The Duck Wandering into the Void Award for Least Expected Moment
There are no major plot spoilers but if you want to see any of these without any context, skip this award. For those staying, this and the next one will be more light hearted, beginning with those scenes in productions whether good or bad which will cause me to scratch my head and wonder about the fact they even came to be. Oh, and before anyone asks, the award's title comes from On the Air (1992), which could have gotten many mentions in this award and the other.
The exorcism of Coca Cola in How
Fernando Pessoa Saved Portugal (2018)
Honourable Mentions:
The many appearances of ducks in On the Air (1992), including one
entering a darkened void that is never explained.
The episodes of Serial Experiments Lain (1998) where in one is a montage
of various real life conspiracy images with voice over, the second involving
another montage set to a guitar solo symbolising a computer being downloaded
into a brain.
The Baby Merchant song from Cop
Rock (1990)
A young man defecating a knife into a toilet in Hallucinations (1986)
Eating humanoid dancing cockroaches in Cats (2019).
A woman giving birth to a full sized man in Xtro (1982)
Chicken head guitarists and Satan crooners in Showgirls 2: Penny's From Heaven (2011)
An apple appearing near your bed, then telling you it intends to kill
you and your roommate in Hobo with a
Trash Can (2015)
Mahatma Gandhi's psychedelic freak out on raisins in Clone High (2002-3)
The comically extended end credits of Wicked World (1991)
Mermaid sex in The Lighthouse
(2019)
Puppet deer attack in Rise of
the Animals (2011)
Caveman shanking in Surviving
Edged Weapons (1988)
The winner is also a nominee in the next, but it deserved the award: literally in the middle of Eugene Green's "short feature", this very dry and sweet film suddenly has a Portuguese priest, under the belief with government officials that the American import of a brand of cola is evil, exorcise a bottle. Green is a very idiosyncratic and very dry director, but if there ever was a sense of his humour, this was perfect as well as being legitimately weird.
=====
Moment of the Year
I decided to not include Psycho (1960) and the shower scene, because that would be unfair. Also this award is for all the interesting and memorable moments (and one MVP) that deserve a nod, more designed for moments that amused me or come from work which. Likewise before, there are no major plot spoilers included or only vaguely alluded to, but if you wish to come to the work I have covered this year blind, skip this award:
The locker room death in Hello
Mary Lou: Prom Night II (1987)
Honourable Mentions:
The final shoe pun related conclusion in On the Air (1992) with avant-garde dissonant jazz, Ian Buchanan
with a robot voice and shoes being waved aloft in a mass dance.
Camelo Bene as two monks from Our
Lady of the Spheres (1968)
The exorcism of Coca Cola in How
Fernando Pessoa Saved Portugal (2018)
"Who Killed Captain Alex: The Musical" in Who Killed Captain Alex? (2010).
Otley (1968) and the driving test car chase
Richard Dean Anderson convincing a gunslinger to not shoot him by
offering to introduce him to his publisher in the pilot episode of Legend (1995)
The bloodbath that ends the remake of Suspiria (2018)
The final episode of Point
Pleasant (2005) when the shit hits the fan.
Cop Rock (1990) breaking the fourth wall and admitting it
has been cancelled.
Petscop (2017-2020) when it reaches Episode 11 and introduces
the "Demo" segments
The bedroom disturbance in The
Phantom of Liberty (1974)
Created clearly to cash in on the phenomenon that was the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, the first sequel to the 1980 Prom Night, Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II (1987), could have easily been a cheap dream logic horror move with no creativity. So much however was, enough that it could have easily been in the weirdest category if it was not against such strong competition, and it deserves as well to have this award because, for one of its sequences, the execution and content have been permanently etched into my mind. It does start with a slight sense of gay panic, so be warned as that might upset some viewers, in which the lead character (a girl possessed by the vengeful ghost of a prom queen from the fifties) flirts with the female victim. Thankfully, this can be brushed aside for a scene which is legitimately creepy, and borders into the area of the erotic-grotesque. Involving someone being stalked in the women's changing room, first you have to credit lead actress Wendy Lyon who, when it was never written as such in the script, was willing instead to play the scene with full frontal nudity, which changes the tone of the scene and makes it creepier. Then you thank everyone who created the denouement, including a riff on a roll n roll song lyric and a gruesome moment involving lockers, which ends the scene as one of the most distinct and effective scenes from the eighties era of horror cinema for me. The film itself was a huge surprise to return to, and this sequence showed why.
=====
The Most Underrated Project
Honourable Mentions: Tetsuo The Bullet Man (2009), Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II (1987), Xtro (1982), Youth Without Youth (2007)
Sadly not every film will get a prominent place in these awards, so this one is designed for everything that I covered, an "Abstract" work or not, that was accidentally ignored.
Honourable, honourable mentions include: the IMAX 3D spectacle film Haunted Castle (2001), which is a long forgotten piece of spectacle entertainment I cannot help but still think of with its dated CGI and being a literal ride in first person form; Plan 10 from Outer Space (1995), the first encounter with American independent director Trent Harris who has won me over with his eccentric take Mormonism and aliens, followed by his very micro budget but utterly entertaining Welcome to the Rubber Room (2017); and Epidemic (1987), a fascinating first step for Lars von Trier in what would become his Dogme 95 movement in the next decade after, a micro budgeted meta apocalypse film where von Trier himself and screenwriter Niels Vørsel accidentally cause the end of humanity when researching for a post apocalypse film about a virus ending the world.
Whilst von Trier's film is the better work, I have to give the first slot however to Francis Ford Coppola's completely strange and unique period magical realist tale Youth Without Youth (2007), his return after a long absence in which his technical craft is still exceptional, whilst his tale of Tim Roth being struck by lightning and acquiring super human gifts is as emotional rich as it is as mad as a box of frogs. And whilst the first sequel was terrible, the original Xtro (1982) was great. Also as equally bizarre, but whilst Youth Without Youth was an auteur with creative control, Xtro is a rare case of the producers influencing its weirdest and most interesting details among other factors. Like a curious, really screwed up metaphor for divorce and when an absentee father returns and destroys the family, Xtro has depth to it and a lot of other material that is mind boggling. Since I am at it, I admit to that I enjoyed Xtro 3: Watch the Skies (1995) though it is not on the list.
In the same camp, Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II (1987) looked at the original film, a Canadian slasher, decided to instead become a follow on to the popularity of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise and become a strange, mind boggling spectacle of weirdness, a really startling locker room pursuit and Michael Ironside. Sadly the second sequel, Prom Night III: The Last Kiss (1990), whilst only available in a cut form for the most part and worthy of a re-evaluation in respect of this, missed the tone entirely.
Definitely following the ideal of this award, as a huge fan of director Shinya Tsukamoto, I finally got to the divisive Tetsuo The Bullet Man (2009), and whilst the flaws are visible, I argue that even as the weakest of the Tetsuo trilogy it is still proof of his talent. Showing his transition to the 2010s, whilst it does come off like a silly monster film at points, it still has the intensity, the Chu Ishikawa score and enough in its form that it still stands out proudly.
Beating it to the top spot however is a film that sadly was marginalised from the other awards and needed some credit, João Pedro Rodrigues' O Fantasma (2000) was the Portuguese director's debut, following the curious sexual obsessions of a male garbage truck employee, and did not pull back his punches in being explicit in the sexual content, in being provocative (such as our lead finding a police officer handcuffed in his own car and decided to wank him off in a prone state), and being even grimy. The film is a character piece not necessarily driven by plot, somehow ending up with our lead in a homemade gimp leather suit crawling around a landfill, and how you get to that point is entirely for the viewer to learn of. Rodrigues is definitely a director of interest to me now, and whilst his films have sadly been unavailable, films have (wink wink) been available on MUBI's Library service, created in May 2020, and hopefully means his work will become more easily available to explore for the blog.
=====
Music of the Abstract:
As is part of my other blog 1000 Anime, music is a very important aspect of the Japanese animated medium, and likewise to ignore for cinema and other motion picture media this important piece of their construction any longer would be embarrassing. For this award, I am being open to pre-existing music being chosen, and also including an adaptation of an opera as well.
And there are many admirable honourable mentions. We Are The Strange (2007), whatever you think of it as a micro budget animated film, had a great score nonetheless. Serial Experiments Lain (1998), one two television series to be talked of, is known for its opening theme by British rock band Bôa, but its eerie industrial and electronic score by Reichi Nakaido also fits material just on the cusp of horror. The 2018 remake of Suspiria may be a divisive production, but alongside falling in love with it, it wisely never attempted to remake Goblin's incredible score either, instead letting Tom Yorke of Radiohead carve his own unique take on the material. Finally, one should mention Who Killed Captain Alex? (2010), entirely for the fact that the panpipe rendition of Seal's Kiss of a Rose is as iconic as many other factors within the Ugandan epic for its fan base.
12. Death Metal Zombies (1995), a no budget zombie film, managed to get some pretty good music from Relapse Records in spite of its no existent homemade production, and even the bizarre tracks stand out. It also introduced me to Amorphis, which is a huge success on the film's part.
Track to Listen to: In the
Beginning by Amorphis
11. Whilst an infamous production in Trent Reznor's career, one whose grotesqueness feels ill-at-ease to the version of Nine Inch Nails I have come to them as in terms of a band, the short film Broken (1992) is nonetheless backed by the titular EP. By itself, it is likely more known of even for people with limited knowledge of the band and Reznor due to how, even as an EP, it has carved a popular reputation in his career. Songs like Happiness in Slavery are huge hits, and when the short works like that song's accompanying segment, the effect is startling.
Track to Listen to: Gave Up
by Nine Inch Nails
10. One of the secret weapons of YouTube series Petscop (2017-20) was its score, a work that was made available in part of creator Tony Domenico's finale for the series, a challenge to have created in both trying to replicate a Playstation One era videogame but also suiting what becomes a complex psychological drama in a very unconventional format. He succeeded well.
Track to Listen To: Listen to
the Whole Album (It's the epilogue to Petscop on its YouTube page)
9. For any flaws Tetsuo The Bullet Man (2009) has in context of Shinya Tsukamoto's trilogy, no one would hopefully complain about Chu Ishikawa's soundtrack, the audio equivalent of an industrial nightmare that is as much part of the trilogy's power. An additional bonus, and befitting a previously mentioned inclusion, is the main theme by Trent Reznor with is arguably his first collaboration with Atticus Ross. Those two would go far afterwards.
Track to Listen To: Main
Theme by Nine Inch Nails
8. Arguably the most divisive film in Jim Jarmusch's career, the soundtrack to The Limits of Control (2009) is a perfect accompaniment to how you should treat the film. Mostly drone metal, including a cameo by LCD Soundsystem, it is a sub genre of metal about pushing a single guitar riff as prolonged as possible, once compared to raga being played during an earthquake. For a film which takes an assassin film and stretches it to a minimalist extreme, this type of soundtrack with its who's-who of drone metal innovators is befitting the material.
Track to Listen To: Farewell
by Boris
7. The Needle (1988) was a vehicle for Viktor Tsoy, an iconic figure in rock music in Eastern Europe, tragically dying at a young age not long after the creation of this film. The Needle if nothing else was a testament to his charisma, a figure probably not known in the slightest outside that region sadly, especially with the fact that, with his band Kino on the soundtrack, the film is also a testament to the great music he created.
Track to Listen to: Gruppa
krovi (aka. Группа крови) by Kino
6. One of the reasons that I have allowed use of pre-existing music is because, well, most would be baffled Lasagna Cat (2007-2017) is on the list, but in one of its creators Fatal Farm's best and cheekiest moves, they used the entire Philip Glass composed soundtrack to Martin Scorsese's Kundun (1997), which raises questions of "borrowing" another project's entire soundtrack but was bloody inspired to say the least.
Track to Listen To: Escape to
India by Philip Glass
5. Don't Hug Me. I'm Scared, a YouTube success that has scared and fascinated many, also happens to be an admirable project by creators Becky Sloan and Joseph Pelling. A pastiche of puppet shows, with production value that few online videos have, it also decided to have musical numbers which are as iconic as the horrifying material inside. The music has been made available separately on the likes of iTunes, but they work fully when next to the visuals, so watch the series if you have not. Watch it again after reading this if you already have.
Track to Listen To: The Love
Song [Don't Hug Me Episode 3]
4. Thankfully for John Zorn's soundtrack to The Golden Boat (1990), whilst it is not available to stream, he made it available alongside most if not all his career through CDs and on iTunes, his unique and odd soundtrack to one of Raul Ruiz's only American films part of the compilation Filmworks 1986–1990. A unique film in the Chilean director's career for just the amount of important figures on and behind the camera in the film - Zorn, Katy Ackey, Jim Jarmusch etc. - the score is an appropriately strange jazz piece to match a deeply strange film.
Track to Listen To: Main
Theme to The Golden Boat by John Zorn
3. Cop Rock (1990) is sadly seen as an exceptional failure in television history, a notorious attempt by Steven Bochco, King of cop dramas, to make one that was also a musical but without losing the dark and adult subject matter. Chances of an actual soundtrack being available are slim, unless secretly snuck online, but for every song which was terrible, I can think of a lot that were successes. Not just the Baby Merchant song either but just for those created by Randy Newman including the title theme.
Track to Listen To: Cop Rock
(Under the Gun) by Randy Newman
2. Moses and Aaron (1975), at least the version that Jean-Marie Straub and Daniele Huillet made, more than likely does not have an original soundtrack album, which means anything I will link to would not really match in the slightest their interpretation of Arnold Schoenberg's original unfinished opera. As a production, it is unique in context to this list, Schoenberg's three act opera set after the Book of Exodus when Moses comes into conflict with Aaron, his original representative to help push his ideals of God, over what that message and ideals should be, before you even get to the fact the directors created an actual ending to their version too. As also one of the most idiosyncratic films in these directors' career, which is saying something for how difficult and unique their work was, likewise this is unique music that you experience as much as the film is in itself. Especially with the chosen cast, the opera is thunderous and startling to hear.
Track to Listen To: Best to investigate the entire opera, be it online or in one's preferred form, then link to any specific piece of the composition.
1. Psycho (1960) is not my favourite Alfred Hitchcock film in the slightest, which is why controversially it will not top many of the lists. But only a madman would however give the award to anyone else but Bernard Hermann's iconic and startling score. The list itself is hilarious to consider - only here would you have Arnold Schoenberg and Philip Glass against music by the notorious shock metal band Anal Cunt and Randy Newman - but it just proves that, between heavy metal to opera, pre-existing music to original compositions, the choice of a score is a difficult task but one that can succeed if you chose it rightly. Psycho is the best example of this. We never view showers since 1960 without thinking of Herrmann's strings.
Track to Listen To: Prelude
by Bernard Herrmann
=====
Best [Not Abstract] Film/Project
Honourable Mentions: Otley (1969); The Needle (1988); Psycho (1960); Swept Away (1974)
Not everything I have covered qualified for "abstract", so for those titles, they deserve their own moment in the sun. There are a few titles worth mentioning. Three television series - Point Pleasant (2005), Clone High (2002-3) and Legend (1995) - come to mind. Who Killed Captain Alex? (2010) has already gotten a bit of love already. Two have yet to be mentioned however. Benzina (2001), an Italian LGBT crime drama about two women having to try to hide the body of the mother of one of them, is of its time aesthetically, but is a film that if uncovered today should get a lot more love. Hell House (2001), a film that definitely should be rediscovered, is a documentary on the Evangelical equivalent to the haunted houses found on Halloween, meant to scare people to God and in cases have been controversial, especially the one we see here ran by a Church that once reinterpreted the Columbine High School shootings for one of the exhibits. Having to open the assortment of problems of their ideals, their thoughts, their controversial ideals like their anti-gay views, but also their moments of humanity and weakness, this open minded documentary, where the one openly confrontational attack on the hell house is from young patrons rather than the production itself, is very good.
Also tackling a really controversial subject, most will only know Swept Away (1974) for its terrible 2002 remake with Madonna. The original by Lina Wertmüller, a prominent female director in the seventies who sadly has never had any of her work released in the United Kingdom baring this one, is uncomfortable as it deals with politics, misogyny, power roles and even sexual violence, but it is compelling and morally dark in a way, from a female director-writer, where you are aware she is making these difficult choices to make the viewer uncomfortable.
Psycho (1960) is a film most people will know of. I personally find it is not Alfred Hitchcock's best, especially as there is a period in the middle act where it does feel flabby due the plot structure, but it is still an important film and when it is good, its reputation is deserved. The Needle (1988) is tragically a film most will not be able to see, a Soviet era post-punk film that, from the end of that era before the Iron Curtain fell, feels distinct and bursting with rebellious passion. Otley (1969), from that odd and rewarding era of British cinema between the late sixties and the seventies, until and even after the funding from American studios disappeared, would have encapsulated the great BFI Flipside label if it had not been released by another Blu-Ray/DVD company Indicator instead. A James Bond and spy film parody, baring one single line which has not dated well at all it is still sharp and stands out considerably in the present day as an underrated gem, for its dark sense of humour, sense of absurdity among real London locations, and a cast full of heavyweights including Tom Courtenay and Romy Schneider that won me over.
The winner however was one of the last I covered for this year, Jean-Marie Straub and Daniele Huillet stripping away all artifice for Antigone (1992) but still keeping a dramatic weight to the material. The film is arguably one of their most assessable films, whilst very unconventional, for the mere fact that it tells a full tale of dramatic weight, based on Ancient Greek legend, but keeps the directors' attitude to not compromising in their aesthetic and filmmaking craft. Within the recent years, especially through MUBI and an American distributor Grasshopper Films, we have been thankfully had the duo's films become more readily available, so hopefully one day this particular title among others will be easier to see. [Such as MUBI at least in the United Kingdom if you are subscribed to their streaming service.]
=====
The Abstract Hall of Fame (Class of 2019-20)
Winners:
Raul Ruiz
Jean Marie Straub and Daniele Huillet
This, like the Honorary Award at the Academy Awards, goes to the figures who have contributed to the "Abstract" (or at least the ideals of this blog), and have been covered a great deal. In the future, I hope to expend this beyond directors to other fields - actors, writers, even figures in areas like production design and music - as long as they hit a requisite qualification (i.e. at least one film on the Abstract List or enough special about them) to qualify. Especially as I have more interest in themed runs of films and productions being covered, more names added to the ballots until I have to actually create a post for them all.
This year is devoted to three very high brow art cinema creators who have plenty of films and productions left to cover. Straub and Huillet are thankfully having their day in terms of their cinema being restored and made available. Raul Ruiz is sadly maligned in my honest opinion, one of my favourite directors but barely available baring VHS rips you have to track online. Any promotion of his, and the trio's work in general, even on this tiny blog is worthy. Straub and Huillet, whilst very strict and extremely minimalist, showed completely experimental bravery with their work. Ruiz's cinema, and everything else he touched, is very unpredictable at its best, a fever dream where nothing is to be predictable. He is arguably even now a sacred figure for the blog in terms of true abstract and unique cinema and motion pictures....and he made over a hundred productions according to his IMDB (and still counting), so I have a lot to cover.
===
Best Abstract Film/Project
And here we are...the last award, for titles which even if they did not get on the Abstract List itself, were all candidates, all together in one final category. There were many titles which missed the list. That Most Important Thing: Love (1975), Suspiria (2018), Not Reconciled (1965), A Paper Tiger (2008), In the Mouth of Madness (1994), Petscop (2017-2020), Moses and Aaron (1975), In Fabric (2018) and The Limits of Control (2009) all missed out to heavy competition.
10. First on the list, Rubber's Lover (1996), has embarrassingly been ignored throughout the entire series of blog posts which I can only blame on myself. Shozin Fukui's monochrome cyberpunk film, about underground and illegal experiments on psychic powers, is an uncomfortable and dark production to watch, at times gruelling in its willingness in sound and imagery to pummel the viewer senseless. It is however, because of this why it is also such a spectacular production to witness. It deserves, if anything, a re-discovery.
9. Horse Money (2014) is also difficult, but for very different reasons. Finally getting worldwide attention, or at least availability, in the 2010s, Pedro Costa changed drastically in his work from his debut Blood (1989) to this, a minimalist tale worked on with the real life occupants of Fontaínhas, reinterpreting their real lives stories (acted out by them, like with his regular star Ventura) in a dreamlike haze here in Horse Money with shadow drenched set pieces. It is gorgeous to witness, and rewarding when you unpick its pieces.
8. Two for the price of one, Raul Ruiz's The Wandering Soap Opera (2017) and The Golden Boat (1990), which have been covered earlier on equally in these lists, are a fascinating pair worthy of being seen. Raul Ruiz is one of my favourite directors, tragically one difficult to actually see, so any encouragement to have films like this released is virtuous for this goal. They make a perfect duo anyway, as The Wandering Soap Opera was first shot in the same era of The Golden Boat only to be fully constructed a long time afterwards, both a piece of his career interlinked.
7. The Phantom of Liberty (1974) is not a film as talked about in Luis Bunuel's later career compared to his other work, but from the later surrealist period in France, Liberty is definitely one of the strangest of them. Like an anthology of interconnecting absurdities and scathing ideals, it begins in the Napoleonic Era, and yet ends in the seventies with the French police storming a zoo with fired shots. How you get there is the magic and black hearted humour of the film.
6. On the list of productions that need to actually be made available to the public again legally is On the Air (1992), David Lynch and Mark Frost's failed comedy sitcom about a fifties variety show which goes wrong every live broadcast. Seeing Lynch, even if he only collaborated partially, have a very silly sense of humour is humbling, to know that even the man who made Lost Highway (1997) really likes a Dad pun, and his collaborators from the Twin Peaks era, having to try to copy him, fell onto some of the deeply strangest material they could ever produce.
5. Also in dire need of availability, though screened on Amazon Prime of all places, is Our Lady of the Turks (1968). Again, Carmelo Bene's work needs to be made available, with this, his debut, utterly alien to a lot of modern day world cinema, but captivating both when it is sincere and also insane.
4. Hukkle (2002) is also captivating as a production, György Pálfi's audio-visual mystery standing out as something to admire.
3. Also proudly an Eastern European production, On Body and Soul (2017) takes a romantic drama, and through very unconventional plotting and circumstances, creates one that is even more beautiful and sweet as a result.
2. The Lighthouse (2019) is a popular film, but with good reason, a rare hit that even intrigues someone like me. Again, as mentioned previously, that Robert Eggers managed to get a film like this made from a mainstream studio is a rare and mercurial thing, and that it has succeeded enough that parodies appear on even the newest Animal Crossing video game is a blessing. Certainly you could not go wrong with what is part cautionary tale of being stuck on an island with only booze to keep you company, also a strange nautical horror film I would argue is supernatural, but of the weirder sort that skulks of the side. Most of the film does not even need to evoke the unnatural in the slightest to crawl down your neck, whilst drunken madness unfolds and Willem Dafoe breaks out words rarely used in modern English just in response to Robert Patterson criticising his cooking. And, whilst "jellicle cats" appearing in my brain has silliness to it, "never kill a seagull" occasionally pops into my head but with greater weight and glee to it in comparison.
And yet, in this case, the winner is a television series. Not a film, but the animated television series Serial Experiments Lain (1998); when I first saw the series as a young adult getting into anime, I did not like it at all, but a decade later I finally came to appreciate this mysterious gem. It is not quite horror, but has plenty of uncomfortable moments of tension and body horror, and it is science fiction but with a premise grounded in urban reality that, dealing with the internet back in a period where concepts like web forums were in their infancy, are amazingly relevant still alongside its existential ideas. It also looks unique in context, even if an early adopter of the computer assisted animation, thankfully just before the 2000 or so period where many television series looked awful, but eerie and cool in its aesthetic. We also have to thank Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995) as, being also a cross over hit that gets picked up on Netflix, its success in its home land of Japan is arguably responsible for these brave little experiments in television anime, Evangelion's own idiosyncratic (and controversial) moments allowing the likes of Serial Experiments Lain to exist. It was an early work covered last year, the second covered actually behind The Phantom of Liberty, but thinking about it, as someone who had grown fond of the show over the years already, it deserves the title even over some strong competition. That a television show dominates over the list of films I have covered is not a detriment to cinema, but that the moving pictures for the open minded are rich and diverse in abstract gems.
And with that, Year Two ends, and Year Three soon begins...
