16 Crazy Genius Movies by Craig Hammill (SMC Founder)

Secret Movie Clubbers, we thought it might be instructive to post 16 of our favorite "So Crazy They're Genius" movies. This is distinct from "So Bad, They're Good". These movies, in this programmer's opinion, are truly great movies. And some of the selections have already been canonized (we'll be posting about two David Lynch movies). What these movies all share is a kind of gonzo, go-for-broke strangeness and artistic daring they become cinematic experiences like no other you've had. You feel like you're dreaming or in another dimension sometimes when you see the risks, creative choices, sustained nutso tones these movies maintain. We recommend them all at the highest degree. BUT. . .be warned. . .some of them are pretty strange. And almost all of them would definitely be Hard R's or higher. (These movies are not being posted in any kind of order.)

REPO MAN (1984, dir by Alex Cox, USA)

Alex Cox's Repo Man is a personal favorite of this programmer. As a Los Angeles native, there's almost no better movie that captures what LA really looked like in 1984 than this movie. Suffused with a punk rock sensibility and willingness to take continual nutty left turns, Repo Man tells the story of disaffected punk Otto (Emilio Estevez) who suddenly finds himself repossessing cars in LA with a bunch of misfit, gun toting, repo men (including an awesome Harry Dean Stanton). From there we get aliens, revolutionaries, a strange glowing car, government conspiracies, and a ton of awesome early 80's punk music. This is just one of those movies where every new weirdo scene has you going "This is so awesome...". If you need some gonzo sunshine right now, watch this movie!

BAD LIEUTENANT (1992, dir by Abel Ferrera, USA)

As many folks who attend our live screenings know, my folks divorced when I was 6. After that my Dad let me rent whatever I wanted (my Mom only let us watch age appropriate movies thus our heavy dive into the classics). I remember being 15 and renting this movie because I'd heard it was nuts. NOTHING PREPARES YOU FOR HOW NUTS IT IS. Harvey Keitel (in one of his all time best performances) plays a character we only know as Bad Lieutenant. A New York detective who has gambling, drug, sex addictions. When he's tasked with solving the rape of a nun, something in him changes and he tries to redeem and make up for his sins and bad ways. Within 10 minutes of this movie, there's a scene where a drugged out Harvey Keitel just full on yells at his kids in the back seat of the car and curses up a storm. I knew at that moment. . .this movie would be GOLD!!! Although clearly trying to be envelope pushing and controversial (the movie received an NC-17 rating), the story is one of true spiritual redemption and anguish. The absolute commitment that Keitel gives the role is one of THE great and key performances of the 1990's. Brace yourself. There's a lot of bad behavior in this movie. But there's a THERE THERE that will stun and blow you away. . .maybe even bring you to tears.

THE WORLD'S GREATEST SINNER (1962, dir by Timothy Carey, USA)

This movie is the definition of off-beat. Famous character actor Timothy Carey (The Killing, Paths of Glory) took the money he made from acting gigs and shot this movie for years. In it, he plays an insurance salesman who gets tempted by the devil, quits his job, becomes a rock star, changes his name to "God Hillard" and preaches a kind of cult of eternal selfishness. For a long time, the movie feels as haphazard and slapdash (though wildly entertaining) as the plot description above then suddenly. . .the ending. What an ending. Suddenly Carey miraculously lands the plane with an ending that affirms. . .well. . .you just gotta watch it. John Cassavetes and Martin Scorsese were both obsessed with this movie. So is this programmer. Oh yeah, it's also got a score by a very young Frank Zappa! It's definitely a diamond in the rough. But it's a diamond and a discovery worth making!

TWIN PEAKS FIRE WALK WITH ME (1992, dir by David Lynch, USA)

This is actually one of this programmer's favorite movies of all time (it was floating around the edges of my personal top 35). At the time it came out, Fire Walk With Me was almost universally panned; possibly more than Dune. And yet. . .this is my personal favorite David Lynch movie and, for my money, his masterpiece. The structure itself is unsettling. We start with the FBI murder investigation into Teresa Banks, a woman connected to Laura Palmer, but not Laura Palmer. Everything about the first 30 minutes of the movie is a kind "through the looking glass" of the original Twin Peaks show. Nobody wants to help the FBI agents. The sheriff is totally unhelpful. The diner doesn't look too good (neither does its cherry pie or coffee). We then cut to the Philadelphia FBI office where Agent Cooper ups the weird factor with a strange dream he's just had. David Bowie shows up. Then we cut to Twin Peaks and the last few days of Laura Palmer's life told in a brutal, unflinching, yet lyrically poetic style by Lynch. And then we descend into hell and see her actual murder. Twin Peaks has always been the Lynch metaphor that has resonated the most powerfully for this programmer. It's hard to find a more terrifying/succinct way of representing family dysfunction and abuse than Lynch came up with here. And Lynch posits something so genius in its implications, it's almost too unfathomable to take on. There MAY BE another world, an afterlife, a transcendent plane. But it may be as horrific, unsettling, complex as our waking/living existence. One of THE key American works (again in this programmer's personal opinion) of the last half century.

THE TRIP (1967, dir by Roger Corman, USA)

The movie that does acid so you don't have to. What makes this movie so worth watching is its total commitment to making the ENTIRE movie an LSD trip from the moment Peter Fonda's newly divorced Paul Groves takes LSD to the moment he finally comes out of the "trip". Like The Wizard of Oz, this structure gives the whole movie a kind of sustained psychological interest. A great script by Jack Nicholson (clearly dealing with some divorce issues), pretty incredible direction by Roger Corman (who tries out a number of film printing/special effect techniques that are still striking today), uniformly game performances by the entire cast (which includes Fonda, Bruce Dern, Dennis Hopper, Susan Strasberg), and time capsule 1967 Los Angeles locations (this movie does feel like one of the KEY inspirations for Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) make The Trip one of those rare exploitation/pop culture movies of the moment that rise to something altogether more fascinating and astute.

SHOGUN ASSASSIN (1980, dir by Kenji Misumi & Robert Houston, Japan/USA)

It's almost best to look at this movie like a great re-mix. The movie follows a Shogun's Executioner who, after the murder of his wife, roams the Japanese countryside with his son (in a baby cart tricked out with tons of weapons) and seeks vengeance on those who killed his wife and wrongly accused him of crimes. He also stops from time to time to help poor folks out on side adventures. A mash-up of the first three Lone Wolf & Cub movies from Japan (all directed by the great Kenji Misumi), Shogun Assassin was re-edited, dubbed into English, and released in the United States as one movie. Normally this would be an act of sacrilege (and probably still is on many levels since the originals are all classics in their own rite) but the American moviemakers add a strange Days of Heaven voice over from the point of view of the toddler, change the story around, add an 80's synth soundtrack, and create something brutal, groovy, exciting, and dreamlike. It's almost like watching Punk Rock American culture try to understand early 1970's Japanese culture. This movie really is pure joy from start to finish. Original Japanese director Kenji Misumi is one of cinema's great pulp stylists. And every fight and suspense sequence in this movie is filmed with tremendous imagination. Like no movie you've ever seen.

THE HOLY MOUNTAIN (1973, dir by Alejandro Jodorowsky, Mexico)

Alejandro Jodorowsky has made some of the most committedly defiant works of art in all cinema. His movie El Topo is now extremely problematic (like Last Tango in Paris) because of scenes of a sexual nature that didn't have the actors' consent. Thankfully, to this programmer's knowledge, The Holy Mountain and Santa Sangre (two incredible masterpieces) are not encumbered by this thorny history. What The Holy Mountain is, is a totally singular, like no other movie that's part visual feast, part scathing condemnation of materialistic cultures, part hilarious farce on the 1970's lifestyle; all fascinating jaw dropping cinema. An Alchemist invites a group of characters conforming to the Tarot to join him on a trip to "the Holy Mountain" where they will gain enlightenment. From there we get mind-boggling scenes, character intros, set pieces, production design, and hilarious comedy/satire. The key to Jodorowsky (like David Lynch), unlike other cinema provocateurs, is that Jodorowsky is clearly making something very serious and spiritually committed. The result is probably as wild, crazy, artistically daring as Jodorowsky himself but the experience of watching the movie is 200% nutritious. If you need to be kicked in the head to break your preconceptions about cinema, watch this movie immediately. TONIGHT!

BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS (1970, dir by Russ Meyer, USA)

This was actually the first Secret Movie Club movie ever screened way back in the early 2000's when SMC was just a club this programmer started to hang out in friends' apartments, drink beer, and discover off the beaten path cinematic gems. Directed by the ridiculously energetic, mega-talented, ribald Russ Meyer and written by one very young tender-hearted Roger Ebert, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls tells the story of the all-female group The Kelly Affair who go to Hollywood, change their name to The Carrie Nations, get involved with the nefarious promoter/manager "Z-Man", get into all sorts of wild behavior (mostly sexual and drug related), then have one the craziest, scariest nights of all time at Z-Man's house. It's really hard to describe the brilliance of this movie. It is jaw-dropping in its sexuality, over the top scenes/plot twists, and satirical approach to the 1960's. It also has some of the best editing and filmmaking you'll ever see. Meyer, a World War II vet, was a kind of doppelganger of Stanley Kubrick. He shot, edited, directed most of his movies which were often satirical soft core or exploitation movies that looked/moved way better than they had any right to. When these movies made tons of money, the studios took notice and gave Meyer tons of cash to make Beyond. He took that cash, never looked back, and basically made a multi-million dollar Russ Meyer movie. Prep yourself to be delighted and shocked in equal measure.

HARD TO BE A GOD (2013, dir by Aleksei German, Russia)

Like David Lynch's Fire Walk With Me and Eraserhead, Hard to Be a God is generally considered an out and out unqualified masterpiece. The story tells of Scientist/Astronauts who travel to a foreign planet almost identical to ours except the humans never got out of the middle ages. Consequently it's a race that's still dominated by deep feudalism and superstition and ignorance. But the Scientists have sworn an oath not to get involved or change the trajectory of the planet. They're just there to observe/hide. But one Scientist finds it harder and harder not to get "active". The style of the movie is totally unique. Master tracking shots on wide angle lenses move through black and white frames crowded with objects, people, textures. This programmer has never seen a movie like this before or since. And it does build to an incredible climax and breaking point. This is one of the few movies that FEELS like it was made on another planet. A cinematic experience like no other. This programmer thinks about this movie constantly. There is something utterly haunting and unsettling and profound about the entire movie.

VISITOR Q (2001, dir by Takashi Miike, Japan)

In the opening scene, a fickle journalist interviews a teenage school girl prostitute then sleeps with her. We then learn the journalist is also the prostitute's father. That's the opening scene. From there "Visitor Q", a strange mysterious young man in his 20's, comes to the family's house and begins to wreck a kind of havoc on the father, mother, son, and daughter. Each scene essentially ups the taboo ante of the scene before. We're talking heroin, family abuse, necrophilia. But it's all done in a strangely hilarious, 'I can't believe this scene works as well as it does' way. And just when you think you couldn't possibly take anymore the movie morphs into something altogether more profound and. . .dare we say it. . .optimistic. Auteur punk rock Japanese moviemaker Takashi Miike has directed more than a 100 movies (!) including Audition, Ichi the Killer, the DOA trilogy, Graveyard of Honor, 13 Assassins, Happiness of the Katakuris, among others. Visitor Q, in this programmer's opinion, is Miike's absolute best AND one of the key movies of the last 25 years. If you can stick with it.

SPIDER BABY (1967, dir by Jack Hill, USA)

Jack Hill would go on to write and direct a number of the greatest exploitation/B-movies of all time: The Big Doll House, The Big Bird Cage, Coffy, Foxy Brown, Switchblade Sisters, and Swinging Cheerleaders just to name a few. But possibly none of them are as utterly weird and bitingly on-point as his early Spider Baby. A group of money-grubbing distant family members descend on a remote house to claim their inheritance from a will only to discover the remaining family members in the house, raised by the loyal Chauffeur (a game Lon Chaney Jr.) have a taste for. . .well. . .human flesh. And that's not even mentioning whatever it is that lives in the basement. There's a sweetness to this movie that's impossible to explain. Our sympathies are totally with the cannibalistic kids NOT the "normal'' distant family members. Like Todd Browning's Freaks (which we'll get to later in this list), Spider Baby brilliantly points out that the accepted brutality, hypocrisy, and cruelty of "normal" people behavior is often more malignant than the behavior of the supposed misfits. Lots of moviemakers have tried to capture the vibe of this movie. None of them have succeeded. Also, we get a young Sid Haig in the first of many memorable performances.

A CHINESE GHOST STORY (1987, dir by Ching Siu-Tung, Hong Kong)

A young scholar stays in an abandoned inn in a haunted forest. He falls in love with a beautiful ghost cursed to marry the lord of the underworld. What can this programmer say about this movie other than he loves it with all his heart. When I lived in Malaysia for a summer when I was 15, I would notice all these great movies playing on buses when I traveled around the country. No subtitles. Just some of the craziest set pieces, hyperkinetic directing, and gonzo practical special effects I'd ever seen. I learned they were all from Hong Kong. A Chinese Ghost Story produced by the action auteur Tsui Hark has everything. Amazing martial arts. Hilarious musical numbers. A trip to hell itself. Claymation skeletons. Swooning romance. Amazing cinematography. I remember when I first saw this movie, I realized immediately I'd never seen anything like it. I didn't realize you could make a movie that would one moment have characters flying through the forest in a sword fight then the next moment erotically kissing in a bathtub then the next moment running for their lives from a 50 foot tongue (you'll just have to see the movie). But you can make such movies. And such movies will rock your world.

RICKI-OH (1991, dir by Lam Ngai Kai, Hong Kong)

In a future where all prisons are privatized, Ricky, a fighter with almost supernatural kung-fu powers, gets sentenced to 10 years for killing the Drug Lord who was responsible for the death of his girlfriend. Inside this maximum security prison, the only answer is for Ricky to get even more violent. Some of the dopest fights and kills ever filmed follow. Ricki Oh: The Story of Ricki is one of those movies that's somehow simultaneously laugh out loud hilarious in its ridiculousness and straight up dope if you love your action movies over the top. The kills in this movie are so absurd they become a kind of Dada art. Guts literally get pulled out of stomachs. Eyes pop out. People get thrown into prison kitchen meat grinders. Heads explode between palm strikes. And the effects are somehow both cheesy and practical enough to be totally entertaining. And throughout it all, our hero Ricki still strives for some Buddhist ideal of peace and non-violence (he fails miserably because he drops tons of fools). Basically this movie should have had you at Kung Fu and maximum security prison. Throw in a movie that starts at 11 and gets pumped up to 15 and you have yourself some gonzo gold.

ERASERHEAD (1977, dir by David Lynch, USA)

Henry (played by a magnificent Jack Nance) finds out his girlfriend is pregnant. They bring the baby, which appears to be deformed and horselike, back to Henry's apartment. Henry struggles with parental anxiety and lust for his neighbor. A strange woman in Henry's radiator sings about heaven. It's helpful to remember just how daring and strange and unlike anything else ever made this movie was (and still is). It took Lynch and his crew 4+ years to make this movie. They made the absolute most of every set, every lighting setup, every filmmaking decision. The movie is just beautiful to watch. And from his very first movie, Lynch demonstrates all the weirdness and surreal atmosphere is for the cause of something deeper. A movie that, almost too painfully, digs into the emotions an expectant or new parent might feel at sudden responsibilities they don't feel up to while at the same time still struggling with their own flawed humanity. And the baby. . .Lynch has never revealed how they made or operated it. Lynch has always called this his most spiritual movie but that nobody has ever really gotten that. Like all Lynch there are numerous interpretations one could give to the movie. And that's what makes Lynch Lynch. In a way, he always lets the audience make it their own.

FREAKS (1932, dir by Tod Browning, USA)

Along with her boyfriend, the Strong Man, a scheming trapeze artist beauty seduces & marries Hans, a sideshow little person, to bilk him of his fortune; Hans's friends, the other circus "freaks", seeing the scheme come to his defense. Tod Browning, one of the original masters of horror, directs this unsettling yet deeply empathetic horror movie. It's fascinating to see just how many recent horror filmmakers (Rob Zombie, Kevin Smith, Ryan Murphy) use this movie as a template for their own projects. Even Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio quote it at length in one of the crazier scenes in Wolf of Wall Street. And yet... nobody has (or can) match the mix of genuinely terrifying horror and deeply moving pathos achieved by this movie. Browning finds the perfect metaphor in the life of circus people here to point out that the real "monsters" live in the hearts & souls and often behind "attractive faces". The real beauties of this world also reside in the hearts & souls but often behind "abnormal" exteriors. The wedding dinner, the rainstorm raid where the "freaks" exact revenge, and the final shocking reveal are three of the greatest moments in all horror. This is definitely a "Pre-Code" movie. And one of the greatest humanist horror movies (yes they exist) ever made.

THE CREMASTER CYCLE (2003, dir by Matthew Barney, USA)

Comprised of 5 movies sequenced Cremaster 4, 1, 5, 2, 3, the cycle is a series of ravishingly beautiful yet grotesque ballets of body horror, surreal imagery, & disjointed narrative. The Cremaster Cycle really challenges the line between cinema and fine art. Barney, a conceptual & sculptural artist, consistently throughout the series produces hypnotically engaging movies that make little to no "logical" sense. In one Cremaster, he basically climbs the ivy covered proscenium arch of a theater for the duration of the movie. And yet, as the movies progress so does Barney's understanding and mastery of cinematic tools until by Cremaster 3, we get a movie of such overpowering visual beauty, that the whole cycle feels like an odyssey. What makes these movies great is how IMPOSSIBLE they are to describe. The descriptions of these movies would make your grandmother stare at you like you needed some mental help. And that is what makes them masterpieces. Any cinematic work that somehow both embraces and blows up all conventions of cinema is something to be celebrated. We need these radicals starting with Eisenstein, Bunuel, Dziga Vertov through Stan Brakhage and Jean Luc Godard through Fassbinder through Barney to periodically break the puzzle back into its component pieces so we can see cinema anew. One of the great rewarding cinematic experiences of the past 30 years.

Written by Craig Hammill. Founder and Programmer of Secret Movie Club.