Back in the late 1980s, when critics were fawning over Peter Weir’s overbaked, cloying and obnoxious Dead Poets Society (1989), few acknowledged that a little movie of two years prior (with a tiny fraction of its gross – it earned just over one million stateside, compared to Poets’ reported domestic gross of over 95 million) blithely achieved what Weir was attempting on a thematic level. And it did so with twice the grace and no manipulation at hand. Scottish darling Bill Forsyth’s Housekeeping (1987) was a product of onetime Columbia prexy David Puttnam’s brief, controversial tenure at that studio; Puttnam and Forsyth had worked together several years prior by collaborating on the masterful Local Hero (1983) at Goldcrest Films in the UK, so when the Coca Cola company purchased Columbia and brought Puttnam in to head-up their flagging studio operation (c. 1986), Puttnam turned to Europe for talent. Forsyth soon heeded Puttnam’s call and found himself whisked off to the lights of Los Angeles. The movie that the two men produced, Housekeeping (originally a property held by Cannon and slated to star Diane Keaton), is arguably the finest product of the Puttnam era at Columbia Pictures. Still, over twenty years later, few American viewers have heard of it; it has never received a DVD release, seldom turns up on cable, and is just awaiting rediscovery by cinephiles.

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Dark Sky Films has just released a new edition of Jim VanBebber’s violent cult classic Deadbeat at Dawn as part of their truly impressive four disc “Visions of Hell” DVD box-set (which also includes the unrated, two-disc special edition of VanBebber’s transgressive shocker The Manson Family), but those who still own the original Synapse release of Deadbeat at Dawn may not want to toss that old disc up on eBay just yet!

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For those of use who grew up watching Count Scary, The Ghoul, Sir Graves Ghastly, Elvira, or even Commander USA, the mere thought of schlock horror flicks hosted by wisecracking characters on ramshackle studio sets is enough to make us instinctively reach for some non-existent, noggin-top rabbit ears in a nostalgic bid to clear the static distortion of our collective memories. Thankfully, we need not lament the death of a bygone era or regret the fact that we’ll never be able to share those memories with our own children any longer, as – at least in the Detroit television market – good-humored lycanthrope Wolfman Mac is primed and ready to revive this long-dormant television sub-genre with his late-night horror show entitled Nightmare SINema.

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Inspired by the Kung Fu Flicks series I had previously posted about and still lamenting the lack of fun choices on Detroit area movie screens, yours truly has partnered with Synapse Films and the Emagine Theaters to cook up a mondo bizarro movie series that is absolutely guaranteed to overload your cerebral cortex with some of the most outrageous cult films ever produced!

Every Thursday evening in April, Detroit area moviegoers are invited to come out to the Novi Emagine and experience the seedier side of cinema as we present a series of $7 double features featuring everything from punk rock zombies and flesh-eating schoolgirls to alien parasites, demonic heavy metal bands, debauched detectives, and gore drenched winos!

This isn’t Rodriguez and Tarantino’s Grindhouse folks… this is the REAL DEAL!

The complete schedule follows the jump.

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Films as blissfully evocative as Louis Malle’s 1963 Le Feu Follet (The Fire Within) appear perhaps once or twice a decade. Arguably the most intelligently crafted and elegantly-produced movie of Malle’s forty year career (and – in this editor’s opinion – one of the eight or ten greatest films of all time), this little psychodrama tries something so courageous and original that it thoroughly upset many viewers upon release, and kept others away in droves with what they perceived as a depressing subject and an onslaught of dour pessimism. Couple this with the most unfortunate release timing imaginable in its given decade, and one can understand why the picture flopped in the States. Now, some 44 years later, The Criterion Collection has contracted with Nouvelles Editions de Films to distribute much of the Malle catalogue on disc, and Le Feu Follet is poised for reconsideration and rediscovery. An official issue date hasn’t yet been posted on the Criterion site for the DVD, but until that release day arrives, we’ll have to hold our breaths. (It is still available in an old VHS version by New Yorker, for those who don’t mind hunting and pecking). Time and again, this little overlooked masterpiece is one to cherish and will inevitably beckon its admirers return.

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An adaptation of Bari Wood’s cult novel A Doll’s Eyes, Neil Jordan’s In Dreams is a surrealistic, gothic thriller that received a harsh critical drubbing when it first bowed 9 years ago this month. Watching it on home video, I found it neither as pretentious nor as cliched as most critics did; in fact, I regard it - though not 100% successful - as one of the most interesting and underrated horror films of the ’90s. Adventuresome genre lovers might want to give this one a look.

The story concerns children’s book illustrator Claire Cooper (Annette Bening) a woman who moves to a farmhouse near a local reservoir with her young daughter Rebecca (Katie Sagona) and airline pilot husband Paul (Aidan Quinn).

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This past weekend, I stumbled onto the second strangest and most beguiling film I’ve ever privately screened. Roger Ebert’s “Great Movies” column tipped me off to an eccentric little feature by Werner Herzog called Stroszek (1977). The premise – about a mentally-impaired German ex-con, a prostitute and a diminutive, wizened octogenarian scientist who collectively move from Berlin to rural Wisconsin and take up in a hideous prefabricated trailer – is unquestionably bizarre, but Stroszek is also, in its own idiosyncratic way, a brilliant, illuminating and heartfelt movie. I can honestly admit that I haven’t been as moved by a single feature since reveling in Edward Yang’s peerless Yi Yi. Before I discuss the content of Stroszek, however, let me take a second to recount the backstory that belies the film – an outrageous tale that outstrips anything in the movie itself with its quotient of pure unadulterated nuttiness, and that explains the inspiration for much of the tragicomedy that unfolds onscreen.

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Photo Credit: illustration by Jeremy Wheeler

Looking for something hot to watch this weekend? Have not enough Dumb-da-Dumb-Dumb flicks been warping your reality as of late? If so – search no more! Do yourself a favor and step into the not-so-long-ago machine and unearth none other than Eddie Furlong’s fourth follow-up after Terminator 2 – Brainscan. This sucker is one hum dinger of a virtual reality horror flick that was forgotten at the time of release and stays forgotten even today.

So is it any good? Not in any conventional way, lord no – but it does have its big, bright, beautifully silly moments that make for delirious entertainment for kitsch video fans to dig into. After the jump, find out 5 reasons to dig this one out of cinema’s time capsule of shame. Have fun!

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