2,500th Post Celebration: Dr. Caligari (1989)

After everything I've seen so far, this was still damn weird!  Enjoy...

Today's film is Dr. Caligari, the 1989 Version of the famous tale.  Well, sort of.  Honestly, I couldn't see how any of it relates to the Story one bit.  It doesn't even have anything to do with the 1964 Version Written by Robert Bloch either.  The connection: a character named Dr. Caligari.  That's it, pretty much.  The film tells the tale of a woman haunted by strange dreams, vision and constant craving for sex.  There is no preparing you for this movie.  How do I know?  Because even I was caught off-guard by how bizarre this whole thing was.  I've seen giant brains with mouths, ladies with alien parasites in their wombs and a man with his 'member' bitten off by an alligator-torso woman and replaces with a bio-mechanical cannon.  As the expression goes 'I've seen it all.'  Of course, there is always new stuff to see.  While I couldn't wrap my head around this movie (or the parts I watched), it did show me that there is still some freaky shit out there yet to see.  As I write my 2,500th Post, I find it refreshing to know that I have barely touched the iceberg of crazy film madness to come.  The fact that Japan continues to make films about killer sushi, toilet zombies and vampire accountants is a nice bonus.  It is worth nothing that the film's Director (under a pseudonym) made a number of 1980's Music Videos like 'Somebody's Watching Me' by Rockwell and 'I Lost on Jeopardy' by 'Weird Al' Yankovic.  Random fact!  This is about all the lead-in that can prepare you for...

A woman is having some weird dreams.  They involve her sitting in a weird room watching herself on a TV and going into a bathroom, only to be attacked by...well, this.

Her husband is convinced that she needs help again from Dr. Caligari, who kind of blows him off.  She's...well, you can see how sane she is just from this shot (she's in the center).

The woman continues to have weird visions and fantasies climaxing (pun thoroughly-intended) with a blow-up bed sheet with a mouth and tongue appear and...yeah, this happens.

I could go on, but this is pretty much a glimpse (without the prevalent Nudity) of what the rest of the film is like.  The End.

Oh wow- this was something!  One thing to note is that this is the only real commercial work of Stephen Sayadian.  He made alot of 'adult' films under the pseudonym Rinse Dreams (whatever that means!) after this film and one before it.  I will give him alot of credit for the unique visual style and flourish of the film.  Here's my problem: there is no tie to reality.  This feels like if you made only the crazy parts of those Peter Gabriel videos like 'Steam' and turned that into a film.  Like I've said, I like the crazy stuff, but it needs to have the slightest bit of grounding to it.  For example, Meet the Hollowheads was batshit insane, but had a solid (if silly) story behind it that made it work (for me, at least).  This one is just weird thing, weird thing and more weird thing.  Without a single bit of seeming reality to it, it just turned into a bizarre (if interesting) series of odd visuals.  This will probably be my only Sayadian film, as I have no real interest in reviewing Untamed Cowgirls of the Wild West Part 1: The Pillowbiters.  Oh and if you don't know him, he is from Vienna, Maynard.  He could be your neighbor.  A film I will mention is the only other Credit for the lead here- she was 'Jennera the Bellerian' (the one who talks to 'Captain Santa') in Space Mutiny (but was dubbed over by Cameron Mitchell's daughter)...

Next up, I have my first physical Screener of a film to review.  It's got vampires, hot chicks and...a Jewish Doctor?  Stay tuned...