After far, far too long a time, I finally popped the movie Dark Star (1974) off the reader-requested review queue at 366 Weird Movies. Not only is it a long-standing cult favorite for being the first theatrical release for both John Carpenter and Dan O’Bannon when they were still film students, it’s also a quirky and unique sci-fi comedy whose “hippies in space” motif is just enough to flirt with the list of weirdest movies of all time.
Category: Movies
IMGUR posts: 1980s Action Figures and Vintage Pulp Novel Cover Art
So you all might be noticing by now, I’ve been tinkering around with IMGUR a lot lately. I can’t help getting hold of a social media platform and eventually experimenting with it to see what kinds of nifty posts I can make in that medium. The IMGUR format is underappreciated; it’s more like a super-Tumblr since you can post any amount of text appended to images and chain images together into albums. Not bad for a site that originally started as a side-feature for Reddit.
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New at 366Weird: Eating Raoul (1982)
At long last, I got the opportunity to vindicate this gonzo cannibal comedy for the brilliant social satire it was: Light-years ahead of its time. I offer Eating Raoul (1982) as a candidate for the Weird Movies’ List apocrypha.
Paul Bartel was writer, director, and co-lead, which makes this probably his magnum opus in his too-short career. But for what few opportunities he did find, Paul Bartel was a master of deadpan black comedy, albeit a little too reserved for the tastes of modern audiences.
New at 366Weird: LEMORA: A CHILD’S TALE OF THE SUPERNATURAL (1973)
I’m probably, what, one of the five or so bloggers to review this forgotten nightmare? Brace yourself for an edgy take on the vampire mythos with our review of Lemora: A Child’s Tale of the Supernatural. Your skin crawling may not be entirely from the conventional scares.
This movie is a freak in so many other ways!
- The only movie directed by Richard Blackburn
- The only acting role for Lesley Taplin
- Starring exploitation actress Cheryl Smith when she was of sub-legal age (and playing a 13-year-old).
Cheryl “Rainbeaux” Smith would go on to a famously seedy B-movie career including Caged Heat, The Swinging Cheerleaders, and Video Vixens!, but also cult movies like Phantom of the Paradise, The Incredible Melting Man, and Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid. Sadly, her star set too soon when she died from heroin complications.
I don’t write about vampires often, so here’s some other monsters I have written about…
- Who Needs Halloween When You Have The Real Life Horror Of China? – Much scarier than vampires, isn’t it?
- The Best Cannibal Horror Movies – Pleased to eat you!
- Junji Ito, Legendary Horror Mangaka – You’ll never look at a spiral the same way again.
- History of Witch Torture – You’ll be on neither party’s side.
- HP Lovecraft Books That’ll Give You Nightmares – Lovecraft made the most innovative monsters, besides being a poop.
Gimme Your Weird Love: Our 366Weird Picks For Valentine’s Flicks
Valentine’s Day just got very warped: Three of us weird cinephiles (your humble author included) pick our top five weird movies to celebrate Valentine’s Day. Is your vision of love bizarre and unconventional? Do you hope to win a mate over by your quirks alone? Is your idea of the perfect couple closer to The Addams Family than mainstream rom-coms?
Well you got 15 (don’t sweat the math, I checked) certified weirdest movies to choose from to mark this pesky wanna-be holiday. Giles even wrote a poem about it! What a hoot!
XOXOKQ : But bonus content has since been added:
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New at 123ish: Why Horror Is Dominated By Catholic Tropes
Director William Friedkin last week complained the sequel to his ground-breaking 1973 film The Exorcist sucks runny demon eggs. I can’t disagree, but I will point out that he is responsible for breaking the horror genre in two and dooming us all to a lifetime of rehashed exorcism cliches.
Here, I tackle the meaty subject of why The Exorcist dominates horror culture right to the modern day, and ask if we will ever move on past Satanism, Ouija boards, priests clutching crucfixes, and nuns-nuns-nuns.
UPDATE – BONUS BUCK: I ran out of space in that article to talk about the “Satanic Panic” movement in the ’70s-’90s, a scare-tactics campaign by the American Christian church that grew more shrill by the year with shock media. Satanic Panic was one of the biggest contributors to turning American Christianity, originally more left-leaning, into the movement of Neocon bigots we know today. But I ran across this video preserved on the channel of the excellent archivist Josh Hadley which gives you an adequate taste for the atmosphere of the time. Feast your eyes and ears on the hilariously paranoid conspiracy theorists at Jeremiah Films, with “The Pagan Invasion – Devil Worship – The Rise Of Satanism.” No, this is not a parody.
New post at 123ish.com: We Always Need A Black Mirror
Netflix’s Black Mirror has been critically acclaimed and widely praised, but also gets its share of fan hate? The new episode “Bandersnatch” gives us a great opportunity to re-examine the series’ cultural position.
Join me as I illustrate why Black Mirror isn’t just any TV anthology series. Along the way we revisit some classic genre anthology TV series from decades past, including the one that used to scare me silly as a kid!
New Post At 123ish: Leave The Star Wars Holiday Special Alone!
You judgemental, mean-spirited geeks pushed me and pushed me year in and year out. And I finally snapped. This is one of those nerd-rage rants that have been kicking around in my slush folder for years, and it’s finally found a home.
Leave The Star Wars Holiday Special Alone! If it’s that bad, it’s still no worse than the rest of Star Wars.
UPDATE Called it!
Netflix’s Adaptation Of Death Note – Just One More Failure
Seen the Netflix movie version of Death Note? Hated it for being Twilight but with a Ferris wheel scene for no reason? Forehead still numb from facepalming as you witnessed complete character flips that made no sense?
Nah, OK, maybe you didn’t do all that, but I’m here to explain why Death Note is a can of hairy worms for just about anybody to try to adapt into a movie, why the anime is the best we can get – potato chip scene be damned! – and why the original manga stands alone in a class by itself.