Here is an alphabetical listing of all the movies (so far) that have been certified as among the 366 weirdest ever made, along with links to films reviewed in capsule form only.

Our short film reviews have been moved to this page: Shorts.

(Note that the numbers that appear beside the original entries don’t indicate any sort of rank, but refer solely to order of publication).

THE CANONICAL LIST OF 366:

3-Iron [Bin-jip] (2004) – A homeless young Korean man trains himself to be invisible so he can romance another man’s wife

3 Women (1977) – Identities merge and personalities shift when ingénue Pinky becomes obsessed with delusional Millie

8 1/2 (1963) – Memories and dreams collide with reality in Fellini’s self-reflexive, stream-of-consciousness classic about a director trying to make a movie

200 Motels (1971) – Frank Zappa’s psychedelic review includes Ringo Starr as Larry the Dwarf, Keith Moon as a nun groupie, and an oratorio devoted to the penis

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) – Space monoliths turn apes into men and men into star children

The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T (1953) – A mad doctor enslaves 500 boys to play his giant piano in this surreal musical fantasy courtesy of Dr. Seuss

The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) – Art-deco B-movie with fascinating production design and campy acting from star Vincent Price

Adaptation. (2002) – Charlie Kaufman can’t get started on an adaptation of “The Orchid Thief,” so he writes himself (and his twin brother) into the screenplay

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension (1984) – Buckaroo’s a neurosurgeon/particle physicist/secret agent/rock star with a backing band of soldier-of-fortune scientists opposed by transdimensional aliens and… it just goes on from there

After Hours (1985) – A word processor stranded in SoHo overnight is bedeviled by a series of odd women and odder coincidences

After Last Season (2009) – An amateurish embarrassment about two med students, a killer on the loose, and a ghost, so full of misguided directorial choices and failed attempts at cinematic poetry that it takes on a dreamlike character

Akira (1988) – A telekinetic maniac wrecks Neo-Tokyo in this trendsetting cult anime

Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams [Yume; AKA Dreams] (1990) – The master filmmaker relates eight “dreams,” including one where he wanders through Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings

Alice [Neco Z Alenky] (1988) – Ultra-creepy Czech stop-motion animated version of the Lewis Carroll classic, shot in eerie stop-animation in a decaying house

Alice in Wonderland (1966) – Surreal and dreamlike adaptation of the nonsense classic depicts the main characters as Victorian ladies and gentlemen rather than talking animals

Allegro non Troppo (1976) – “The Italian Fantasia” has some mildly surreal animated sequences, with black and white sequences of an orchestra of old ladies that may be even stranger

Altered States (1980) – Ken Russell’s visionary tale of genetic regression under the influence of magic mushrooms may be the greatest “trip” movie ever made

Amarcord (1973) – A year in the life of an Italian town under Fascist rule, as Federico Fellini (mis)remembers his youth in comic vignettes that range from strange to surreal

The American Astronaut (2001) – An absurdist indie sci-fi/western/musical/comedy co-starring the Boy Who Actually Saw a Woman’s Breast

Antichrist (2009) – Controversial, extremely graphic allegory about a man and woman lose their child and retreat to a cabin in the woods where they go crazy

The Apple (1980) – Nutty, campy musical flop that is simultaneously an allegory for the Garden of Eden and the rise of disco

Archangel (1990) – Surreal, nearly silent meditation on forgetfulness set in an icy Russian city just after World War I

Arise! The SubGenius Movie (1992) – “Bob” just might save abnormals from the flying saucers on X-day; learn how in this bizarrely edited fake cult recruitment video

Arizona Dream (1993) – A dream fish swims through the desert and Johnny Depp is romantically trapped between a cougar who dreams of flying and her suicidal daughter

Audition (1999) – A widower holds a fake audition to select a new wife, and makes the absolute worst pick possible

Bad Boy Bubby (1993) – Relentlessly offbeat character study of a man who was locked in a basement until age 35, then unleashed on modern Australia

Barbarella (1968) – Slinky Barbarella flies through the sinful galaxy finding herself in sexy psychedelic situations

Barton Fink (1991) – A leftist Hollywood screenwriter endures a case of writer’s block that turns into a living nightmare on the eve of WWII

Batman Returns (1992) – The Caped Crusader faces off against a capitalist, an S&M themed feline feminist, and a deformed survivor of an infanticide attempt with an army of missile-equipped penguins in the weirdest summer blockbuster ever

The Beast [La Bête] (1975) – A drawing room nuptial drama, only with scenes of explicit (simulated) bestiality

The Beast of Yucca Flats (1961) – Dadaist narration courtesy of the eccentric Coleman Francis makes this tale of a nuclear blast turning Tor Johnson into a ravaging desert “beast” weird indeed

Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012) – Six-year old Hushpuppy lives in “the Bathtub” with her dying daddy, and imagines aurochs coming to get her

Beauty and the Beast [La Belle et la Bete] (1946) – One of the greatest fairy tale films ever made, with Surrealist-inspired set design including living candelabras

The Bed Sitting Room (1969) – Ralph Richardson mutates into a bed sitting room in this absurd post-apocalyptic comedy

Begotten (1991) – Legendary experimental film, featuring God disemboweling himself and other metaphysical atrocities

Being John Malkovich (1999) – You can enter the head of the titular actor through this weird metaphysical comedy, the screenwriting debut of bizarre movie titan Charlie Kaufman

Belladonna of Sadness [Kanashimi no Beradonna] (1973) – A medieval beauty is raped on her wedding night and makes a revenge pact with Satan in this violent, erotic, psychedelic anime

Belle de Jour (1967) – A young French housewife has bondage fantasies that gradually merge with her everyday reality in this once-salacious arthouse hit

Beyond the Black Rainbow (2010) – Modern recreation of a circa 1983 midnight movie, about a telepath imprisoned in the mysterious New Age Arboria Institute

Birdboy: The Forgotten Children (2015) – Cute teenage animals are wracked with despair, delinquency and drug-abuse on a post-apocalyptic island

The Black Cat (1934) – The first and best of the Boris Karloff/Bela Lugosi team-ups is an Expressionist horror masterpiece about Satanism and vengeance

Black Moon (1975) – Louis Malle’s unexpected venture in surrealism features gender genocide, breastfeeding, and a unicorn

Black Swan (2010) – A ballerina goes mad as she encounters her lustful double while preparing to dance the lead in “Swan Lake”

Blancanieves (2012) – A modern silent retelling of the legend of Snow White set in the bullfighting culture of 1920s Spain

Blood Diner (1987) – Severely out-of-whack horror-comedy with (possibly unconscious) fascist undertones

Blood Freak (1972) – Pot + experimental turkey meat turns Herschell into a turkey-headed killing machine in the world’s only Christian anti-drug gore movie

The Blood of a Poet [Le sang d’un poète] (1930) – Early Surrealist work where a poet gets a mouth stuck on his hand, visits a strange hotel, and commits suicide after losing a card game on a snowy Parisian street

Blood Tea and Red String (2006) – The Dwellers Under the Oak seek to recover their stolen doll from depraved white mice in this surreal stop-motion animated fairy tale for adults

Blue Velvet (1986) – Jeffrey finds a severed ear and it leads him to a melancholy nightclub singer, a deranged drug-huffing pervert, and a suave karaoke version of Roy Orbison

The Boxer’s Omen [Mo] (1983) – Surreal black magic battles featuring an evil wizard with a detachable head and a nude she-demon birthed from crocodile carcass

A Boy and His Dog (1975) – Post-apocalyptic tale of a wasteland rapist and his far more intelligent telepathic dog companion

Branded to Kill [Koroshi No Rakuin] (1967) – Seijun Suzuki’s surreal, scrambled yakuza thriller about a rice-sniffing hitman famously got him fired by the studio who financed it

Brand Upon the Brain! (2006) – “Guy Maddin” “remembers” his childhood growing up with a domineering mother and a mad scientist father in a lighthouse/orphanage

Brazil (1985) – Terry Gilliam’s must-see dystopian black comedy mixes expressionism, surrealism, fantasy, and film noir to create a keen satire of bureaucracy

Bronson (2008) – Overwhelmingly stylized biopic of Charlie Bronson (born Michael Peterson), the self-mythologizing celebrity who prides himself on being Britain’s most violent prisoner

Bubba Ho-Tep (2002) – Elvis and black JFK team up to fight a mummy terrorizing their rest home

The Butcher Boy (1997) – Neglected and largely left to his own devices, the incredible Francie Brady goes insane before our very eyes

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) – The titular Dr. engages a somnambulist to commit murders in a strangely slanted Expressionist town

Careful (1992) – Residents of an Alpine village fear avalanches and their own incestuous desires in this comic surrealist melodrama shot in “two-strip” Technicolor

Carnival of Souls (1962) – Low-budget creepfest is a minor miracle on film

Catch-22 (1970) – Mike Nichols’ underappreciated adaptation of the classic novel is star-studded absurdism

Cat Soup [Nekojiru-so] (2001) – The surreal adventures of an anthropomorphic cartoon cat and his half-dead sister

Cemetery Man [Dellamorte Dellamore] (1994) – Surrealist arthouse zombie gore film about the caretaker of a graveyard where the dead refuse to stay down

Un Chien Andalou (1929) – A razor through an eyeball announces the Surrealist revolution

Christmas on Mars (2008) – The Flaming Lips bring us the most vaginal imagery ever seen in a psychedelic science fiction Christmas movie

The City of Lost Children [La cité des enfants perdus] (1995) – Visionary steampunk fairytale from Jeunet & Caro

City of Women [La città delle donne] (1980) – An aging Lothario finds himself lost in a province populated and ruled by females, until he finds refuge at the citadel of the world’s last macho man

Clean, Shaven (1993) – A deinstitutionalized man seeks his lost daughter in what may be the most clinically accurate depiction of schizophrenia ever filmed

A Clockwork Orange (1971) – Kubrick weirds it up in this disturbing moral fable

The Color of Pomegranates [Sayat Nova] (1969) – Impressionistic, poetic retelling of the life of Armenian bard Sayat Nova in a series of surreal tableaux

Come and See (1985) – Bleak and intense Soviet WWII classic about a boy solider, with dreamlike passages

The Company of Wolves (1984) – “Little Red Riding Hood” told as the werewolf nightmare of a pubescent girl

Conspirators of Pleasure [Spiklenci Slasti] (1996) – A man with a chicken complex and a woman who snorts dough are two of the six characters whose bizarre fetishes intersect in this intricate Surrealist joke

The Cook the Thief His Wife & Her Lover (1989) – Peter Greenaway’s lavish Jacobean revenge fable is set in a French restaurant where a boorish Thief terrorizes the staff and customers

Cowards Bend the Knee, or, the Blue Hands (2003) – Typically surreal modern silent from the inimitable Guy Maddin mixing melodrama, Greek tragedy, psychosexual guilt, and hockey highlights

The Cremator [Spalovac Mrtvol] (1969) – An oddball Czech cremator harmonizes his homegrown Buddhism with Nazi ideology

Crime Wave (1985) – A silent screenwriter who can only complete beginnings and endings struggles to create the great Canadian “colour crime movie”

Cube (1997) – Five strangers wake up in a hi-tech booby-trapped cube, with no idea who built it or why

Daisies [Sedmikrásky] (1966) – Sexy Czech hippie chicks wreaking havoc in this banned satire of something or other

The Dance of Reality [La Danza de Realidad] (2013) – Alejandro Jodorowsky’s surrealistic autobiography is one of his most accessible films, although it still features a woman who can only sing opera and who cures plague with her urine

The Dark Backward (1991) – The world’s worst comic nearly becomes an overnight success when he grows a third arm out of his back in this grotesque show business satire

Dark City (1998) – Mysterious bald Strangers manipulate events and geometries in a city of endless night for their own purposes

Dead Alive [AKA Brain Dead] (1992) – A rabid monkey incites the most absurdly gory zombie movie ever made

Dead Leaves (2004) – Hyperactive anime about a guy with a television head and a girl with mismatched eyes breaking out of a mutant clone prison on the moon

Dead Man (1995) – Hypnotic, dreamlike Western about a man bearing the name of a dead poet and an Indian named Nobody

Dead Ringers (1988) – Twin gynecologists (!) go crazy in this odd psychodrama from horror maestro David Cronenberg

Death Bed: The Bed That Eats (1977) – Rediscovered oddity about a man-eating bed is a surreal horror/art film/black comedy, or something?

Death by Hanging [Koshikei] (1968) – A Korean killer survives his execution, and puzzled police bureaucrats try to recreate the capital crimes to cure the condemned’s amnesia

Death Laid an Egg [La morte ha fatto l’uovo] (1968) – A Surrealist giallo set at an experimental poultry farm that’s breeding headless chickens

Delicatessen (1991) – Jeunet & Caro’s first film is a bizarre but oddly sweet black comedy involving cannibalism in post-apocalyptic Paris

Dementia [Daughter of Horror] (1955) – Silent, experimental, and noirish horror about a woman soon to be involved in a “mysterious stabbing”

Der Samurai (2014) – A man with a katana in an evening dress terrorizes a rural German town

Desperate Living (1977) – This grunge fairy tale includes cross-dressing, cannibalism, necrophilia, bat rabies, and gap-toothed queen Edith Massey serviced by leather-bound Nazis

Destino (2003) – Reconstruction of an abandoned 1946 collaboration between and ; it’s a five minute moving canvas

The Devils (1971) – Ken Russell’s most violently deranged film is the true-ish story of a convent of nuns who accuse a priest of being an incubus in league with the Devil

Dillinger is Dead [Dillinger e Morto] (1969) – Nearly forgotten late 1960s avant-garde alienation piece about a gas-mask designer who spends an evening puttering about his apartment

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie [Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie ] (1972) – Six upper-class twits (and a bishop) attempt to have dinner together, but they are always interrupted

Django Kill… If You Live, Shoot! [Se sei Vivo Spara] (1967) – An ambiguously dead antihero who shoots golden bullets fights Mr. Sorrow and his gang of gay fascist cowboys

Doggiewogiez! Poochiewoochiez! (2012) – A remake of The Holy Mountain composed entirely of found footage of dogs

Dog Star Man (1964) – A man climbs up a mountain, a star explodes, a baby suckles, and probably more things happen, although you can hardly tell through the four layers of superimposed images

Dogtooth [Kynodontas] (2009) – Three children are raised to adulthood in a bizarre estate where words mean just what the tyrannical father wants them to in this shocking Greek art film

Dogville (2003) – This misanthropic fable is like de Sade’s “Justine” played out on the set of Wilder’s “Our Town”

Donnie Darko (2001) – Angsty, apocalyptic, fantastical drama about a screwed-up, possibly time-traveling teen is an irresistibly lovable mess

Don’t Look Now (1973) – Classic psychological horror with a weird twist

The Double (2013) – In a comically nightmarish nowhere, meek clerk Simon James is bedeviled by James Simon, his exact double and his exact opposite

Dr. Caligari (1989) – This pop-surrealist work by a hardcore porn director suffers from bad acting, but it is weird as hell

Eden and After [L’éden et après] (1970) – Bored college students steal a painting and end up in Tunisia, although it could just be the drugs in this surreal sadomasochistic story that could be described as Alice in Wonderland meets Justine meets The Trip

Eisenstein in Guanajuato (2015) – Delirious biopic postulating that Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein lost his virginity to his guide while in Mexico to film a movie that never got made

Elevator Movie (2004) – Surreal and minimalist independent feature about two people trapped in an elevator for months; well-scripted and weird as hell but very amateur

El Topo (1970) – Mystical and surreal Spaghetti Western from Alejandro Jodorowsky

Enemy (2013) – A history professor is obsessed with tracking down a man who appears to be his exact double; spiders appear

Enter the Void (2009) – Provocative and pretentious, Gaspar Noé’s “psychedelic melodrama” is nonetheless the best trip film of the young millennium

Eraserhead (1977) – The ultimate nightmare experience, about horror at procreation and loathing for one’s own offspring

Escape from Tomorrow (2013) – Surrealist satire secretly shot in Disney World, with mad scientists, evil witches, French jailbait, and a cat flu plague

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) – Jim Carrey unexpectedly shines as he fights against a memory-erasing procedure he impulsively undertook; a weird crowd-pleaser

Even Dwarfs Started Small [Auch Zwerge haben klein angefangen] (1970) – Dwarf inmates revolt against their dwarf oppressors at an unnamed institution; they burn flowerpots, crucify monkeys, and laugh at defecating camels

Evil Dead II (1987) – The frenetic, fantastic and crowd-pleasing movie about a man trapped in a cabin menaced by evil spirits, mixing equal parts horror and absurd slapstick comedy

The Exterminating Angel [El àngel exterminador] (1962) – Attendees at a fancy soiree find they cannot leave the premises–for no reason whatsoever

Eyes Without a Face [Les Yeux sans Visage] (1965) – Georges Franjou’s influential, poetic horror film

The Face of Another [Tanin no kao] (1966) – A man whose face has been burned in an accident gets a synthetic mask based on a stranger’s face and sets out to seduce his own wife

The Falls (1980) – Absurdist mockumentary about the 92 survivors of the Violent Unexplained Event whose names begin with “Fall”

Fantasia (1940) – Dinos, demons and hippos illustrate the classical music canon in Walt Disney’s weirdest classic

Fantastic Planet [La Planète Sauvage] (1973) – Tale of humans kept as pets by giant blue aliens, told in a Terry-Gilliam-meets-Salvador-Dalí-in-space animation style

Fantasy Mission Force [Mi ni te gong dui; AKA Dragon Attack] (1983) – An anachronistic team of misfits (including Jackie Chan and guys in kilts) fight Amazons and stay at a haunted house while on a quest to rescue Allied generals captured by Japanese Nazis in Canada

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) – Terry Gilliam’s adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson’s cult novel about two burnouts taking insane quantities of drugs in the City of Sin

Fellini Satyricon (1969) – Bizarre androgynous costuming and mythological leaps of logic gird a great director’s decadent extravaganza

Female Trouble (1974) – Juvenile delinquent Dawn Davenport (Divine) proves that “crime is beauty” on her way to the electric chair

A Field in England (2013) – Deserters from the English Civil War eat psychedelic mushrooms and hunt for buried treasure at an alchemist’s command

Fight Club (1999) – Manhood finds itself tested at the millennium when an actuary and an eccentric soap-maker found an underground “fight club” and find it taking on cult proportions

Final Flesh (2009) – Four separate porn-troupes-for-hire enact an absurdist prank script about the apocalypse

The Forbidden Room (2015) – Guy Maddin’s collection of reimagined lost films, with tales curled inside each other like Russian nesting dolls

Forbidden Zone (1982) – Frenchie is lost in the 6th Dimension and her family and friends must save her from the king and queen in this surreal musical that often looks like a Fleischer Brothers cartoon

Freaks (1932) – A trapeze artist marries a dwarf for his money, leading to gruesome revenge in this infamous film populated by real carnival freaks

Funeral Parade of Roses [Bara no sôretsu] (1969) – Basically, a psychedelic Japanese drag adaptation of “Oedipus Rex”

Funky Forest: The First Contact (2005) – Selection of surreal, interwoven sketches from three Japanese directors is uneven, as you would expect, but contains some of the weirdest sequences you’re likely to come across

Glen or Glenda (1953) – Ed Wood’s pro-transvestite documentary, with Bela Lugosi as an omniscient one-man Greek chorus and a dream sequence featuring bondage

The Godmonster of Indian Flats (1973) – A mutant sheep embryo develops into a monster that threatens an old-West themed town involved in a sticky real estate deal

Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell [Kyuketsuki Gokemidoro] (1968) – Survivors of an airline crash squabble among each other while psychedelic space vampires pick them off

Goodbye Uncle Tom (1971) – A fake shockumentary about slavery in the American south, with nudity and depravity on an epic scale

Gothic (1986) – Hallucinatory excess from Ken Russell, about the night Mary Shelley conceived “Frankenstein”

Gozu [Gokudô kyôfu dai-gekijô: Gozu] (2003) – Erotically charged, grotesquely surreal Takashi Miike horror/yakuza mashup

La Grande Bouffe (1973) – Four successful men lock themselves inside a chateau and eat themselves to death

Greaser’s Palace (1972) – A zoot-suited Jesus visits a Western town to enact a series of absurd parables

The Greasy Strangler (2016) – Lard-loving Big Ronnie (who doubles as the Greasy Strangler) and his son live together and conduct scam walking tours, until a “disco cutie” comes between them

Gummo (1997) – Indisputably weird but ceaselessly unpleasant portrait of hopeless white trash

Häxan [Witchcraft Through the Ages] (1922) – Silent documentary about witchcraft containing the most diabolically visionary horror images of all time

Head (1968) – Prefab pop band the Monkees commit career suicide with this psychedelic spit in the eye of their young fans

Heavenly Creatures (1994) – Peter Jackson brings the fantasy world of two teenaged murderesses to life in this crime drama based on a real-life case

Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001) – Hedwig, a punk band leader and victim of a botched sex change operation, chases the rock star who stole her songs across the U.S.

Hellzapoppin’ (1941) – Anarchic musical comedy from vaudevillians Chick Johnson and Ole Olsen is probably the weirdest Hollywood musical of all time

Help! Help! The Globolinks [Hilfe! Hilfe! Die Globolinks] (1969) – The world’s only psychedelic children’s opera about an alien invasion

Holy Motors (2012) – “Mr. Oscar” drives around Paris taking on “assignments” that require him to become a hit man, accordionist, and a fashion-model abducting leprechaun

The Holy Mountain (1973) – An extravagant, psychedelic tour of world mysticism has a guru lead a Christ-figure and companions on a quest to storm the Holy Mountain

The Horrors of Spider Island [Ein Toter hing im Netz] (1960) – A bad misogynist fever dream involving poorly dubbed buxom women, and some spiders, on an island

The Hourglass Sanatorium (1973) – A man meets strange characters at a dreamy sanatorium where the rules of time and logic do not apply

Hour of the Wolf [Vargtimmen] (1968) – An artist is invited to visit the castle of—demons? ghosts? hallucinations?—in Ingmar Bergman’s Gothic horror

House [Hausu] (1977) – The weirdest haunted house movie ever made; no one forgets the scene where the piano eats the girl

Howl’s Moving Castle [Hauru no ugoku shiro] (2004) – An 18-year old girl is turned into an old woman and goes to work for a wizard in a steampunk castle

How to Get Ahead in Advertising (1989) – A hotshot ad exec grows a pimple that turns into a head in this bizarre, biting satire

Hugo the Hippo (1975) – Hugo’s family is brutally slaughtered by Paul Lynde, who later subjects the hippo and his human pal to horrifying hallucinations in this delightful children’s fare

The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting (1978) – A Collector poses actors into tableaux vivants in an attempt to divine the esoteric message in a series of 19th century paintings

I Can See You (2008) – This “psychedelic campfire tale” is slow to start, but climaxes in a 20 minute freakout

Idiots and Angels (2008) – A loathsome man grows wings in this occasionally surreal animated black comedy that expertly mixes cynicism with romanticism

If…. (1968) – debuts as a rebellious youth in a British boarding school who fights a (largely imaginary) battle with the authorities

I’m A Cyborg, But That’s OK [Saibogujiman Kwenchana] (2006) – Romantic comedy set in a mental asylum is likely to remain the weirdest example of its genre

The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle (2009) – Experimental cookies cause hallucinations and pregnancy in male janitors in this indie comedy sleeper

Indecent Desires (1968) – This roughie about the symbiotic sexual relationship between a transient, a magic ring, a doll, and a blonde secretary is our choice to represent the oeuvre of

Inherent Vice (2014) – Pot-smoking detective “Doc” Sportello investigates kidnappings, fake murders, a sinister consortium of dentists, and more in this baffling adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s novel

Ink (2009) – Visually impressive low-budget fantasy about a mysterious figure who snatches a sleeping girl into a world of dreams

INLAND EMPIRE (2006) – This story of Laura Dern trapped in a nightmare while filming a cursed script is perhaps David Lynch’s weirdest movie

Innocence (2004) – A girl arrives, in a coffin, for her first day at a strange all-female boarding school

Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life (1995) – An ambitionless man enrolls in a school for servants and enters into ambiguous relationships with the brother and sister who run the institute

It’s Such a Beautiful Day (2011) – Psychedelic animation about the life and death of a terminally ill, terminally confused stick figure in a hat

I Will Walk Like a Crazy Horse [J’irai Comme un Cheval Fou] (1973) – Accused of murdering his mother, a man flees to the desert where he meets—and falls for—a mystical dwarf

Jacob’s Ladder (1990) – Big-budget cult mindtrip movie with unforgettable demonic hallucinations

Japanese Summer: Double Suicide [Muri shinjû: Nihon no natsu] (1967) – A nympho who can’t get laid meets a suicidal man who can’t get killed in the surreal Sixties satire

John Dies at the End (2012) – A psychedelic drug called “Soy Sauce” gives two slackers the psychic powers necessary to sense an incoming extra-dimensional invasion

Johnny Got His Gun (1971) – Antiwar classic about a limbless, blind and deaf casualty of the first World War, trapped inside his own head where he lives out a mixture of dreams and fantasies

Keyhole (2011) – A gangster journeys through a haunted house unlocking forgotten family memories

Kin-Dza-Dza (1986) – Russian junkyard sci-fi satire about a planet with bizarre customs and an absurdly arbitrary class structure. Also, koo!

Kontroll (2003) – A kontroller living in the Budapest subway chases after a mysterious killer pushing people onto the train tracks in this mythic thriller

Kung Fu Hustle [Kung Fu] (2004) – Totally off-it’s-rocker kung fu comedy/fantasy that became a smash international hit

Kwaidan (1964) – Old Japanese ghost stories turned into Expressionist art

L’Age d’Or (1930) – A documentary about scorpions turns into the story of a man and woman’s frustrated love, then into Jesus’ Sadean orgy

The Lair of the White Worm (1988) – Ken Russell’s ultra-fun, tongue-in-cheek horror movie filled with phallic symbols and impaled nuns

Last Year at Marienbad [L’Année Dernière à Marienbad] (1961) – Trapped in a ghostly hotel, a man insists he met a woman last year; the woman denies it; things get strange

The Legend of Suram Fortress [Ambavi Suramis Tsikhitsa] (1984) – The fortress of Suram is doomed to crumble eternally until a youth entombs himself in its walls

Lemonade Joe [Limonádový Joe aneb Konská Opera] (1964) – Anarchic Czech Communist musical Western spoof about a lemonade-drinking cowboy who challenges the whiskey monopoly in a frontier town

Léolo (1992) – A French Canadian boy who believes he was conceived from an Italian tomato contaminated with semen uses imagination to escape from his dysfunctional family

L’Immortelle (1963) – A professor in Istanbul finds and loses a mysterious woman in novelist Alain Robbe-Grillet’s directorial debut

L’Inhumaine [The Inhuman Woman] (1924) – Arty avant-garde sci-fi melodrama about a stuck-up diva and the men she drives to madness

Liquid Sky (1982) – Tiny aliens harvest endorphins from New Wave punks at the point of orgasm, killing them in the process

Lisztomania (1975) – Composer Franz Liszt battles composer/vampire Richard Wagner in this crazy classical music comedy

Little Otik [Otesánek] (2000) – A barren woman adopts a log as a child, and it comes to life and begins eating the neighbors in this black comedy adaptation of an Eastern European folktale

The Lobster (2015) – Find a mate in 45 days or be turned into an animal of your choice

Lost Highway (1997) – A jazzman allegedly kills his wife, then one day disappears and a totally different man wakes up in his death row cell

Love Exposure (2008) – A virginal Catholic who makes his living as a pornographer with ninja skills at upskirt photography tries to save his unrequited love from a religious cult in this bizarrely plotted four hour comedy epic

The Love Witch (2016) – A mix of witchcraft, campy romantic melodrama, and bubbling feminist subtext, presented as a tribute to 1960s Technicolor spectacles

Lucifer Rising (1981) – Egyptian gods and goddess conjure Lucifer and flying saucers in this short (30 minutes), occult, avant-garde masterpiece

Lunacy [Sileni] (2005) – Jan Svankmajer directs the Marquis de Sade in a pair of tales by Edgar Allan Poe

The Lure [Córki Dancingu] (2015) -Poland’s disco-musical about killer mermaids

Maelstrom (2000) – This tale of a pretty young socialite’s guilt is narrated by a talking fish

Malpertuis (1972) – Harry Kümel’s big weird dark house tale was confusing and a flop despite the presence of Orson Welles, but drips with surreal atmosphere nonetheless

Mandy (2018) – When a hippy cult leader kills lumberjack Nicolas Cage‘s girl, he goes on a psychedelic revenge rampage

Maniac (1934) – Resurrection of the dead, an orangutan-man rapist and edible cat eyeballs all feature heavily in this deranged exploitation movie that seems to have been directed by an actual maniac

Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966) – Could have been the worst movie ever made, if not for the redemptive presence of the great oddball character Torgo, the spastic satyr

The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) – David Bowie is the alien who falls to Earth and corrupted in this nonlinear, experimental sci-fi movie

Marquis (1989) – The story of the Marquis de Sade’s imprisonment in the Bastille, performed by characters in animal masks and featuring Sade’s penis in a speaking role

Meet the Feebles (1989) – Fragile egos, double-dealings, accidental killings, pornographic sidelines, rohypnol-aided assault, and drug and sex addictions plague puppets at a variety show

Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) – This fifteen minute afternoon nightmare with cloaked figures with mirrored faces gave birth to the American avant-garde

Metropolis (1927) – Fritz Lang’s futurist fantasia, a political allegory with Biblical imagery, undercover robots and Bauhaus designs

The Milky Way [La Voie Lactee] (1969) – A dry and cerebral, but very weird, story by surrealist master Luis Buñuel about two tramps meeting various Biblical characters and embodiments of Catholic heresies while traveling on a pilgrimage

Millennium Actress [Sennen joyû; AKA Chiyoko: Millennium Actress] (2001) – A retired actress recounts her life, with her interviewers entering a story which mixes up reality with scenes from her movies

Mind Game (2004) – Nishi goes on a psychedelic journey after being killed by a yakuza, returns to Earth, and lives in the belly of a whale with an old hermit in this anime with rapidly shifting art styles

Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life (1983) – Monty Python discusses life in a series of (frequently weird) sketches

Mood Indigo (2013) – A wealthy inventor’s wife grows ill from a water lily growing in her lung in this whimsical and surreal adaptation of Boris Vian’s novel

mother! (2017) – Jennifer Lawrence finds hordes of boorish guests descending on, and wrecking, the tranquil home she is refurbishing with her celebrity poet husband

Mr. Nobody (2009) – The last mortal man in the world remembers dozens of parallel reality variations of his life

Mulholland Drive (2001) – Radical identity shifts and surrealistic nightclub acts ignite this dreamlike noir fable about love, guilt and Hollywood

My Winnipeg (2007) – In Guy Maddin’s Winnipeg, sleepwalkers roam the streets at night, horses freeze in the river, and mother is everywhere

Naked Lunch (1991) – David Cronenberg’s adaptation of the unadaptable William S. Burroughs novel features film’s scariest typewriters

Natural Born Killers (1994) – A pair of serial killers become celebrities as they slay their way across a hallucinogenic America

Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion (1997) – This apocalyptic anime feature, serving as an alternate ending to ‘s popular TV series, is basically Jungian psychoanalysis acted out by giant robots

Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941) – The “Great Man” (W.C. Fields) tries to sell a studio an absurd script that begins when he falls out of an airplane chasing his plummeting whiskey flask

Night of the Hunter (1955) – A homicidal Preacher with “LOVE” and “HATE” tattooed on his hands hunts children carrying treasure in this Southern Gothic Expressionist fable

Night Train to Terror (1985) – God and Satan watch badly edited horror films on a train while a New Wave band practices one compartment down

Ninja Champion (1985) – Rose seeks revenge against her diamond-smuggling rapist, while in another movie clumsily pasted on to that one, an Interpol ninja assassinates evil ninjas while they practice circus tricks

The Ninth Configuration (1980) – A psychiatrist argues for the existence of God in an experimental military mental hospital, but is he as crazy as his patients?

Nosferatu [Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens; Nosferatu, a Symphony of Horror] (1922) – F.W. Murnau’s unauthorized Expressionist adaptation of “Dracula” is a melange of sex and disease

No Smoking (2007) – Quit smoking, the Bollywood way, in one of India’s few intentionally weird films

Nostalghia (1983) – Andrei Tarkovsky’s slow, beautiful, dreamlike spiritual parable about a homesick Russian poet in Italy

Nothing but Trouble (1991) – Dan Akroyd’s grotesque Hollywood misfire about a weird old “reeve” ruling from a junkyard in a backwoods New Jersey “shire”

November (2017) – A tragic romance set in a world where our forefathers’ craziest superstitions are literally true

Nuit Noire [Black Night] (2005) – In a world where the sun only shines fifteen seconds a day, a strange African woman crawls into a solitary entomologist’s bed to die

O Lucky Man! (1973) – Sprawling satire with Malcolm McDowell, Kafkaesque interrogations, a half-man half-hog, and breastfeeding

Orpheus [Orphée] (1950) – When Jean Cocteau refashions the Greek myth for postwar France, Orpheus and Death fall in love, and Death’s chauffeur gets the hots for Eurydice

A Page of Madness (1926) [Kurutta ippêji] – A janitor takes a job in an asylum where his wife is held in this silent Japanese film heavily influenced by the European avant-garde

Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) – Guillermo del Toro’s beautiful fairytale; a girl completes quests at a faun’s behest, while her real world Fascist stepfather is a monster beyond all fantasy

Paprika (2006) – Stunning Satoshi Kon animation; scenario involves terrorists invading dreams, then turning them loose on the streets of Tokyo

Perfect Blue [Pafekuto buru] (1997) – A Japanese pop idol tries her hand as an actress, and the pressure of unhappy fans and selling out leads her to a psychotic break with reality

Performance (1970) – Gangster James Fox is fed magic mushrooms and turned into a hippie by Mick Jagger and groupies in this psychedelic stunner

Persona (1966) – A mute actress and her nurse switch personalities at a vacation home – maybe?

Phantasm (1979) – Crazy, nightmarish, obstinately illogical drive-in horror flick about a kid and a sinister funeral home, featuring the terrifying “Tall Man”

The Phantom of Liberty (1974) – A series of Surrealist sketches by the great Luis Buñuel

Phantom of the Paradise (1974) – A rock n’ rollin’ mix of Phantom of the Opera and “Faust,” with just the right amount of crazy

Pi (1998) – Amazing black and white photography and a pulsing electronica soundtrack drive this intellectual thriller about a mad math genius seeking a mystical number

Pierrot le Fou (1965) – A television personality goes on the lam with his babysitter in this playfully fractured, classic Nouvelle Vague road movie

The Pillow Book (1996) – Gorgeous experimental video, full of layered images, illustrates this story of a woman obsessed with creating living books by drawing on nude bodies

Pink Flamingos (1972) – Divine goes to excessive lengths to prove she is the filthiest person in the world

Pink Floyd the Wall (1982) – Bombastic, unfocused, overwrought and often brilliant rock opera, with knockout animation from British political cartoonist Gerald Scarfe

Playtime (1967) – A plotless “day in the life” of modernist Paris that ends with chaotic revelry in a crumbling restaurant

The Pornographers [“Erogotoshitachi” yori Jinruigaku nyūmon] (1966) – Ogata makes pornographic movies while sleeping with his landlady and lusting after her teenage daughter, under the watchful eye of a carp the widow believes is her reincarnated husband

Possession (1981) – Anna leaves her husband, but not for another man… or even another human

Prospero’s Books (1991) – Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” as an avant-garde video version of Renaissance painting come to life, with plentiful nudity and all parts voiced by Sir John Gielgud

Reality [Réalité] (2014) – An aspiring filmmaker gets lost in nightmares inside of nightmares when he is tasked with finding an award-winning scream as a prerequisite to funding his movie

The Red Squirrel [La Ardilla Roja] (1993) – A suicidal man pretends to be the boyfriend of a beautiful amnesia victim, but how long can he keep up the charade?

The Reflecting Skin (1990) – Uneven but sometimes powerful flick teeming with symbolism about a kid who thinks his widow neighbor is a vampire, among other strangenesses

Reflections of Evil (2002) – A bizarrely edited piece of avant-outsider art about an angry, obese street peddler who is watched over by the ghost of his dead junkie sister in a purgatorial L.A.

Repo Man (1984) – A punk kid takes a job as a repo man and searches for a car with a mysterious glowing cargo in the trunk

A Report on the Party and Guests [O slavnosti a hostech] (1966) – Picnickers are kidnapped and taken to a party in this Kafkaesque allegory on totalitarianism made (and banned) in Communist Czechoslovakia

Repulsion (1965) – Disturbing Roman Polanski peek inside Catherine Deneuve’s disintegrating mind

Robot Monster (1953) – A gorilla alien in a diving helmet and his bubble machine invade Bronson Canyon

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) – Even without its bizarre cult following, this naughty musical b-movie spoof would have earned a place on the list

Roma (1972) [AKA Fellini’s Roma] – An infamous ecclesiastical fashion show with roller-skating cardinals highlights this Felliniesque sequence of vignettes set in the Eternal City

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (1990) – The two minor characters from “Hamlet” wander around the castle of Elsinore, unaware that they are actually characters in a play

Rubber (2010) – The best animated tire serial killer movie ever made gets bonus points for including an audience that comments on the absurdly comic proceedings

Rubin & Ed (1991) – Antisocial weirdo Rubin agrees to attend a real estate seminar with sad sack salesman Ed, if Ed will help him bury his dead pet cat first

The Ruling Class (1972) – The 14th Earl of Gurney is unfit to serve in the House of Lords because he believes he is God, but he becomes even worse after he is “cured”

Run Lola Run (1998) – Lola has twenty minutes to raise 100,000 Deutschmarks and get it to her desperate boyfriend; fortunately, she gets a do-over

The Saddest Music in the World (2003) – A legless Winnipeg beer baroness holds a contest to discover the titular music in this typically retro comic outing by Guy Maddin

Sans Soleil (1983) – Remarkable, meandering mondo-style arthouse documentary that mixes a trip to a cat shrine and a monkey porn museum with cinematic poetry

Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny (1972) – Insanely bad holiday cheer about Santa’s sleigh stuck on a Florida beach, and Thumbelina, and the sad-sack Pirates World amusement park…

Santa Claus (1959) – With the assistance of his henchman Merlin, Santa fights the Devil while delivering presents on Christmas Eve in this culturally confused Mexican take on Kris Kringle

Santa Sangre (1989) – Psychedelic slasher film about a man raised in a circus who acts as the hands for his armless mother

The Saragossa Manuscript [Rekopis Znaleziony w Saragossie] (1965) – A Napoleonic soldier listens to stories inside of stories, all of which may be related to two women claiming to be his Muslim cousins who want to seduce him

Save the Green Planet [Jigureul jikyeora!] (2003) – A man kidnaps and tortures a pharmaceutical executive, believing him to be an alien spy from the Andromeda galaxy

A Scanner Darkly (2006) – An undercover cop addicted to a powerful future narcotic is assigned to investigate himself in this rotoscoped adaptation of the paranoid Philip K. Dick novel

Schizopolis (1996) – Fletcher Munson struggles to write a speech for a Scientology-like leader while his doppelgänger is having an affair with his wife

The Science of Sleep (2006) – The melancholy love life of a man who can’t distinguish dreams from reality

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010) – A Toronto slacker must defeat his new girlfriend’s seven evil exes in this video game styled cult pic

The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb (1993) – The fairy tale retold in stop-motion animation and pixilation, set in a dystopian city full of bugs and monstrosities

A Serious Man (2009) – The Coen brothers’ retelling of the Book of Job as an absurdist comedy is mystifying and brilliant in equal parts

Seven Servants (1996) – A dying Anthony Quinn hires shirtless young men to stick their fingers up his nostrils

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1964) – An old Ukrainian folk tale told as an elliptical experimental film by incomparable stylist

Shanks (1974) – A mute puppeteer (played by Marcel Marceau) learns to operate dead bodies like marionettes, and ends up fighting bikers

Shock Corridor (1963) – Eccentric auteur Sam Fuller imagines Cold War America as a mental asylum in this campy melodrama with remarkable expressionist visuals

Silent Hill (2006) – Sloppy scripting and apocalyptic imagery combine to create a truly weird experience

Sin City (2005) – Visually stunning, ultraviolent postmodern noir

The Singing Ringing Tree [Das Singende, Klingende Bäumchen] (1957) – This magical fairytale featuring an evil dwarf, a prince in a bear suit, and a nightmarish mechanical goldfish terrified a generation of British children

Sita Sings the Blues (2008) – An animated retelling of the Indian epic “Ramayana,” with music video interludes featuring a Betty Boop-like demigoddess singing the torch songs of Annette Hanshaw

Skidoo (1968) – Carol Channing strips, Jackie Gleason drops acid and Groucho Marx is “God” in this all-star psychedelic misfire

Skins [Pieles] (2017) – The lives of a butt-faced woman, a reluctant pedophile, an eyeless prostitute, and other internally and externally deformed people intersect in unexpected ways

Society (1989) – This horror satire about a teen who doesn’t fit in with his high society family is famous for its wild, surrealist makeup effects

Solaris [Solyaris] (1972) – Minimalist, mystical science fiction about a conscious planet that recreates a cosmonaut’s dead wife

Songs from the Second Floor (2000) – Millennial and existential panic in a nameless Swedish city, told in a spare, absurd style

Sorry to Bother You (2018) – Far-left-field absurdist agitprop satire about a black telemarketer who shoots up the corporate ladder when he learns to use his “white voice”

Spider Baby, or the Maddest Story Ever Told (1967) – The Merrye family reverts to savagery as they age in this horror/comedy with an utterly unique tone

Spirited Away [Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi] (2001) – Hayao Miyazaki’s masterpiece about a girl trapped in a bathhouse of spirits is Japan’s answer to “Alice in Wonderland”

Stalker (1979) – Andrei Tarkovsky’s slow, mystifying, beautiful science fiction parable about three men’s journey to a room which can grant their innermost wishes

Steppenwolf (1974) – The psychedelic effects in this faithful adaptation of Herman Hesse’s novel have dated badly

Strange Frame: Love & Sax (2012) – Romance and intrigue on the moons of Jupiter in this psychedelic animated lesbian science fiction musical

Street of Crocodiles (1986) – Eerie reminiscences unfold when a gaunt man is brought to life after a globule of spittle activates a machine

Survive Style 5+ (2004) – Five fantastical interlocking stories about a revenant wife, a hypnotized salaryman, three teenage burglars, an ad exec, and an assassin with a translator

Suspiria (1977) – Bizarre, unreal color schemes and a pounding score surrealize this horror fairy tale about a coven of witches operating a ballet academy

Sweet Movie (1974) – A beauty contest winner’s prize is to marry a billionaire, while in a second plotline a socialist sea captain sails down an Amsterdam canal with a hold full of sugar in this scatological political satire

Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971) – The first blaxploitation movie was actually an experimental art film with explicit sex and a cop-beating hero who spends the movie evading the Man

The Swimmer (1968) – Cheerful go-getter Ned decides to swim home through his neighbor’s pools, but has he forgotten something important?

Swiss Army Man (2016) – A suicidal, shipwrecked man uses for a flatulent, talking corpse to find his way home

Synecdoche, New York (2008) – Charlie Kaufman working without a net in this absurdist, recursive, and dreamlike story of a sad-sack theater director who builds a replica of New York City inside a warehouse

Tales from the Quadead Zone (1987) – We chose this ultra-low-budget anthology of horror stories to represent the work of outsider VHS shlockmeister Chester N. Turner

The Taste of Tea (2004) – The quaintly surreal adventures of a rural Japanese family include a girl plagued by a giant doppelganger only she can see

Taxidermia (2006) – A penis ejaculating fire is the take-home image from this surreal and twisted Hungarian generational epic; barf bags recommended

Tekkonkinkreet (2006) – Orphans White and Black scrape out an existence on the surreal streets of Treasure Town

The Telephone Book (1971) – A nymphomaniac falls in love with the world’s greatest obscene phone caller in this arty underground sexploitationer that climaxes with a surreally obscene animation

The Tenant (1976) – A new roomer in an odd apartment complex takes on the personality of the previous tenant, who committed suicide

Teorema (1968) – A handsome stranger sleeps with each member of a bourgeois family, and their lives self-destruct when he disappears

The Testament of Orpheus (1960) – The conclusion of ‘s “Orphic” trilogy casts the poet as a time-traveler interrogated by his own fictional characters

Tetsuo: The Iron Man [Tetsuo] (1989) – A man inexplicably transforms into metal, set to an industrial soundtrack in grainy 16mm black and white

That Obscure Object of Desire (1977) – A wealthy French businessman romances a young Spanish girl over the years, but she will never submit to him

Thundercrack! (1975) – An absurdist underground spoof of Old Dark House movies, with hardcore sex scenes and an amorous gorilla

Tideland (2005) – Terry Gilliam’s dark and controversial riff on Alice in Wonderland

Time Bandits (1981) – Time-traveling, thieving dwarfs feature heavily in this weird kiddie film mixing fantasy, comedy and theology

The Tin Drum [Die Blechtrommel] (1979) – A three-year old German boy refuses to grow up, then witnesses the rise of Nazism

The Tingler (1959) – A creature that lives in your spine and causes you to die if you don’t scream gets loose in this very theater

Titus (1999) – Anachronistic avant-garde adaptation of Shakespeare’s most exploitative play, with gang rape, body parts cut off, and cannibalism

Tokyo Gore Police [Tôkyô Zankoku Keisatsu] (2008) – A female cop hunts spontaneously mutating serial killers in this very weird, often imitated splatterpunk classic

Toto the Hero [Toto le Heros] (1991) – A man nurses a lifelong grudge against the neighbor he believes stole his life (and maybe the love of his sister)

Trash Humpers (2009) – Geriatric miscreants vandalize a trash-strewn Nashville and force Siamese twins to eat soap-soaked pancakes in this non-narrative celebration of VHS aesthetics. A “reader’s choice” poll winner.

The Tree of Life (2011) – Terrence Malick wonders how best to tell the tale of a Texas boy’s strained relationship with his demanding father, and concludes the answer is to include dinosaurs

The Trial (1962) – Josef K. finds he’s accused of a crime, but no one will tell him what it is in Orson Welles’ adaptation of Franz Kafka’s absurdist/existentialist classic

The Triplets of Belleville [Les Triplettes de Belleville, AKA Belleville Rendez-vous] (2003) – Three retired jazz singers help a nearsighted grandma and her overweight dog save a bicyclist from art deco gangsters in this dialogue-free animation set in a surrealistic 1940s milieu

Tromeo & Juliet (1996) – The creators of The Toxic Avenger remake the Bard’s tale as an obscene punk epic, with predictably bizarre results

True Stories (1986) – A deadpan narrator in a cowboy hat observes the lives of the strange residents of fictional Virgil, Texas

Tuvalu (1999) – Can Anton get his family’s Turkish bathhouse to pass inspection while winning the heart of the girl who blames him for her father’s death?

Twelve Monkeys (1995) – A time-traveler from a dystopian future trying to investigate a cult called “12 monkeys” is mistaken for a madman

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992) – David Lynch took an on-the-edge TV series over the cliff with this divisive prequel exploring Laura Palmer’s last days

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives [Loong Boonmee raleuk chat] (2010) – Meditative Thai movie where the border between this world and the next is as thin as a strip of film

Underground (1995) – A Yugoslavian gangster tricks his partner into hiding out in a cellar for decades, making him believe WWII is still raging outside

Under the Skin (2013) – An alien dissolves single men in black goo

Upstream Color (2013) – An examination of what happens when a woman is infected with a will-sapping worm that is then implanted in a pig to create a psychic link

Urusei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer (1984) – The characters of an anime sitcom about an amorous flying alien find themselves trapped in one of the cast’s dream

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders [Valerie a Týden Divu] (1970) – The onset of menses turns 13-year old Valerie’s innocent world of childhood into a dream of rapist priests, lesbians, incest, and vampires

Vampire’s Kiss (1988) – Nicolas Cage’s weirdest role features him overacting brilliantly as a literary agent who believes he’s turning into a vampire

Vampyr (1932) – Dreamlike early talkie about a student of the occult who wanders into a French village suffering a vampiric infestation

Vertigo (1958) – An acrophobic detective falls for a mysterious woman in Alfred Hitchcock’s obsessive exploration of sexual desire

Videodrome (1983) – Discovery of a pirate snuff film broadcast leads to a hallucinatory melding of man and media

Visitor Q [Bijitâ Q] (2001) – Takashi Miike’s story about a mysterious visitor who disrupts dysfunctional family dynamics breaks the lactation taboo

Viva la Muerte [Long Live Death] (1971) – Fernando Arrabal’s surreal, semi-autobiographical story about a boy who discovers his mother turned his father in to the Spanish Fascists

Waking Life (2001) – The story of a young man who finds he’s dreaming and can’t wake up, with serious philosophical monologues and dialogues interspersed, painstakingly animated by over thirty artists in differing styles

Waltz with Bashir (2008) – Dreamlike animated documentary about the director’s loss of memories related to his time as a conscripted Israeli soldier during the 1982 war in Lebanon

Wax, or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees (1991) – An experimental mock documentary about a computer programmer who begins communing with Mesopotamian bees, who set him to a strange task

Weekend (1967) – A money-grubbing couple travel through a surreal French countryside full of burning wrecks, fictional characters and feral hippies as they try to secure an inheritance from the wife’s dying father

Werckmeister Harmonies (2000) – A Whale and a Prince bring a local apocalypse to a poor but peaceful Hungarian town

Why Don’t You Play in Hell? [Jigoku de naze warui] (2013) – A team of amateur filmmakers luck out when a real-life yakuza asks them to film a bloody raid

The Wicker Man (1973) – Horrifying and intelligent tale of a devout detective’s search for a missing girl on a Scottish island where the residents have adopted an ancient pagan religion

Wild at Heart (1990) – Sailor and Lulu flee mother’s assassins as they tool down the yellow brick road that leads to madness

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971) – A laborer race of orange and green dwarfs and the bad acid boat trip from hell tip this kiddie musical into the weird column

The Woman in the Dunes [Suna no onna] (1964) – Existential allegory where an amateur entomologist is trapped in a sand pit with a widow, forced to shovel sand to survive

Wool 100% (2006) – Our only weird movie revolving around knitting is the tale of a strange girl who appears in the lives of two reclusive old pack-rat sisters

WR: Mysteries of the Organism (1971) – A celebration of the sexual revolution that begins as a straightforward documentary on controversial psychologist William Reich and ends with a decapitated head declaring she’s not ashamed of her Communist past

Yellow Submarine (1968) – Animated film inspired by Beatles songs is a psychedelic trip through surreal seas in a quest to defeat the music-hating Blue Meanies

You, the Living [Du Levande] (2007) – 50 bittersweet, absurdist sketches on the crushing mundanity of everyday life

Zardoz (1974) – John Boorman’s pretentious, campy sci-fi epic full of floating stone heads, psychedelic effects and Sean Connery in a red diaper

Zazie dans le Metro (1960) – 10-year old Zazie explores a Paris filled with transvestites, dirty old men, desperate widows and polar bears in this absurdist tribute to slapstick comedy

A Zed and Two Noughts (1985) – Two zoologist brothers enter a strange menage a trois with the legless woman who survived an accident that killed their wives

Zéro de conduite (1933) – Boys in a French boarding school rebel in this anarchist/surrealist anti-establishment classic

APOCRYPHA (alternates that just missed the cutoff for Canonical status):

Big Man Japan (2007) – Mockumentary about Japan’s last giant monster fighter, featuring remarkably kooky kaiju

Celine and Julie Go Boating [Céline et Julie vont en bateau] (1974) – The whimsical, magical title characters take memory candies to solve an old mystery

Electric Dragon 80000V (2001) – B&W Japanese punk superhero musical with ample industrial noise guitar solos

Gemini (1999) – adapts an eerie story about a successful doctor’s discovery of the evil twin who was separated at birth

The Happiness of the Katakuris (2001) – A musical about a Japanese family who keep discovering corpses in their bed and breakfast—partly done in claymation

The Lighthouse (2019) – Against his superior’s warning, an apprentice lighthouse tender harms a seabird; madness follows

She’s Allergic to Cats (2016) – A would-be director makes “weird video art that no one watches,” while pursing a beautiful woman and his dream project: a remake of Carrie featuring a cast of cats

Singapore Sling (1990) – While searching for his lost love, a detective is kidnapped by two psychotic women who use them in their S&M roleplaying games in this bizarre cross between film noir and torture porn

Under the Silver Lake (2018) – A California slacker becomes embroiled in perhaps the biggest cover-up that has ever bamboozled the Golden State

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATES (movies we’re still considering)

1 (2009) – The Reality Defense Institute investigates a mysterious book which is turning the whole world mad

7 Faces of Dr. Lao (1964) – A shapeshifting “Chinaman fakir” brings his allegorical circus to a Western town

964 Pinocchio (1991) – A cybernetic male sex-slave is cast adrift in a weird world in this underground Japanese cyberpunk film

9 Lives of a Wet Pussy (1976) – Underground legend Abel Ferrara‘s directorial debut was a XXX film about a lesbian fortune teller and her promiscuous friend

The Acid House (1998) – A trio of tawdry, disturbing fantasies penned by Irvine (“Trainspotting”) Welsh

The Adventure of Denchu-Kozo (1987) – Shinya Tsukamoto‘s warm-up for Tetsuo: The Iron Man involves time travel, vampires, and a boy with a rod growing from his back

The Adventures of Mark Twain (1985) – Claymation selection of Twain stories, with a wraparound story about the author flying a homemade blimp to catch Haley’s comet

Aegri Somnia (2008) – The sick dreams of a disturbed man

The Aerial [La Antena] (2007) – Mr. TV’s monopoly on voices is threatened by a mutant eyeless boy in this modern silent

Alice in Wonderland (1933) – This “star-studded” (W.C. Fields, Gary Cooper, Cary Grant) version of Lewis Carrol flopped on release—could it be because it was too weird for 1933 audiences?

Alien Crystal Palace (2018) – An ancient demigod tries to meld a director and a musician into a single androgyene

Alphaville (1965) – Jean-Luc Godard‘s dystopian science fiction movie involves Phillip Marlowe-style detective Lemmy Caution facing off against a tyrannical computer

Amélie (2001) – A pixysh girl improves the lives of those around her in a kitschy version of Paris in this magical romantic comedy

Amer (2009) – Atmospheric, erotic giallo tribute

Angel’s Egg (1985) – Surreal anime about a girl tending an egg in a Gothic city

Angelus (2000) – A few decades in the life of a secret apocalyptic cult in Communist Poland

Angst (1983) – Intense Austrian movie that traps the viewer in the mind of a serial killer

Anguish (1987) – Spiral movie-within-a-movie (within-a-movie?) about a serial killer loose in a theater

Antiviral (2012) – In a satirical dystopian future, people pay to be infected with viruses taken from their favorite celebrities

April and the Extraordinary World (2015) – French steampunk animation about the world that results when Napoleon III tries to create an army of invulnerable monkeys

Asparagus (1979) – Surreal 18 minute tour de force featuring obscene iterations of the title vegetable. Included on The Films of Suzan Pitt.

Atmo HorroX (2016) – A creature with balloons tied to his crotch hunts people who are prescribed a certain medication (I think)

The Atrocity Exhibition (2000) – Series of bizarre sketches based on a J.G. Ballard anthology

The Attic Expeditions (2001) – Mindbending psychological horror that loses its mind, mixing occultism, medical experimentation and general weirdness into a confusing B-movie blend

Avida (2004) – Surreal comedy centered around a dognapping

The Baby of Macon (1993) – The story of a pseudo-miraculous infant unfolds in an elaborate passion play

The Bad Batch (2016) – A girl exiled into the desert in a future dystopia seeks revenge on the bodybuilding cannibals who ate part of her

Bad Girls Go to Hell (1965) – A housewife descends into a dreamlike sexual hell in this roughie with lots of random shots of feet and furniture

The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009) – Nic Cage unloosed, iguanas, and an ambiguous ending give this crazy thriller some weird cred

Beetlejuice (1988) – Possibly Tim Burton‘s most beloved movie, about a “bio-exorcist” attempting to scare the living out of the home of a nice newly-deceased couple

La Belle Captive (1983) – A man seeks a mysterious woman who may be a ghost, a vampiress or a dream in this film that visually references the paintings of Rene Magritte

Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980) – The misadvenutres of a pimp/murderer trying to go straight in Weimar Germany; a fifteen hour character study told through a fluid mix of drama, melodrama, poetic monologue, and surrealism

Between Worlds (2018) – The “other” weird Nicolas Cage movie of 2018 has the spirit of Nic’s dead wife possessing a younger woman’s body

Birds Without Feathers (2018) – The lives of six isolated, unhappy characters intersect in increasingly surreal ways

Blind Woman’s Curse (1970) – A feminist yakuza ghost story

Bloodsucker’s Handbook (2012) – Neo-noir about a priest hunting a vampire in an absurd alternate future

Blue Sunshine (1977) – People who took a particular brand of LSD in the Sixties find themselves transformed into bald killers ten years later

Border (2018) – A Swedish customs officer with a “chromosonal abnormality” and a superhuman ability to detect when travelers are hiding something meets a traveler with a similar appearance

Borgman (2013) – A criminal insinuates himself into a Dutch family’s home

The Bothersome Man (2006) – A freethinker seeks escape from a bland paradise

Brain Damage (1988) – The Aylmer attaches himself to Brian’s brainstem, feeding him an addictive drug in return for grisly murders

The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (1962) – A mad scientist searches for a hot new body for the recently decapitated fiancée whose head he’s keeping alive in his basement

Brewster McCloud (1970) – Bizarre, bird-oriented Robert Altman cult satire about a boy who dreams of flying inside the Houston Astrodome

Buffet Froid (1979) – A trio of Parisians commit a dreamlike series of murders

Buster’s Mal Heart (2017) – A hermit warns about the impending “Inversion”

Calvaire (2004) – Strange, surreal, and excessive Belgian horror about a lounge singer stranded in a remote town full of perverted and sadistic men

Capone (2020) – Literally demented biopic with firing a gold-plated Tommy gun while wearing a diaper and chomping on a carrot

The Catechism Cataclysm (2011) – The world’s least likely (and maybe least effective) priest goes on a beer-drinking, headbanging canoe trip with his high school idol

Cats (2019) – The uncanny valley adaptation of the Broadway musical has camp potential

Charms (1973) – Some sort of biker/western/witchcraft counterculture mishmash

Chicken with Plums [Poulet aux Prunes] (2011) – The deathbed hallucinations of a master musician who gives up on life after his beloved violin is destroyed

Chronopolis (1982) – Reader review by Morgan Hoyle-Combs. Seldom-seen abstract stop-motion animation from France

Climax (2018) – Someone spikes the dance troupe’s punchbowl with LSD, and things get weird

CoinCoin and the Extra-Humans (2019) – Black tar falls from the sky and duplicates French people in this strange sequel to L’il Quinquin

collective:unconscious – Experimental anthology wherein six underground directors film each others’ dreams

“The Comb” (1990) – Quay Brothers animation about a man trying to reach a sleeping woman in her dream

Come to Daddy (2019) – A recovering alcoholic hipster reunites with his estranged father, followed soon by his aggrieved criminal associates

The Congress (2013) – An aging actress (Robin Wright, playing a version of herself) allows her image to be digitized for virtual reality use in the future in this partly animated mindbender

Crash (1996) – A jaded man finds thrills among an underground cult who get turned on by automobile accidents

The Cult of the Damned [Angel, Angel, Down We Go] (1969) – A rock singer influences a Hollywood household in this psychedelic musical satire

Cure (1997) – Pretty weird Japanese twist in the serial killer/police procedural genre

A Cure for Wellness (2017) – An up and coming young executive goes on a mission to retrieve his presumably insane CEO from a cult-like Swiss wellness resort and finds eels, lots of eels

Dark Country (2009) – Noir-thriller mix about a honeymooning couple who run over a man in the desert

Dark Star (1974) – Cult sci-fi satire with a farting beach ball alien

Dark Waters (1993) – Nun-too-scary movie about a female island cult

The Death King (1990) – A suite of seven stories about suicide

Decasia (2002) – An atonal symphony scored to decaying nitrate images from silent films

Der Bunker (2015) – A Student comes to stay with a very strange family who live in an underground bunker

The Devil (1972) – A Polish soldier goes on a rampage, encouraged by a Mysterious Stranger

Diamantino (2018) – A slow-witted Portuguese soccer idol is manipulated into becoming the spokesman for a right-wing party, while being subjected to cloning experiments

The Double Hour (2009) – A woman is haunted by apparitions of the dead and visions from what seem to be an alternate, parallel version of her life

Down and Dirty Duck (1974) – 1970s adult underground animation about a Walter Mitty-style insurance adjuster and his duck companion

Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971) – A cauliflower-faced Frankenstein’s monster squares off against Dracula with an afro in a very bad (but weird) movie

Dreamland [Bruce McDonald’s Dreamland] (2019) – Stephen McHattie in a dual role as a world-weary jazz musician and the world-weary hitman sent to assassinate him

Duck Soup (1933) – Groucho’s lack of diplomacy leads Freedonia into war in the surrealest of the Marx Brothers features

Edward Scissorhands (1990) – A mad scientist fashions a creature with razor-sharp fingers, who then must adapt to suburbia

The Endless (2017) – Two brothers are lured back to the UFO cult they grew up in after receiving a mysterious videotape

Endless Poetry (2017) – The second installment of ‘s autobiographical project that began with The Dance of Reality

Entertainment (2015) – An anti-comic on a tour of the Southwest bombs, existentially

Executive Koala (2005) – A koala in a business suit is accused of killing his wife and girlfriend

eXistenZ (1999) – Bizarre scenarios inside a virtual reality game world

The Falling (2014) – Students at an all-girls school experience a collective mass hysteria after one of their group unexpectedly passes away

Fando y Lis (1968) – Alejandro Jodorowsky’s first film, from a Fernando Arrabal play, is about a man carrying his lame lover through the desert on a quest to find the magical city of Tar

Father’s Day (2011) – A serial killer who preys on fathers is just the starting point for this lunatic bad-taste comedy that literally winds up in Hell

Faust (1994) – Veteran stop-motion surrealist Jan Svankmajer’s take on the Faust legend

Faust (2011) – Aleksandr Sokurov’s hallucinatory version of the Faust story

Film (1965) – An avant-garde collaboration between Samuel Beckett (writing his only screenplay) and Buster Keaton

The Flesh (1991) – A nightclub pianist drops everything to shack up with a mysterious woman and ends up a paralyzed sex slave

Flooding With Love for the Kid (2010) – Zachary Oberzan’s one-man Rambo adaptation, made for less than $100, is beyond weird or normal

The Forest of Love (2019) – A con-man takes over an amateur film production about his life and turns the crew into a family of serial killers

The Fountain (2006) – The search for the fountain of youth, and also the story of a modern-day scientist seeking a cure for cancer, and also the story of a tree-tending guru floating in a space bubble

Frank (2014) – A mediocre songwriter joins a band led by a genius who refuses to remove his giant papier-mâché head

Frankenstein Island (1981) – Balloon racers land on the titular island and encounter Amazons in bikinis, Dr. Frankenstein’s granddaughter, and extreme foolishness in this incoherently hilarious horrro

Frankie in Blunderland (2011) – Low budget hallucinatory trip through a bizarre hipster L.A.

Fried Barry (2020) – An alien possesses a South African heroin addict

Frownland (2007) – Painfully emotionally intense character study of a loser whose social anxiety disorder ironically turns him into loathsome company

Get Mean (1976) – The only Spaghetti Western with Mongol hordes and a Spanish princess

Girl Slaves of Morgana le Fay [Morgane et ses Nymphes] (1971) – A fairy tale for lesbian sex fetishists

Grendel, Grendel, Grendel (1981) – The animated, existential, singing and dancing adventures of Beowulf’s nemesis

Greener Grass (2019) – Jill gives her new baby away to her best friend, but regrets the decision when her remaining child turns into a dog

Hansel and Gretel (2007) – Korean adaptation of the fairytale switches the roles of the children and adults; it’s a beautifully made movie but perhaps too predictable in the end

Hard to Be a God (2013) – Undercover Earth visitors are forbidden to intervene in the affairs of a planet stuck in its own filthy version of the Middle Ages

The Hawks and the Sparrows (1966) – Two men meet a talking Marxist raven on the road

Heart of Glass (1976) – Werner Herzog had his cast lietrally hypnotized for this dreamy story of the slow death of a German town after its master glassblower dies, taking his secrets to his grave

Heavy Traffic (1973) – An underground cartoonist animates the highlights of his lowlife neighborhood in this edgy and occasionally surreal mix of animation and live action

Hellzapoppin’ (1941) – Original List Candidate entry

Hereditary (2018) – Disturbing events unfold after the death of a family matriarch, culminating in a bizarrely violent pagan ritual infused with supernatural occurrences

High Life (2018) – A scientist performs strange reproductive research on a crew of convicts on a spaceship headed to a black hole

Hitler Lives! (2017) – As the title suggests, but in a bunker in Australia with puppet hallucinations and aliens

Holy Trinity (2019) – A dominatrix finds she can speak to the dead after huffing some new age air freshener

The Honor Farm (2017) – Teens take shrooms on prom night and grow up fast

House of 1,000 Corpses (2003) – Rob Zombie’s cruel and self-indulgent Texas Chainsaw Massacre tribute is weird but not much fun

House of Evil (1968) – One of Boris Karloff’s final, half-Mexican films; also one of his worst

Human Highway (1982) – Neil Young’s anarchic musical comedy about a slightly pre-apocalyptic desert town next to a nuclear reactor

Idaho Transfer (1973) – Pantsless time-traveling teens try to avert a future dystopia

I [Heart] Huckabees (2004) – An activist hires two existential detectives to investigate the Huckabee’s corporation

I Lost My Body (2019) – An (animated) severed hand searches for it’s owner, who has troubles of his own

Immortal (Ad Vitam) (2004) – The Egyptian god Horus visits future Manhattan in this trippy French sci-fi feature mixing live and computer generated actors

The Isle [Seom] (2000) – A mute woman falls for a suicidal man among the floating cabins of a fishing resort in this bizarre sadomasochistic romance

Jesus Christ Superstar (1973) – The film adaptation of the rock opera chronicling the passion of Jesus

Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway (2019) – Gonzo comedy about a virus named “Soviet Union” infecting social media

Je T’aime, Je T’aime (1968) – French New Wave pioneer tackles the time travel genre, with weird results

Kaboom (2010) – College student stumbles upon odd murder mystery in this mix of sex and weirdness

The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017) – ‘ first explicit horror film is every bit as unnerving as you’d imagine

Koko-Di, Koko-da (2019) – A Scandinavian nightmare about folkloric creatures killing a grieving couple over and over

Kung Fu Arts [Hou Fu Ma] (1980) – A Chinese princess marries “Sida, the French Monkey Star” in this zany chopsocky

Labyrinth of Cinema (2019) – Japanese teenagers find themselves thrown into the movies screening at a cinema on the last night before it closes

Lake Michigan Monster (2019) – A clever, mindless monster romp in a scratchy, black and white world à la Guy Maddin

The Last of England (1988) – Utterly avant-garde and abstract, it’s a mad meditation on the decline of Britain in the 1980s

Lemora: A Child’s Tale of the Supernatural (1973) – An innocent tween-age girl navigates a nightmare vision of post-Prohibition America in a search of her long-lost father, running into danger at every turn

Let the Corpses Tan (2017) – Surreal revisionists and tackle the poliziotteschi genre

L’il Quinquin (2014) – When human body parts are discovered in cows, it’s up to a detective with bizarre facial tics to not solve the murder in a French coastal town full of eccentrics

Livide (2011) – Surreal modern French haunted house movie

Lost River (2014) – An urban fantasy/fairy tale set in a city in decline

Lowlife (2017) – The plans of a luchador bodyguard and other lowlifes intersect in this Pulp Fiction-esque multi-narrative feature

Luz (2018) – A police psychologist comes between a cab driver and the demon that lusts after her

The Machinist (2004) – Possibly predictable mindbender starring an emaciated Christian Bale

The Mad Fox (1962) – Ppens as a medieval Japanese epic with a folkloric spin and then suddenly goes mad, turning into kabuki theater

Maggie (2019) – Socially aware South Korean madness narrated by a catfish

The Magic Christian (1969) – A billionaire induces people to degrade themselves for money in this series of bizarre satirical sketches

Make-out with Violence (2008) – A young man rekindles romance with his ex; the only issue is, she’s dead

The Manitou (1978) – A native-American medicine man grows out of Susan Strasberg’s back, and fake psychic Tony Curtis must defeat it

Maribeto (2004) – A photographer finds a modern vampire living in the sewers

Master of the Flying Guillotine (1977) – Crazy kung fu spectacle featuring a decaptitating sidearm and a monk with extensible arms

Maximum Shame (2010) – The tagline describes it as “an apocalyptic fetish horror musical chess sci-fi weird feature movie”—and it is!

Meek’s Cutoff (2010) – Westbound pioneers gamble on a shortcut and find themselves unsure which guide they can trust

Meet the Hollowheads (1989) – Surreal parody of 50s sitcoms

MFKZ (2018) – French/Japanese anime where a pizza-delivery guy and his flaming-skulled roommate fight aliens with the help of a secret society of luchadores

Mindflesh (2008) – A taxi driver is haunted by an alien nymphomaniac from another dimension

Modus Operandi (2009) – Grindhouse spy spoof with ridiculous amounts of nudity and violence and about a 5% admixture of surrealism

The Mouse and His Child (1977) – Philsophical children’s film about two clockwork toy mice seeking autonomy

My Own Private Idaho (1991) – Weaves two weird premises together: the story of a narcoleptic searching for his mother and a modern adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Henry IV, Part I.”

Mystics in Bali (1981) – A witch turns a black magic researcher into a flying head

Nails (2003) – Low-budget Russian video about a hitman who fights ennui by driving nails into his own head

Night Across the Street (2012) – Raoul Ruiz’ last completed film is an absurdist meditation on death

The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) – Macabre stop-motion animated cult favorite about the Pumpkin King of Halloweentown trying to reproduce Christmas in his own ghoulish style

Night on the Galactic Railroad (1985) – Two kitty cats take a trip on a train to see the sights: candy-flavored herons, self-replicating apples, and stairways that lead to the center of the universe

The Nude Vampire [La Vampire Nue] (1970) – A man kidnaps a vampire hoping to learn the secret of immortality, but it turns out she’s from another dimension, and her kinsfolk want her back

Oldboy (2003) – Excellent, if extreme, Korean revenge drama could stand just a teaspoon more weirdness…

One Point O [Paranoia 1.0] (2004) – Computer programmer Simon J develops crippling paranoia, and a craving for branded milk

On the Silver Globe (1977/1988) – ‘s unfinished science fiction epic about the religious rituals of a tribe of humans descended from stranded astronauts

The Ornithologist (2016) – An ornithologist birdwatching in the Portuguese wilderness wrecks his kayak and undergoes hallucinations (?) that mirror the life of St. Anthony

Palindromes (2004) – A 13-year old girl desperately wants to become pregnant; she’s played by 8 different actresses of different ages, weights and races

Paperhouse (1988) – A feverish girl dreams of a house

The Passion of Darkly Noon (1995) – A refugee from a religious cult shacks up with a mute carpenter and a possible witch

The Peanut Butter Solution (1985) – This odd story of a kid losing all his hair, then growing it back with the help of hobo ghosts freaked out lots of unsuspecting kids in the 1980s

Philosophy of a Knife (2008) – 4+ hours (!) of surreal re-enactments of torture scenes mixed with documentary footage about Japanese WWII atrocities

The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes (2005) – This Quay Brothers fairy tale about a piano tuner, a mad doctor and a withdrawn opera diva overflows with dream sequences

Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) – The 1900 St. Valentine’s Day disappearance of schoolgirls from a picnic goes unexplained

A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (2014) – More existential sketch comedy from the unique Roy Andersson, featuring two chronically depressed novelty salesmen and King Charles XII

Pigsty [Porcile] (1969) – Parallel stories of a medieval cannibal and an ex-Nazi industrialist

Pom Poko (1994) – Tanuki (“raccoon dogs”) fight against the encroachment of humans into their forests in this animated fantasia from Studio Ghibli

Possession (1981) – The original (and controversial) List Candidate entry

Possum (2018) – A creepy puppeteer can’t get rid of his spider-legged dummy

Punch-Drunk Love (2000) – A man with anger management issues (Adam Sandler, in a bizarre casting choice) finds love in this eccentric romantic black comedy

Putney Swope (1969) – A militant black man becomes head of a Madison Avenue advertising agency in this absurdist satire from the Swinging Sixties

R100 (2013) – A man hires dominatrixes to attack him in public, but then things get strange

Raggedy Ann and Andy: A Musical Adventure (1977) – Raggedy Ann and Andy to pursue a toy pirate into a mystical fantasy world to rescue a French waif

The Rambler (2013) – A man is released from prison and hitchhikes across the West meeting mummy-toting professors and a femme fatale who will not die

Rape of the Vampire [Le Viol du Vampire] (1968) – A psychotherapist tries to convince four sisters they aren’t vampires, then gets killed and resurrected to defeat the Queen of the Vampires in this surrealist horror

Re-Animator (1985) – Dr. Herbert West re-animates the dead in this seminal horror/comedy

Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967) – Marlon Brando is a repressed homosexual in John Huston’s way overheated melodrama

Relaxer (2018) – As Y2K approaches, a slacker tries to achieve a perfect score on Pac Man

Repo! the Genetic Opera (2008) – An all singing, all the time sci-fi/horror hybrid about organ repossession

Requiem for a Vampire (1973) – An aging vampire needs two killer lesbian clowns to regenerate his race in Jean Rollin’s most sexually explicit erotic horror movie

Resolution (2012) – Strange things happen when a man tries to kick his meth habit in a remote cabin in this mindbending meta-horror

Rondo (2018) – Hyperstylized, grindhouse-y movie about a vet pulled into a sordid world of revenge fantasies

Rubber’s Lover (1996) – In a modern update of the Frankenstein plot, a team of rogue scientists conduct experimental research on abducted subjects in a secret government torture lab

Saint Clara [Clara Hakedosha] (1996) – A psychic Russian immigrant girl in Israel gives her classmates test answers, until she falls in love

The Saragossa Manuscript (1965) – The weird adventures of a Napoleonic solider are told in this “existential potpourri”

Satantango (1994) – Bela Tarr’s glacially paced, almost 8 hour long Hungarian black comedy is a classic and/or an exercise in minimalist extremes

Savages (1972) – A tribe of “mud people” follow a croquet ball to an abandoned manor and turn into dinner-party-hosting dandies

Savage Witches (2012) – Two teenage girls seek to play games and avoid responsibility in this modern experimental tribute to Daisies

Sequence Break (2017) – Nipple console buttons, white goo circuitry, and coital gaming seizures adorn this sci-fi thriller featuring a Cronenberg-inspired video game

Sex and Lucia [Lucia y el Sexo] (2001) – Arty dirty movie with a meta-narrative and nude Paz Vega

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978) – If you hate the Beatles, you’ll love this bizarrely bad disco-era insult to their memory

Sherlock Jr. (1924) – Buster Keaton’s movie projectionist dreams himself onto the big screen as a detective

She’s Allergic to Cats (2016) -Outsider romantic comedy mixed with avant-garde video art

The Short Films of David Lynch (2002) – The short “The Grandmother” is a weird classic; the rest of this collection, less so

Simon of the Desert (1965) – Truncated (45 minute) surrealist feature about the temptation of a saint who lives on a pillar in the desert

Singapore Sling (1990) – Black and white film noir tribute with mucho sexual perversion and general weirdness

Sitcom (1998) – A rat plays the role of God in this sticom-set variation on Teorema

Six-String Samurai (1998) – Buddy Holly is a sword-swinging rock n’ roller seeking to claim Elvis’ throne in an alternate post-apocalyptic reality

Slack Bay (2016) – Weird families, bumbling detectives and unexplained disappearances at a Calais resort

Slapstick of Another Kind (1982) – A pair of ugly twins turn out to be aliens; one of the weirdest (but not the best) adapations of a novel

Slaughterhouse-Five (1972) – Billy Pilgrim comes unstuck in time in what’s arguably the only decent film adaptation of a story

Sleepaway Camp (1983) – 1980s teen slasher whose unforgettable ending has given it a cult reputation

Sleeping Beauty (2011) – A young girl takes job as an unconscious prostitute

A Snake of June (2002) – A photographer blackmails a woman into acting out her own sex fantasies; it’s weirder than it sounds

Snowflake (2017) – The hitmen characters in a dentist’s amateur screenplay force him to update it on the fly to give them a happy ending

Some Call it Loving (1973) – A jaded, modern, softcore porn take on “Sleeping Beauty”

Son of the White Mare [Fehérlófia] (1981) – The title character takes on dragons to rescue a princess in this Slavic folktake delovered in mindblowing stylized animation

Sound of Noise (2010) – A tone deaf detective tries to stop a gang of musical terrorists from staging a conceptual composition in the public spaces of a Swedish city

Southland Tales (2006) – Crazy, near-incoherent apocalyptic epic; a famous flop from the creator of Donnie Darko

Space Ninjas (2019) – A movie combining The Breakfast Club with… space ninjas

Speed Racer (2008) – The Wachowskis (then brothers) followed up The Matrix with this hyperactive, candy-colored live action version of the beloved racing anime

Spider (2002) – David Cronenberg turns inward for this story of a schizophrenic misremembering a family tragedy

Spirits of the Air, Gremlins of the Clouds (1987) – The odd post-apocalyptic story of a crippled inventor, his child-like sister, and a stranger on the run

Stingray Sam (2009) – It’s a six part musical/Western/sci-fi serial; need we say more to catch your interest?

The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears (2013) – A businessman searches for his missing wife in this stylized neo-giallo from the makers of Amer

“Street of Crocodiles” (1986) – A globule of spittle animates a puppet who journeys to a tailor’s shop underneath a crocodile skeleton

Suicide Club (2002) – Japanese surrealism about an unexplained wave of suicides among Tokyo teens

Super (2010) – Uneven comic entry in the “average guy decides to become a masked vigilante” subgenre

Suture (1993) – In an experiment/gimmick that takes non-traditional casting to the extreme, man takes the identity of his “nearly identical” brother

Symbol (2009) – A Japanese man wakes up in a white room full of cherub phalluses, while a Mexican luchador prepares for a match

Tale of Tales (2015) – Interlocking adaptation of a trio of Giambattista Basile fairy tales

Tales of Ordinary Madness (1981) – There’s little that’s ordinary in these magical realist tales based on the life of skid-row poet Charles Bukowski

Tampopo (1985) – The tale of a wanderer training a widow to establish the perfect noodle shop, interrupted by absurdist foodie skits

The Temptation of St. Tony (2009) – Kafkaesque Estonian retelling of the temptation of St. Anthony

The Theatre Bizarre (2011) – A puppet version of Udo Kier introduces six perverse tales of terror

The Third Part of the Night (1971) –

Three Crowns of the Sailor (1983) – A sailor related the surreal tales of his travels to exotic ports to a student

Time of Moulting (2020) – A series of tableaux showing Stephanie growing up to become a troubled teenager

The Tingler (1959) – Vincent Price takes acid and exposes the creature that lives in our tailbones and causes fear

To Die for Tano [Tano da Morire] (1997) – This amateur mafia musical is a cult classic in Italy

Tokyo! (2008) – Tryptich of weird tales set in the titular metropolis, from directors Michel Gondry, Leos Carax and Joon-ho Bong

Tommy (1975) – A deaf, dumb and blind kid plays a mean pinball in this psychedelic version of the Who’s best-selling rock opera

A Town Called Panic (2009) – The outright insanity of this picaresque children’s adventure appeals to weirder adults

Toys in the Attic (2009) – A dictatorial Head kidnaps a motherly doll in this Czech stop-motion animated kids fantasy

Trans-Europ-Express (1967) – A producer and director invent a movie about a drug smuggler in Antwerp with a strangulation fetish

Twice Upon a Time (1983) – A shapeshifting “all-purpose animal” and a silent tramp try to save the world from nightmare bombs in this uniquely conceived animated feature

Twilight of the Cockroaches (1989) – Half-animated, half-live-action, anime allegory about the politics of cockroach tribes and human extreminators

Umbilical World (2019) – A remixed collection of ’s absurdist flash animation cartoons

Undergods (2020) – “K” and “Z” drive their van around a ruined shell of a city collecting dead bodies and telling each other about their dreams

Up! (1976) – Alfred Eaker contends it’s Russ Meyer’s “most surreal live-action X-rated cartoon”

Vera (2003) – A Mexican miner encounters an alien spirit who leads him into the land of the dead in this mystical movie whose visual ambitions exceed its budget

Violence Voyager (2018) – Experimental “gekimation” about the titular location, a mysterious adventure park

A Virgin Among the Living Dead (1973) – This dreamlike tale of a beautiful girl who inherits a home full of strange relatives may be Jess Franco’s best work

Viridiana (1961) – A novice nun inherits her uncle’s estate and turns it into a charitable haven, with disastrous results

The Visitor (1979) – Jesus is an alien in this incoherent flop Exorcist ripoff

Vivarium (2019) – A couple move to the suburbs and are soon trapped with a rapidly–growing kid they’re forced to adopt

The Voices (2014) – A schizophrenic takes advice from his talking dog and cat

The Wayward Cloud (2005) – Taiwanese minimalism mixing porno shoots, a watermelon fetish, and musical numbers

We Are Little Zombies (2019) – Four orphans meet at their parents’ funerals, run away, and form a pop band

We Are the Flesh (2016) – A hermit orchestrates two teenage siblings in enacting his depraved and hallucinatory fantasies

Why Don’t You Just Die? [Papa, Sdokhni] (2018) – A movie-length battle with a Rasputin-style assassin

Witching and Bitching [Las Brujas de Zugarramurdi] (2013) – Robbers rip off a pawn shop and then fall into the clutches of a coven of witches in this over-the-top horror comedy

The Wild Boys (2017) – After raping and accidentally murdering their literature teacher—under the prodding of TREVOR—five miscreant boys are sent to sea for discipline

Wild in the Streets (1968) – Psychedelic nugget with a pop star getting elected President after scheming to get the voting age lowered to 14

The Wolf House (2018) – Constantly shifting stop-animation telling the fairy tale story of a girl who flees a cult and holes up in an abandoned cabin

Wonderwall (1968) – An absent-minded professor spies on a fashion model frolicking in a psychedelic wonderland by peeping through the hole in his apartment wall

World on a Wire (1973) – Werner Rainer Fassbinder does The Matrix 25 years earlier, and does it with more artistry

Wrong (2012) – Absurdist comedy about a man searching for his kidnapped dog

Xtro (1983) – incoherent alien exploitation pic that’s fairly standard, up until when the dwarf clown hits the nanny on the head with a rubber hammer and uses her to incubate alien eggs

Yakuza Weapon (2011) – An already nearly invincible yakuza warrior is turned into a killer cyborg with armaments for arms

Yellowbrickroad (2010) – Decades ago, the residents of a New England town mysteriously disappeared; a new generation unwisely sets out to discover the cause

Yokai Monsters: Spook Warfare (1968) – Japanese yokai unite to defeat a Babylonian vampire in this puppet fantasy

Yumeji (1991) – ‘s imaginary bioic of painter Takehisa Yumeji may be his most purely surreal work

CAPSULES



@SuicideRoom (2011)

11:14 (2003)

1BR (2019)

2000 Maniacs (1964)

2012 Aficionado DVD Zine: Issue #0

3 Dev Adam (1973)

3-Iron (2004)

4 (2005)

42nd Street (1933)

44 Inch Chest (2009)

7th Day (2012)

7 Women (1966)

8 (2019)

88 (2015)

9 (2009)

$9.99 (2008)

Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)

The ABCs of Death (2012)

The ABCs of Death 2 (2014)

Absurdistan (2008)

The Acid Eaters (1968)

Acid Head: The Buzzard Nuts County Slaughter (2011)

Across the Universe (2007)

The Act of Killing (2012)

The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes (1971)

The Addiction (1995)

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)

The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926)

The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D (2005)

After.Life (2009)

Against the Clock (2019)

Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972)

A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)

Aimy in a Cage (2015)

Air Doll (2009)

A Journey into the Mind of P (2001)

Aladdin (2019)

À L’aventure (2009)

The Alchemist Cookbook (2016)

Aleister Crowley’s the Rites of Mars: A Rock Opera (2014)

Alice (2009)

Alice in Wonderland (1951)

Alice in Wonderland (1986)

Alice in Wonderland (2010)

Alice Through the Looking Glass (1973)

Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016)

Alien Terror (1971)

Alien vs. Ninja (2010)

All My Friends Are Funeral Singers (2010)

All That Jazz (1979)

All the Colors of Giallo (2019)

All the Colors of the Dark (1972)

All You Can Eat Buddha (2017)

Alps (2011)

Alyce Kills (2011)

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)

The Amazing Transplant (1970)

Amazon Women on the Moon (1987)

American Fable (2016)

American Grindhouse (2010)

An American Hippie in Israel (1972)

American Pop (1981)

American Sniper (2014)

Andrei Rublev (1966)

Angel Heart (1987)

Anna Karamazoff (1991)

Annie Hall (1977)

Annihilation (2018)

Anomalisa (2015)

Antibirth (2016)

Ant-Man (2015)

The Ape Man (1943)

Aphrodisiac! The Sexual Secret of Marijuana (1971)

Apocalypse Now Redux (1979/2001)

Apocalypsis (2018)

Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie for Theaters (2007)

Arabian Nights (2015)

The Arbor (2010)

Aria (1987)

Army of Darkness (1992)

Ascanio in Alba (2006)

Assassin 33 A.D. (2020)

As the Gods Will (2014)

Asylum (1972)

At Eternity’s Gate (2018)

At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul (1964)

Attenberg (2010)

Automatons (2006)

Autumn Sonata (1978)

Avatar (2009)

Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

The Babadook (2014)

Baba Yaga (1973)

Babe: Pig in the City (1998)

Babo 73 (1964)

The Baby (1973)

Baby Face (1933)

Bacurau (2019)

Bad Biology (2008)

Bad Chicken (2013)

Bad Milo (2013)

Bad Taste (1987)

Bad Timing (1980)

Bag Boy Lover Boy (2014)

The Banishment (2007)

The Banshee Chapter (2013)

Basket Case (1982)

Baskin (2015)

Bathory (2008)

Batman (1989)

Batman Ninja (2018)

Batman the Movie (1966)

Batman vs. Superman (2016)

Battle at Beaver Creek (2014) –

Battle in Heaven (2005)

Battle Royale (2000)

The Beach Bum (2019)

Beauty and the Beast [Panna a Netvor] (1978)

Because of Eve (1948)

Beat Girl (1960)

Bedways (2010)

Bellflower (2011)

Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970)

Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens (1979)

Between Men (1935)

The Beyond (1981)

Beyond Re-Animator (2003)

Beyond the Door (1974)

Beyond the Grave (2010)

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970)

The Big Bang (2011)

Big Calibre (1935)

Big Eyes (2014)

Big Fish (2003)

Big Money Rustlas (2010)

Billy the Kid vs. Dracula (1966)

The Birds (1963)

Birds of Neptune (2015)

Bitch Slap (2009)

Birdemic: Shock and Terror (2008)

Birdman (2014)

Bird People (2014)

The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933)

Black Belly of the Tarantula (1971)

The Blackbird (1926)

Black Cat, White Cat (1998)

Black Cobra Woman [Eva Nera; AKA Emmanuelle and the Deadly Black Cobra] (1976)

Black Devil Doll (2007)

Black Devil Doll from Hell (1984)

Black Dragons (1942)

Black Sunday (1960)

Blacula (1972)

Blank City (2010)

Blind Beast (1969)

Bliss (1985)

Blonde Venus (1932)

Blood Feast (1963)

Blood for Dracula [Andy Warhol’s Dracula] (1974)

Blood Paradise (2018)

Blood Sabbath (1972)

Bloodsucking Freaks (1976)

Blow-Up (1966)

Blue (1993)

Bluebeard (1944)

Blue Beard [Barbe Bleue] (2009)

Blue Movie (1978)

Blue Movie (1971)

Blue My Mind (2017)

The Body Snatcher (1945)

Bowery at Midnight (1942)

The Box (2009)

The Boys from Brazil (1978)

Braid (2018)

Brain Dead (1991)

Brainiac [El barón del terror] (1962)

Branded (1950)

Branded (2012)

The Brand New Testament (2015)

The Bravados (1958)

The Brave Little Toaster (1987)

Breakfast of Champions (1999)

Brides of Dracula (1960)

The Bride of Frank (1996)

The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

Bride of the Monster (1955)

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974)

Britannia Hospital (1982)

The Brood (1979)

The Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001)

Bruiser (2000)

A Bucket of Blood (1959)

Buffalo ’66 (1998)

Bug (2006)

The Bulgarian Prophet (2010)

Bunny and the Bull (2009)

Bunraku (2010)

Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles (2018)

The Burial of Kojo (2018)

Burning Inside (2010)

Burnt Offerings (1976)

Bushido Man (2013)

Butt Boy (2019)

Buttwhistle (2014)

Buzzard (2014)

The Cabin in the Woods (2012)

Cafe Flesh (1982)

Caligula (1979)

Calvary (2014)

The Cameraman (1978) – Buster Keaton plays a cameraman with a monkey sidekick

Candy (1968)

Caniba (2017)

Cannibal Holocaust (1980) – Filmmakers torture a cannibal tribe and are eventually eaten by them; turtles are beheaded

Cannibal: the Musical (1993)

Can’t Kill This (2019)

Carmel (2009)

Carrie (1976)

The Cars That Ate Paris (1974)

La Casa del Terror (1960) – Spanish-language musical horror-comedy involving both a mummy and a werewolf (and a grunting Lon Chaney, Jr.)

Casino Royale (1967) – This all-star spy spoof, from five different directors and based on a James Bond novel, is a famously overindulgent flop

The Casserole Masters (200?) – Amateur avant-garde film with some interesting animation; currently available for viewing online (and not available any other way)

Castle in the Sky (1986) – Kid-friendly anime about a floating city is magical, but not weird

Castle of Fu Manchu (1971)

Castle of the Living Dead (1964)

The Cat and the Canary (1927) – Early silent “old dark house” movie that set the standards for the genre

Catch My Soul (1974)

Caterpillar (2010) – A dutiful wife cares for her deaf and dumb quadruple-amputee husband after the Japanese Emperor declares him a “living war god”

Cat People (1942) – A Serbian woman fears that she will turn into a panther and kill her husband if she loses her virginity in this “quiet horror” classic

Cat People (1982) – Strange, hypereroticized and occasionally surreal update of Val Lewton’s classic about a race of people who turn into panthers when sexually aroused

Cauldron of Blood (1970) – Mild psychedelia pervades this otherwise uninteresting horror film, one of Boris Karloff’s final efforts

Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010) – Werner Herzog’s remarkable documentary about the world’s oldest cave paintings, originally in 3D

The Cell (2000)

Cemetery of Splendor (2015)

Certified Copy (2010) – An unexplained identity shift provides refined weirdness in this otherwise talky and intellectual arthouse drama

Chafed Elbows (1966) – Walter has a breakdown, gives birth to ten dollar bills and marries his mom in this seminal underground comedy

Chained for Life (2018)

The Chair (2007) – Interesting Canadian indie horror film about possession that lacks true weirdness

Chamber of Horrors (1966)

Charley Bowers: The Rediscovery of an American Comic Genius – Collection containing most of the nearly lost silent films of absurdist stop-motion animator and comedian Bowers

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)

The Chase (1946)

The Chaser (1928) – Early gender-switch comedy has Harry Landon sentenced to play the role of wife

Cherry, Harry & Raquel (1970)

Child Bride (1938)– This salacious, leering “exposé” of child marriage among hillbillies is 1930s filmmaking at its most shamelessly exploitative

Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things (1972)

Chimes at Midnight (1966)

Chi-Raq (2015)

The Choppers (1961)

Christmas Evil (1980) – Offbeat, low budget character study about a killer Santa that’s not as exploitative as future films exploring the same territory

The Chumscrubber (2005)

The Circus (1928) – Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp invades a circus

Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV (2000) – the long running series hits a new low in bad taste with this installment, but of course, that was what they were aiming at

City Lights (1931) – The Tramp romances a blind flower girl

City Ninja [Tou Qing Ke; AKA Ninja Holocaust] (1985) – Another crazy ninja movie, but this time with steamy sex scenes

City of the Living Dead (1981)

Climate of the Hunter (2019)

Closet Monster (2015)

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (2009)

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