Greatest Wierd Head Trip Movie

By "Greatest," I mean it was Big. You staggered out of the theatre going, "Whoa, I'm gonna need to see that deep shit again." You couldn't tell if it was the most profound or most cracked thing you'd ever seen, because the ideas were so moebiusly large, maybe. It bridged the gap between MST3K and the Oscar for Best Mindfuck. It gave your hippocampus a free reach-around just because it liked you.

Some possible runners up that didn't make the A-List:

Solaris (Tarkovsky's 1972 version, not the remake)
Blade Runner
Akira
Angel Heart
Jacob's Ladder
Fight Club (slide!)
Deathtrap
Flatliners
They Live
Videodrome
Lawnmower Man
The Parallax View
Apocalypse Now (yes, but have you watched it on LSD?)
Parents
Light Years
A Clockwork Orange
The Manchurian Candidate
Colossus: the Forbin Project

So go ahead, vote for your next video rental. You know you want to.

Or anything else by Peter Greenaway.

A Zed and two Noughts etc.
• 8 1/2 Women (2000)

• 4 American Composers - Boxed Set (1999)

• 4 American Composers - Meredith Monk (1999)

• The Pillow Book (1997)

• Death in the Seine (1994)

• Drowning by Numbers (1991)

• Prospero's Books (1991)

• The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover (1989)

• The Belly of An Architect (1987)

• A Zed and Two Noughts (1985)

• Four American Composers - Boxed Set (1983)

• Four American Composers - John Cage (1983)

• Four American Composers - Philip Glass (1983)

• Four American Composers - Robert Ashley (1983)

• The Draughtsman's Contract (1982)

• Death in the Seine

I rented the video several times.

It had some beautiful, artsy moments -- like when the boy is singing in the alley... great movie.

need to rent it soon.

Should have made the list. I think...

"C'est arrivé près de chez vous" by Rémy Belvaux / André Bonzel / Benoit Poelvoorde. Belgium 1992.
And "Gyakufunsha Kazoku" by Sogo Ishii, Japan 1984.
I'am sorry, don't know whether they are available in english. That's really weird but great stuff.

ps: found something
"Gyakufunsha Kazoku"
http://www.thegline.com/dvd-of-the-week/2002/09-30-2002.htm
"C'est arrivé près de chez vous"
http://www.waikato.ac.nz/film/mock-doc/filmography/title37.shtml

Greenaway, recommendable - without doubt.
Terry Gilliam - Brazil, i love this film.
nice poll :)

"Man Bites Dog"

I thought I was the only person who ever saw it. Truly disturbed and disturbing. And funny as hell! (But not for the squeamish.)

and Walkabout are two weird, wonderful Nicholas Roeg movies.

Days of Heaven is a different kind of trip.

Apocalypse Now.

Atalante by Jean Vigo. I never saw Zero de Conduit, but it's on my list.

And I agree with everyone who mentioned Blue Velvet.


PS: Aguirre, the Wrath of God

Night of the Living Dead (1967 version)

... I'd put "Blue Velvet" ahead of "Eraserhead." Yeah, the latter is very, very weird, but it left me wondering more about David Lynch's mental balance than put me in a netherworldish mood. One that should be on this list is the 1983 remake of "1984." Great sets, superb acting, and one walks away from that depressed, blown up and very much affected.

Honorable mentions should include "Altered States," "Blow-Up," and "If...." is pretty damned strange.

One that goes back some, but is also worth mention is "La Grande Bouffe." It was originally an Italian film ("La grande abbuffata"), but was subsequently released dubbed in French in 1973, so most everyone thinks it's a French film. Quite obscure now, but it really fits the bill--four bored middle-class men decide to end it all by having a non-stop orgy of food and hookers until they expire.

On edit, in the honorable mention category, how could I forget "A Boy and His Dog." Geez, that's a strange one (and if you want to see what the right-wing becomes after the atomic wars, this is the film for you--just imagine a sequel to "Dr. Strangelove" a few generations after they've gone underground).

Cheers.

Frank Booth is Hopper's best character ever, sick.

"Do you want me to send you a love letter?"

you walked out of the theater scratching your head and vowing not to eat for a week . . .

http://www.notcoming.com/reviews/eltopo.html

Holy Mountain or Santa Sangre are weirder, imo.

I'd also like to add to our list:

Zardoz
Repo Man
Svankmajer's Faust

much stranger than El Topo.

My picks:
Chien Andalou (Salvador Dali)
Gift




I'd like to add that I have seen Apocolypse Now on LSD, and it's "slightly intense" (replace slightly with the superlative of your liking to indicate "very").

That movie gives me the Heebie Jeebies just thinking about it.

creepy puzzlers

Both of them are EXCELLENT movies.

If you liked Fantastic Planet, you'll probably enjoy Light Years too.

with some amazing creatures.

I felt like I was stoned watching that movie.

Also, Vertigo,
City of Lost Children,
The Wizard of Oz,
The Incredible World of Jules Verne,
Donnie Darko,
and Evil Dead 2.

Hubbs: What the f*** is that?
Joes: It's "Don't Fear the Reaper," man!
Hubbs: You're not playing that pussy song in my car man!
Joe: But it's Blue Oyster Cult!
Hubbs: I don't give a f*** if it's Blue Oyster Cult, it's a pussy song! Let me tell you something: every band puts out at least one pussy song so they can find out who the faggots are!

Frank Zappa's bizarre ode to life on the road. Been so long but the highlights are;

Ringo Starr as Larry the Dwarf and Frank Zappa
Keith Moon as a nun
Former Turtle Mark Volman completely naked.

Very strange film that can not be understood at all. But a lot of fun.

For I am.....bwana Dick!

The closing song, as I remember, sung by Theodore Bikel(!) went something like:
Lord have mercy on the people of England
For the terrible food
These people must eat
Lord help the winos and faggots and junkies
And God help the mind of the man in the street....

.

Then again I was drunk and angry at the time, a pink bunny could have pissed me off.

Have your DVD player run through the scenes in chronological order!

great head trip movies, though I also agree with your list.

Videodrome - I'm surprised anyone remembers that one. That was a weird movie, like, fer sure.

Written by, and featuring a cameo appearance by, Jack Nicholson.

I see something new in this movie every time I see it. It's one of my all-time favorites.

Great cult film! I thought I was the only one to remember it!

Also, some recent ones:

Memento

Vanilla Sky (very trippy, hard to figure out)

Kudos to DUers for bringing up some of the better flicks that I forgot to put in the list. Honestly, I can't remember all of them at once.

Memento is certainly a good mindwarp film
Cook, Thief, Wife, Lover and Inferno, both by Greenway
200 Motels, although I passed out halfway through every time I tried to watch it
Blue Velvet ("Heineken is for pussies! Pabst Blue Ribbon!")
City of Lost Children
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

I haven't seen Vanilla Sky yet, and that will have to change.

Zardoz, I regard as more of a cheesy joke flick weighted a shade too heavily to the MST3K side of the aisle. But YMMV.

Another recent film I almost forgot about is Adaptation. It's got a nice "Barton Fink" twist to it.

Robocop 2 has a great brain-in-a-vat sequence that makes the whole movie worth watching.

Slacker. I can't believe I didn't put Slacker on the list. Watch the film again, and see if you don't freak on the passage of time; Linklater really makes an entire day pass for a cityfull of oddballs in under 2 hours. He focuses on details of behavior and dialog so much I get totally embedded in the various characters' timeflow whenever I see the movie. Plus, there's that guy near the end of the film driving the truck with the loudspeaker on top, saying the damnedest shit at 5am...

and mission: impossible 2

Requiem for a Dream (not a good trip, mind you, but a trip nonetheless)

Pi (See above)

The Saragaso Manuscript (billed as "Jerry Garcia's Favourite Movie")
(has to be seen to be believed!!)

Cube (Canadian low budget sci-fi thriller about a bunch of people who wake up in a giant torture puzzle/maze made entirely of lethal cubic rooms)

Reuben and Ed (Crispin Glover and Howard Hessman in the same movie--need I say more?)

River's Edge

Fight Club

Living in Oblivion

Mulholland Drive (what IS David Lynch on?!)

Hard Core Logo (best Rock 'n' Roll Road Movie of all time)

Evil Dead

Jacob's Ladder


edit= Oh, and "Being John Malkovich"

Good movie that has aged very poorly in this day and age of terorism.

Especially considering the story is about a terrorist group that blows up skyscrapers.

I haven't heard much about the movie since 9/11/01. It seems to have just 'disappeared'.

Nonetheless, I still like it.

"The Wall" is pretty trippy at times, bt it isn't much of a movie in my opinion. I just chose it beacuse Roger Waters is an incredible genius. The Final Cut mini- movie is great too.

Another one is The Magic Christian, although the only thing I remember about it was that it was one of those trippy movies.

I remember saying "wow" a lot. Also I think it was whats-her-name's first movie.

I knew the story so I got it right off, but it was incredibly well made...stunning, really.

Kika (this is one truly screwed up film!)
Tie me up Tie me Down
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

Every tool is in some way a weapon...

Every day is some sort of birthday...

Life's journey is to pass through the doors of perception...

"Daddy's traveling."

"Excellent speech, Heywood. I'm sure it really beefed up morale."

"Don't suppose you know what the damn thing IS."

"I'm afraid...Dave."

to this day, I won't watch it...

Seriously, can anoyone with a zoom DVD player confirm this? I think it wa an entire horse or cow head wrapped in Saran wrap. Anyone else?

One of my best college friends works for the NYC transit authority, he says Jacob's Ladder captures the spooky decay of the subway system perfectly.

No Donnie Darko?

Keyser Soze!

Sequel to "If..." and one of the strangest movies I've ever experienced.

I'd have to toss "Caligula" into the mix here as well. If Sir John Gielgud bleeding to death in a giant crystal bowl wasn't enough to wig you out, the beheading machine would probably do it. Or Peter O'Toole as Caligula's VD-consumed father, frolicking in the pool with the little boys and girls.

Hmmm... Malcolm McDowell stars in both of these. And "A Clockwork Orange" as well. My, my, Malcolm does get himself involved in some interesting projects, doesn't he?

and the pigman?

I once thought I imagined all that, like some drug induced altered consciousness. But no, it is a real, honest to god movie.

The human heads transplanted onto animal bodies, the glittery suit, and coffee with Helen Mirren. One seriously whacked-out flick.

I watched it 2 times and thought to myself - WTF did I just watch?

The version of "Mad Love" at the end is really great.

"Mad World"

Drew Barrymore had me confused.

Stayed up thinking about it the whole night. Look at Woody Harrelson in a whole new way now.

I was totally jazzed and jangled after watching that movie.....

I had to watch it again after seeing it once .

All nine subtitled hours of it!!

I don't know whether I should be happy or sad knowing that info. I'll probably give it a look, considering we're never going to see the last parts of The Kingdom since one of the major stars died.

MOOOOOSSSSGAAAAARRRD!

The remake is being made here in BC. I know some people working on it.

It should be good, as King is a huge fan of the original, and this one is going to be 15 hours long, intertwining the original plot with King's onw hallucinations from when he was recovering from his accident...

I think it's more likely that the origninal will never be completed because von Trier has bigger fish to fry now, being all world-renowned and shit.

Lars said somewhere down the line that he wouldn't finish the project without him.

When we saw that the theatre, my wife and I disclosed to each other that by about halfway through the movie, we were each silently thinking to ourself: "Why{/i] are we sitting here watching this..."
It was a brutal torment of a movie to watch.

agreed. Pretty brutal.

But Last Exit to Brooklyn was like being bashed/raped.

And then with the same woman saw "The Bad Lieutenant" with Harvey Keitel.

Yes, we're still friends & still talk occasionally- but she wasn't who I married.

that is one f*cked up flick.

I was stoned when I saw it.

Classic "what the F_CK was that all about" experience.

Saw it years later and I wasnt stoned, w. my partner, on video.

Still a "what the F_CK was that all about" movie. My partner, who has no problem with creepy sci-fi like Alien couldnt watch it..he was hiding his eyes.....

Liquid Sky...man I have NOT heard of that movie in years!

"He's a suave guy"

Man that was a real trip to watch. Sort of a conventional crime flick? Not this timie buddy!

That movie MIGHT have been cool if the writers hadn't decided that death was Rube Goldberg. I felt like I was watching a live action version of a Tom N Jerry cartoon.

..."Clumsy Cleuseau-esque Waiter" from the Simpsons.

Did you do a lot of acid back in the 60s?

Archie: "Let's go do some crimes."

Archie's Girlfriend: "Yeah, let's get sushi and not pay!"



Also

Plate of shrimp.

Funny? Hell yes.

Awesome social commentary? Oh yeah. ("put it on a plate, dear, it'll taste better")

Lovable yet Kick Ass characters? Yup.

Strange parallel subplots? Uh huh. UFOs, even.

A good movie. Maybe even a Great movie.

But it didn't suck me into the depths of freaky oozing alternate reality the way, say, Naked Lunch did. I dunno. There are certainly some I missed when making the poll, but Repo Man doesn't seem like one of 'em. *shrug*

I'll go through this thread if/when it hits 100 poll responses and tally up all the votes including the write-ins, so don't think your opinion doesn't count. This is DU, after all, not Florida.

... but another really oddball one is "Aria," the one with ten directors doing film to accompany famous operatic arias. Some really wild stuff in some segments, ranging from funny (Buck Henry as a second-hand producer under the influence of Ecstacy chasing Beverly d'Angelo around while an Elvis impersonator is singing Rigoletto) to Jean-Luc Godard directing a bit with two cleaning women fantasizing about killing muscle-bound men in a gym to Franc Roddam's vision of Bridget Fonda and her lover killing themselves in Las Vegas in sync with the death aria from Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde," to a phenomenal Ken Russell segment of a woman, during the playing of Puccini's "Turandot," gradually realizes that jewels on her body are wounds from a car crash and her fantasies of strong, virile men and women are not dreams, but rather are her nurses and physicians.

Saturating.

I'd love to see that again. The Franc Roddam vignette was absolutely heartbreaking.

I must say that the 2 movies that has made the greatest impression on me as weired or mind-boggling has been:

http://us.imdb.com/Title?0070130">La Grande bouffe
and
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0072235">Sweet Movie

If you haven't had the pleasure (??) of seeing them, try to get hold of them both. Amazing movies!

Punch Drunk Love
The Excorcist
Altered States
A Nightmare On Elm Street
Event Horizon

Jay

:thumbsup:

I really, really liked this flick - I can't explain it, its like nothing else I've seen, except maybe, to a small degeree, Waking Life, which came way after Slacker....

Unfortunately, there are only 10 slots in a DU poll. Can't fit 'em all in, but I'm thinking Slacker would've fared better than Yellow Submarine.

Slacker is a total timewarp freakshow. It's like "Reality TV" on serous amphetamine psychosis. Was my favorite film for a while.

and his little friend.

It was Chris Kristoffeson(spelling ?) I dont know if it was ever in theaters, but from some of the sex scenes cut on tv I guess it was. I saw it when i was like 14 on tv and it was a really disturbing but thought out movie. it has stuck with me since and i am now 45.

... a Yukio Mishima novella. If there was someone who was really twisted up, it was Mishima--beautiful expressions in words, and a life that was completely gonzo--right-wing emperor worship, homosexual identity issues, ending his life in ritual _seppuku_ after occupying some official offices by force. His life would make a weirder movie than his stories.

Some American director made a movie called 'Mishima," which is a biopic of the supremely gifted and screwed-up Japanese author.

It's actually kind of a documentary with reenacted scenes. Haven't seen it for years, though.

... that's very interesting. There is a sort of half biography/half interpretation of his works in four parts by Paul Schrader, who directed "Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters." Is that the one you're thinking of? The first three segments are sort of fictionalized around some of his works (_The Temple of the Golden Pavilion_, _Kyoko's House_, and _Runaway Horses_, while the last segment is devoted to the day of his death by _seppuku_). That the one? Released in 1985?

Seen it. Marveled at it. Paul Schrader is very, very good. Schrader's wife, Chieko Schrader, did a lot of the Japanese in the script.

Schrader is also known for another strange movie, "Hardcore," with George C. Scott. If you've lived in western Michigan, as I have, you'd recognize that Schrader pumps in many jabs at the Calvinists with whom he grew up in the area in that film, and includes some of the jabs they took at him for going to Hollywood to make "serious" films.

Cheers.

Any movie who's climax (pardon the pun) is when people learn the missionary position is a head trip.

"ivvvvve got a hole in me pocket" - ringo.....classic.

I figured it would do better than The Wall, maybe even place second or third! Who knew Beatles fans were so fickle?

Stranger Than Paradise

Down By Law

Mystery Train

Night on Earth

Dead Man

equally weird : equally great

and his film about Neil Young's tour "Year of the Horse" kicked major ass.

looking forward to it.

Not the least of which is to feed my Johnny Depp obssession.

Such a different and messed up movie the likes of which i have never seen.

n/m

Nobody has seen this movie. I got it as a gift. I forced someone to watch "Repo Man" (I may have refrred to it as a "Rosetta Stone of Western Civilization")They reciprocated by getting me this movie.
Billy Baldwin.
Totally freaky premise. It's about a girl who works for a post-murder cleanup service. Serial killer is pivotal.
Wack ending.

"Pi" and "Meet the Feebles".

I agree with a lot of the movies already mentioned. Blue Velvet (along with Wild at Heart and Lost
Highway by Lynch), Fight Club, Seven, Memento, Matrix, even Willy Wonka!

Two recent ones; Moulin Rouge. The begining of the movie especially is an assault on the senses. I was
a bit (okay, a lot) baked when I saw it and I was really freaked out.

The other just came out on dvd, called Irreversible. It is a French (sorry, "freedom") movie that, like Memento,
tells the story backwards. Although the movie was good, I would not really recomend it to anyone as it is
VERY disturbing and graphic. There is a grisly, graphic murder and a very graphic rape scene that goes on
for what seems like an eternity. While not pleasant at all, the movie is powerful and will haunt you. The
way the movie is filmed also keeps you totally off balance.

the concept, if not the execution.

The part where one guy puts the orgasm experience on a short loop is priceless. Overall, tho, it's a bit too flawed (without being flawed enough) to be among the Greats. IMHO.

Not a bit nihilistic, but a real tour de force. But Miyazawa's imagination is just so strange and wonderful. I love this movie.

"They're chickens! No bigger than your fist! But they're NEW!"

Roger Daltrey as Franz Liszt. Very bizarre movie.

A bizarre independant dogme film about a strange young man in Brooklyn and his very disturbing home life. It filmed in B&W and came out in 1996.
Very strange to the point of being disturbing.

America as an insane asylum, as seen from inside one. This picture will haunt you.