10 Weirdest Films Ever Made

Take a Walk on The Weird Side

♦ Contributing Writer James DC take us on a moonlit, lunatic trip to the fringes of planet-batty, looking at the craziest, most bizarre and deranged movies ever made (barring loads of others which had to be left out, such as Bad Boy Bubby, Being John Malkovitch, After Hours, Suspiria, El Topo, etc). These were game-changing films, which later became cult classics – and deservedly so. If you want to explore the furthest reaches of madness, reality and the eternal nightmare, then any of these will do. And don’t forget that when you’re strange, everyone remembers your name!

1) Eraserhead

Director: David Lynch, 1978.

An incredible, totally twisted head-trip that takes place in an eerie, post-industrial netherworld, Erazerhead first goes into bonkers overdrive when the protagonist Henry sits down to dinner and sees the chicken on his plate suddenly move and ooze pus. Henceforth it begins to feel like your worst ever nightmare; hypnotically fascinating, but in a slow-motion, car-crash kind of way. The fact that it’s also one of the funniest and wittiest films, despite it’s disturbing, psychotic atmosphere of quiet, insidious horror, is a stroke of genius. Lynch was never as original and intense as with this, his debut feature.

2) Un Chien Andalou (An Andalousian Dog)

Luis Bunuel, 1928.

The Surrealist film par excellence contains one of the most shocking, infamous scenes in cinema history: a shot of a girl’s eye being sliced open with a razor. Co-creators Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali scrapped anything which made logical, cinematic sense, and in turn released a whirlwind of weirdness, where reality and dreams coalesce into images and symbols which take on new, enigmatic meanings. It is no exaggeration to state that this legendary, influential, cult film is the Grand-daddy of all ‘weird’ films. Apparently, Bunuel kept small rocks in his pockets at the debut screening in 1928, in case it caused a riot; luckily, the audience of assorted Surrealists and bohemians loved it.

3) Possession

Andrej Żuławski, 1981.

This obscure horror classic creates an off-kilter realm of psycho-sexual tension and pervading unease. The gorgeous Isabelle Adjani plays a demented housewife who leaves her husband (Sam Neil) to conduct an affair with a multi-tentacled, shape-changing monster (as you do), which she regularly screws in a gloomy apartment. Highly influenced by Polanski’s Repulsion, this is an intense, brooding journey into a terrifying mind-set. The prolonged scene where Adjani finally loses her sanity, as she freaks out and shrieks at the top of her lungs in a subway tunnel, is very strange indeed – to put it mildly.

4) Videodrome

David Cronenberg, 1983.

How about the scene where James Woods kisses, and then sinks his whole face into a soft, undulating TV screen which is broadcasting Debbie Harry’s voluptuous, gigantic red lips, as it comes ‘alive’? Or when he nervously strokes a pulsating, gaping, vaginal slit in his stomach and then plunges his handgun inside, for it to disappear completely? A prescient, yet twisted and perverse dystopian nightmare which dissects the pervasive, burgeoning mind-control via the media, years before the internet ever existed. Suffice to say, Cronenberg’s sex-horror-science fiction masterpiece is a total mind-fuck, overflowing with insane, hallucinatory imagery.

5) Plan 9 From Outer Space

Ed Wood, 1958.

Often voted ‘The Worst Film Of All Time’, this is actually a far-out, out to lunch, trash masterpiece. When a B-movie’s this bad, it crosses over into the ‘good’ category. It’s so ridiculously nutty – where to start? How about excruciating, inept acting? An incomprehensible, demented plot about aliens, nuclear armageddon and the living dead? A geriatric, heroin addicted Bela Lugosi shuffling around in a state of bewilderment? Cardboard tombstones and wobbly sets which regularly get knocked over by the actors? Utterly incongruous editing, whereby bright, daytime scenes segue into pitch-black night shots, as if it were perfectly normal? Or car hubcaps on flimsy strings for flying saucers? Check.

6) Zu Warriors

Tsui Hark, 1983.

A completely mind-boggling, psychedelic, parallel universe, populated by warring mythological super-beings (who all look like extras from Monkey) trying desperately to destroy each other through the use of lethal energy-beams, gravity defying martial arts, every throwing weapon known to man, and killer beards. Yes, that’s right: Killer Beards. Long, thin white ones, which fly straight from the chin and try to strangle you. How cool is that? Downright barking. If you want a proper, ‘cult’ martial arts film, this is it.

7) The Bed Sitting Room

Richard Lester, 1969.

Based on a play by supreme nutter Spike Milligan, this odd little curio is potty in the extreme. A bunch of disparate, mad characters (including Milligan, Dudley Moore, and Peter Cooke) endlessly roam about a post-apocalyptic wasteland, talking nonsense and cheerily going about their hare-brained schemes, as if nothing much had happened. In the great tradition of Lewis Carol and Monty Python, this fabulous oddity is tons of fun. Oh, and Leo Mckern mutates into a talking wardrobe. Barmy British eccentricity at its best.

8) Even Dwarves Started Small

Werner Herzog, 1970.

A group of dwarves seem to be held captive by a sole guard, in a mysterious, unexplained prison-colony. Suddenly, they revolt against their tyrant and he barricades himself away. They then begin to taste freedom and self-determination, but this doesn’t last long, as in-fighting, demonic role-playing and total anarchy sets in. The nuttiest scene is when a dwarf nearly chokes himself to death by incessantly, deliriously laughing at the sight of a camel, for what seems like ages. Yes, simply the sight of a camel, standing there, minding its own business. Don’t ask me, it’s completely cuckoo!

9) The Tenant

Roman Polanski, 1976.

A peculiar, introverted tenant (played by Polanski himself) moves into the claustrophobic ex-apartment of a suicide victim, only to find himself feeling compelled to ‘inhabit’ the dead girls soul. Or is it a case of external, supernatural possession? He begins to dress and act like the woman, and explores his feminine, darker side, always on the edge of totally losing it, right up to the haunting, fateful climax. A disturbing, creepy study of paranoid schizophrenia and existential angst.

10) Images

Robert Altman, 1972.

Susannah York portrays a woman skirting a complete nervous breakdown, as the reality around her begins to crumble. It’s a spooky, chimerical film, existing in the crevices of York’s tortured, cracked mind. In effect, she haunts herself, as in the scary moment when she sees her doppelganger, which is basically a subconscious apparition, reflecting the increasing fragmentation of her personality. An intense, subtle, obscure delve into sexual neurosis and madness, and very underrated.

JAMES DC

Eraserhead [DVD] [1977] L’Age d’or + Un Chien Andalou [DVD + Blu-ray] [1930] Possession [Blu-ray] Videodrome [Blu-Ray] Plan 9 From Outer Space [DVD] [1956] Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain [DVD] (1983) The Bed Sitting Room (BFI Flipside) (DVD + Blu-ray) [1969] The Tenant [1976] [DVD] Images