Film Inquiry Recommends: Insane Films

Over at our official Facebook page , we are currently posting daily Film Recommendations, with each week being a different theme. This is a collection of those recommendations! Last week’s theme is Insane Films, films which push the envelope in outrageous ways with entertaining, yet crazy results.

1. Viy (1967, Georgi Kropachyov, Konstantin Yershov)

Based on the Nikolai Gogol short story (which was also the basis of Mario Bava‘s Black Sunday), this film served as Russia’s first official horror film. There’s not much of a story (with the film only under 75 minutes), which entails the adventures of Khoma, a young priest who accidentally left a witch to die due to his faith, decides to repent by praying over the body for 3 consecutive nights. The problem is, during these nights, the witch comes alive and taunts him, making each consecutive nights crazier then the last one. The first night simply entails the witch alone, toying with Khoma, ramping up to the third night, when the film really starts to get crazy.

Whilst the acting is pretty laughable, the standout portion of the film is it’s technical side, where the directors Georgi Kropachyov and Konstantin Yershov, really use the church interior in different creative ways. Techniques such as manipulating the lighting and creating a unique atmosphere through interesting cinematography to slowly build Khoma’s descent into madness. The film was remade as a mainstream 3D horror film in 2012 but don’t bother with it. This film can be seen as quite influential to Sam Raimi‘s The Evil Dead, as they share very similar settings and both have the same level of building craziness. The intense claustrophobia that Raimi builds in Evil Dead can have it’s roots shown in Viy, as they both deal with an innocent protagonist who must fight against increasingly deranged supernatural beings.

2. Possession (1981, Andrzej Żuławski)

Now this is a film that’s hard to talk about. An extremely controversial film and one of the most interesting cinematic experiences imaginable. IMDB lists the plotline as “A woman starts exhibiting increasingly disturbing behavior after asking her husband for a divorce. Suspicions of infidelity soon give way to something much more sinister.” which is probably the right amount of vagueness to enter this film with. If watching for the first time, avoid any further spoilers about this film and go in cold. Isabelle Adjani turns in an amazing performance, that’s extremely physical and could only be pulled off by a talented actress such as Adjani.

One infamous scene features Adjani undergoing some form of seizure/transformation in a subway alley, featuring no cuts, that includes some horrific body horror images that still shock today’s audiences. Sam Neill is a completely different person to one you see in Jurassic Park, basically screaming the entire film. This isn’t a film that descends into craziness, it starts at 10 and gets even more insane from there. Do not let these warnings detract you though, the film is quite deep in its thematic readings and there is a lot of substance to be interpreted from it.

3. Detention (2011, Joseph Kahn)

Joseph Kahn is a director you might’ve been hearing about lately, he’s one of the more interesting directors working today. He has directed a lot of music videos that you have definitely seen and heard of, like Taylor Swift’s past two music videos (Bad Blood and Blank Space), made an independent Power Rangers reboot that went viral and his first feature film was the widely panned-now appreciated Torque. His second feature film was Detention, a critique on modern day teenage society compared to that of the children of the 90’s, using humour and a hyper-kinetic style to test how today’s teenagers process information.

He uses that to satirise high school films and create something extremely original and worth seeing. The film, much like many of this list, has a small plot which is the catalyst for a labyrinth of different sub-plots that somehow all come together in the end, even though whilst watching this film you wouldn’t think so. The basic plot of the film is about a serial killer slowly killing teenagers leading up to their prom. Yes, it does sound like a film you’ve seen millions of times, but that’s not what it’s about. Watch the opening scene, that’ll give you a hint at the insane plot deviations and twists this film encounters. You might not be able to follow the plot by the end of the film, but it doesn’t matter, it’s so full of energy that it’s still an enjoyable watch.

4. A Chinese Ghost Story (1987, Ching Siu-tung)

When you first start this film, you may notice that it is quite slow-moving and not much was going on. This happens in quite a lot of great B-Movies (e.g. Race with the Devil), where the first hour is quite slow and full of poorly delivered story, but then the last half hour totally delivers. Once all the pieces are set up, the film totally goes for broke and the energy ramps up immediately.

A Chinese Ghost Story tells the story about Ning Tsai-Shen, a lowly tax collector doing his job, who is homeless and ends up sleeping in a cave, where he encounters the tortured female ghost of Nieh Hsiao-Tsing. The ghostis trapped to Earth by an evil tree spirit. Once the film sets up all these characters (including Yen Che-Hsia, a swordsman whose introduction is a musical number) the film is a blast. A hundred things are happening at once, the practical effects are great and makes the film a satisfying experience.

5. The Visitor (1979, Giulio Paradisi)

You need to see The Visitor to believe it. It’s a film lacking in any form of coherent plot, where the audience must piece together the little information given to them. A film which stars the acting talents of Lance Henriksen, Franco Nero, John Huston (yes, the director) and Sam Peckinpah, who was so drunk that his dialogue is dubbed by someone else. The supposed plot is about the remnants of an evil defeated alien who has impregnated women on Earth to give birth to his evil protegees, who exhibit vague psychic powers, who must be stopped by John Huston.

The film is like watching a Jodorwosky film, where you look around you and go, ‘What is going on?’ continuously throughout the film. One of the infamous scenes includes the main antagonist of the film, a small girl, having a birthday party and teleporting a pistol into the room which she uses against her own mother. It comes from nowhere and there are no consequences for the scene. An extremely fun watch, even if it does leave you scratching your head.

6. Very Bad Things (1998, Peter Berg)

Very Bad Things is a black comedy, the first film by director Peter Berg, who went onto to direct Battleship and Lone Survivor. VBT is completely different to Berg’s later efforts and it would’ve been interesting to see if Berg continued in the direction he established in this film. VBT uses a pretty loaded cast, including Cameron Diaz, Jeremy Piven, Christian Slater and Jon Favreau, to tell a darkly comic story of a bunch of friends who go to Las Vegas for a bachelor party and accidentally kill a prostitute. Afterwards, the friends slowly start to turn on each other, which leads to one of the weirdest, absurdly comedic endings ever seen in film. The fact that a mainstream comedy film could have this sort of ending, shows how much things have changed since the 90’s.

7. The Manitou (1978, William Girdler)

This film is interesting because it’s not a good film. Here at Film Inquiry we try to recommend underseen films, as a way of broadening the filmic landscape for our readers. This film however, is a poorly made, post-Exorcist cash grab film starring an older and past his prime Tony Curtis (who looks exactly like current day Michael Keaton in this). The reason we’re recommending this film is because it is quite insane and very enjoyable in its unpredictable and absurd nature. The film’s thin plot involves Karen (Susan Strasberg) who notices a lump growing on her back. Worried she might die soon, she contacts her ex-husband, a phony psychic played by Tony Curtis.

As the lump grows, Curtis discovers it’s not a standard lump, but it’s actually the growing reincarnation of a 400-year old Native American spirit. Sound a bit wacky? The film continues to surprise you even with that premise. Curtis eventually teams up with a Native American, John Singing Rock (Michael Ansara), to rid the evil spirit from Karen’s body. At this point, the film turns into a direct rip-off of The Exorcist. The last 30 minutes of the film, all located within a hospital, are some of the craziest and funniest clips you will see from a film. The plot and any explanation of what’s happening goes completely out the window and the film becomes kind of a fun amusement park ride, where you’re already strapped in and ready to finish the ride. A good film to watch late at night with friends who want something different or for people who like to watch bad movies ironically, like Birdemic or The Room.

Any other insane films that you’ve seen that you can recommend?

(top image: Very Bad Things – source: PolyGram Filmed Entertainment)