I am a fan of many kinds of movies and often enjoy cheesy, low-budget films from the drive-in era of the sixties and seventies. I love the company Something Weird Video—which took its name from this film and which distributes countless films from the aforementioned genre on DVD—so I decided to give this movie a shot. I was actually pretty excited to watch it.
I ended up being pretty disappointed. Often, when certain movies are considered bad by most, I am still able to find something redeeming or enjoyable about them, even if it is just the old "so bad it's good" quality. I enjoyed Tommy Wiseau's 2003 masterpiece "The Room", which has been called one of the worse films of all time, but which is enjoyable to watch because it is unintentionally funny. Despite its flaws—or because of them—it is enjoyable. But Something Weird lacks even that. It was not so bad it was good. It was so bad it was terrible.
The film is a rambling mess. It's out of focus. It's not cheesy in a funny or charming way. It's quite the opposite. The characters are sickening. The plot goes from one incoherent scene to the next and introduces incongruous subplots. I don't know what this movie is about. There's a witch and a guy with superpowers, but we never find out how the two are connected and we get the idea that maybe it doesn't really matter.
Every scene feels pointless and extraneous. I was waiting for it all to come together and make at least a little bit of sense, but at some point I realized that that moment would never come and I gave up hope. It felt like the filmmakers were not following any sort of screenplay and basing the scenes on whatever locations they had available. That's fine, when it's done well as it was in Easy Rider, but here I felt like the filmmakers didn't even care. They knew their film would be terrible and they let it happen. They never even tried to make it good. The filmmakers didn't care, so why should we? The characters' motivations are unclear and make little sense. The acting is bad. The witch could have been well done, but the actress did a terrible job. Even despite a lack of acting skill, I felt she could have at least tried to have fun with the role, but she did not. And her makeup could have been done a lot better.
I watched the movie one Saturday afternoon after waking up with a hangover. I sat down with a greasy burger and plenty of juice and coffee and popped in the DVD. I think this movie made my hangover last longer and countered the effect of the food and drink. My headache just got worse. I probably would turned off the movie and gone and done something else with my day, but my hangover kept me from getting off the couch.
Even after the film was over, I found myself depressed by it. It was strangely disconcerting. It's a powerful film, in a way. I know I won't forget it. It truly is something weird. I found that it changed the way I thought about the world around me, because before watching it I had no idea that anything so strange existed. It gave me a very bad feeling that I've never felt before and never want to feel again.
Herschell Gordon Lewis, who directed this film, once said: "I see filmmaking as a business and pity anyone who regards it as an art form." I disagree, as I see great artistic potential in film and consider many to be true works of art. But I realize that, based on his personal beliefs about art and film, he was likely never able to make a truly good one. It was not good on any level. There was nothing good about it. It was unpleasant to watch and it ruined my day.
I ended up being pretty disappointed. Often, when certain movies are considered bad by most, I am still able to find something redeeming or enjoyable about them, even if it is just the old "so bad it's good" quality. I enjoyed Tommy Wiseau's 2003 masterpiece "The Room", which has been called one of the worse films of all time, but which is enjoyable to watch because it is unintentionally funny. Despite its flaws—or because of them—it is enjoyable. But Something Weird lacks even that. It was not so bad it was good. It was so bad it was terrible.
The film is a rambling mess. It's out of focus. It's not cheesy in a funny or charming way. It's quite the opposite. The characters are sickening. The plot goes from one incoherent scene to the next and introduces incongruous subplots. I don't know what this movie is about. There's a witch and a guy with superpowers, but we never find out how the two are connected and we get the idea that maybe it doesn't really matter.
Every scene feels pointless and extraneous. I was waiting for it all to come together and make at least a little bit of sense, but at some point I realized that that moment would never come and I gave up hope. It felt like the filmmakers were not following any sort of screenplay and basing the scenes on whatever locations they had available. That's fine, when it's done well as it was in Easy Rider, but here I felt like the filmmakers didn't even care. They knew their film would be terrible and they let it happen. They never even tried to make it good. The filmmakers didn't care, so why should we? The characters' motivations are unclear and make little sense. The acting is bad. The witch could have been well done, but the actress did a terrible job. Even despite a lack of acting skill, I felt she could have at least tried to have fun with the role, but she did not. And her makeup could have been done a lot better.
I watched the movie one Saturday afternoon after waking up with a hangover. I sat down with a greasy burger and plenty of juice and coffee and popped in the DVD. I think this movie made my hangover last longer and countered the effect of the food and drink. My headache just got worse. I probably would turned off the movie and gone and done something else with my day, but my hangover kept me from getting off the couch.
Even after the film was over, I found myself depressed by it. It was strangely disconcerting. It's a powerful film, in a way. I know I won't forget it. It truly is something weird. I found that it changed the way I thought about the world around me, because before watching it I had no idea that anything so strange existed. It gave me a very bad feeling that I've never felt before and never want to feel again.
Herschell Gordon Lewis, who directed this film, once said: "I see filmmaking as a business and pity anyone who regards it as an art form." I disagree, as I see great artistic potential in film and consider many to be true works of art. But I realize that, based on his personal beliefs about art and film, he was likely never able to make a truly good one. It was not good on any level. There was nothing good about it. It was unpleasant to watch and it ruined my day.
