You’ve got to admit it: sometimes you do want your brain messed with and watch some bizarre and inexplicable movie. Lucky you, there are countless such movies: surreal to the point of insanity. From iconic directors like David Lynch and Harmony Korine to underground indie filmmakers, it seems as if, at one point or another, almost everyone has put the work into creating something frightening and strange.
Some of these are pretty thought provoking in their weirdness, and others are straight up gory and gross, thus eating popcorn becomes optional.
Brace yourselves for the ten weirdest movies of all time.
1. ERASERHEAD
David Lynch is arguably the father of what we’d call modern weird cinema and has several films on this list, starting with the 1977 Eraserhead.
This movies starts off with The Man in The Planet pulling some levers in space while the head of a Henry Spencer (played by Jack Nance) floats above the clouds. A sperm monster escapes his mouth and floats away. Can’t get any weirder than that.
Of course, there are many more scenes that are considered quite disturbing– most famous is the appearance of Henry Spencer’s baby.
Art should disturb the comfortable, for Eraserhead offers no comfort at all to any of the disturbed.
2. GUMMO
From Harmony Korine, the director of Spring Breakers and Mister Lonely, Gummo, a 1997 art drama film set in the slum town of Xenia, Ohio after it was hit by a tornado. The theme is loose in nature and follows the lives of several characters. Their destructive and strange ways of dealing with their boredom is the main plot point. The film features vignettes of other citizens of the town as well.
The characters range from bizarre to straight up terrible. Bunny Boy is a mute child who wears pink bunny ears and no shirt. Tummler is a horrible teen boy who kills cats for fun and huffs glue. There’s also a man who pimps out his sister, a child molester, a tennis player with ADD, and skinheads.
Gummo explores a wide range of issues: drug abuse, mental illness, poverty, and racism.
3. NAKED LUNCH
This 1991 science fiction drama is an adaptation of the much more bizarre novel by William S. Burroughs of the same name, as well as parts of his other works. The project was a co-production between filmmakers in America, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Japan. The result was an utterly surreal, ugly, and somewhat humorous film.
Directed by David Cronenberg, Naked Lunch follows William Lee, a pest control worker whose wife uses his insecticide as a recreational drug. He hallucinates various alien-like and roach-like creatures and accidentally murders his wife after a game of William Tell. He flees to a place called Interzone, where he encounters doppelgängers, horrific mutations, and other strange things. The story is loosely based on real events that Burroughs experienced as a drug addict and many characters are based on other beat writers like Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg.
4. RUBBER
This 2010 independent dark comedy horror film won’t ever be included in a “greatest movies” list, but it does have an original plot– the movie is about a tire by the name of Robert that gains consciousness and goes on a killing spree across a desert in California. There are some interesting characters in Rubber, including a sheriff who breaks the fourth wall and a murderous accountant.
The film made it all the way to Cannes and is notorious for being a “love it or hate it” kind of film, with half of critics expressing distaste for the film while the other half expresses admiration for the film…
5. MULHOLLAND DRIVE
Another one from master David Lynch.
Mulholland Drive is a 2001 neo-noir mystery thriller, starring Justin Theroux and Naomi Watts. It was originally meant to be a television pilot, but when executives rejected it, Lynch went ahead and produced it as a standalone film.
In Mulholland Drive, an aspiring actress (Watts) arrives at her aunt’s home in Los Angeles. She meets a woman with amnesia who has been hiding in the apartment and helps her figure out her identity. There are lots of dark and disturbing moments, and, to this day, Lynch refuses to explain the cryptic ending or talk about his intention for the narrative, claiming that audiences should speculate for themselves what actually happened. The movie feels like utter nonsense yet it gives the impression of being very intentional, and it will definitely make you think.
6. SOCIETY
This 1989 gory American horror film is a trip from beginning to end.
Society follows a wealthy high school student by the name of Bill, who after listening to a tape of what sounds like a violent orgy between his family members, goes to a therapist. The therapist plays the tape, but what plays are totally normal sounds and voices of his family. A friend of Bill’s confirms that the first tape was real, and the boy who gave it to Bill has been found dead. What ensues seems to be some kind of conspiracy that quickly descends into a surreal nightmare with shocking gore and mutating orgies.
Society has been praised for being idiotic but in a somehow brilliant manner.
7. HOLY MOTORS
This 2012 French-German fantasy drama is one of the most thought-provoking movies of this list. Holy Motors stars Denis Lavant and features Eva Mendes and Kyle Minogue in bizarre roles.
The plot follows a man named Oscar. The nature of his job is mysterious and difficult to understand– throughout the day, he changes into various costumes and assumes different identities, which range from a disturbed red-haired kidnapper to a supportive father to a Chinese gangster. It is revealed that there are other people with this “job”.
The film gained positive reviews for being mesmerizing and strange as well as difficult to analyze. It also won Best Foreign Language Film at a number of international film festivals.
8.PIN
Sandor Stern’s Pin is about a doctor who uses a “talking,” life-size, anatomically correct medical dummy to teach his children about the birds and the bees. The doctor’s nurse secretly uses Pin as a sex toy, and he becomes the fractured alter ego (and disturbed sexual id) of the family’s son.
9. UN CHIEN ANDALOU
Un Chien Andalou is a 1929 silent surrealist short film by the Spanish director Luis Buñuel and artist Salvador Dalí. Enough said.
10. The New York Ripper
Fetishistic eye violence, stomach-churning special effects, and a twisting mystery, the 1982 The New York Ripper
is the perfect match for its seedy backdrop — the bowels of the city before its sleazy strip was vanquished, when New York was a much darker and meaner place.
This list could go on and on. I feel I have omitted plenty of titles. Some, deliberately, for they have become cult classics or have been embraced by the mainstream media.
In any case, which is the weirdest movie you ever watched?
Some of these seem too bizarre even for me but I loved this post!
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And there are a ton more that I thought about, but I just didn’t want to write a super long post.
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Do a sequel for sure. Pin has got to be the strangest one of all. Trying to envision it!
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Try “Rubber”.
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I’ve seen it and liked it! I’m soooooo weird.
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Dogtooth by Yorgos Lanthimos! Chillingly thought provoking and well worth the watch👍🏼 I need to check out Un Chien Andalou, sounds so interesting. I love this list😊
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Yes. Thought about adding that one to the list as well.
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Reblogged this on John Barleycorn and commented:
Most of these I had not heard of. Interesting post.
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I did watch Rubber, and thought it was cute.
Thanks for the heads up on the others…I’ll pass.
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Reblogged this on Cristian Mihai.
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Reblogged this on Not without my pen and commented:
Wasjust going through a fellow bloggers blogs, this one is a good one, @Christian Mihai
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These guys had passion! You have to admire that!
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Came to check if you had Mulholland Drive. Yup yup! Will leave really wanting to check out rubber!
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I think that most people who read this post wanted to check out “Rubber.” I’m not sure if I should be proud or not.
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Proud!
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Rubber sounds intriguing, I may have to see that some night. Another really weird movie is Skidoo. It starts out as a gangster movie, then everyone goes on an LSD trip. The scene with the singing and dancing garbage cans still give me flashbacks. And it had an all star cast.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063612/?ref_=nv_sr_1
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Thank you so much for sharing these Cristian. I have not seen any of them though I’ve wanted to watch Naked Lunch for a long time.
F.D.
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The only one of these I have seen is Eraserhead, which I enjoyed. Rubber sounds a bit like Christine, the killer car. Brazil is pretty weird
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Eraserhead. God. I saw that when I was 19. My boyfriend, his best friend and I. We didn’t speak for about half an hour afterwards. That movie disturbed me!!! 🤣🤣🤣
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Thankfully, I haven’t seen any of these lol
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Well… it’s quite the experience. I can’t decide whether good or bad, but it’s quite the experience.
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One of the weirdest movies I’ve ever seen was “Forbidden Zone,” which features the music of Danny Elfman and a performance by the late cult actress Susan Tyrell. Whoever made that one was doing some SERIOUS drugs. 😛
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Forbidden Zone – Oh yes!
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Love your choices, glad to see, “Eraserhead.” in pole position, the weirdest film I’ve ever seen, especially the roast chickens?
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Dogtooth (2009) is pretty weird.
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I would have added Brazil
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Watched ‘Naked Lunch’ once. Freaked me out! Never again.
Perhaps not so strange as others mentioned here, but I love ‘Dogora’ [1964], a Japanese kaiju film that could be summed as “What if a gang attempting a massive diamond heist are continually thwarted by a giant space jellyfish?” 🙂
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It was an opera instead of a movie. I was 18 and on a first date and I mostly remember my face being frozen in a “whaaaat,” expression as all these cat-suited singers leaped around the stage singing, “Meooow, and how.” It was so bad it was unforgettable. 🙂 So was the date.
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I always thought Lost Highway was a weird one.
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Too many movies do mess with the mind and turn us into people we, in the end, don’t want to be. My point of view is, be careful what we feed our minds so we become the people we want to be.
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A few of these are in my favourites, even reading the Naked Lunch and other Burroughs pieces. I’d definitely say The Holy Mountain. That’s a trip from start to finish!
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5000 Fingers of Dr. T (1953) deserves a place on you list for its psychedelic technicolor cinematography, Dr. Seuss script, and completely demented characters.
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Absolutely brilliant collection! Eraserhead caused be more than a few sleepless nights. Great posting! Keep ’em coming.
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Thank you so much, Ray!
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Super interesting post! Thanks for introducing them to us. I can’t wait to find them and watch them.
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Intriguing post, I think someone should gather these films a build a traveling college movie festival.
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