Hodge You beat me to most of my favorites. However I can add these Cronenberg films that are not on your list but delightfuly weird:
The Brood A bit hard to find, but lotsa fun.
M. Butterfly Very interesting.
Other noteworthy movies:
Pi is a really fun movie and it’s just weird enough to keep it interesting.
Killer Kondom is one of the weirdest movies I have seen.
If I think of more, I’ll post them…
Marat/Sade was a recent one I saw that’s pretty odd/disturbing. It’s adapted from a French (I believe) stage play, performed by an excellent cast from the Royal Shakespeare Company, the title’s short for a much longer title, and it’s pretty darn strange.
Oh, and I agree with Eraserhead.
Hey, a friend of mine was in Motel Hell, she says she still gets a residuals check for $10 or $12 every year or so.
But seriously guys, you need to see more weird films, I mean, Blue Velvet, Clockwork Orange, and Head are the most bizarre films ever? Hardly. How about:
Guinea Pig: Flowers of Flesh and Blood
Vormittagsspuk (Ghosts Before Breakfast)
Penn and Teller Get Killed
Irezumi (Spirit of the Tattoo)
Motion Painting #1 by Oskar Fischinger
Le Locataire (The Tenant)
Dwaj ludzie z szafa (Two Men and a Wardrobe)
Cemetery Man, aka Dellamore Dellamorte. Truly bizarre, and if I am not mistaken, in the tradition of absurdist theater. You must see this movie once in your lifetime, if only for the sheer bewilderment factor.
Brazil: Get the director’s cut if you can find it.
Last Year at Marienbad: A couple may or may not have had an affair the year before at a hotel resort in Marienbad. A Chinese puzzle box of a movie, with no clear answers in the end.
The Untold Story: American horror movie makers are pikers. Hell, even the Italians can’t match this one.
“The Grave Of The Fireflies”
Oh Ghod.
One of the most heart-wrenching, gut-twisting, tearjerking films—no, the saddest film I’ve ever seen.
Semi-autobiographical, everthing in it happened, either to the Director/screenwriter or to somebody he knew well.
How children could survive this is incredible. Almost as incredible is the idea that anybody could bear making the film after going through this.
And, they made it as a cartoon?
A film that is strange & deeply disturbing.
Uhh, dude… you are aware that’s not so much a wierd movie as an incredibly well faked Snuff Film, right? That’s the one that Charlie Sheen turned in to the FBI and they tracked down the guys who made it in… I think Japan.
It turned out that they were just a movie special effects crew that made this to prove that they were really good.
LC
This real winner, Forbidden Zone features Herve Villechaise (yes, Tattoo), as the king of some wierd realm reached from the basement of one of the local wierdo’s homes. Another plot summary, from IMDB: "A French midget king of the sixth dimension, complete with his two battling wives and a slew of topless concubines, capture unwitting commoners, including Squeezit Henderson the Chicken Boy. "
Features a fantastic turn by Danny Elfman doing a Cab Calloway riff as Satan, a frog in a tux, english dudes in diapers smacking each other, and some terrible/terribly funny show tunes. Unsane.
Here’s a very old thread with some great suggestions.
The thread is so old it’s got that old coding and the posts are out of order. I’ve been here longer that I realized.
How could I forget the immortal Zardoz. Giant floating heaads spitting our rifles, strange secret societies and Sean Connery running around in a bright orange loincloth.
Hodge
Yes I’m aware. And it’s still a damn weird film.
The Holy Mountain.
Meetings With Remarkable Men.
Hellywood. Imagine “Tommy” performed in Japanese in the early 80’s.
Tommy
Lisztomania
Liquid Sky
and someone already mentioned Eraserhead
It’s called Eversmile New Jersey. (My family made it about 1/4 of the way through.)
Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2 (1963)
Some older ones that haven’t been mentioned yet:
O Lucky Man! - sequel to “If”, in itself a wierd movie, and followed by “Britannia Hospital”, another wierd movie.
Mahler - practically anything by Ken Russell is, by definition, wierd. Catch the dream sequence involving all the Teutonic / Nazi motifs when he converts to Christianity (“No longer a JEW boy, now you’re a GOY!”).
Altered States - Ken Russell again. Need we also mention “Gothic”?
Harold and Maude - A cult favorite whose cult I belong to. Still strange.
The Ruling Class - I love this movie, also. Very, very strange piece of black humor.
If we’re going to go for low-budget wierdness, there’s a veritable treasure trove of course - Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, anyone?
Just thought of another.
Jacobs Ladder
Am I the only person who considers Lost Highway a bizarre movie? I didn’t notice it in the lists of David Lynch movies?
Two goodies : City of Lost Children and Dead Alive, (the latter if only for the final lawnmower scene.)
Eating Raul.
Orlando.