The cult 2010 video game
Deadly Premonition gets a
Director's Cut this week. The
brainchild of a guy who calls himself
SWERY, one could make a strong case for
Deadly Premonition being the most entertainingly bizarre game ever made. It's undeniably
influenced by Twin Peaks and more than a touch of Japanese horror, yet that doesn't begin to explain how unique, disturbing and hilarious the game is. The humor is
intentionally unintentional. Everyone agrees there are significant gameplay problems, but the phrase "so bad it's good" does the game a
terrible disservice. "
Capable of swinging from zany to nasty, inspired to absurd
within the
course of a
single sequence," and
boasting an
eccentric, often inappropriate soundtrack,
Deadly Premonition is either a joke, a masterpiece or both. (Previously:
It's like watching two clowns eat each other.)
posted by naju
on Apr 30, 2013 -
33 comments
...
Buckaroo Banzai is paradoxically decades ahead of its time and yet completely of its time; it’s profoundly a movie by, for, and of geeks and nerds at a time before geek/nerd culture was mainstreamed, and a movie whose pre-CG special effects and pre-Computer Age production design were an essential part of its good-natured enthusiasm. What at the time was a hip, modern take on classic SF is now, almost thirty years later, almost indistinguishable from the SF cinema that inspired it in terms of the appeal to modern viewers: the charmingly old-fashioned special effects, and the comparatively innocent earnestness of its tone. -
Danny Bowes [more inside]
posted by Egg Shen
on Aug 19, 2012 -
119 comments
"What is a cult film? A cult film is one that has a passionate following, but does not appeal to everyone. James Bond movies are not cult films, but chainsaw movies are. Just because a film has become a cult movie does not automatically guarantee quality. Some are very bad; others are very, very good. Some make an awful lot of money at the box office; others make no money at all. Some are considered quality films; others are exploitation movies. One thing cult movies do have in common is that they are all genre films - for example gangster films or westerns. They also have a tendency to slosh over from one genre into another, so that a science fiction film might also be a detective movie, or vice versa. They share common themes as well, themes that are found in all drama: love, murder and greed." - of the British TV film slots accompanied by an introduction perhaps the
most celebrated is
Moviedrome, running between 1988 and 2000 and presented first by Repo Man director
Alex Cox and then film critic
Mark Cousins.
[more inside]
posted by Artw
on Aug 3, 2012 -
88 comments
Makoto Hirata, a senior member of doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo and one of three remaining fugitives from the group, has
turned himself in to police after more than sixteen years on the run, leading to
questions about the timing of his surrender now, after all these years.
While Aum is best known as the group responsible for the
deadly sarin-gas attack on Tokyo's subway system that killed 13 people and injured more than 6000, Hirata is wanted on suspicion of taking part in a different crime, the
kidnapping and murder of Kiyoshi Kariya, the brother of an ex-Aum member who had left the group.
Despite the fact that police stations and koban (police boxes) throughout Japan have prominently displayed
wanted posters of the three Aum Shinrikyo fugitives for the past 16 years, Hirata had remained at large and hadn't had plastic surgery, leading to
police speculation that he must have been helped by others while on the run.
posted by Umami Dearest
on Jan 1, 2012 -
22 comments
Alex Cox:
REPO MAN was made as a "negative pickup" by Universal at the time when Bob Rehme was head of the studio. At the time, the big deal over there was STREETS OF FIRE, and nobody really noticed our film [8 MB PDF] at all. Which was lucky for us, since Bob Rehme had "green-lighted" a film which was quite unusual by studio standards. (previously)
posted by Trurl
on Oct 31, 2011 -
92 comments
Straight to Hell is a 1987 action-comedy film directed by Alex Cox, featuring Sy Richardson, The Clash frontman Joe Strummer (after whose song the film is named), Courtney Love, Dick Rude, Dennis Hopper, Grace Jones, Elvis Costello, Xander Berkeley, Kathy Burke, Jim Jarmusch, Edward Tudor-Pole, Miguel Sandoval, as well as members of The Pogues, Amazulu and The Circle Jerks. ... While the film received almost no positive reviews, it has (like several other of Cox's films) achieved a minor cult status, largely due to its cast of musicians, many of whom have cult followings of their own. A soundtrack has been released. (previously, awesomely)
posted by Trurl
on Jul 1, 2011 -
44 comments
Kamikuishiki was a village in the
Yamanashi Prefecture in Japan that gained unwanted international attention in 1995 as a key location for
Aum Shinrikyo, the religious cult behind a number of acts of violence, including the Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway. To change the nature of attention given to the picturesque village, a new attraction was built on the former site of the cult complex:
Gulliver's Kingdom,
a mixed up theme park with a Scandinavian town, a petting zoo, a French puppet theater to tell the story of Gulliver, and a
45 meter version of Gulliver himself, pinned to the ground. The park was opened in 1997, but Niigata Chuo Bank was facing
serious problems two years later, collapsing "under the weight of nonperforming loans." The theme park's owners were the largest borrowers from the bank, and
the park closed in 2001. The park was
finally purchased in 2002 in the 3rd auction attempt. In 2006,
Kamikuishiki disappeared, divided and the parts merged into neighboring municipalities. The next year,
Gulliver's Kingdom was demolished, leaving behind
photos (
new and old), and
memories.
posted by filthy light thief
on Jun 6, 2011 -
4 comments
"Beat the Devil" went straight from box office flop to cult classic and has been called the first camp movie, although Bogart, who sank his own money into it, said, "Only phonies like it." It's a movie that was made up on the spot; Huston tore up the original screenplay on the first day of filming, flew the young Truman Capote to Ravallo, Italy, to crank out new scenes against a daily deadline and allowed his supporting stars, especially Robert Morley and Peter Lorre, to create dialogue for their own characters. (Capote spoke daily by telephone with his pet raven, and one day when the raven refused to answer he flew to Rome to console it, further delaying the production.) -
Roger Ebert's Great Movies
posted by Trurl
on May 22, 2011 -
21 comments
"Let's do those drive-in totals. We have: Nineteen dead bodies
(plus fragments). Ten breasts
(shame on you, TNT censors). Two zombie breasts. One-hundred twenty-five zombies. Mummy dogs. One-half zombie dog. Ten gallons blood. Brain-eating. Gratuitous embalming. Zombie fu. Nekkid punk-rocker fondue. Gratuitous midget zombie. Torso S&M. One motor vehicle chase
(totalled by zombies). Pool cue fu. No aardvarking. Heads roll. Brains roll. Arms roll. Hands roll.
Joe Bob says, Check It Out." Only on
MonsterVision.
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Feb 3, 2011 -
31 comments
Nobuhiko Obayashi's
House (also called Hausu) has been a cult film legend pretty much since its 1977 release in Japan. As director, Obayashi alchemizes the usual horror trappings (seven pretty young girls, each defined by one personality trait, visit a mysterious aunt who lives in a creepy house in the middle of nowhere) into a glorious, barely coherent, eminently watchable fever dream. The film has been
discussed by
those in the
know for some
time, but unless one knew who to ask, or lucked into the right festival, actually
seeing the movie outside of the
trailer or scenes on Youtube has been a bit of a difficult task. This particular injustice has officially been remedied, in a move for which very few people were calling out, but more might have if they'd known about it: House has been released on region 1 DVD and Blu-Ray
by no less an entity than the Criterion Collection, finally taking its rightful place in cinematic history alongside such films as
Rashomon,
The Seventh Seal, and Olivier's
Hamlet. Just in time for that Halloween party! Provided you not only want your guests to be entertained but also thoroughly bewildered and maybe slightly shellshocked.
posted by FAMOUS MONSTER
on Oct 26, 2010 -
40 comments
For the first time ever, a look inside the most secure room in the world. Not Disney's
Club 33. Not the White House
Situation Room or the
Gold Vault at Fort Knox. Welcome to the
OT VIII Course Room aboard the Church of Scientology's flagship
MV Freewinds. This room is the only place (on this planet at least) where you can read an authorized copy of Scientology's highest level.
posted by scalefree
on May 7, 2010 -
62 comments
I am Myra Breckinridge whom no man will ever possess. Clad only in garter belt and one dress shield, I held off the entire elite of the Trobriand Islanders, a race who possess no words for "why" or "because." Wielding a stone axe, I broke the arms, the limbs, the balls (nsfw) of their finest warriors, my beauty blinding them, as it does all men... [more inside]
posted by Joe Beese
on Jun 1, 2009 -
20 comments
The Torture Colony.
In a remote part of Chile, an evil German evangelist built a utopia whose members helped the Pinochet regime perform its foulest deeds... [i]nvestigations by Amnesty International and the governments of Chile, Germany, and France, as well as the testimony of former colonos who, over the years, managed to escape the colony, have revealed evidence of terrible crimes: child molestation, forced labor, weapons trafficking, money laundering, kidnapping, torture, and murder. It may sound like the farfetched plot of Saw VII (or
something out of Kafka) but it's horrifyingly true.
[Previously]
posted by dersins
on Apr 17, 2009 -
38 comments
...[Change of scene. We are looking out of a car window; it is raining, or has recently rained. Shops go by.] I treated myself to a taxi. I rode home through the city streets! There wasn't a street--there wasn't a building--that wasn't connected to some memory in my mind. There I was buying a suit with my father. There I was having an ice-cream soda after school. When I finally came in, Debby was home from work. And I told her everything about my dinner with André
And here is
Sergio Leone and the Inside Fly Rule's meditation on the only possible other candidate for
Best.Movie.Ever. [more inside]
posted by y2karl
on Apr 3, 2009 -
52 comments
Bruce McDonald, respected Canadian indie director, announced his plans last week to make not one, not two, but three sequels to his low-budget 1996 cult favorite
Hard Core Logo, essentially turning it into a
franchise.
Hard core fans will no doubt hope that the films are either great enough to live up to the original, or that it's all a publicity stunt timed for the TIFF premiere of his new film
Pontypool, a horror flick about zombies who spread infection through conversation.
[more inside]
posted by mannequito
on Sep 3, 2008 -
26 comments
