So I know moviebob already does a good bit of this, but if I know my brethren at the Escapist, I suspect there are those who don't care to wait, so lets take care of this ourselves. I'd like to share some of my favorite movies with you, and I hope any other connoisseurs of the obscure out there will share theirs as well. Here goes!
Good:
Bronson: If you ever needed a reason to be excited about The Dark Knight Rises, here it is. Tom Hardy is amazing in this somewhat surreal exploration of the life of British criminal Charles Bronson. There's really too much going on in this one for me to get into here, but the storytelling is compelling and the soundtrack is killer.
Baraka: Surprisingly coherent story about the various ways in which religion helps people to understand their place in the world relative to their perceptions of chaos and order. The whole thing is told through a jumble of striking imagery tied together by a powerful soundtrack, and manages to do the whole thing without a scrap of dialogue and still be entertaining.
The Wizard of Gore (2007 remake): Some of the acting can be a bit grating, but the leads are all astoundingly well acted and written in this pitch dark film that confronts the viewer with the untrustworthy nature of sense experience. Crispin Glover, gratuitous gore and nudity, and some well articulated philosophy mesh together surprising well here.
Repo: The Genetic Opera: Gore-Opera about a father and his struggle to maintain a relationship with his daughter while keeping her imprisoned. Great music, great acting, cool ideas. Low budget, but near-flawlessly executed.
Bad:
Starcrash (or The Adventures of Stella Star): Star Wars ripoff with David Hasselhoff, stop-motion robots, an android whose voice wears a Stetson, and a guy with superpowers who forgets that he has them so often one wonders whose side he's actually on.
Turkish Star Wars (or Dünyay Kurtaran Adam): Balls to the wall crazy sci-fi with floppy foam costumes, special effects scenes lifted directly out of Star Wars (hence the name) and a soundtrack mashup of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Moonraker, and Battlestar Galactica.
Strange:
The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle: Janitors eat experimental cookies that make them hallucinate, then impregnate them with blue fish babies. Believe it or not, Little Dizzle is a touching drama that rarely gets too obtuse to be relatable.
Funky Forest: The First Contact
If you enjoy the feeling of having your brain implode, this is a must-watch. The experience of the Funky Forest truly cannot be put into words, but I'm going to try anyways.
From the very start it grabs your attention with the surreal undertones that imbue every image and word of dialogue.
You won't know who the characters are, or why they are doing the things they are doing, but at this point you will still sort of expect it to make sense eventually. About thirty minutes in, however, you may begin to suspect it's never going to make sense, and may become enraged at this horrid thing that is wasting your time. You will want to turn it off.
Don't.
Over the course of the film, you may experience excitement, intrigue, confusion, boredom, anger, hysteria, soul-crushing despair, and enlightenment. This is a normal response. Whatever you do, don't turn it off. Reaching the end is a test of character, but the rewards are legend. It lives you feeling cleansed, brimming with a desperate hope that there is an order to your universe, and a lurking fear that Japan houses people who live in a plane of reality completely alien to you.
Good:
Bronson: If you ever needed a reason to be excited about The Dark Knight Rises, here it is. Tom Hardy is amazing in this somewhat surreal exploration of the life of British criminal Charles Bronson. There's really too much going on in this one for me to get into here, but the storytelling is compelling and the soundtrack is killer.
Baraka: Surprisingly coherent story about the various ways in which religion helps people to understand their place in the world relative to their perceptions of chaos and order. The whole thing is told through a jumble of striking imagery tied together by a powerful soundtrack, and manages to do the whole thing without a scrap of dialogue and still be entertaining.
The Wizard of Gore (2007 remake): Some of the acting can be a bit grating, but the leads are all astoundingly well acted and written in this pitch dark film that confronts the viewer with the untrustworthy nature of sense experience. Crispin Glover, gratuitous gore and nudity, and some well articulated philosophy mesh together surprising well here.
Repo: The Genetic Opera: Gore-Opera about a father and his struggle to maintain a relationship with his daughter while keeping her imprisoned. Great music, great acting, cool ideas. Low budget, but near-flawlessly executed.
Bad:
Starcrash (or The Adventures of Stella Star): Star Wars ripoff with David Hasselhoff, stop-motion robots, an android whose voice wears a Stetson, and a guy with superpowers who forgets that he has them so often one wonders whose side he's actually on.
Turkish Star Wars (or Dünyay Kurtaran Adam): Balls to the wall crazy sci-fi with floppy foam costumes, special effects scenes lifted directly out of Star Wars (hence the name) and a soundtrack mashup of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Moonraker, and Battlestar Galactica.
Strange:
The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle: Janitors eat experimental cookies that make them hallucinate, then impregnate them with blue fish babies. Believe it or not, Little Dizzle is a touching drama that rarely gets too obtuse to be relatable.
Funky Forest: The First Contact
If you enjoy the feeling of having your brain implode, this is a must-watch. The experience of the Funky Forest truly cannot be put into words, but I'm going to try anyways.
From the very start it grabs your attention with the surreal undertones that imbue every image and word of dialogue.
You won't know who the characters are, or why they are doing the things they are doing, but at this point you will still sort of expect it to make sense eventually. About thirty minutes in, however, you may begin to suspect it's never going to make sense, and may become enraged at this horrid thing that is wasting your time. You will want to turn it off.
Don't.
Over the course of the film, you may experience excitement, intrigue, confusion, boredom, anger, hysteria, soul-crushing despair, and enlightenment. This is a normal response. Whatever you do, don't turn it off. Reaching the end is a test of character, but the rewards are legend. It lives you feeling cleansed, brimming with a desperate hope that there is an order to your universe, and a lurking fear that Japan houses people who live in a plane of reality completely alien to you.
