The Peanut Butter Solution: As a kid, Tim caught this one on cable, and it creeped him out for years. Over those years, what he could remember from watching the movie made so little sense to him, he started to think he'd made the whole film up. But then, many years later, while talking to a friend about weird movies, The Peanut Butter Solution came up and they discovered they'd both had the exact same experience! But what kind of nonsensical movie could have driven two different people to believe they'd hallucinated an entire movie? The Peanut Butter Solution is about a young kid who gets coerced into investigating an creepy old haunted house. When he goes in, he sees something that scares him so badly [what he actually sees is never revealed to the audience], all of his hair falls out. Then a witch (or something) visits him at his home and gives him a magic recipe that utilizes household items to make a paste the kid must slather on his bald head at night in order to make his hair grow back. (The main ingredient is peanut butter, hence the title... I guess....) But something goes wrong when he makes the "solution" and the ratio of peanut butter to other stuff gets messed up. But that doesn't deter him from using the solution anyway! His hair does grow back and very quickly, but once it starts growing, it never stops. Soon has so much hair he must to do all kinds of wacky things to deal with it all, while his hair continues to grow at an alarming rate. This is about the time he's kidnapped by his art teacher. His teacher has kidnapped a bunch of other kids as well and has been cutting their hair to make magic paintbrushes that allow you to walk into whatever you paint with them. And that's just the start of the third act! If you're ever in the mood to watch the most inexplicable kid's "comedy" ever made, get your hands on this movie and marvel.
Cannibal Girls: This film was directed by Ivan Reitman (Stripes, Ghostbusters) and produced by his frequent collaborator Daniel Goldberg (Stripes, and The Hangover movies) as their first serious attempt at filmmaking. The idea was to shoot a horror movie for a few thousand bucks using the Canadian film incentives, take the film to Cannes (where they were guaranteed a screening as part of the film incentives), sell the movie for a profit, and then use those profits to make a bigger (and better) movie! They enlisted some improv comedian friends (Eugene Levy and Andrea Martin) and set out with a loose story of a young couple on a road trip who visit a restaurant on the outskirts of town run by a trio of cannibal girls. They shot for 9 days mostly improvising the rest of the story on set, figuring they could make it work in the edit. And that's where their plan went sideways... After the initial shoot, they had to re-shot multiple times in an attempt to hobble together a semi-coherent plot. Each time they re-shot, they ended up more in debt to the increasing number of investors, and to their print lab. As their screening date quickly approached, Reitman left for Cannes while (a very nervous) Goldberg continued editing the film. The hope was that Goldberg could get the last reels cut, printed, shipped, and delivered to Reitman before their scheduled screening at the festival. Unfortunately, when Goldberg finished editing the film, the lab tried to strong arm him into signing a contract that gave them distribution rights (the exact thing they were trying to sell in Cannes). It's lucky for Goldberg that they did this without knowing he had a third of the film still in his car, and he promptly told them he'd sooner drive his car, and the reels, off a cliff than hand them distribution rights. Somehow, Goldberg got the full film to Cannes in time for their screening, Reitman was able to sell off the distribution rights, they were just barely able to pay off the debt they racked up making this little flick, and were able to go on and make more films together. [There's a great interview with these 2 on the Blu Ray that is totally worth watching, there's far more to that story and it's all pretty interesting.]
PIN: A Plastic Nightmare: This is a story of a deeply disturbed boy (Leon), his sister, and their two very cold parents. Their father is a doctor who enjoys teaching the kids about anatomy using his full size anatomy doll "Pin" (short for Pinocchio). He uses Pin like a ventriloquist dummy, and because of this young Leon believes Pin is real. But, he also might believe Pin is real because he begins talking to Leon on his own (voiced by Jonathan Banks). Also not helping his delusions is Leon's extremely overprotective mother who won't let him be around other kids, so Pin is also pretty much his only friend. Obviously Pin starts telling Leon to start killing people, but that's not even the full weirdness of this, very strange and very dark, movie that blurs what's real and not for the audience the whole way through. (Fair warning: this might be a good weird flick, but it's also a movie that leaves you feeling pretty gross by the end.)
Yeti: Giant of the 20th Century: The Italian knock-off productions were always looking for a deal, so the Canadian tax incentives were obviously on their radar. And man, are we grateful they were! That's how we got this part King Kong, part Lassie all filtered through an Italian/Canadian lens epic that is Yeti. The titular Yeti is more of a gigantic guy with a beard and feathered hair wearing most of a gorilla suit who RELENTLESSLY communicates through wacky facial expressions and drastically shifts size from scene to scene depending on how he's being superimposed on screen. The Lassie part of this gem revolves around a young a mute boy, his sister, and their Lassie-looking dog who repeatedly comes to their rescue. There's also subplot with the millionaire who funded project thaw-the-Yeti ("scientist" thaw him from his frozen solid state using electric shock, an oscilloscope, and a helicopter) who's trying to capitalize on the Yeti through savvy marketing and cheap merchandising. This whole film is exactly as ridiculous as it sounds, and is on Amazon prime right now! See for yourself how off the wall this thing gets, we implore you.
Murder by Phone (aka Bells): This is a movie about killer phone calls. That's right, phone calls that KILL! Someone is calling people and playing a series of high pitched sounds through their phone that causes the person on the other end to go into a trance, convulse, and bleed from their eyes and face until lighting shoots out of their phone blowing them and everything else in the room to smithereens. Oh boy, is this a fun and ridiculous one!! There's a VHS rip up in its entirety on Youtube, you're welcome.
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