I’m watching Terry Gilliam’s Brazil right now, and it is still, along with The Adventures of Baron Von Munchausen, the weirdest big-budget, general release motion picture I’ve ever seen.
I’m going to split the question into two parts: the biggest “mainstream” movie you ever saw and the weirdest small, arty, direct-to-DVD - whatever, as long as it didn’t play in New York or L.A. for the seven days it needed to qualify for an Academy Award.
Deine “weird” however you want, whether you liked it or not, whether it did or didn’t have a coherent plot, but other stuff was weird, whatever.
For “mainstream” movie I might nominate Being John Malkovich.
For arty movie, I’ll nominate El Topo (“The Mole”), an utterly surreal “acid western” by Mexican director Alejandro Jodorowsky. The trailer only gives the merest hint of how genuinely bizarre and deeply disturbing this film is.
Last Year at Marienbad was pretty weird,. too. As was Carnival of Souls. Liquid Sky
Possession (1981) – Played in major theaters, starred Sam Neill. Special effects by Carlo Rambaldi. Weird as hell.
Arguably the weirdest movie to be “accepted” as a Mainstream Movie, though, was Koyaanisqatsi. An “art film” with gorgeous photography and a Philip Glass score, it was moved from theater to theater when I was in Salt Lake City, and only eventually ended up at the “Art Cinema”, after having played several commercial theaters. No plot. No spoken dialogue. Still attracted a lot of attention from people who don’t usually see that kind of thing.
There were two sequels, but they didn’t do anywhere near as well.
Just this past Sunday there was a film festival here in Krakow (Krakow Off Camera Festival) where I watched an Irish movie with Will Forte (Saturday Night Live) called “Extra Ordinary” a “Comedy” that was so bizzare, so crazed and warped that I am still trying to wrap my head around it, and failing miserably.
Overall, it was simply too “Over The Top” for me to really enjoy, but it had a few stand alone one-liners that were as funny (if twisted) as anything I have seen in recent years.
Strangest I think I’ve seen was The American Astronaut (2001.) It only grossed $36,000 so that’s a pretty small film. A bizarre black and white sci-fi musical.
The new film “In Fabric” is also pretty damn surreal! I saw it at a film festival, it opens later this year.
I won’t mention “intentionally strange” movies (David Lynch and the like) because it’s just too easy.
I think the most truly strange movie was 1999’s “Friends and Lovers”. Supposedly a romantic indie comedy (with a solid cast including Robert Downey Jr.), it is a bizarre blend of rank amateur and well-made filmmaking, with lots of “what the hell was that” moments mingled with some actual funny stuff. It provides more surrealist entertainment than a dozen wannabe cult films combined.
I’ll go with ‘Possession’ with Sam Neill and …Isabel Adjani?..reading a synopsis makes you think it’s a sci-fi or horror film. It’s a horror, all right, but not in the way you might think. Faintly ominous, with moments of horrifying WTF and a disturbing scene in a deserted subway station that goes on FOREVER.
I suppose The Lobster qualifies as a general release movie, but I doubt it played a lot of multiplexes. With the premise being that single people have to find a partner within 45 days or they get turned into animals, it’s pretty strange, as are all of director Yorgos Lanthimos’s movies.
I saw it in a nearly deserted theater in Salt Lake City. I’d been curious ever since I saw still from it in Cinefantastique, but even that didn’t prepare me for how off-the-wall it was.
And, yeah, that scene with Isabel Adjani freaking out in the subway goes on 'way too long.
