Tag: art house, Punching noise in it's stupid face.

Web Site Spotlight: 366 Weird Movies

Been awhile since I did one of these, hell, been awhile since I have posted, been busy and lazy, since I can’t make a basket of mackerels with this web site I have to do actual work to keep myself alive and after that work is done I don’t want to do anything but veg out and let my brain soak in the book I am reading, the movie/TV show I am watching or the music I am listening to. I really have to force myself to work on my blog, that being said I constantly go to this site, “366 Weird Movies”. This site has introduced me to so many cool movies, TV show and other media I otherwise wouldn’t have heard about. They have different features like “Saturday Shorts” where a weird short of yesteryear or current day is featured every Saturday, “Apocrypha Candidates” different reviewers try to decide if a certain weird movie should join the list, “Weird Watch Party” where you can join other fans of strange cinema on streaming platforms to group watch a weird movie, “Weird Horizon for the Week” where they list theaters and festivals showing odd movies and DVD and/or Blu Ray releases of strange films for the week, “Whats in the Pipeline” where they discuss movies and TV shows in production or that are coming out in the near future, “Capsules” where movies and TV shows of the past that are bizarre are reviewed, and interviews with film makers. I could read “366 Weird Movies” all day long, but there is a draw back, sometimes “366 Weird Movies” has the “stench of hipster” all over it, some of the pieces are way up their own ass and they make me roll my eyes. The drawback to some of these sites is it seems that the people who run them and write for them think their better than everybody else with their unpopular and fringe tastes and sometimes politics gets injected into the pieces were politics doesn’t even apply which is one of my biggest pet peeves. Look, nobody gives a shit about what you think, talk politics if it has do with the plot or message of the piece of media you are reviewing. This even pisses me off when the person agrees with me, but overall these are minor drawbacks and their rare, though the hipster thing is a light coat over the whole web site. That being said this site is one of the few that searches out movies and TV shows no one else does and as a result I have found a lot of good stuff both old and new. So go over to “366 Weird Movies”, take the road less traveled, even if it is crooked and leads to a rabbit hole.

Go weird here: https://366weirdmovies.com/

Visual White Noise Theater: Going into “Phase IV” (1974)

There is a “solar event” and ants start killing people. That pretty much sums up the plot of “Phase IV” it isn’t an original plot, nothing new there but what is surrounding the movie is new and breaths life into a plot that was done to death. Visually stunning, and steeped in some New Age horse shit, this movie pleasantly surprised me, people I trust who have the same tastes as me said “Phase IV” would be up my alley when I asked them if it would make me laugh they shrugged and said “It might I don’t want to give away too much info”. I was given the specifics of the plot and kind of rolled my eyes, another killer insect movie but this didn’t turn out to be another killer insect movie, no this was a sci fi horror/art house film.

It was directed by graphic designer Saul Bass and was his one and only movie which is a damn shame besides directing a few educational short films and the awesome, The Quest, loosely based on a Ray Bradbury short story, you can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxqN0tGyLRI . He brought along his talent for visual flare to the film, sadly “Phase IV” tanked at the box office and “Mystery Science Theater 3000” (not a fan, don’t find their schtick funny, they fucking suck) skewered the movie relentlessly, because of the failure nobody would hire Saul Bass to direct another movie. Bass would continue to design company logos and posters and win awards, but lord knows what Saul would’ve come up with next if he were allowed to direct another feature.

Ken Middleham, a wildlife photographer, was the one that got the close up shots of the killer ants, interiors were filmed in England and exteriors in Kenya representing Arizona. Saul shot a different ending that showed what happened after the ant attack but the hippy dippy, visually stunning, New Age ending shocked even the coke jaded execs and they wanted it cut. That ending was thought to be lost but it was found in the Saul Bass Collection at the Academy Film Archive, it was cleaned up and showed at the film hipster haven Alamo Drafthouse, for a Saul Bass type festival in Austin, TX, the ending is available on Itunes Extras and 101 films in the UK did a special two disc release with the original ending included, that is out of print.

This film went from “failure” to cult success and one of my favorite new filmmakers, Panos Cosmatos, said this movie inspired his great “Beyond the Black Rainbow” and I can see the visual inspiration from “Phase IV” in this movie. Yeah fuck those not funny idiots on MST3, most of the movies they trash go on to become gems. If you want a visual experience get into “Phase IV” but the story isn’t original, its whats around it that is original.

To watch “Phase IV” with the cut ending go here: https://www.bitchute.com/video/7umrLJlCyjmH/