumiya and one of the first Japanese cyberpunk films to be made. Sperm are superimposed on images of buildings, and that's even before a character gets hit by a hallucinogenic mutation powder and the film becomes one long dream sequence.
Death Spa (Michael Fischa, 1989) - Review
A gym becomes possessed by the co-owner's ex-wife. Or is it just her twin brother responsible for the tiles flying off the walls in the women's showers?
Dementia [The "Daughter of Horror" Cut] (John Parker, 1955) - Review
Despite the Night (2015) - Review
Philippe Grandrieux turns an erotic drama with crime leanings, of a man obsessed with a vanished woman falling for a traumatized married woman, into a nocturnal nightmare.
Devil's Castle, The (Georges Méliès, 1896) - Review
Méliès created the horror genre with jump cut disappearance tricks, the Devil turning into a bat and ghosts terrorizing cavaliers. We should thank him even if we've all done so already for other things.
Disconnected (Gorman Bechard, 1984) - Review
The lo-fi Connecticut based slasher oddity which splits in half between fringe horror cinema and creepy, almost No-Wave cinema about menacing phone calls.
Fear X (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2003) - Review
John Turturro hunts for his wife's murderer in the elusive and increasingly abstract crime thriller which completely destroyed Refn's first attempt to conquer the USA but should win him further fans.
F is for Fart (Noboru Iguchi, 2012) - Review
From the anthology The ABCs of Death, Iguchi depicts a forbidden love between a female schoolgirl and her female teacher during the end of the world...one which involves breaking their hesitance of taboos and smelling the other's farts.
Hell of the Living Dead (Bruno Mattei (with additional material by Claudio Fragasso), 1980) - Review
Another zombie apocalypse is taking place, but by way of nature footage taken from seventies French films and a blatant environmental message. Add to this soldiers dressing up in a pink tutu and an abruptly bleak ending and it can only be the infamous Italian genre film duo Mattei and Fragasso who're responsible for it.
Hunger, The (Tony Scott, 1983) - Review
It may look like a product of the eighties, but the late Tony Scott takes lush pop video aesthetics, a fog machine and David Bowie and makes one of the most dreamlike mainstream horror films you could ever get about longing, death and the curse of vamperism.
Incubus (Leslie Stevens, 1966) - Review
When not covering Pulp's Common People or playing Captain Kirk, William Shatner wanders into an incredible, Ingmar Bergman like supernatural horror being tempted by succubus whilst he has a near incestuous relationship with his loving sister. While speaking entirely in Esperanto.
Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles (Chantal Akerman, 1975) - Review
Chantal Akerman's legendary endurance test and feminist tale of a housewife (Delphine Seyri) over the course of three days, experiencing her life in prolonged detail until little mistakes begin to pile up from day two onwards...
Long Weekend (Colin Eggleston, 1978) - Review
Is is really a coincidence or is the woodlands after us? What's obvious is that both of us despise each other in the middle of this during our vacation...
Méliès created the horror genre with jump cut disappearance tricks, the Devil turning into a bat and ghosts terrorizing cavaliers. We should thank him even if we've all done so already for other things.
Disconnected (Gorman Bechard, 1984) - Review
The lo-fi Connecticut based slasher oddity which splits in half between fringe horror cinema and creepy, almost No-Wave cinema about menacing phone calls.
Fear X (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2003) - Review
John Turturro hunts for his wife's murderer in the elusive and increasingly abstract crime thriller which completely destroyed Refn's first attempt to conquer the USA but should win him further fans.
F is for Fart (Noboru Iguchi, 2012) - Review
From the anthology The ABCs of Death, Iguchi depicts a forbidden love between a female schoolgirl and her female teacher during the end of the world...one which involves breaking their hesitance of taboos and smelling the other's farts.
Hell of the Living Dead (Bruno Mattei (with additional material by Claudio Fragasso), 1980) - Review
Another zombie apocalypse is taking place, but by way of nature footage taken from seventies French films and a blatant environmental message. Add to this soldiers dressing up in a pink tutu and an abruptly bleak ending and it can only be the infamous Italian genre film duo Mattei and Fragasso who're responsible for it.
Hunger, The (Tony Scott, 1983) - Review
It may look like a product of the eighties, but the late Tony Scott takes lush pop video aesthetics, a fog machine and David Bowie and makes one of the most dreamlike mainstream horror films you could ever get about longing, death and the curse of vamperism.
Incubus (Leslie Stevens, 1966) - Review
When not covering Pulp's Common People or playing Captain Kirk, William Shatner wanders into an incredible, Ingmar Bergman like supernatural horror being tempted by succubus whilst he has a near incestuous relationship with his loving sister. While speaking entirely in Esperanto.
Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles (Chantal Akerman, 1975) - Review
Chantal Akerman's legendary endurance test and feminist tale of a housewife (Delphine Seyri) over the course of three days, experiencing her life in prolonged detail until little mistakes begin to pile up from day two onwards...
Long Weekend (Colin Eggleston, 1978) - Review
Is is really a coincidence or is the woodlands after us? What's obvious is that both of us despise each other in the middle of this during our vacation...
Lucy (Luc Besson, 2014) - Review
Scarlett Johansson becomes able to use all 100% of her mind. A Luc Besson action film that suddenly becomes Akira (1988) and 2001: A Space Odyssey (1967) in the finale with more empty bullet cases left on the ground afterwards.
Medea (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1969) - Review
One of many interpretations of classical mythology by the legendary Italian director, full of political critique of commercialism but still retaining the mysticism of the myths.
Midori (Hiroshi Harada 1992) - Review
The notorious and once impossible to find animated adaptation of an equally notorious period Ero-guro manga, where an innocent teenage girl finds herself in a carnival freak show in twenties Japan, suffering all manner of psychological and physical torment. So strange, you can only see it in its native country if a full carnival is set up with the screening the centerpiece.
Nekromantik (Jörg Buttgereit, 1987) - Review
The notorious film known for its transgressive use of necrophilia. What it actually turns out to be is a strange breakup drama by way of taboo breaking and dream sequences on an uber-low budget.
Night of the Hunted, The (Jean Rollin, 1980) - Review
Jean Rollin spins a tale incredibly different from his usual obsessions - a Cronenberg-like tale of a woman who loses all her memories and a conspiracy involving a tower block full of people like her with the same affliction.
Phantasm (Don Coscarelli, 1979) - Review
The anxieties of a young boy about loss of loved ones becomes a nightmare of a Tall Man, hooded dwarfs and floating sliver spheres.
Raging Sun, Raging Sky (Julián Hernández, 2009) - Review
The romantic configuration of three gay men and one woman which expands between reality and magical fantasy realms.
R is for Removed (Srdjan Spasojevic, 2012) - Review
From the anthology film The ABCs of Death. The director of A Serbian Film (2010) depicts a man whose flesh is used to make film celluloid and his desire to escape the isolated hospital room he's forever stuck in.
Ring - Kanzenban (Chisui Takigawa, 1995) - Review
Just when you thought this franchise started with Hideo Nakata's 1998 feature film, you discover a TV movie with softcore sex, a sexed up antagonist, peculiar and pointlessly added plot twists, and a trippy cursed video existed beforehand. Somehow in being the more ridiculous and least marketable take on the story its more faithful to the original source material.
Midori (Hiroshi Harada 1992) - Review
The notorious and once impossible to find animated adaptation of an equally notorious period Ero-guro manga, where an innocent teenage girl finds herself in a carnival freak show in twenties Japan, suffering all manner of psychological and physical torment. So strange, you can only see it in its native country if a full carnival is set up with the screening the centerpiece.
Nekromantik (Jörg Buttgereit, 1987) - Review
The notorious film known for its transgressive use of necrophilia. What it actually turns out to be is a strange breakup drama by way of taboo breaking and dream sequences on an uber-low budget.
Night of the Hunted, The (Jean Rollin, 1980) - Review
Jean Rollin spins a tale incredibly different from his usual obsessions - a Cronenberg-like tale of a woman who loses all her memories and a conspiracy involving a tower block full of people like her with the same affliction.
Phantasm (Don Coscarelli, 1979) - Review
The anxieties of a young boy about loss of loved ones becomes a nightmare of a Tall Man, hooded dwarfs and floating sliver spheres.
Raging Sun, Raging Sky (Julián Hernández, 2009) - Review
The romantic configuration of three gay men and one woman which expands between reality and magical fantasy realms.
R is for Removed (Srdjan Spasojevic, 2012) - Review
From the anthology film The ABCs of Death. The director of A Serbian Film (2010) depicts a man whose flesh is used to make film celluloid and his desire to escape the isolated hospital room he's forever stuck in.
Ring - Kanzenban (Chisui Takigawa, 1995) - Review
Just when you thought this franchise started with Hideo Nakata's 1998 feature film, you discover a TV movie with softcore sex, a sexed up antagonist, peculiar and pointlessly added plot twists, and a trippy cursed video existed beforehand. Somehow in being the more ridiculous and least marketable take on the story its more faithful to the original source material.
Rise And Fall Of A Small Film Company (Jean-Luc Godard, 1986) - Review
Dug up from the vast back catalog of Godard's prolific career and restored for public viewing, a French TV series episode at a feature length which promised an adaptation of James Hadley Chase's crime novel The Soft Centre, but instead gives you a meta-farce with Jean-Pierre Léaud creating ritualistic extra casting sessions whilst Jean-Pierre Mocky as his producer laments not being able to fund even a cheap TV production.
Sadist With Red Teeth, The (Jean Louis Van Belle, 1970) - Review
One man believes he is a vampire, and as his doctors push him into becoming one, the director above this plays with the content like a mischievous child.
Santa Sangre (Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1989) - Review
Jodorowsky's psychodrama about a man who has to act as the arms of his mother, violent and as dynamic as a carnival.
Scanners (David Cronenberg, 1981) - Review
Cronenberg's almost dreamlike sci-fi thriller about psychics and Michael Ironside chewing scenery like a boss.
Seconds (John Frankenheimer, 1966) - Review
A paranoid, sobering sci-fi drama that came out-of-nowhere from the Hollywood studios, where a man is offered the chance to becoming Rock Hudson but still finds his life meaningless.
See You In Hell, My Darling (Nikos Nikolaidis, 1999) - Review
Two women, and their shared male lover, find themselves in purgatory in the form of a lavish home with a swimming pool, unable to leave and still with the money they stole coming in-between them.
Shivers of the Vampires (Jean Rollin, 1971) - Review
A newly married couple meet the wife's cousins only to discover a nest of vampires. One of the many films French cult director Jean Rollin that'll end up on the Abstract List.
Skullduggery (Ota Richter, 1983) - Review
Bizarre Canuxploitation slasher more concerned with bizarre background jokes, Dungeon & Dragon paranoia and smoking gorilla doctors than the slice-and-dice tropes.
Spasmo (Umberto Lenzi, 1974) - Review
Lenzi's giallo film is a little off compared to its peers. Female mannequins are abruptly appearing around the Italian countryside in mock murder positions whilst Robert Hoffmann wonders why an assassin he killed during an adulterous night with a woman has suddenly vanished without trace from the hotel bathroom floor.
Taxidermia (György Pálfi, 2006) - Review
Following three generations of men in a single family, Hungarian director Pálfi by way of porn inserts, vomiting, taxidermy, speed eating and various taboos tackles the history of his country from World War II, the era of communism and the era after communism.
Tetsuo II: Body Hammer (Shinya Tsukamoto, 1992) - Review
Tsukamoto's divisive first sequel to Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989) which may have more virtue than it has credit for.
Touch of Death (Lucio Fulci, 1988) - Review
A Lucio Fulci deep cut from later in his career; feeling like it was made in another dimension, his comedic horror splatter farce in which a man dates lonely, rich women and murders them for their wealth.
TV Wheel, The (1995/TV Pilot) - Review
The failed TV pilot for Mystery Science Theatre 3000 creator Joel Hodgson's peculiar recreation of live comedy from his youth: sticking future figures of American comedy like director Paul Feig on a giant revolving stage with added puppets.
Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1959) - Review
The greatest film ever made according to Sight & Sound magazine, in which James Stewart becomes obsessed with recreating a woman in an eerie metaphor for perception corrupting one's mind in a melodrama Hitchcock potboiler.
Visitor, The (Giulio Paradisi (as Michael J. Paradise), 1979) - Review
The world is threatened by a young girl, armed with a pet bird and potent psychic powers, and a shady group of businessmen, and its down to the director of The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Franco Nero in a cameo as Space Christ to stop them. Cue exploding basketballs, ice skating accidents, and enough New Age stream of consciousness dialogue to cause one's head to spin.
Wild Boys, The (Bertrand Mandico, 2017) - Review
Bertrand Mandico's debut feature film, a tropical adventure film about boys (played by women) become women, whilst frolicking among the very suggestive wildlife.
Wild Palms (Peter Hewitt, Keith Gordon, Kathryn Bigelow and Phil Joanou, 1993) - Review
A bizarre post-Twin Peaks sci-fi mini series in which Jim Belushi must overcome cyber-immortality, hologram addiction, a sociopathic son, old flames and dreams of rhinoceroses inexplicably appearing in his kitchen.
Zardoz (John Boorman, 1974) - Review
The one and only infamous film from the director of Deliverance (1972) who got to make whatever film he wanted after that one did so well. What he gave us was Sean Connery in orange bikini briefs overcoming a giant floating stone head, New Age dialogue, a psychic and bored intelligentsia and Charlotte Rampling demonstrating his ability to get an erection in front of a large crowd. Some may be surprised by how low it is on the Abstract List, but that says for me how high the bar is for a movie to get up the rankings if this is at the bottom.
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Additional Viewing Material:
Just because some of the films I've covered have been given None on the Abstract Rating scale doesn't mean they're not of interest. These are the ones that might intrigue as well*:
Aaaaaaaagh! (Steve Oram, 2015) - Review
A world in which England everyone acts like a primate yet still had washing machines and television.
Blind Woman's Curse (Teruo Ishii, 1970) - Review
Ishii's delirious chambara tale of ghost black cats, freak shows and Meiko Kaji
Blood Beast (Fabrice A. Zaphiratos, 1983) - Review
The curious Wisconsin based tale of a woman whose sexual desires explode into a murderous samurai stalking a family during a very hostile Christmas reunion.
The Bloodettes (Jean-Pierre Bekolo, 2005) - Review
A Cameroonian sci-fi tale in which two women find themselves having to dispose a body of a politician in a dystopian metropolis, leading to them being in the midst of a blackmail scheme that requires their smarts and the sacred art of the Mevoungou, a (real life) African custom derived from the female sex, for them to overcome
Blood Feast 2: All U Can Eat (Herschell Gordon Lewis, 2002) - Review
The legendary cult innovator of the splatter film finally makes a sequel to the 1963 film that created the sub genre; a bizarre quasi-remake with added humour, psychobilly music and nudity in which the grandson of the original antagonist is possessed to recreate the blood feast from fresh victims for a wedding reception.
Blood Freak (Brad F. Grinter and Steve Hawkes, 1972) - Review
The only Christian, anti-drug splatter film about a man turned into a murderous turkey-human hybrid by narcotics and contaminated turkey meat to exist.
Corpse Eaters (Donald R. Passmore and Klaus Vetter, 1974) - Review
A curious Canadian zombie splatter film from the bowls of seventies exploitation film making, a reminder to never go to a graveyard with friends and accidentally reenact a black magic ritual among the dead.
Dark Backwards, The (Adam Rifkin, 1991) - Review
Garbage man and failed comedian Marty Malt suddenly becomes an overnight sensation when a third arm grows out of his back.
Decent Woman, A (Lukas Valenta Rinner, 2016) - Review
A housemaid for a rich family finds harmony when she joins a New Age nudist commune in the neighborhood. Unfortunately when the rich suburbanites takes offense to their existence, this Argentinian farce inspired by the Greek Weird Wave of cinema shows when the conflict ramps up.
Dracula's Fiancée (Jean Rollin, 2002) - Review
Later era Rollin which, following his pulp obsessions, has not been aged by time.
Executive Koala (Minoru Kawasaki, 2005) - Review
Tamura is a hard working employee at a pickle company who is the main culprit of his girlfriend's murder, complicated by the fact his wife having vanished years ago. Tamura also happens to be an anthropomorphic koala bear.
Freeway (Matthew Bright, 1996) - Review
The screenwriter of Forbidden Zone (1980) directs and pens this perverse reinterpretation of Little Red Riding Hood, envisioned with Reese Witherspoon as a trailer trash version and Kiefer Sutherland the person hiding secrets when he picks her up as a hitchhiker.
Killing Car (Jean Rollin, 1993) - Review
Another of Jean Rollin's outliers from his usual style, a crime story of a mysterious woman in a car who pursues and shoots those responsible for a past transgression.
Lifeforce (Tope Hooper, 1985) - Review
Hooper's infamous Cannon Films backed sci-fi/horror epic of nude space vampires.
Microwave Massacre (Wayne Berwick, 1983) - Review
The utterly un-PC but compelling tale of domestic masculine crisis and cannibalism in which comedian Jackie Vernon develops a taste for human meat, and begins killing women with the intention of preparing their bodies for food by way of a ridiculously large microwave.
Mystics In Bali (H. Tjut Djalil, 1981) - Review
An Indonesian horror film in which a woman whose desire to research black magic leads her to being turned into a Penanggalan, a vampire whose head detaches from the body leaving a trail of entrails hanging off the severed neck sent off the feed on the blood of pregnant women and the meat of unborn children.
Of Freaks and Men (Aleksei Balabanov, 1998) - Review
A period Russian drama in which two men produce flagellation erotica whilst in the midst of malicious plans involving seducing a wealthy middle class women and acquiring a pair of Siamese Twins with the purpose of increasing their fortunes.
Organ (Kei Fujiwara, 1996) - Review
One of the few known Japanese horror films directed and written by a woman; a grotesque and gristly psycho-thriller about illegal organ harvesting and a plant-man hybrids locked in a school room.
Pepperminta (Pipilotti Rist, 2009) - Review
Swiss visual artist Pipilotti Rist creates a deeply flawed yet fascinating day-glo paean to anarchic happiness as she bands together a group of misfits and her grandmother, a mechanical eye in a jar, to make the world more fun and colourful.
Postcards from the Zoo (Edwin, 2012) - Review
One named Indonesian filmmaker Edwin follows the burgeoning relationship between a woman brought up by zoo staff and a cowboy magician.
Scream (Wes Craven, 1996) - Review
Not an abstract film at all, but this review of Wes Craven's seminal meta-commentary on the slasher genre does cover the time I viewed the film on the big screen, and the fact the red saturation in the version being played being too high was not a detraction in the slightest but a fascinating viewing experience appropriate for this blog.
Smoke and Flesh (Joseph Mangine, 1968) - Review
A delirious and sexy sexploitation/drugsploitation film about pot loving New Yorkers having fun, playing strip Scalextric and using whipped cream in legitimately kinky ways.
Suddenly in the Dark (Young Nam Ko, 1981) - Review
A heightened and stylished South Korean horror film where a married woman becomes more and more paranoid when she suspects her husband is having an affair with an orphaned young woman who brings a creepy shrine doll with her.
Tag (Sion Sono, 2015) - Review
Schoolgirl Mitsuko finds herself in the midst of strange events involving a dangerous gust of wind, homicidal teachers and an infinate loop including her own wedding where the guests are less than welcoming.
Tales from the Quadead Zone (Chester Novell Turner, 1987) - Review
Chester Novell Turner's legendary and infamous shot-on video anthology tale. Once (may still be) the most expensive VHS tape to buy due to its original scarceness, also a deeply weird homemade work of strange music, a peculiar form of family ritual involving baloney sandwiches, and an undead clown.
Tale of Tales (Matteo Garrone, 2015) - Review
The director of realistic crime drama Gomorrah (2008) takes an unexpected turn into adapting the fairy tale collection the Pentamerone by Giambattista Basile; expect violence, monsters and Toby Jones being obsessed with raising a giant flea.
Tokyo x Erotica (Takahisa Zeze, 2001) - Review
Zeze's pinku erotic exploration of the 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system by why of a man and woman, who exist in three different time periods even after their deaths, and Death as personified as a man in a pink bunny costume.
Treasure of Bitch Island (F.J. Ossang, 1990) - Review
From punk filmmaker/poet/musician Ossang comes the tale of heir of the consortium Kryo'Corp travelling to Bitch Island with assistance, in hope to claim the substances needed for an important new energy form, only for drugs, the environment's radiation, unhelpful hotel staff, and the general tension between the fascistic colonizers and the natives to take it's toll.
Waltz with Bashir (Ari Folman, 2008) - Review
Using animation to examine his own experience as a soldier during the 1982 Lebanon War as the Israeli opposition, director Folman with interviews with those involved, recreations of events and dream sequences attempts to uncover the memories lost to him and openly confront the horrifying things that he also witnessed and may have accidentally be complicit in.
* Some of the reviews might be negative, but my opinions have become fonder of these after all this time, hence their inclusion.
======
Sadly not all is great or abstract**...
Antiporno (Sion Sono, 2016) - Review
Sion Sono's critique of pinku (erotic) cinema by means of transgression.
Enemy (Denis Villeneuve, 2013) - Review
The tale of Jake Gyllenhaal meeting his doppelganger in a strange fascistic world with spiders and secret sex clubs.
Female Human Animal (Josh Appignanesi, 2018) - Review
A shot-on-video psycho-sexual-thriller influenced by the work of Surrealist Leonara Carrington starring a scholar of her work, Chloe Aridjis, playing herself.
Final Stab (David DeCoteau, 2001) - Review
A low budget slasher from the post-Scream era by the legendary cult figure David DeCoteau. Is what it is, so this wasn't a negative review. Why I covered it as an Abstract film was why the "Non-Abstract Reviews" section was made in 2018, and is stranger than the film itself.
Sexy Killer (Miguel Martí, 2008) - Review
A Spanish genre hybrid about a young woman who happens to be the killer on her university campus.
Virus Buster Serge (Masami Obari, 1997/TV Series) - Review
The legendary (if sometimes divisive) anime director and designer Obari's unknown and usually reviled animated television series; a dystopian sci-fi action series about a squad created to defeat an unknown satellite that infects humans and computes with a virus. Expected female characters with voluptuous figures but comically bug sized eyes, ridiculous fashion choices and a post-Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995) influence where everything is meant to be moody with lots of surreal symbolism.
**Although the future might be kind to these works, and I'll revisit them in the future.
==========
Elvira Show, The (1993/TV Pilot) - Review
Cassandra "Elvira" Peterson, the seminal cult figure, once made a TV pilot for a sitcom starring her character, one quashed due to how raunchy her style was. But its available to see in this era of the internet...
HI-8 (Horror Independents) (Various, 2014) - Review
Veterans of the Shot-on-Video era of American genre boom of the eighties, and their successors, come together for this anthology where they had to make shorts made with the restrictions of those original SOV productions.
Notorious Daughter of Fanny Hill, The (Peter Perry Jr., 1966)/The Head Mistress (Byron Mabe, 1968) - Review
Two sixties sexploitation films, released by Something Weird Video, for the price of one review. One, the erotic adventures of Fanny Hill's daughter, is surprisingly fun and charming beyond the sight of Americans trying to recreate a period drama on a low budget. The Head Mistress, about the sexual romps of a man who poses as a dumb and mute man servant at a 17th century Italian all-girl's school, is less so sadly.
Permanent Vacation (Jim Jarmusch, 1980) - Review
The debut of the cult American filmmaker, a lo-fi series of sketches following a young insomniac on a trip to see his mother in a mental institution.
Redneck County Fever (Gary Kennamer, 1992) - Review
Something legitimately odd in the question of why it even exists: a shot-on-video comedy about two Bill and Ted stand-ins wandering the South in a series of "sketches" with the locals for an hour's length.
Reanimator Academy (Judith Priest, 1992) - Review
This hour long, shot-on-video cash-in on the Re-Animator franchise, in which a scientist creates a resurrection serum, takes an odd turn immediately with the severed, burnt head of a comedian coming to life, no-budget aesthetic and gangsters straight out of a Looney Tunes cartoon named Mugsy.
Sextette (Ken Hughes, 1978) - Review
Legendary performance Mae West's last on-screen role, eighty five, still being portrayed as a seductive man-eater in a musical comedy farce that includes Don DeLuise, Tony Curtis and a young Timothy Dalton. The result is a car crash you cannot take your eyes away from.
Tokyo Vampire Hotel (Sion Sono, 2017) - Review
Sion Sono's Amazon Prime commissioned TV mini-series about a vampire war and apocalypse where surviving humans are forced to procreate in a giant mansion growing out of a female vampire.
Ultraforce (1995/TV Series) - Review
A cancelled TV series I saw merely a clip of as a child and was burnt into memory. The truth, based on the properties of publisher Malibu Comics just before their acquisition by Marvel Comics doomed them, is its own fascinating tale whilst the superhero animated series is a car-crash of nineties aesthetic, wonky animation and a strange misbegotten charm in failure.
Wet Woman in the Wind (Akihiko Shiota, 2016) - Review
Part of Nikkatsu's re-launch of their Roman Porno line of pinku erotica, this follows a reclusive playwright who cannot shake off a very sexually active woman from him even in his self sufficient hut in the woods.
Freeway (Matthew Bright, 1996) - Review
The screenwriter of Forbidden Zone (1980) directs and pens this perverse reinterpretation of Little Red Riding Hood, envisioned with Reese Witherspoon as a trailer trash version and Kiefer Sutherland the person hiding secrets when he picks her up as a hitchhiker.
Another of Jean Rollin's outliers from his usual style, a crime story of a mysterious woman in a car who pursues and shoots those responsible for a past transgression.
Lifeforce (Tope Hooper, 1985) - Review
Hooper's infamous Cannon Films backed sci-fi/horror epic of nude space vampires.
The Mansion of Madness (Juan López Moctezuma, 1973) - Review
A strange Mexican reinterpretation of Edgar Allen Poe in which a journalist goes to a mental institution only to find himself in the midst of madness.
Microwave Massacre (Wayne Berwick, 1983) - Review
The utterly un-PC but compelling tale of domestic masculine crisis and cannibalism in which comedian Jackie Vernon develops a taste for human meat, and begins killing women with the intention of preparing their bodies for food by way of a ridiculously large microwave.
An Indonesian horror film in which a woman whose desire to research black magic leads her to being turned into a Penanggalan, a vampire whose head detaches from the body leaving a trail of entrails hanging off the severed neck sent off the feed on the blood of pregnant women and the meat of unborn children.
Of Freaks and Men (Aleksei Balabanov, 1998) - Review
A period Russian drama in which two men produce flagellation erotica whilst in the midst of malicious plans involving seducing a wealthy middle class women and acquiring a pair of Siamese Twins with the purpose of increasing their fortunes.
Organ (Kei Fujiwara, 1996) - Review
One of the few known Japanese horror films directed and written by a woman; a grotesque and gristly psycho-thriller about illegal organ harvesting and a plant-man hybrids locked in a school room.
Out For A Kill (Michael Oblowitz, 2003) - Review
In the midst of Steven Seagal's straight-to-video, this particular ones feels like it is was concocted in a stoned dream, where its produced by the country of Aruba without being even set there and Seagal's usually tale of justice is cribbed together with the looseness of a Frankenstein creation.
Pepperminta (Pipilotti Rist, 2009) - Review
Swiss visual artist Pipilotti Rist creates a deeply flawed yet fascinating day-glo paean to anarchic happiness as she bands together a group of misfits and her grandmother, a mechanical eye in a jar, to make the world more fun and colourful.
Postcards from the Zoo (Edwin, 2012) - Review
One named Indonesian filmmaker Edwin follows the burgeoning relationship between a woman brought up by zoo staff and a cowboy magician.
Scream (Wes Craven, 1996) - Review
Not an abstract film at all, but this review of Wes Craven's seminal meta-commentary on the slasher genre does cover the time I viewed the film on the big screen, and the fact the red saturation in the version being played being too high was not a detraction in the slightest but a fascinating viewing experience appropriate for this blog.
Smoke and Flesh (Joseph Mangine, 1968) - Review
A delirious and sexy sexploitation/drugsploitation film about pot loving New Yorkers having fun, playing strip Scalextric and using whipped cream in legitimately kinky ways.
Suddenly in the Dark (Young Nam Ko, 1981) - Review
A heightened and stylished South Korean horror film where a married woman becomes more and more paranoid when she suspects her husband is having an affair with an orphaned young woman who brings a creepy shrine doll with her.
Tag (Sion Sono, 2015) - Review
Schoolgirl Mitsuko finds herself in the midst of strange events involving a dangerous gust of wind, homicidal teachers and an infinate loop including her own wedding where the guests are less than welcoming.
Tales from the Quadead Zone (Chester Novell Turner, 1987) - Review
Chester Novell Turner's legendary and infamous shot-on video anthology tale. Once (may still be) the most expensive VHS tape to buy due to its original scarceness, also a deeply weird homemade work of strange music, a peculiar form of family ritual involving baloney sandwiches, and an undead clown.
Tale of Tales (Matteo Garrone, 2015) - Review
The director of realistic crime drama Gomorrah (2008) takes an unexpected turn into adapting the fairy tale collection the Pentamerone by Giambattista Basile; expect violence, monsters and Toby Jones being obsessed with raising a giant flea.
The Territory (Raul Ruiz, 1981) - Review
Ruiz's turbulent production is one of his only horror films - as a series of American tourists get lost in the French woodlands only to resort to cannibalism.
Ruiz's turbulent production is one of his only horror films - as a series of American tourists get lost in the French woodlands only to resort to cannibalism.
Tokyo x Erotica (Takahisa Zeze, 2001) - Review
Zeze's pinku erotic exploration of the 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system by why of a man and woman, who exist in three different time periods even after their deaths, and Death as personified as a man in a pink bunny costume.
Treasure of Bitch Island (F.J. Ossang, 1990) - Review
From punk filmmaker/poet/musician Ossang comes the tale of heir of the consortium Kryo'Corp travelling to Bitch Island with assistance, in hope to claim the substances needed for an important new energy form, only for drugs, the environment's radiation, unhelpful hotel staff, and the general tension between the fascistic colonizers and the natives to take it's toll.
Waltz with Bashir (Ari Folman, 2008) - Review
Using animation to examine his own experience as a soldier during the 1982 Lebanon War as the Israeli opposition, director Folman with interviews with those involved, recreations of events and dream sequences attempts to uncover the memories lost to him and openly confront the horrifying things that he also witnessed and may have accidentally be complicit in.
* Some of the reviews might be negative, but my opinions have become fonder of these after all this time, hence their inclusion.
======
Unsuccessful "Abstract" Works Covered:
Antiporno (Sion Sono, 2016) - Review
Sion Sono's critique of pinku (erotic) cinema by means of transgression.
Enemy (Denis Villeneuve, 2013) - Review
The tale of Jake Gyllenhaal meeting his doppelganger in a strange fascistic world with spiders and secret sex clubs.
Female Human Animal (Josh Appignanesi, 2018) - Review
A shot-on-video psycho-sexual-thriller influenced by the work of Surrealist Leonara Carrington starring a scholar of her work, Chloe Aridjis, playing herself.
Final Stab (David DeCoteau, 2001) - Review
A low budget slasher from the post-Scream era by the legendary cult figure David DeCoteau. Is what it is, so this wasn't a negative review. Why I covered it as an Abstract film was why the "Non-Abstract Reviews" section was made in 2018, and is stranger than the film itself.
Iron Virgin Jun (Maezono Fumio, 1992) - Review
One of the obscurest adaptations of Go Nagai, an innovator of manga and anime (and also exceptionally perverse) about a muscle powered heroine escapes her evil mother's forced marriage plans only to be persuaded, in the most tasteless aspect, by the Golden Cherry Boys with mechanical animal heads on their crotches
Sexy Killer (Miguel Martí, 2008) - Review
A Spanish genre hybrid about a young woman who happens to be the killer on her university campus.
Virus Buster Serge (Masami Obari, 1997/TV Series) - Review
The legendary (if sometimes divisive) anime director and designer Obari's unknown and usually reviled animated television series; a dystopian sci-fi action series about a squad created to defeat an unknown satellite that infects humans and computes with a virus. Expected female characters with voluptuous figures but comically bug sized eyes, ridiculous fashion choices and a post-Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995) influence where everything is meant to be moody with lots of surreal symbolism.
**Although the future might be kind to these works, and I'll revisit them in the future.
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Non Abstract Reviews:
Somethings there are works that are not weird or abstract, but have a detail about them that is different and unique, worthy of a review whether they succeed or not. Call them the curiosities of this online Wunderkammer.
Cassandra "Elvira" Peterson, the seminal cult figure, once made a TV pilot for a sitcom starring her character, one quashed due to how raunchy her style was. But its available to see in this era of the internet...
Happy Hour (Ryūsuke Hamaguchi, 2015) - Review
Ryūsuke Hamaguchi's drama of four thirty-something women, whose lives are effected by one of their own revealing a past adultery and her current divorce court proceedings, that is over five hours plus long yet uses it fully to its advantage.
HI-8 (Horror Independents) (Various, 2014) - Review
Veterans of the Shot-on-Video era of American genre boom of the eighties, and their successors, come together for this anthology where they had to make shorts made with the restrictions of those original SOV productions.
Notorious Daughter of Fanny Hill, The (Peter Perry Jr., 1966)/The Head Mistress (Byron Mabe, 1968) - Review
Two sixties sexploitation films, released by Something Weird Video, for the price of one review. One, the erotic adventures of Fanny Hill's daughter, is surprisingly fun and charming beyond the sight of Americans trying to recreate a period drama on a low budget. The Head Mistress, about the sexual romps of a man who poses as a dumb and mute man servant at a 17th century Italian all-girl's school, is less so sadly.
Permanent Vacation (Jim Jarmusch, 1980) - Review
The debut of the cult American filmmaker, a lo-fi series of sketches following a young insomniac on a trip to see his mother in a mental institution.
Redneck County Fever (Gary Kennamer, 1992) - Review
Something legitimately odd in the question of why it even exists: a shot-on-video comedy about two Bill and Ted stand-ins wandering the South in a series of "sketches" with the locals for an hour's length.
Reanimator Academy (Judith Priest, 1992) - Review
This hour long, shot-on-video cash-in on the Re-Animator franchise, in which a scientist creates a resurrection serum, takes an odd turn immediately with the severed, burnt head of a comedian coming to life, no-budget aesthetic and gangsters straight out of a Looney Tunes cartoon named Mugsy.
Sextette (Ken Hughes, 1978) - Review
Legendary performance Mae West's last on-screen role, eighty five, still being portrayed as a seductive man-eater in a musical comedy farce that includes Don DeLuise, Tony Curtis and a young Timothy Dalton. The result is a car crash you cannot take your eyes away from.
Tokyo Vampire Hotel (Sion Sono, 2017) - Review
Sion Sono's Amazon Prime commissioned TV mini-series about a vampire war and apocalypse where surviving humans are forced to procreate in a giant mansion growing out of a female vampire.
Ultraforce (1995/TV Series) - Review
A cancelled TV series I saw merely a clip of as a child and was burnt into memory. The truth, based on the properties of publisher Malibu Comics just before their acquisition by Marvel Comics doomed them, is its own fascinating tale whilst the superhero animated series is a car-crash of nineties aesthetic, wonky animation and a strange misbegotten charm in failure.
Wet Woman in the Wind (Akihiko Shiota, 2016) - Review
Part of Nikkatsu's re-launch of their Roman Porno line of pinku erotica, this follows a reclusive playwright who cannot shake off a very sexually active woman from him even in his self sufficient hut in the woods.
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