Naked Lunch
Wizards -Ralph Bakshi
The Man Who Fell To Earth -David Bowie
Reefer Madness
Phantom Of The Paradise
Seconded. Terrific movie, a real favorite of mine. GREAT soundtrack by Brian Tyler and the Red Elvises.
Cool. I thought I was the only one who’d seen this.
I also nominate Seconds (1966) - an ageing Rock Hudson stars. Tired of his circumstances, he goes to an underground agency and gets a facelift and a new identity. Its a very dark, depressing film.
Loved Liquid Sky.
“Chickenwoman!”
Hey, I was going to mention this one! I saw it as part of a university film series without knowing anything about it. Watching it was kind of like going moderately insane over the course of 2 hours. I found it oddly compelling (reminded me of my druggie days, I guess), but most of the audience voted with their feet.
I was also one of the few survivors of all of The Velvet Underground and Nico (1966) – hundreds of black-clad hipsters had shown up to see rare footage of the Velvets in '66 at the Factory, which is what they got. However: no vocals, one chord played for about an hour, one static camera shot, and then the cops came. I think ten people were left by then end. Shot by Warhol, it’s the Empire of music videos. It’s MTV antimatter.
I never saw any of the 400-odd minutes of Empire (1964) (which, to save you the trouble of the click, is a single shot of the Empire State Building), but I have see the first 20 minutes or so of Yoko Ono’s Up Your Legs Forever, which consists of tracking shots of legs for 70 minutes. Even I have my limits, apparently.
Attack of the Killer Tomatoes . Definitely … odd .
I also vaguely remember one I saw on HBO many , many years ago , I think it was called The Tin Drum that was pretty damned weird . I might understnd it more now , but when I saw it about age 19 , it left me confuzzled .
Since no one has mentioned it…
Repo Man.
Buckaroo Banzai.
Forbidden Zone is on DVD? I stole a VHS copy from a video store in about 1988! 
I will throw in Baxter and Delicatessan, both found at an awesome indie rental place in Boulder, CO.
Dr Caligari not to be confused with the German original or the American black and white remake. For the first few minutes, nobody talks and I was wondering if the film had no dialogue. A wall of flesh grows a giant tongue, then scars through which it oozes pepto bismol. Having seen the original, IMHO this film is a worthy successor. The sets, acting, costumes etc are all truly in German expressionist style. They also use the proper German pronunciation of Cesare (not ‘see-zarr’ as I had expected but ‘chezz-uh-ray’).
I stumbled over it at one of the strangest video stores I’ve ever been at. Instead of shelves, there were plexiglass peninsulas. The movies were set on wooden boards mounted on the other side of the plexiglass. To examine a box, you had to ask an employee to go to the back of the store and enter the plexiglass. At first we thought that this was to prevent theft. But, the boxes were empty.
Most of my strange movies have already been mentioned, but for one: Closet Land. Somewhat surreal and (at the time, at least) very disturbing.
Yeah–first time I saw it, me and my friend left after the first hour. Then in college a pretentious po-mo professor decided we needed to see it, and I was stuck through the whole thing.
I guess pretentious is in the eye of the beholder, but I found this movie unbearably pretentious.
Daniel
I guess most of my choices for this category are messed up love stories.
“Turkish Delight”
“War of the Roses”
“The Last Tango in Paris”
“Letter from an Unknown Woman”
“The Marrying Kind”
“Belle de Jour”
“Two for the Road”
I strongly recommend the last four; the first three, meh.
Believe it or not, I just watched it last night. Borrowed it from a buddy after hearing the soundtrack at her house.
Ogdamn, that was a great flick.
I saw Crispin Glover on “Henry’s Film Corner” a couple of months back, and he was talking about his latest movie, something he had produced and directed. I can’t remember the title, but I do remember that it was supposed to be very surreal, and the entire cast was made up of people with Down syndrome or something like that (excluding Glover, who also appears in the film). I only saw the clip they showed on the program, but that clip struck me as the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen committed to the screen.
Now, I’m all for people doing their own thing and following their own vision, but you at least want to reach people, right? I mean, making a movie and casting the film entirely with birth defected people seems just aggressively inaccessable. From what I saw, it wasn’t like the handicap was really integral to the statement–if any–being made by the movie. I doubt too many folks will see that flick, but maybe a Doper might take the chance.
Phantom of the Paradise is a wonderfully weird movie. I finally got it on DVD, and the soundtrack. “Beef” cracks me up every time!!
Blood Harvest Things are bad enough with the economy taking a serious slump and all the farm forclosures in the area. They get worse when a serial killer starts murdering folks. Tiny Tim plays a deranged man who now dresses in his clown suit and make up all the time.
Two I don’t know the titles of. I also missed the beginnings of both.
#1 I caught on a local public access or PBS station almost twenty years ago in northern Virginia. The whole thing was clearly shot by some guys with a camera, and involved no professionals of any kind. A man tries being a monk. He doesn’t find what he’s looking for. He leaves the monastery and there’s a montage of a debauchery (gambling, alcohol, women) set to really repetitive saxophone music. Then, he sobers up and becomes a night watchman. His partner has worked there for years. New guy talks about his search for meaning. Veteran doesn’t care. One night, the new guy sees something strange on the monitors. The veteran watchman is terrified by a humanoid figure and fires shots. After confirming that newguy saw something on the monitors, veteran tells him of The Man Above The Ceiling. TMATC was an executive who stole a huge amount of money. He’s been hiding in the building for years, waiting for the statute of limitations to run out. Mostly, he lives in the crawlspace above the ceiling tiles. He’s dishevelled and insane, and does a lot of high-pitched giggling. New guy eventually sees TMATC and is wordlessly invited to follow him. It turns out that God talks to TMATC. Not hallucinations, or omens actually caused by a mundane source. God appears as a great glow and talks in a suitably impressive voice. TMATC no longer cares about the statute or returning to a normal life. He wants to spend the rest of his life above the ceiling, with the Lord. Newguy has finally found what he’s been looking for and becomes the second Man Above The Ceiling. The film ends with God delivering laws “Thou shalt not spend thy green friend”, while TMATC and his newpal giggle.
#2
I saw this on HBO or Cinemax so, somebody should actually be able to identify it. Two friends are drinking. One is saying that soon, there will be a revolution and society will change. The protagonist doesn’t buy it. He ends up passed out on the street. Most passersby ignore him. One steals his wallet. One gives a sermon about Christian charity and carries him home. There, the good samaritan rapes the semiconscious man. Then, he carries him back to the sidewalk and leaves him. The protagonist wakes up and (I don’t remember how) gets a gun. He uses this to carjack a hispanic woman driving a red convertible. She doesn’t seem very nervous about this. At one point she says ‘What are you gonna do now that you have me at gunpoint? Tie me up and make me give you a blowjob? You don’t have to tie me up. I like giving blowjobs, especially to men who enjoy them.’ He puts down the gun, she performs oral sex on him, and steam erupting from the radiator cap stands in for the moment of climax. The protagonist tells the woman he loves her, but there’s something he has to do. He says he’ll come back to her if he can. She says she’s fallen in love with him, and will miss him. The protagonist goes to the home of a senator. He shouts something about a revolution and shoots the senator before the two police guarding the man overpower him. There is a short chat revealing that the cops don’t like the senator either. One of the cops says ‘Stupid man. You only got him in the leg. He’ll be fine. You need to get him in the heart like this’ the cop shoots the semiconscious senator in the heart ‘or in the head like this’. The cop shoots the senator in the head. The cops tell the protagonist to hurry and leave the scene. The film ends with the protagonist and his new love driving along in the convertible while the radio announced addresses him by name and says ‘See? I told you the revolution was coming.’
Strangest movie I personally have ever seen, hands down, is Zardoz. Sean Connery (desperate to do anything non-Bond) a giant flying head, topless women, and a completely incomprehensible plot.
I rented it because it had an interesting movie poster and then spent the rest of the evening recoiling in horror.