Tag: visual white noise theater

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Visual White Noise Theater: You’ll get “Red Eyes” (1994)

Ahhh video stores…anybody remember those? Well in “Red Eyes” there is one and it is called “Galaxy Video”, back when mom and pop video rental stores proliferated though out America, gimmicks were used to keep the customer coming in, i.e. special devices, giveaways, food, people dressed as characters from various films etc. “Red Eyes” plays on this and also uses it as a wraparound (excuse) to introduce sub par horror anthology segments, a big man in a trench coat with a mustache and mullet rents a “Vid-Visor” from Galaxy Video, a virtual reality type contraption that you have to put quarters into to make it work and show you bad short films, now first off, why the fuck would you want to put quarters into something you already paid to rent in the first place? I mean you paid already, this fucking “Vid-Visor” would have me walking away calling it out for what it was, a scam to siphon quarters off of you. As you can see “Red Eyes” from the beginning makes no sense. Mullet guy when he puts on the Vid-Visor, sees a screen that looks like the type of IBM computer graphics I used in junior high flashing “Insert Coin” he rummages through his pockets and finds some change. The grim reaper appears with flashing red eyes, I am sure they picked up this grim reaper at some cheap Halloween chain store, an early 1990’s “Spirit” store. He calls himself Charon, the same name of the boat man in Greek mythology and introduces the first horror short.

The shorts in this anthology aren’t very good, that being said they are at least entertaining and the movie isn’t boring, the first short has a grandmother telling her grandson while fishing on a dock about a World War Two vet that got antsy not being in a battle and goes into the lake their fishing at to see if the a downed Japanese POW plane is being operated as a base by the enemy, he goes into the lake and disappears, soon a really stereotyped Japanese soldier zombie emerges from the lake and attacks the grandson and grandma, the World War Two vet emerges and blows up the stereotyped Japanese soldier with a grenade and gives the kid his dog tags. After this short ends the mullet guy has no more change so he lures a priest to his door collecting money for the poor, and slams his hand so hard in the door it pops off spewing blood. Wow. So a dumb horror short viewed in a cheap visor makes you want to kill. OK buddy. The next short is about almost all the people in the world getting into their cars and driving, a father gets his wife and daughter in their car and they drive aimlessly, he tells them he heard about a family whose car stalled and the people just died. Soon they come across their deceased son, they stop and let him in the car and they keep driving all happy. Uh without a job, driving aimlessly around with no income, you aren’t gonna last too long, it looked like it was trying to take a shot at something Ray Bradbury like, but it misses the mark. The company who makes “Vid-Visor”, a Japanese company somehow finds out there is a malfunction in one of their units and sends an android killer to take out mullet guy.  Next mullet guy murders a pizza boy to steal his change and another sub par short pops up about a theater that swallows lonely people represented by a clown, it is done documentary style with interviews with police, journalists and the theater owners. The last and best short in “Red Eyes” is about a guy who has long hair, a Motorhead T shirt, drives a muscle car and is a jerk who drinks booze in a bag while harassing his girlfriend. The music in this short is a mix of Z grade hair and thrash metal which makes this short the best out of the whole rotten bunch. Long hair guy drunkenly hits a girl on roller skates while she is carrying her doll.  He puts the girl’s body in the woods and takes the doll home, the doll comes to stop motion life and makes him drink rat poison and cuts his throat. His girlfriend wanting to make up comes in in black see through lingerie and screams when she sees him dead.

Android assassin locates mullet guy at a bowling alley where all the participants are dead and finds mullet guy sitting down with a toy walking skull, the assassin goes to shoot him, sees a bowling pin and uses that to take his head off which goes down the alley, knocks all the pins down and reemerges in the ball machine thing. The end. SIGH… HA! HA! Yes, dumb, cheap, nonsensical, inept etc. “Red Eyes” will give you red eyes because you’ll be laughing so hard you’ll be crying.

 

To get “Red Eyes” (the good kind) you can go here: https://www.bitchute.com/video/wRFXSkWKYiqx/

VHS and physical copies…good luck finding that needle in the haystack. HA!

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Visual White Noise Theater: Ever feel like your “Disembodied” (1998)?

This movie is what happens when a person watches too many David Lynch, John Waters and 1950’s sci fi horror movies and mixes them up in their head. This movie’s logic is not of this world but that isn’t a bad thing. A goth looking girl, Connie Sproutz, checks into a decrepit motel and the night clerk, played by James Diederichsen who also does the special effects in “Disembodied” looks like death warmed over and he also gives out creeper vibes, the only room he has left is in the basement near the boiler, the look of this boiler would give David Lynch a hard on. Her next door neighbor is a buxom prostitute named Trixie, who turns tricks, there is also a cleaning lady who smokes giant cigars and complains about cleaning the shit hole of a hotel.

Connie keeps her brain in a jar and feeds it liquids, she also has a machine that keeps her dreams of outer space and alien landscapes from becoming a reality, all the while a man who looks like Colonel Sanders, Dr. Sigmund Sylvanus pursues her on behalf of a corporation. Connie used to work for the corporation and was taken over by a parasite alien while doing research and is on the run. Connie has a huge pimple that spews liquid that turns people into slime which she eats and then she gives birth to breathing vagina like things she stores in a dirty bathtub.

Trixie befriends Connie and the clerk tries to pick up both girls by asking them to watch old educational film reels and the girls always turn him down which makes him very frustrated. These characters are pretty much the main ones, except for two victims of Connie and a John Trixie slaps, it exists in its own strange world, there is stop motion and rocks that Connie collects that change into different items like balls, dolls etc. There is flowers that spew liquid in stop motion. I wasn’t bored one minute and the fact that this movie is only one hour and seventeen minutes makes it ever better. The otherworldly quality of this film and the world it creates will keep you interested.

So in closing to get “Disembodied” physically, the director, William Kersten, has done 2K remaster on blu ray here: https://www.amazon.com/Disembodied-Blu-ray-Anastasia-Woolverton/dp/B078FHJJZC

To get “Disembodied” now get torn apart here: https://tubitv.com/movies/559781/disembodied?start=true

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Visual White Noise Theater: Lets have a nice visit with “Frank and Zed” 2021

The last puppet movie I saw that was made for adults was Peter Jackson’s “Meet the Feebles”, it was before Jackson slathered CGI shit all over the screen with “Bored of the Dings”. “Meet the Feebles” featured puppets fucking, getting AIDs, having eating disorders and being addicted to drugs, you know, kid’s stuff. Now I know in the interim that there was one other adult puppet movie that came out which I never saw called “Happy Time Murders” but Melissa McCarthy’s presence makes me not want to see it. However, while rolling through the web site “366 Weird Movies” I came across a review for a movie called “Frank and Zed” which featured all puppets, and watching the trailer made me cum in my pants. I crossed my fingers hoping there was somewhere I could watch it. No such luck, until I visited the filmmaker’s facebook page and web site which was called “Puppetcore” to see if there was anyway I could see it. “Frank and Zed” was going to be streamed through Halloween and I plopped down my money down and what I got was a puppet movie unlike I’d ever seen, a fantasy, horror and comedy, three of my favorite genres mashed together, visually eye popping, gut busting funny, I had a great time watching “Frank and Zed”, the puppets all had personalities of their own right down to the background puppets, “Frank and Zed” is like a mutant hybrid of “Evil Dead 2”, “Meet the Feebles” and “Young Frankenstein”.

 

I don’t want to give too much away, but the movie tells the tale of Frank who was made from various body parts and Zed who is a zombie whose soul is trapped in its body by the God of Death, whom Frank and Zed were made to serve. The God of Death seeks to rule over a small village but he is slaughtered by the villagers and he puts a curse on the village saying they will all die in a “Orgy of Blood”. A priest and a lord plot to overthrow the king and make the curse not happen by tricking the villagers into killing Frank and Zed whom they see as maintaining the curse and all hell breaks loose. Bones break, blood splatters, brains get eaten etc. I sure hope sooner or later this gets released in physical format, the only draw back to watching it online streaming was that it had a watermark right in the middle of the screen, which was annoying, but I understand why they put it there, to keep theft from happening. “Frank and Zed” took an impressive seven years to make by Portland, OR based filmmaker Jesse Blanchard and crew, the miniatures were shot on the RED camera which was Stanley Kubrick’s favorite lens. Jesse and his crew made all the sets and puppets in his garage and used mainly practical effects, only using CGI for some thunder and electricity, this movie was strictly old school. He helped fund “Frank and Zed” in part through Kickstarter. This movie is a hoot and I can’t wait to watch it again, another hidden newer movie that is actually good. Here is praying “Frank and Zed” comes out in Blu Ray/DVD sooner rather than later. 

So where do you get your brains eaten by “Frank and Zed”? You don’t yet but you can get a little taste with the trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDaRv1IkUsg&t=11s

Go to the castle here: https://www.puppetcore.com/

Their fuckfacebook page (did I just type that? Sorry… NOT!): https://www.facebook.com/Puppetcore/

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Visual White Noise Theater: Let me taste “The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears” (2013)

French husband and wife team Bruno Forzani and Helene Cattet seem to like the giallo genre because the next movie they did after “Amer” (check out my review here: https://www.noisepuncher.net/2021/10/30/revel-in-amer-2009/) a giallo was “The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears”, a giallo. Of course they also did the strange modern Western/Poliziotteschi movie “Let the Corpses Tan”(come on over and get your corpse tanned here: https://www.noisepuncher.net/2021/02/12/go-ahead-let-the-corpses-tan-2017/).

Dan (played by Klaus Tange) returns home from a business trip to find that his wife Edwige (played by Ursula Bedena) is missing without any evidence of her leaving or a break in, he starts looking for her in different rooms of the building, the first lady is behind a veil and tells the story of how her own husband went missing after he was hearing voices and sounds behind the wall where he gets stabbed. Soon Dan turns to the police, at first the inspector (played by Jean-Michel Vovk) is dismissive and of no help at all, Dan has a dream of going to the roof top and encountering a nude woman who jumps. The inspector himself has a missing wife and as the movie goes on it does play with giallo genre tropes but goes into Lynchesque, abstract, noir territory with shifting perspectives of reality.

“The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears” uses a lot of symbolism and metaphors, sometimes you can’t tell if what Dan is seeing is real or what he perceives to be real, and without giving too much away there is another world within the walls of the building and Dan becomes a voyeur spying on the weird going ons of his neighbors. While to some extent, “The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears” is less linear then its predecessor “Amer”, this one, in my opinion, is more rich and mysterious. Its true you get the masked killer with razor and brightly lit color scheme of Argento and Bava, you get a lot more of a stylized and noir like atmosphere. I liked “The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears” more and it is one I want to revisit. The directors claim you need to watch it more than once to get more of the details and more of the stories. This movie will try a lot of people’s patience, even the ones who are into the weird and absurd, that is a warning. This is a love or hate it proposition, if the above description of the movie interests you by all means dive in, if it doesn’t well if you dive in your diving into an empty pool and you will get hurt.

So where do you swim in “The Colour of Your Body’s Tears”? Well you can go here but you’ll have to get a Shudder subscription from Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/amzn1.dv.gti.0ca9f78e-0f49-68fd-350a-1e79e209a76f/ref=dv_auth_ret?autoplay=1&

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Visual White Noise Theater: Revel in “Amer” (2009)

Heading into Halloween it has been a tradition of mine to watch nothing but horror movies for the month of October, that includes every sub genre of horror, so keeping that in mind I decided to review a newer movie that needs more attention by “newer” I mean 2009. And that movie would be the giallo film “Amer” by French husband wife team Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani who did the equally retro western/heist/polzieschi film “Let the Corpses Tan” (My review is here: https://www.noisepuncher.net/2021/02/12/go-ahead-let-the-corpses-tan-2017/).

The film is in three parts, the first part is about the main character, Ana, as a child played by Cassandra Forêt  . Now the first part is the strangest part of all, the girl lives with her parents who seem on edge, her grandma who seems to be mentally unstable and dress in black and her dead grandfather who they have laid out on a bed. This first part seems to meld both reality and the girl’s over imagined perception of it. Little girl Ana, seems frightened by all the adults in her life, including her dead grandfather. Now this part is pure Bava/Argento worship with strange colors and leather clad masked killer with a razor who pursues her after she snatches some jewelry from the dead hands of her grandfather. When she sees her father and mother having sex after being scared at her black funeral clad grandmother spying on her, she gets traumatized and her psyche seems to literally shatter.

The second part of “Amer” goes into Ana’s teenage years (played by Charlotte Eugène Guibeaud), where she has a sexual awakening which she is both turned on by and repulsed by. This is illustrated when her and her mother walk to the butcher shop, the butcher shop owner’s son tries to kiss her and she turns away. She walks toward what looks like a biker gang whose lustful gaze turns to her, there is barely any dialogue in this scene, just the sound of the rustling of her mini skirt and the crinkling of their leather. She seems to be turned on by the fact that these guys could jump her at any minute on the one hand but on the other she has complete power over them. Her mother finds her and slaps her for the flirting.

The third part sees Ana (played by Marie Bos) as a grown up is on a train closely surrounded by men and she seems to be aroused by it. She gets picked up in a taxi cab by a man (played by Harry Cleven) dressed in leather, the man is gazing at her in the mirror the whole time and she is aware of it. At times she begs him to open the window because its hot in the car and he pretends to not listen a couple times as if he trying to show her he is in charge. He ends up dropping her off at her old house which is decrepit and rundown, she goes inspecting and she keeps seeing a dark figure out of the corner of her eyes. At one point when she goes to take a bath, a man in leather tries to drown her but she pulls the plug. As she gets out the man who drove the taxi cab seems to be stalking the house, I am not gonna give away anymore but the end is a mind fuck. The “giallo” genre has certain tropes, the masked killer with the razor, a psychic/occult occurrence, crimson red blood and strange bright colors, this movie plays with all those tropes and makes them their own. This movie is stylized but it holds your attention and keeps you guessing. Another “modern” movie done right. They’d do another giallo film “The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears”(Drink the tears here): https://www.noisepuncher.net/2021/10/30/let-me-taste-the-strange-colour-of-your-bodys-tears-2013/.

So where to catch “Amer”? Apple TV has got it: https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/amer/umc.cmc.1sn38q57xhjw6zyvijqpt06cn?action=play

But if you look in the pirate’s stolen booty you can find it too, just be careful to use a VPN so you don’t walk the plank.

Your welcome.

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Visual White Noise Theater: Show me the way to “After Blue Dirty Paradise” (2021)

A friend sent me a trailer to a movie. I am very skeptical about “newer” movies, so friends and family knowing my weird tastes will send me stuff, I mostly stick with the older stuff and the more unusual and interesting, better, but it just can’t be weird for weird’s sake. Sometimes I’ll watch a trailer and say “Fuck yeah! This proves good newer movies are out there.” Then I watch the film and I am let down, either its too artsy fartsy, its way up its own ass, its boring and/or stupid. I am very picky when it comes to what movies I like and sadly more modern movies have more hoops to jump through for me, and the biggest hoop is “too much CGI”. I do review more modern movies on this site just because I want to shine a light on films that show that the craft of film making isn’t dead. And one of those movies is “After Blue, Dirty Paradise”.

A French film directed by Bertrand Mandico who directed “Wild Boys” which I haven’t seen. This was another movie whose trailer hit me right on the chin, it screamed “1980’s neon Jodorowsky” and of course I didn’t find out until later that “After Blue Dirty Paradise” wasn’t gonna come out to the public until 2022 and that it was playing festivals only. I was pretty pissed off and “Nightstream” came to the rescue just like they had with “Mad God”. Boy oh boy talk about a mind fuck, without giving too much away I wasn’t too far of with my description, this has got “old school” written all over it with barely to no CGI at all, strange lighting, and “Legend” like Tangerine Dream music. Bertrand created his own self contained and world.

“After Blue Dirty Paradise” is a acid freaked, sci fi Western. At first this reminded me a lot of The Muse’s music video “Knights of Cydonia”. The movie takes place on the planet, After Blue, humans are escaping a destroyed earth and they find a planet that can sustain life. The atmosphere acts funny on humans, it makes them grow hair in places they normally don’t (no not there you perv), on women its mainly the neck but in men it makes the hair grow inside and ends up killing all the males, so all births are achieved with insemination. After Blue is a planet populated by women only, there is a very limited use of technology since the populace of After Blue blame technology for the destruction of earth, mainly they still have guns and rifles to hunt and kill each other with.

A teenage girl, played by the pixie, waifish Paula Luna whose nickname is “Toxic” and whose real name is Roxy, is on a beach playing with her friends when she encounters a woman buried up to her chin in sand. The other girls berate and make fun of her, even piss on her. The woman begs Toxic to let her go, Toxic digs her out and she comes out nude with one hairy hand and a rifle, she guns down the other girls. Toxic is hypnotized by the woman and aroused, then the woman runs away. What Toxic didn’t know was that this woman was Kate Bush, a notorious criminal and murderer, the rest of the women in their village make Toxic and her hair dresser mother, Zora, played by Elina Lowensohn who is in the awesome “Let the Corpses Tan” go out to find and kill Kate Bush for the crime of Toxic digging her up. After this a series of strange and surreal events happen, the wandering women looking to kill a fugitive, is a very old Western movie theme. This movie visually and story wise keeps it interesting, this was another movie I wasn’t disappointed in after seeing the trailer. Vinegar Syndrome in partnership with Altered Innocence has released “After Blue” on Blu Ray, link below (I did). At first I thought this movie was going to be preachy and I was hoping I wouldn’t roll my eyes and I didn’t. The message was put across with grace and smarts and if you want me to listen to you even though I might disagree with you, making your point in a interesting and creative way will open my ears. “After Blue Dirty Paradise” has different influences stamped all over it and but their put together so well it becomes its own thing.  One other thing, ZZ Top’s song “Planet of Woman” kept running through my head when I was watching this movie, they must’ve been looking into the future.

 

Here is the trailer for “After Blue Dirty Paradise”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0-HiNH6YXc

An interview with Bertrand Mandico, the director: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QY3xK2CgrhI

You can get “After Blue” on Blu Ray right here: https://vinegarsyndrome.com/products/after-blue-altered-innocence?_pos=2&_psq=After&_ss=e&_v=1.0

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Visual White Noise Theater: One “Mad God” (2021)

Right when I saw the trailer for this it hit me right in my sweet spot, I was literally salivating with desire and pleasure. A whole movie of twisted stop motion, oh to the fucking yeah,  but when I saw the trailer I was wondering if it had already come out and searched around and realized, nope, it hadn’t and I’d probably have to wait a long fucking time before I’d see this or maybe not see it at all. SIGH. As we speak it is making its way through the festival circuit and then Nightstream came to the rescue. Luckily they are featuring some movies for streaming from festivals. I jumped all over “Mad God”. One hour and twenty minutes of awesomeness, a dark hellish world with stabs of heaven like brilliance.

Directed by Phil Tippett who did the effects for “Alien”, “Robocop 2”,  and “Jurassic Park” among a bunch of other movies, he started making this in 1988 while he was working on “Robocop 2”, after doing “Jurassic Park” he thought the art of stop motion was dead so he then shelved “Mad God” until the year 2000 when he really started working on the movie and just finished the movie not long ago. He worked on this project in between his other higher paying gigs, using volunteers and getting money through kickstarter. To sum things up, pretty much an assassin is sent by a pope like figure to “kill God”, as he descends in a weird ship into this post apocalyptic, hellish world that this god inhabits, he is shot at by cannons, and he lands in an area full of statues of different gods and faiths, not to mention brand name mascots of products.

Alot of what happens “Mad God” is metaphors. Some critics have described this as a movie length Tool music video but its more than that, I don’t want to give away too much. The world looks slimy, one crazy image after another gets thrown out at you  before you can fully recover from the last shock, in fact that is its major drawback, its almost sensory overload. Even taking that into consideration you’ll fall under its Bosch like nightmarish spell. This movie proves that art can be both beautiful and ugly at the same time.

In “Mad God” there is some live action actors filmed in stop motion style, like director Alex Cox and Niketa Roman, after “Mad God” ended my eyes were bulging out of my skull and my jaw was on the floor collecting flies. When and if this hits Blu Ray I am snapping it up. Full length stop motion movies are few and far between these days, getting this one from a special effects master is very rare treat, this is one I can’t wait to see again.

So where do you watch this? Well you can’t yet, unless you streamed it during its festival run.

Here is Phil’s web site where you can get the trailer and other info on the movie: https://www.madgodmovie.com/

Pretty cool vid on Phil designing his stop motion figures: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLKxoo9hO84

Interview with Phil on “Mad God”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDVj0a9h8I4

Post Script: This is now on Shudder not on blu ray yet (cross my fingers) but you have to have a subscription, you know what to do *wink*wink*: https://www.shudder.com/movies/watch/mad-god/af7abd4d3ae6f0ad

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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/

 

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Visual White Noise Theater: Want to watch some “Strange Tales” (1986)

Most horror anthologies have this problem, either most of them suck with a couple of good ones, or if your lucky they’ll be mostly good ones with a smattering of bad ones, “Strange Tales” has total of six and out of those six, three are good and three are boring and/or stupid. The really good ones shine like diamonds in coal. Vidcrest, who put out the infamous “Mondo Cane” movies, a company that is still around and run by Robert Weinbach who is still alive put this thing together, he seemed to specialize in finding weird and unusual shorts and putting them together. At the time, the only way to get a hold of this collection was to get it on VHS, at first when I e mailed him he said he had no copies, then he e mailed me back and said he had found a VHS copy in storage, so I bought it. Watching this, I could tell most, if not all of these shorts were shot on Super 8 and most if not all were probably student films. I searched this one out when a buddy of mine sent me a list of live action/animated shorts, one of the shorts on this VHS, “Twilight Journey” got my attention. The problem is this VHS was recorded to EP mode which makes the picture look kind of shitty, its to jam more stuff on less tape, the picture is soft and fuzzy, sometimes you can’t see what is being filmed. So without further ado, here are the good and the bad of “Strange Tales”.

The first short, “The Visitant” is an OK short, a guy chases the ghost of his dead son through a cemetery which looks like the famous Forest Lawn Cemetery in Burbank, CA, me and my weird family used to have picnics there, many famous people from the Golden Age of Hollywood are buried (and turning over in their graves). As he is chasing his son, a zombie chases him with an axe and various dead people as well as an driver-less van try to run him down, he comes across his daughter who is cursing him for killing himself and his son in a drunk driving accident, the guy finds out he is in purgatory and now destined for hell. This one had some cool make up effects and was at least interesting.

The second short is called “Desire in a Public Dump” and I wasn’t too impressed with this one, though I gotta give it credit for not dragging on too long. When I watched this I figured this one was shot in the 1980’s like the rest of the shorts on the tape, but the whole look of the actors and actress and the whole feel screamed “1950’s” yes I found out that this short was shot in the 1950’s, it is very weird to have all the other shorts be filmed in the 1980’s and one lone one from the 1950’s. In this one a hobo stumbles on a picture of a redhead pin up who comes out of the picture and when he goes to kiss her he gets a pitchfork through his chest, the girl disappears from the picture and is replaced by a gorilla, a kid with a BB gun finds the picture and it ends there.

The third short is “A Day in the Life of Snidley Carmichael” stupid, boring and hated this fucking short. All it is is a guy spazzing out to opera music, running around like a fucking retard pretending to get shot. Not funny and a waste of this tape. Next.

The fourth short is by far the best and most interesting, “Twilight Journey” is a god damn trip and this is the reason why I searched this tape out. I wasn’t disappointed, a hybrid of live action and rotoscoped animation, this one is hard to peg, this is acid for people who never have or will drop acid. From what I can tell the story is about a kid whose mom is prostitute, she wears a pig mask I guess out of kinkiness, now this is where it gets confusing either the boy kills his mom while the John is asleep or the John kills her and sets the house on fire.

As the John runs away in his car he gets in an accident and dies, soon he is tumbling through animated space.

Soon he encounters weird shapes, pyramids and killer orcs, whoever did this put a lot of work into it, looks like the guy was probably inspired by Ralph Bakshi’s “Lord of the Rings, LSD and a lot of pot.

Looking for keys and a sword battle ensues, its marvelous and fantastic and worth the price of this video, I wasn’t as mad when this short met my expectations, it made it worth the three other boring shorts on this thing. My only gripe is the short ends abruptly, wish this had had a longer running time and Robert would’ve knocked the other boring fucking shorts off this thing.

The fifth short is “Crystal Quest”, I loved this one, this one follows a guy who is being chased by something or somebody on what looks like a different planet, he takes the crystal from the mouth of a stone monster then he is actually chased by a monster who corners him near an elevator.

As he pushes the button and the elevator the monster chasing him runs away and he thinks he scared the monster off until he turns around and sees a behemoth of a monster blocking the elevator.

He dives underneath the monster’s legs shuts the elevator and pushes the lobby button. He gets to the bottom and the door opens and you find out the “Crystal Quest” is a futuristic game show. I loved this one, the make up was good and I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that the people who worked on this student film went on to do special effects and make up on bigger projects. This one was goofy fun and the other good short in this collection and the last good one.

The sixth and most certainly last one is “Bus Bench” all I can say is “YAWN”, “Strange Tales” goes out on a huge whimper and not a bang. Some old lady sits on a bench while buses and people go by, she seems to be thinking about her past and her own daughter or something. This was boring, so bad I was looking at the clock thinking about other stuff I could be doing. On the back of the VHS box it says “Award winning shorts” yeah, Weinbach I highly doubt this. So all in all there was three good shorts and three boring shorts, so is this worth your clams? I’ll say this much “Twilight Journey” and “Crystal Quest” will make it worth the price, and you’ll want this if your a horror anthology completest.

So where do you pick this up? Well if you want a tape you’ll have to hound Robert you can go to his geocities looking web site here: http://vidcrest.net/catalog/order_list.html

He has a DVD version on his ebay page but talking with one of my friends who ordered a DVD its almost the same version as VHS: https://www.ebay.com/itm/114251165702?hash=item1a99e67006:g:9wUAAOSwwvpe3Af-

If you want a preview of what your gonna get go here: https://www.bitchute.com/video/4Gaa2Xbyq1FX/

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Visual White Noise Theater: Welcome to “The Beast Pageant” 2010

Watching ” The Beast Pageant” I was confused, not because of the crazy imagery or semi non-linear story line, I was confused because this is that type of “tightrope walk” movie, on one side of the thin rope is pretentious, up its ass horse shit and on the other side is spell binding brilliance, this movie didn’t fall onto either side and made it across alright. “The Beast Pageant” was directed by Albert Birney and John Moses and its a fucking trip to be sure.

There is two parts to this film, and I know what “The Beast Pageant” is going for in the first part, Abraham, played by co director/writer John Moses, lives in a German Expressionist style apartment with various machines hooked throughout his apartment, one calls him and sings to him when he picks up the phone and one is a TV apparatus that has a bearded man in it that shows Abraham weird commercials and asks him to talk through the speaker horn if he wants the item advertised in the commercial, Abraham goes to a dead end job in a factory where he pushes slots that spit out synthetic fish. The whole first part smacks heavily of “Eraserhead”, the whole movie is filmed in black and white and has a dream like logic to it. The visuals in this movie are stunning, weird and unusual. The whole “Eraserhead” thing also comes from the dirty, industrial background. Abraham starts to grow a tentacle out of his rib and goes to a doctor to have it removed, the removal isn’t successful. The first part of the film is so blatant in its message, normally when somebody tries to hit me directly on the head with something it pisses me off and turns me off but the hammering is done in an intelligent way, the first part seems to be lampooning consumerism and a 9 to 5 existence. Not to mention how machines will try to give comfort and love but its artificial and plastic.

The second half, Abraham tears out of his house into the countryside, a stark contrast, the tentacle becomes a miniature singing cowboy copy of him complete with acoustic guitar. Among the things he encounters are a small house with a nude couple in it, bush people, water people, dirt people, animal people, a motel in the middle of the forest with a couple that needs a baby sitter and the list goes on and on. The second half seems to say that nature is better than an urban setting and the second half has musical numbers of the indie folk pop type. More weird stuff happens and again I don’t want to spoil too much you’ll have to go watch it yourself.

The movie got its money in part from a Kickstarter campaign and took three years to make. Sure some of this movie made me roll my eyes, some of it is art house pretentious but overall I liked its crazy energy and wasn’t bored. So I say join the “The Beast Pageant”. Albert Birney’s new movie, “Strawberry Mansion”, screened at Fantasia Film Festival, its about a “dream auditor” who gets caught in an old lady’s dream world, hope its as interesting as “The Beast Pageant”.

Become a “Beast” here: https://vimeo.com/groups/awardeo/videos/108922277