Philip LoPresti (PumpkinGetsASnakeBite)

I have no idea what the fuck I just watched, but it was an experience let me tell you. Tinto Brass (best known as the director of Caligula) turned down the chance to direct A Clockwork Orange to make this acid trip of a mind fuck and I'm glad he did....I think. There is very little plot, if any, but there is enough bizarre imagery to blow your eyeballs out of your skull. It begins with a bride ditching her soon to be husband at the alter and taking off with a stranger into surrealist landscapes where they encounter talking animals and mournful exhibitionists, converse with a rock, journey through a psychedelic hotel, instigate a prison riot, escape from naked cannibals living in a tree and battle a wind-up midget dictator. Lots of nudity and violence really round out what i think is one of the strangest films ever made., and although the movie may at times test your patience, it's a rewarding watch if you can get through it. Check it out.

Based partly on the Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer Of Witches, a sort of guide to witch hunting.) this 1922 silent film directed by Danish filmmaker Benjamin Christensen is part documentary and part dramatization which focuses on how superstition and the misunderstanding of mental illness could have lead to the hysteria of the witch hunts. Christensen does an amazing job with the imagery which includes: grave robbing, midevil torture devices used on accused witches, possessed nuns, and a satanic Sabbath among others. Throughout the grotesque and dark subject matter (as I stated before is captured beautifully) lies a fare amount of black humor which really makes the film a truly great and bizarre watch. A must see for anyone interested in the history of witchcraft and witch hunting, or anyone who wants to experience something new. And for a film that's almost 90 years old it's still as original and shocking as when it was first released I'm sure.

This movie disproves the phrase "Majority Rules" and backs up the phrase "Majority's A Shithead!" A Completely underrated effort by Clive Barker. If only we'd get to see the long overdue director's cut. Let's hope, because this film is really that great, that beautiful and that deserving.