Tuesday 30 September 2014

Halloween 32 For 31: Things (1989)

From http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zh4oCUq69X0/ThBeH71sSUI/AAAAAAAAAYk
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Dir. Andrew Jordan

"You have just experienced Things" is as inspired an end credit text as you could get for any film remotely like Things, an infamous no-budget horror film from Canada. Films like this are still a foreign language to me I've only picked a few words up in, an entire subculture around no-budget genre cinema significantly more pronounced in the United States. A few ended up getting released in the United Kingdom, almost all on cheap DVDs, but the Americans have had a greater history of these maligned films, the result of their own idiosyncratic history of the VHS boom where countless obscurities that were never released in the UK were available because of the need for content to sell in the market. Many a person who has greater knowledge in these sorts of topics could, and have reading and listening to their work, have informed me of how far this sub culture in cult cinema goes. Obscurities like Sledgehammer (1983) and Boardinghouse (1982) that sound like an occult language of their own, worshiped on the alter of the video cassette player, with various regional directors I'm only hearing of within the last year as the preachers. Even now, a film like Things is unlikely to get a UK DVD release, because of the cults and phenomenons we hear afar of in the States not reaching over yet, and that because of how the British retail industry works, especially with the costs of getting films certificated, the money or interest needed for an obscure film infamous for being one of the worst films ever made is going to need a larger British contingent of "Thing-ites" to exist to make it viable to release. Last time I check too, you can't watch Things on YouTube either, only reviews from amateur reviewers and the main theme played over and over again for ten hours. I thank the celluloid God the American DVD was available.

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Let's call a spade a digging implement in a spade shape. Things is what happens when two ordinary guys from Canada, director Andrew Jordan and co-writer/star/co-producer Barry J. Gillis managed to get the resources together to make a film, clearly obsessed with horror cinema, but unlike The Deadly Spawn (1983), where semblance of technical cohesiveness on a rudimentary level exists, and in great cases like The Deadly Spawn succeed in being a good film in the conventional way, the result of making Things seems to suggest they had no idea how to make a film in the first place either. The thing, if you forgive the unintentional pun, difficult to use "thing" in my habit of using vague descriptive words, with the film is that it's the least technically competent film I've seen, or one of them, and one of the least comprehensible, but that has meant it's still an experience of great worth if you have the right mindset. Two friends, one J. Gillis, recognisable with his moustache and glorious mullet, visit the brother of J. Gillis' character, whose wife is part of an experimental procedure as they are unable to conceive children. Unfortunately the procedure gives birth to the titular things instead, giant insects that are man eating. That is the only cohesive narrative I can give you as the rest of the film has no cinematic sense to it. The transfer for the version I viewed, the best available version I could've viewed on the first viewing, transferred from film to video, is already hazy, but the technical quality of the original footage would raise the eyebrows of those expecting the gloss of what even a modern day straight-to-video film has. Almost all the film is set in a single house. Sound had to be rerecorded and post-synched, with wooden or outlandish vocals for many of the cast, the sound a messy fuzz. Bleeding red and blue lights are used frequently, drowning entire scenes in the retina burning hues. The things are cheesy models that wobble and wiggle along. And the story itself is a scramble of thoughts disconnected to each other in a stream of wavering acting and abrupt events or dialogue exchanges taking place.

From http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_s_30zQFJp4g/TCINrFIoI4I/
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The things of the title and the actual narrative doesn't appear until thirty minutes in. In that time, the thirty minutes consists of actors talking to each other in either the longue or kitchen, drinking beer and a current of garbled content, too much that doesn't make sense one after another to keep up with and rationalise in the cerebrum. The film starts strongly in warning you of this with a dream sequence with a stripping woman in a rubber devil mask, and while nothing supernatural ever takes place, and nothing plot essential happens in the first thirty minutes, it is a sign to inform you of how random Things will get. In the first thirty minutes you get the following - conversations about finding bestiality programming and about how "Some of the stations he doesn't know where they come from!"; the lost Salvador Dali painting Devil's Daughter on a wall and another nearby given to someone by the Queen of England; the characters eating bread sandwiches and adding tap water to their beers; a tape recorder being taken out of a refrigerator and such other things (to forgive the accidental pun again). The result is stupefying and after the plot kicks in, it gets increasingly nonsensical. The result is virtually unwatchable in terms of conventional filmmaking; the virtue I have grown to love within it, instead, being that of the cinematic image separate from narrative is of the most importance, even in a grotty looking, piece of lunacy like this.

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The things appearing doesn't stop the nonsense even if they try their hardest to make a mess of fake blood out of everything. It doesn't stop J. Gillis, after a character's death, talking about the entire narrative of a fictitious science fiction book his character read for no apparent reason. Or, in-between a succession of gory, homemade splatter effects, including a drill and a chainsaw, characters for an entire ten or so minutes sequences walk through a corridor and examining the corners of the bathroom. Or wishing one another were a midget so it'll be easier to carry them. I admit my patience on a second viewing was waning occasionally in the middle half, but Things' apparent unwatchability is compelling and certainly memorable. A truly bad film is merely dull, and I now consider the worst of cinema not to be dictated by technical competence or narrative consistency, but impact and tone, two things (forgive the accidental pun thrice) Things does have. I haven't even mentioned that the creators of the film managed, despite the obscurity of their work, to their credit and tenacity, to get porn star Amber Lynn to star as an omnipresent news reporter, speaking to no one, or maybe us the viewer, or an imaginary one, in a dark room separate from the rest of the film in a mass of eighties styled blonde hair and a sky blue jacket. Reading her lines at points, obviously, as you see her eyes blatantly looking to her right off screen, her musings are as cryptic and strange, anything from asking an unknown audience abruptly to lock their door and stay indoors, to the copyright issues of George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968). There is a random cutaway, extended sequence, to a mad doctor with a female assistance, early in the film, gruesomely mutilating a man strapped to a chair which is never explained. The actual narrative between all this gets odder to compensate. Countless film references appear obscurely or literally out of the fridge. Someone briefly disappears to through the "3rd, 4th and 5th" dimensions. The reference to Salvador Dali is a perverse and an unexpectedly inspired inclusion because, trying to watch Things, I cannot help but think, to the baffle of some people who may read this, of the automatic writing games of the Surrealists as if done by mistake in a no-budget film.

From http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dr4ptbiKYRc/ThvTAperDcI/AAAAAAAAAKI/sUfKpmvYpeg
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The Surrealists admired "bad" cinema for how the mistakes and deficiencies punctured cinematic reality - Things is a catalogue of scenes and moments together that never connect, legitimately surreal even if it was by mistake, with no deliberation but as a mass of uncontrolled thoughts. Things is legitimately weird. I realise on this viewing how bad the film is in context of film studies and film academic structures of how a movie works and is made, but I went to acquire this film on DVD, as many did unless they were the ones who stumbled upon it originally, with this being made clear. Everyone who goes to watch Things has likely went with some knowledge of this, and that wasn't a detraction from it. I knew what to expect after first learning of its existence through Cinema Sewer, which flat out warns you of its tone and content even if the piece about it secretly loved the movie. Nor is this an ironic bad film or lamely terrible...the word "stupefying" is said by me with amazement too. The appreciation I have for anyone who makes a film, having never done so myself, with what resources they could get is always applaudable, many a cult film fan, particularly with no-budget cinema, with the same mindset, a wonderfully humanitarian view of one's fellow man regardless if a film is good or not. I'm closer to a mindset though I've yet to read or hear explicitly about these films, which Things encapsulates, where for it's inanity, amongst aimless scenes, a catchy doom metal riff rock song in the soundtrack, cockroach eating and mind numbing content, where if I was a film maker, I would take as much inspiration from a film like this and it's apparent failures, and do them deliberately in my work to effect a viewer in the same ways. If an existing director was to do this, I'd argue they would create legitimately great cinema. I've yet to hear anyone say that Things pushes the potential for cinema - in form and content - in its skull fucking weirdness and incompetence as much as an avant-garde film can, so I'll say it here myself, knowing what the film actually is, but still able to see the virtue in that.

From http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MGca9rk2wso/Tz2TfsNnbEI/AAAAAAAACsI/
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Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None) - High
Things proves that a lack of knowledge is as powerful for a viewer as a deliberately made film in the same tone is as well. In what was made by people with the passion for films, which I admire, but yet had no idea how to put this film together, it's completely unpredictable in ways filmmakers have failed miserably in trying to replicate on purpose. Things can jump from a pointless joke about paper children to a Amber Lynn musing, with the randomness of a few random scribbles stuck together in any order. Again, I'd argue that if the content in Things was done deliberately, it would've been exceptional in leaving the viewer in a freakish headspace; as it stands, Things is exceptional in messing the collective minds of myself and many others in the same way, stumbling about for its length incoherently.

A Cinema of the Abstract movie?
I admit to being dangerously close to pretentiousness here, if not already there, comparing Things to high art, but as well as being utterly entertaining in its perceived awfulness, I find joy in it in my personal way as, seeing the garbled mess of impassioned z-grade horror onscreen, it as much shows the nature of films, and how you can bend and break it, as you can learn from a "well made" film too. I can see as much of what can be done here with the medium which is as much a reason this schlock is as worthy of covering as the cultural vegetables of experimental cinema. Things will be the flag post for an area of cinema I wish to see more of, poorly recorded beauty that is on the opposite end of the technically proficient films of the same beauty. I can't hate a film either with this level of ridiculous dialogue, pointless amounts of gunge being split and arbitrary things happening that are hysterical in just taking place. It can be mind numbingly slow and patience testing, but never boring.

Halloween 31 For 31: Cinema of the Abstract Edition Introduction

After two previous editions of this on the original blog, it's now time for a third on the new one. In both previous cases, with the intention of writing thirty one film reviews for thirty one days around October and the Halloween season, it was surprising how difficult and exhausting it was, but that I'm ready for a third says a lot of how invigorating doing the project has been. It's incredibly fun for all the work, because the hard work itself is pleasurable, the last two versions were amongst the most read pages on the original blog, and because the subject itself is one of my favourite things in life. An excuse to watch horror films is great, even though I watch many of them over the year, and Halloween itself is my favourite holiday though I never went trick or treating, and do not do a lot in terms of celebrating it. It's past, the legends and the real cultural background of the holiday, of the day the passage between the living and the dead opens up, has always fascinated me. The supernatural nature of the holiday has grown on me as I grow older, a period to think of the deceased and have them in your thoughts, in all seriousness, and in a more playful way to revel in the gaudy Halloween costumes and schlocky movies that get released  in October.

Obviously, the entertainment comes from the gorging of horror films. If more can be added to this, I can also use this year's project, in a fun way, to ask one question: what is the point of writing a blog called Cinema of the Abstract? Since this concept originated, years ago, on MUBI.com, I've had a lot of time to think and write about this, but it's always worth asking the simple question again so I don't make a mistake in having this amateur blog. Better know there's a point to writing for the sake of it than end in a mess. Horror films are probably the best way to ask this question. As much as it would be great to see an abstract Christmas film, Halloween is one of the few holidays where appropriate film viewing can be any horror film, supernatural movie or anything that fits the mood of the season. The horror genre is also rife in the unconventional, weird, and even the experimental and avant-garde. Experiments with form have taken place, high concepts have been encouraged, aesthetic extravagance celebrated, and in the lowest quality, incompetence can be just as peculiar and inspiring as a viewing experience, providing one hasn't become comatose halfway through the film as you were watching it.

There will be no Friday The 13ths, unlikely a lot at the multiplex unless the popcorn is spiked with something illicit, and anything conventional isn't going to be viewed. I can enjoy these films, if I wanted, when I'm taking a break from writing the reviews for this project. Expect the least conventional instead, with the same abstract rating although I will change, just for this project only, part of my format style to reflect the main question of the project.  The main question for the project can go as far as ask "why do I watch this sort of film?' The kind of films I've been covering so far since starting this blog, and writing about elsewhere online, in my own time and with pay, have been the type of cinema I've become the most enamoured and interested in over the year or so. Instead of boring myself, or pretend to enjoy or admire what I cannot see virtue in, it's liberating to watch these peculiar, unconventional films more frequently, and certainly, this project will be as much as celebration of this fact as it is asking why this is the case. With that in mind, as everything becomes a lot more macabre, the trick or treaters soon about to knock on the doors, and the air of the ghostly and mysterious is felt as winter soon encroaches, what a better way to be a site about abstract cinema then celebrate a season, a holiday, that is all about the unknown, the out-of-sight, out-of-body and supernatural?

Friday 19 September 2014

Archival Reviews: Branded To Kill (1967)

Booklet Cover for the Exceptionable Arrow Video Blu-Ray/DVD Release
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Dir. Seijun Suzuki

About
Since I wrote a blog before this one, it's wrong to erase the old material I compiled on it and, even if I may re-write many reviews from it with the practice I have now, there are others that still retain the opinions I have of the works covered perfectly, so why not include a link to the old page and go through the films in question through the new structure of my reviews? To begin this, why not Branded To Kill, a poster boy for unconventional pulp cinema which famously got its director banned from making films by the studio he was working for? A narrative about the No. 3 top assassin of an organisation (Joe Shishido) whose abrupt mistake during an assassination leads his group to try and take him out, a delirious film in monochrome with abrupt tangents that influenced many a filmmaker decades after,

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Medium
This might raise eyebrows, but from the few films I've seen, Seijun Suzuki could make even more unconventional films than this one. It's still attached to a very well worn narrative, contrary to its reputation, though that doesn't stop it, through its style, presentation and narrative turns from living up to its reputation as being a very off-kilter film. It's just that the director could go even further in this experimentation with great results.

Personal Opinion:
For that, go and read my original review here - Branded To Kill Review - for the final opinion and a longer write up.

From http://ishootthepictures.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/
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Wednesday 10 September 2014

Blind Woman's Curse (1970)

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Dir. Teruo Ishii

It was fateful when the producers requested directed Teruo Ishii and co-screenwriter Chûsei Sone add a ghost cat subplot to their samurai film, as it was already being shot, drastically effecting full narrative cohesiveness. It's a testament though that the film it's director himself called 'nonsensical' still wraps together as a great genre film. In a gang-on-gang battle, leader of the Tachibana gang Akemi Tachibana (Meiko Kaji) blinds the sister of the other gang's leader mid-duel, a black cat appearing to lick up the victim's blood thus cursing Akemi. Along with this curse, a rival gang, through a traitor, intend to take over her territory, leading to desired revenge, murders and a carnival freak show. Blind Woman's Curse is one of the weaker Japanese cult films I've seen from the seventies or so, if only because I have to compare it to the best from Japan that I've seen. It's second or third tier, but it's still unbelievably well crafted and superior in comparison to others. This can be said with confidence considering that, barring the fact that the ghost cat subplot doesn't really make sense, the 'nonsensical' film is far more rationally explainable than you'd think. Certainly nightmarish and peculiar, with its house of horror moments and gore, but it's paradoxically awesome that Ishii viewed this as the nonsensical when his own, and superior, film Horrors of Malformed Men (1969), is utterly bizarre.

From http://www.rockshockpop.com/screencaps/BlindWomansCurse/01-1.jpg
What stands out the most with the film is that it's various pieces, whilst able to connect together, do also stand out individually. Everything is beautifully shot, like the opening sword battle, an eye for rich colour and setting, an air of artifice, bold throughout. The sword battles have considerable weight, added to by the traditional water hose pressure levels of bloodletting in the practical effects. The gang against gang ploy is interesting, of scuzzy villains and scuzzier goings-on with opium drugged, half naked women laying around outside the main villain boss's bedroom, another room just designed as an elaborate death trap and almost everything being shot in gel colour psychedelic lighting. The really memorable things are those that, ironically, were introduced as a result of the ghost cat having to be added to the narrative or fit together with it in the plot. Not only do you get to see an obviously fake cat being pulled along in a graveyard at one point because of this, but whilst a samurai film at heart, it leans greatly into horror cinema. It edges closely to the ero guro, erotic grotesque as critic Tom Mes believes the film does 1. The inspired motif of the dragon tattoo Akemi's gang has, she with the head and others with the fragments of one larger work, is given an added nastiness involving skinning of certain victims. The carnival that the blinded woman of the title getting revenge (Hoki Tokuda) and her hunchback assistant (Tatsumi Hijikata) are part of invokes Horrors of Malformed Men completely, bringing you images of a old man cooking fake limbs and dolls in a giant pan, bandaged and half naked "mutants", a woman as an improvised roof decoration and a severed head gag that strangely evokes Scooby Doo. Yes, it feels abrupt and along with the ghost cat plot feels bolted on, but it certainly adds an edge to the material, especially as the desire for revenge Tokuda 's character Aiko Goda  has against Akemi, ending the film with a sword duel under incredible twilight, vortex-like clouds in a night sky, does fit into the narrative very well.

From http://www.dvdactive.com/images/reviews/screenshot/2014/
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Surprisingly Meiko Kaji is off-screen for a large amount of the film, her first main role, but that doesn't stop her from being a charismatic lead who has made her reputation in cult cinema for justifiable reasons, able to emote with immense passion for dramatic scenes, to show sadness, to show joy, and as with the Female Prisoner Scorpion movies, show a death stare that looks like she can rip a man's throat out in a way that would make Sonny Chiba cower from her, let alone slash them up with a blade.  She's backed up by actors into the heroic leads that are just as charismatic. Makoto Satô as the main heroic lead so laidback that he can casually block a person without breaking a sweat or change his expression. A comedy male sidekick who lusts after the women and openly makes comments about his giant set of front teeth in a sword battle, looking like he could bite someone's head off with them whilst using a blade with skill at the same time, interacting with Akemi's fanclub of women who will gladly die for her like a lustful teenager they are apathetic to. Butoh dance founder Tatsumi Hijikata gets another role here, while significantly smaller than his main role in Ishii's Horrors of Malformed Men, as a hunchback ally to the vengeful blind woman, bringing the clear influence of his own dance ideology to his character's movements and behaviour whilst contributing to the more ghoulish aspects of the narrative strands narratively. Even a character who has no point for said narrative, like the one played by Ryôhei Uchida, is memorable, both for the fact that a man in a bowler hat, gold buttoned vest and wearing only a red thong under the waist is incredibly memorable, but also because the actor makes the character a suitably amusing comedic character everyone can smell from a distance and is not as able to back up his threats as physically as he says verbally. No one in this film, nonsense or not, can be said to not be interesting at all.

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Blind Woman's Curse is still pretty unconventional for a samurai film from what I've viewed. It's narrative is awkwardly put together on paper, but it viewing it this is not the case, the moments that don't add a spice that adds to its qualities. As literally happens, you go from a scene of two people being sent back to Akemi's gang in caskets, everyone saddened, followed by one of their members suddenly jumping into shot claiming to be possessed by a ghost cat and smashing his head into a window, with suitably green, eerie lighting for effect. It makes no rational sense, but the great thing about Ishii's film is that the samurai content is sane enough to balanced out the unrational material like this perfectly, thus giving you your good pulp narrative and the purely lurid at the same time. The entire film is put together perfectly, looking like a lurid coloured, horror film, set in its own world.

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Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None
It is a strikingly unconventional film, but it's surprising that Blind Woman's Curse, which has its moments of lurid content, does fit together it's various pieces snugly enough to not really feel abstract enough for the list. It is not Horrors of Malformed Men - as perverse, strange or liable to still be suppressed from being seen in its home country - and won't be added to the list for this reason. It creeps towards it at points, especially with moments as a character coming back from the grave in a very macabre way, but not enough.

Personal Opinion:
The film itself is utterly entertaining. In a moment where a song plays over images of contemplation, I thought "Yeah, I really like this film". Just because it doesn't reach the madness of the other film I've seen by Teruo Ishii doesn't mean it's not a great film itself. Together with it, it does make Ishii's other films very enticing for me to see. And it's more enticing as, while not that nonsensical, Ishii could make a film that was forced to abruptly add a supernatural plot line during the production of it and still make something that wraps it all neatly together. That the moments that don't nonetheless add a delirious edge to the proceeding content makes it more memorable.

1From the accompanying booklet for the Arrow Blu-Ray/DVD Release

Saturday 6 September 2014

The Cinema of the Abstract Canon

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: 


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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 



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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 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
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...

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. 


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
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.

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
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. 

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 suitand 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.

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
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
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
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. 

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...

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.

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.

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 
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Unsuccessful "Abstract" Works Covered:

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. 

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. 

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...

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.