Nightmare Logic
I don’t mean movies lacking logic through bad writing (a la Plan 9 From Outer Space), I mean movies employing the weird, lawless logic of actual nightmares. In this list we’re moving from relatively more coherent story lines to less.
The Void (2016) d: Steven Kostanski, Jeremy Gillespie
Phantasm (1979) d: Don Coscarelli
Messiah of Evil (1973) d: Gloria Katz, Willard Huyck
Hausu (1977) d: Nobuhiko Obayashi
Tetsuo: The Iron Man* (1989) d: Shinya Tsukamoto
Bobby Yeah (2011) d: Robert Morgan
The Void pays tribute to the great practical effects of 80s horror movies – there are some very direct homages to The Thing in particular. This movie starts with relatively standard hospital setting horror trappings but then takes a series of bizarre turns ramping up to a truly wild ending. (Fun fact: I went to an indie theater to see a documentary about a jazz musician from the 40s, and they hilariously showed the trailer for this beforehand – I thought the people next to me were gonna pass right out).
70s cult classic Phantasm is notoriously strange. It was partially inspired by a nightmare the writer/director had as a child (must have been quite the doozy). The story starts off as a pretty simple human tale, then gets pretty much as far away from that as possible. It is alternately goofy, creepy, and confusing, but always fascinating (including its sequels). Don’t try to understand why things are happening, just let this movie happen to you.
From the husband and wife team that brought you Howard the Duck: Messiah of Evil (ok, ok that’s so not fair to Gloria Katz’s legacy - among other things she is responsible for Princess Leia, so we are INDEBTED). The first line of this hallucinatory movie perfectly sets its stage: “They say that nightmares are dreams perverted…” The plot is simple - woman goes to small town to look for her missing father - but every detail in this movie is designed for maximum disorientation, topped off with some disturbing yet poetic dialogue. It is beautiful and strange, dedicatedly nebulous, and absolutely underrated.
Hausu. Oh Hausu. I am obsessed with this movie. It is so so weird. It’s bonkers, its effects are intentionally bad, and I’ve never watched anything that felt more like a genuine child’s nightmare. That’s due to writer/director Obayashi consulting with his young daughter on the plot – she even ended up with a writing credit. But there’s even more to it than that as underneath the kitsch it actually explores generational schisms, womanhood, and the devastating aftermath of the atomic bomb in Japan. This film is a feast.
I watched Tetsuo, and then immediately googled, “what is the plot of Tetsuo?” There are a lot of capital “I” ideas floating around, including the increasingly intrusive role of technology in our lives, and some interesting homoerotic subtext (though I’m not sure how “sub” it is) that culminates in an unambiguously phallic final metal form for Tetsuo. This movie is a weird trip. It employs a lot of experimental film techniques, it’s a sonic assault, and for a movie about transforming into a metal man, everything is really wet? Pro tip: I do not recommend watching this movie high. A little bird told me it would really freak you out.
Robert Morgan is one of the most creative and fucked up directors/animators working today. Everything he’s done is fascinating. Bobby Yeah is one of his most energetic, unhinged creations. This short film was nominated for a BAFTA and played at Sundance, but you’d never know it has hoighty-toighty creds from its playfully subversive punk mentality. The “plot” is pretty immaterial - Morgan actually started making this without any idea of plot or characters, or even how long it would be: “I wanted the film to feel like a dream, stream-of-consciousness, completely unpredictable. And the best way for me to be unpredictable is basically to not have any idea what I’m doing. If I didn’t know where it was going, if I was surprising myself about what would happen next, then surely the audience would feel the same.” He’s right! I found myself gasping aloud, laughing, and recoiling at the unfolding chaos before me. (P.S. This movie features a few anthropomorphized dolls, including a golliwog. What place does golliwog or picanniny iconography have in modern art? Is Robert Morgan, a white man, allowed to use it? Am I, a white woman, qualified to analyze what it means, especially in a film specifically designed to stymy analysis? Who’s to say, except probably not white people…)
(It’s better known than these, but Lynch’s Eraserhead would obviously slate in nicely here)