It’s Halloween season, as if you needed an excuse to watch some horror, so go wild with these batsh*t crazy movies…
Spooky season is upon us, and Santa is waiting in the background, ready to unleash the Christmas festivities upon us with overpriced chocolate selection tins. For the macabre among you, who much prefer Shocktober to mince pie season, horror films are the order of the day. We don’t want tinsel and baubles; we want chainsaws and boom sticks.
Sure, you could go for some straight-up horror scares, but this genre is nothing if not eclectic. There’s something to be said about batshit crazy horror movies that throw all logic out of the window and unleash head-scratching but nail-biting and visually inventive thrills. From flagrant misuse of a lawnmower and monkey butlers to Nic Cage, here are ten crazy horror films to watch this Shocktober…
Mandy
We might as well start with Nicolas Cage. The man, the myth, the meme legend has experienced a most welcome Cage-naissance over the past 8 years, and it really kicked off with the cult hit, Mandy. Revenge thrillers set in the woods tend to be pretty routine, but not when Panos Cosmatos is at the helm with Nic Cage as his conduit. Mandy is a full-blown, fantasmagorical horror that perfectly utilised Cage at his dialled-up best.
There are no half measures in this dreamy journey from cerebral bliss to a full-blown garish nightmare realm when a logger’s (Cage) beloved girlfriend (Mandy, played brilliantly by Andrea Riseborough) is killed by a travelling cult (headed by a skin-crawling Linus Roache). This one takes an incredible mid-film leap into unmitigated carnage, with less a standard intermission than a full-blown Cage expulsion of roared anguish. Mandy is a love it or hate it deal, but most horror aficionados and appreciators of culty cinematic weirdness have a lot of love for this. It’s utterly bonkers.
The Substance
The Substance isn’t entirely unlike Mandy. For one, it’s a wholly assured (for better or worse, depending on your verdict on the film) auteur vision nailing exactly what the director (Coralie Fargeat) was going for. It also takes us on a wild cinematic journey that starts with atmosphere and intrigue, and ends with absolute fudging bedlam.
From a mystery-laced beginning filled with Kubrickian compositions and Cronenberg eeriness, this ends up more like the finale of Peter Jackson’s Braindead. Demi Moore gives an exceptional (career best) performance, whilst Margot Qualley is also incredible, and Dennis Quaid plays one of modern cinema’s most grotesque characters. It has plenty of subtext too, and perhaps more than any other genre film of recent times; there’s not a compromised or misplaced shot anywhere. Like I said, Kubrickian.
Braindead
If you’re gonna make a gruesome zombie picture on a shoestring budget, you might as well go wild, and that’s exactly what Peter Jackson did with Braindead. Every penny of the budget is eeked and splattered across the screen in this fiendishly anarchic, often screwball horror comedy. The hapless Lionel finds himself caught in the midst of a growing zombie outbreak (started by a Rat-monkey bite), and all he wants to do is keep his overbearing mother happy and try to fumble a romance with Paquita.
Gross-out humour, physical comedy and wildly inventive horror sequences intertwine with quotable lines and colourful performances, all shot and cut with bundles of energy by Jackson. The finale is an astonishing achievement in batshit barmyness.
Phenomena
Italian horror was stuffed with nutty and outrageous horror movies in the 80s as the genre got tired of straight-up Giallo. Dario Argento also found himself taking bigger and more creatively risky gambles, as maybe he felt Suspiria somehow wasn’t dazzling enough. Whilst he never made anything as good as that masterwork in the following decade, he certainly managed some highlights, including Phenomena.
Argento could make ludicrously crazy movies as well as anyone, but even by his standards, Phenomena is a monumental achievement. You’ve got a girl with a telekinetic link with insects who can witness murder through their eyes. You have Donald Pleasence as a crippled entomologist who has his own highly trained (and evidently vengeful) monkey butler and more besides. Add in a superb rock-heavy soundtrack (with a killer Iron Maiden track) and a score from Goblin and Simon Boswell, and this is a winner. It doesn’t make a lick of sense, but it doesn’t need to, and Argento is having a blast indulging as many stylish whims and glass-related deaths as he can. A young Jennifer Connelly heads up the film, and she gives an excellent performance.
Santa Sangre
Speaking of Simon Boswell, he scored Alejandro Jodorowsky’s colourful, delirious fantasy horror, Santa Sangre. A former circus artist escapes a mental asylum and rejoins his armless mother, who heads up a cult. He then becomes her arms to dish out murder.
Jodorowsky’s career as an arthouse auteur is almost as famous for the films he didn’t make (Dune) as for his iconic works like Sangre and The Holy Mountain. You’ll either roll with this or be left scratching your head, but as a collection of imagery it’s absolutely incredible and engrossing. It’s also suitably gruesome (originally receiving an NC-17 rating). One thing is for sure: you won’t have seen anything else quite like it.
Tag
A journey into the wild world of crazy horror wouldn’t be complete without sampling something from Japan. I won’t go the blatantly obvious route of highlighting Nobuhiko Obayashi’s House, although that’s hard to top for sheer bizarre lunacy. Still, Sion Sono knows a thing or two about dialling up the cuckoo, and he does so with glee in Tag.
A young schoolgirl finds her reality stretched, and life descending into a gruesome hell as everyone around her becomes a victim of increasingly gruesome and almost farcical deaths. It’s a sub-90-minute frenzy of bonkers but beautiful visuals, and Sono is freestyling with abandon like an experimental jazz musician huffing solvents. It’s no wonder Sono would later make Prisoners of the Ghostland with Nic Cage. As a pairing, that’s a match made in heaven (albeit that film sadly didn’t entirely live up to that team-up).
Basket Case
As far as low-rent and micro-budget trashy 80s horror goes, few films have had such a cult legacy as Basket Case. The ridiculous concept sees a deformed, separated conjoined twin housed within a basket that naturally goes on a murder spree.
It looks ridiculous but the film also has its tongue firmly planted in its cheek, and the slipshod, but endearingly practical effects add to the charm. It spawned two sequels, which had their moments too.
Killer Klowns From Outer Space
Aliens who look like clowns turn up in a small town to a bunch of blissfully unaware locals and go on a brutal killing frenzy. As you’d expect from its title, Killer Klowns From Outer Space is not taking itself seriously.
With a ragtag group of monstrous killer ‘klowns’ that all look distinct, it’s probably a wonder that this one didn’t turn into a grander franchise. There have been long and persistent rumours of a sequel or reboot but the original remains a thoroughly enjoyable standalone. Yes, it’s delightfully demented.
Highway to Hell
Ate De Jong’s under-the-radar gem is filled with great production design and makeup effects as a Hellcop snatches up young girls and takes them down a mystical highway to hell for the Devil. Unfortunately for Chad, his girlfriend is abducted and taken to hell, and he goes in to rescue her.
Ben and Jerry Stiller pop up in this, with Patrick Bergin and Kristy Swanson, and C.J. Graham is great as the menacing hell cop that Chad must defeat. Hokey, quirky, but full of inventive fun, it deserves way more recognition.
Nightbreed
Whilst Highway to Hell was so non-existent at the box office that it was virtually straight to video, Nightbreed came with plenty of anticipation as Clive Barker’s sizeable budget follow-up to Hellraiser.
Greeted with mediocre reviews and an underwhelming box office, Barker’s gonzo horror opus has found plenty of love in the years since. For one thing, it’s an absolute triumph in special effects and creature makeup, stuffed with creative sets, design, and the mutants. The narrative perhaps lacks focus, but that’s not the main reason we’re here. Meanwhile, horror legend David Cronenberg steps in front of the camera to act as the villain here.
What’s your favourite crazy horror movie? Let us know on our social channels @FlickeringMyth…
Tom Jolliffe
