Welcome!

Susan Tyrrell in Forbidden Zone (1980), see Comedy/Drama (A-L)

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Don’t bypass this holiday-season psychodrama from 1944! I’ll Be Seeing You stars Ginger Rogers as a convict on furlough, visiting her aunt’s family. Jospeh Cotten is a “neuro-psychiatric soldier” on furlough from a mental hospital. They fall in love, not knowing about each other. Read more at Classic Era (A-L).

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Coexistence, My Ass! (2025)

Israeli Comic Noam Shuster Eliassi Uses Humor to Oppose Occupation & Genocide

See interview with director of the documentary and the comic herself on Democracy Now!

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Diane Keaton (1946-2025) directed one of my favorite documentaries, Heaven (1987), interviewing kooky Californians about their afterlife beliefs—combined with brilliant montages of archive footage. Keaton may twit myths but never makes fun of anyone, celebrating wonder and diversity. Full movie, click below.

“…[E]dited together with total affection, helping me realize how much I like all these people no matter how I feel about their religious views. Keaton’s grandmother is the sad, white-haired one wearing a man’s blazer who didn’t believe in Heaven and thought Hell was here on earth.” Read more at Documentary (A-L).

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A tech-savvy surrealist, W.M. Weikart. Check out his Soul to Squeeze (2025) on Tubi. See Horror (M-Z).

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W.M. Weikart’s short film Fun of It (2018) starring an incredible actor named Carl G. Herrick. [4:33]

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Autumn’s here and Something Wicked This Way Comes!

Mr. Dark leads the carnival into town in Something Wicked This Way Comes, the 1983 adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s 1962 novel. A perfect autumn-day movie with Disney spectacle and a cozy cast of character actors.

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According to Variety, Amy Madigan as Aunt Gladys returning in prequel to 2025’s Weapons

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Beyond horror, satire, and the absurd, 2025 is trauma stretched daily on a rack. Escapism can be productive. I recommend any of these 20 films here at QUIRKY CINEMA, each relevant to current sociopolitical realities:

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The great British actor Terence Stamp (1938 – 2025)

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Between the Temples (2024) is “a screwball-style comedy for the Shabbat-observant set” (Slant). Kane plays Carla, retired music teacher and bat mitzvah late-comer. Her unlikely cantor is widower Ben, played by Schwartzman, who lives with his two moms desperate to find anyone else for him. See Comedy/Drama (A-L).

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Enigma (2025) is a documentary about disco star Amanda Lear and the old peer she denies ever knowing April Ashley, a Vogue model outed as transwoman. So much going on, juggled carefully by Zackary Drucker, director of Lady & the Dale (2021) and The Stroll (2023). On HBOMAX. See Documentary (A-L).

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On Becoming a Guinea Fowl (2024) dir. Rungano Nyoni

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Check out a newly added Combo Entry on one of Quirky’s Saints, Sandy Dennis, under the entry Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in Comedy/Drama (M-Z)

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Recommended: George Washington (2000). “Stylized to the point of poetry, David Gordon Green’s impressive debut fuses the lyricism of Terence Malick with Harmony Korine’s willingness to poke around the garbage-strewn landscape of the American underclass,” according to critic Ken Fox.

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Added two Carrie Snodgress films to Quirky Cinema. She reminds me of Helen Shaver and Edie Falco. Her character in Diary of a Mad Housewife (1970) inspired Neil Young’s song “A Man Needs a Maid”; the two married and had a child. See Comedy Drama (A-L). For her psychodrama The Attic (1980) see Horror (A-L).

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Tina Romero, child of horror legend George A. Romero, directs Queens of the Dead: “Big Gay Zom-Com”:

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Two Minnies. Which Witch? Minnie Castevet as played by Dianne Wiest in the prequel Apartment 7A (2024) and Ruth Gordon in the original Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

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Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer back as Spinal Tap for needed laughs in 2025

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O quirkiest of dames! Dame Joan Plowright (October 28, 1929–January 16, 2025)

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> A Comedy in Six Acts: Jan Oxenberg’s pioneering entry into LGBTQ Cinema. [Comedy/Drama (A-L)]
> Cooley High: The film that inspired TV’s Good Times. [Comedy/Drama (A-L)]
> Crazy Fat Ethel: A claustrophobically sleazy psychodrama not out to win you over. [Horror (A-L)]
> Don’t Open the Door: S.F. Brownrigg’s trash-horror sequel to his classic Don’t Look in the Basement
[Horror (A-L)]; “Don’t” try a double feature, i.e. DO!
> The Naked Civil Servant: Quentin Crisp’s autobiography adapted to film proved a touchstone moment
and turning point in LGBTQ history. [Comedy/Drama (M-Z)]
> The Psychopath: Directed by a gay porn director and starring a gay porn actor, they bring a revenge
script to life with the kind of perverse willpower only a truly low budget could exacerbate. [Horror (M-Z)]
> The UFO Incident: The first reported alien abduction involved interracial couple Barney and Betty Hill,
here played by two venerable actors, James Earl Jones and Estelle Parsons. [Comedy/Drama (M-Z)]
> Thundercrack!: An X-rated b+w comedy-horror epic from the queer underground legend Curt
McDowell. Imagine if The Cockettes made a version of The Old Dark House. [Comedy/Drama (M-Z)]
> The Wedding Trough: The one and only arthouse sickie that—in b+w realism, without dialogue—
captures the romance between a man on a farm and a pig on that farm. [Comedy/Drama (M-Z)]

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Marianne Jean-Baptiste, of Mike Leigh’s acclaimed Secrets & Lies (1997), returns in Mike Leigh’s 2024 release Hard Truths, winning Best Actress awards from New York Film Critics Circle, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and National Society of Film Critics (first black actor to win “the critics’ trifecta”).

Go to Comedy/Drama (A-L) for Hard Truths and Comedy/Drama (M-Z) for Secrets & Lies

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The Bad Seed (1956) at Classic Era (A-L): one of the Five Best Portrayals of Cinematic Sociopaths

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Tracey Ullman, Vincent D’Onofrio, Lili Taylor in Household Saints (1993) remastered for DVD in 2024

Read about Household Saints (1993) (dir. Nancy Savoca, above)

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Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Pie Jesu” from Requiem (1985), video directed by legendary filmmaker Stephen Frears

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Queendom (2023), Agniia Galdanova’s documentary about Russian performance artist Gena Marvin.

See Documentary (M-Z)

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Janet Planet, a directorial debut for Amherst-born Annie Baker: I especially love young Zoe Ziegler—so good in this daring yet quiet, stoic yet funny and tender movie from 2023. See Comedy/Drama (A-L).

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The one and only Piper Laurie (1932-2023)

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In 2023: Celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the immortal Paper Moon, directed by Peter Bogdanovich and starring father-daughter team Ryan O’Neal and Tatum O’Neal. Watch the Criterion release and read the original Joe David Brown novel Addie Pray. Aside from Bogdanovich moving the story from Deep South to Kansas and Missouri, the scenes in Addie Pray are cinematic on the page, seeming to have flown, destined, onto the screen (with the bonus of a whole second half of the novel not included in the film).

Go to Comedy/Drama (M-Z) to read more about Paper Moon

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Pearl (2022), see Horror (M-Z)

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Last Stop Larrimah (2023), directed and edited by Thomas Tancred. Like Erroll Morris’s documentary Vernon, Florida (1981) but in Australia and with a murder. Who of the mere ten remaining residents did it? HBOMAX.

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White Noise (2022): Noah Baumbach’s adaptation of Don DeLillo’s 1985 novel is about an Airborne Toxic Event, specifically a chemical spill from a derailed train, and how a rather quirky family copes with evacuation. See entry at Comedy/Drama (M-Z). Though absurdist in its satire (think Don’t Look Up), White Noise proved a wakeup call after an actual “bomb train” prompted the evacuation of East Palestine, Ohio in early 2023. Below: Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig head up the Gladney family.

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A Star Without a Star: The Untold Juanita Moore Story (2022)

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2021 ends with the 50th Anniversary of the release of Hal Ashby’s Harold and Maude, starring Bud Cort and Ruth Gordon—see Comedy/Drama (A-L); also check out the documentary Hal in Documentary A-L

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Cult cinema fans mourning Dean Stockwell (1936-2021) will be quick to point to David Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986), as we should. This is to remind you of or turn you on to some other memorable Dean Stockwell movies. From his child star years, there’s Home Sweet Homicide (1942) and The Boy with Green Hair (a lead role, 1948), from his dashing youth there’s the Leopold & Loebe-inspired masterpiece Compulsion (1959), and from the campy side of 1970s horror there’s Werewolf of Washington (1973). See Classic Era (A-L) and Horror (M-Z).

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Hester Street (1975), dir. Joan Micklin Silver: Restored for a 2021 re-release in theaters, the film is also streaming; for more, see The Classic Jewish Film Hester Street Gets a New Life in 2021

Carol Kane, one of the Saints of Quirky Cinema

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The Innocents a/k/a De Ukyldige (2021) dir. Eskil Vogt

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Tammy Faye Bakker, with husband Jim Bakker, dominated 1980s televangelism until their wildly public downfall. The 2021 film The Eyes of Tammy Faye is named after the beloved documentary The Eyes of Tammy Faye (2000) narrated by RuPaul. Try binging a triple-feature with Fall from Grace (1990), a TV Movie starring Kevin Spacey and Bernadette Peters. For a combo-entry on all three versions of the Bakker saga, see The Eyes of Tammy Faye in Comedy/Drama (A-L).

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Bingo Hell (2021) dir. Gigi Saul Guerrero, starring Adriana Barraza (see Horror (A-L))

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Wish I could find this religious satire from 1971, The Thorn, starring Bette Midler as the Virgin Mary—directed by marijuana-legalization activist and prolific self-help author Peter McWilliams. The book pictured, Going Steady with God, is a real 1967 book “for young people” by an old church lady named Anna B. Mow.

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Films starring Aubrey Plaza, newest Saint of Quirky Cinema: Life After Beth* and The Little Hours (directed by husband Jeff Baena, 2014 and 2017), An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn (2018),* Child’s Play (2019), Black Bear (2020) (*see Horror (A-L) and Comedy/Drama (A-L))

 

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Greener Grass (2019), directed by Jocelyn DeBoer and Dawn Luebbe; see Comedy/Drama (A-L)

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The Witch of Kings Cross (2020) dir. Sonia Bible (see Documentary (M-Z))

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Kajillionaire (2020): Less introspective, slightly opaque Miranda July film that doesn’t star Miranda July herself; it’s still just as quirky but characterological and directorial experimentation suggests an expanding cinematic vision. See Comedy/Drama for this and her films Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005) and The Future (2011).

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RIP Sylvia Miles (1924–2019)

Sylvia Miles can’t be dead. She was made of an immortal material. She was fire. She was acid. She should’ve survived the apocalypse. For her most iconic roles, seek out (clockwise): the perverse horror entry The Sentinel (1977), Andy Warhol’s Heat with Joe Dallesandro (1972, see Comedy/Drama (A-L)), John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy (1969), Tobe Hooper’s underrated The Funhouse (1981, see Horror (A-L)), and the big Agatha Christie splash Evil Under the Sun (1982).

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Who Killed Mary Whats’ername? (1971) stars Red Buttons, Sylvia Miles, Conrad Bain, Sam Waterston, and David “Bosley” Doyle. A weird and grim-gritty slice of the urban early-1970s.

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Realness: Anna Magnani in Tennessee Williams’ The Rose Tattoo (1955)

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A classic ’80s anthology of Horror Film Crit. Check it out!

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Disabilities are not quirks, I should say, but there’s a lot of engaging personalities going on in this “indispensable documentary” (Rolling Stone‘s Peter Travers) directed by James Lebrecht and Nicole Newnham. Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution (2020) focuses on not only the camp experience but also those campers who’d later become driving-force activists for the disability rights movement.

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The Old Dark House (1932) dir. James Whale; see Classic Era (M-Z) 

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RIP: Director Larry Cohen (1936-2019). Longtime psychotronic fave, Cohen’s movies were ever-present in horror sections at video stores in the 1980s and ‘90s. There’s campy fun in the It’s Alive trilogy (1974-1987), an urban “creature feature” Q: The Winged Serpent (1982), a horror-comedy with social commentary called The Stuff (1985), and the Salem’s Lot sequel (1987). See Horror (M-Z) for more on Q and Stuff. Also, see Horror (A-L) for entries on Cohen’s visionary “wtf?”-inducing masterpieces Bone (1972) and God Told Me To (1976).

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Please visit my companion website QUIRKY ACTORS, a photo blog starring over 300 quirky, obscure, supporting, or lesser-known actors, from both classic Hollywood and modern-day eras, many of them admired throughout QUIRKY CINEMA’s hundreds of entries. Plus find a hardy page dedicated to classic era actors parodied in cartoons of the era as well as a nostalgic page dedicated to retro television actors.

A. Loudermilk’s QUIRKY ACTORS Photo Blog

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Mike Leigh classics High Hopes (1989) and Life Is Sweet (1990). See entries in Comedy/Drama (A-L).

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Border (2018): Swedish masterpiece, directed by Iranian-born Ali Abbasi, known for for Shelley (2016), Holy Spider (2022), and The Apprentice (2024). Read more at Horror (A-L).

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1934 portrait of John Barrymore who can be read about here under A Bill of Divorcement (1932) and Dinner at Eight (1933) and a 1928 portrait of his elder brother Lionel Barrymore whose character Grandpa Vanderhof in Frank Capra’s You Can’t Take It With You (1938) is among our Saints of the Quirky. These legendary actors are better known now as Drew Barrymore’s great-uncles.

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Frank Capra’s You Can’t Take It With You (1938): A quirk-peppered screwball classic. All thriving under one roof, Capra’s cast of kooky nonconformists tune in, turn on, and drop out—Depression-era style.

See Classic Era (M-Z)

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Katherine Helmond (1929-2019). Helmond is one of those scene-stealing supporting players most deserving of inclusion in Saints of Quirky Cinema. Her career spanned Hitchcock, mainstream TV, and avant-garde film.

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Do Not Fold, Spindle, or Mutilate (1971) is not a “psychobiddy” entry but close: a psycho pursues some formidable biddies played by (r-l) Mildred Natwick, Myrna Loy, Sylvia Sidney, and Helen Hayes.

See Horror (A-L). Hayes and Natwick returned for more in the fun TV series The Snoop Sisters.

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A 2014 documentary about veteran character actor Dick Miller (1928-2019). His career spanned nearly 200 films over sixty years, including: It Conquered the World (1956), Bucket of Blood (1959), The Trip (1967), Piranha (1978), The Howling (1981), Gremlins (1984), Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983), and Chopping Mall (1986).

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Check out my PopMatters review of Elsa Lanchester‘s autobiography Elsa Lanchester: Herself––originally published 1983 by St. Martin’s Press; reissued 2018 by Chicago Review Press. More than The Bride of Frankenstein, more than wife to legendary actor and out homosexual Charles Laughton, Lanchester was one of the twentieth century’s best kept secrets.

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Barbara Harris (1935-2018):

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Sorry to Bother You (2018) and director Boots Riley, see Comedy/Drama (M-Z)

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Why do fans take George A. Romero’s 1978 indie masterpiece Martin so personally?

My essay in PopMatters looks closely at the film, its novelization, its experimental jazz soundtrack, the pop song by Soft Cell it inspired, and a recent book-length analysis.

“On Lasting Intimacy with a Cult Cinema Vampire”: PopMatters. See also Horror (M-Z).

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This 2018 documentary on counterculture-defining director Hal Ashby (1929-1988), among the most beloved of Saints of Quirky Cinema, will hit fans hard in the best ways, opening up understanding of his few but crucial films. See Documentary A-L. He directed The Landlord (1970), Harold & Maude (1971), and Being There (1979), all included in Comedy/Drama (A-L), as well as The Last Detail (1973), Shampoo (1975), Bound for Glory (1976), and Coming Home (1978).

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Hereditary (2018): A masterful blend of psychodrama and supernatural terror, directed by Ari Aster.

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RIP clever, idiosyncratic Margot Kidder (1948-2018), known for playing Lois Lane in the Superman movies (1979-1983) starring Christopher Reeve. Also the Briana DePalma classic Sisters (1973, see Horror (M-Z)), the Bob Clark classic Black Christmas (1974), The Amityville Horror (1979), and Some Kind of Hero with Richard Pryor (1982). Lois Lane had eclipsed Kidder’s entire career, alas, and she suffered a very public breakdown in 1996, which has been referred to as “the most famous public freak-out in history.”

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“Capitalism is such a macho force. I felt run over.” (The Guardian, 2018)—Jane Campion, one of our Saints of the Quirky as director of the Oscar-winning The Piano (1993) as well as 2 Friends (1986), Sweetie (1989), and An Angel at My Table (1990, pictured below). See Comedy/Drama. “Hero stories are wearing thin. We have lived a male life, we have lived within the patriarchy. It’s something else to take ownership of your own story.” Note: Campion went on to address masculinity directly in her award-winning western The Power of the Dog (2021).

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Voyeur (dirs. Myles Kane, Josh Koury) (2017): Journalism icon Gay Talese (top photo) reports on Gerald Foos (lower photo), the owner of a Colorado motel who, for decades, with the aid of specially designed ceiling vents, watched and took detailed notes on his guests. See entry in Documentary (M-Z).

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New wave cult classic Liquid Sky (1982) on Blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome: Cult Film Preservation & Releasing. Look for Paula E. Sheppard singing “Me and My Rhythm Box” (below left). She stars in only one other movie, a cult classic titled Alice, Sweet Alice (1976, below right) in which she plays bad seed Alice (see Horror (A-L).

Clip from Liquid Sky: “Me and My Rhythm Box”

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The Greasy Strangler (2016) dir. Jim Hosking: see Comedy/Drama A-L.

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In terms of inspiring the quirkiest killers in horror, Charles Manson (1934-2017) and Ed Gein (1906-1984) rule supreme. My high school psychology teacher showed the mini-series Helter Skelter (1976) to fill up some classes and I am still grateful. Steve Railsback is Manson for me as much as Manson is himself, pictured below with George DiCenzo as Vincent Bugliosi, the Los Angeles district attorney who wrote the book Helter Skelter.

Railsback went on to spearhead an underrated 2000 horror indie titled Ed Gein (see Horror (A-L)) starring Railsback himself as Gein and costarring Carrie Snodgrass as his emasculating mother. 

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>>Everyone involved in the town scene early-on in The Blair Witch Project (1999) was a plant. Except for Susie Gooch. A random person from the real Burkitsville, when asked about the Blair Witch she immediately “recalled” (made up) seeing a documentary on the Discovery Channel about the witch and some hunters who went missing. Her child Ingrid did not approve, though now both attend horror-cons together. The two did a reenactment of this scene at Ingrid’s wedding reception.<<

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Remembering Pat Ast: From Warhol star to bad girl in Donna Summer’s “Bad Girls” video, Ast possessed both comic quirks and gutter grit while sporting designs by her pal Halston. Here she is with Joe Dallesandro (in Warhol’s Heat, 1972, see Comedy/Drama (A-L)), with Wendy O. Williams (in Reform School Girls, 1986, see Comedy/Drama (M-Z)), and in a snapshot with Shelley Duvall. For more Saints and Anti-Heroes of Quirky Cinema, see the Saints of the Quirky page.

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See The Naked Civil Servant at Comedy/Drama (M-Z)

for a combo-entry on films about queer icon Quentin Crisp

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A Hero Among Zombies, George A. Romero (1940-2017) and a Genius with Psychos, Tobe Hooper (1943-2017)

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Bela Lugosi (with quote) and Oscar-winning Martin Landau (1928-2017) playing an aged Lugosi in Tim Burton’s film Ed Wood (1994); Landau also known for TV’s Mission: Impossible (1966–1969), Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), and the horror/sci-fi obscurity Without Warning (1980). (See Comedy/Drama (A-L) and See also Horror (M-Z).)

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“I learned that stars starve in silence,” laments Betty Davis, the most hardcore funk pioneer of the 1970s and also the biggest musical mystery of the 1970s. Finally there’s a documentary to help old and new fans better understand her short-lived but influential music career: They Say I’m Different (2017)

See Documentary (M-Z)

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“A Queer Alliance”: PopMatters

Dame Margaret Rutherford as Miss Prism, with Dame Edith Evans, in The Importance of Being Earnest (1952); and as eccentric medium Madame Arcati in Blithe Spirit (1945)

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Danny Perez’s Antibirth (2016) featuring Natasha Lyonne, Chloë Sevigny, and Meg Tilly: gritty gyno-horror comedy with lots of gross-out splatter

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RIP: Alexis Arquette (1969-2016), as Georgette in Last Exit to Brooklyn (1989) and promoting Killer Drag Queens on Dope (2003):

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Tickled (2016), dirs. David Farrier, Dylan Reeve.

Don’t read anything about this documentary. Just watch.

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RIP: Gene Wilder (1933-2016)

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Laurel & Hardy in That’s My Wife (1929); Al Hirschfeld’s “Laurel & Hardy, Sweet Dreams“

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Above: My review of What Happened, Miss Simone? (2015), new on DVD: PopMatters

Below: My review of Antonia’s Line (1993), now on Blu-ray: PopMatters

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Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (dir. Russ Meyer, 1965). See Comedy/Drama (A-L).

Helped by a Kickstarter campaign and John Waters, the documentary on Tura Satana (1938-2011),

star of Russ Meyer’s classic Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965), is still in production as of 2023.

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A few titles from my PopMatters article

“32 Films That Begin with Someone Leaving a Mental Institution, 1904-2012”:

The escaped lunatic in D.W. Griffith’s The House of Darkness (1913)

Screengrabs from Woman in White (1917)

Home Before Dark (dir. Mervyn LeRoy, 1958)

Emily (Mariclare Costello), Jessica (Zohra Lampert) in Let’s Scare Jessica To Death (1971). See Horror (A-L).

I’d always joked that any movie beginning with someone leaving a mental institution was going to be good. Well it wasn’t a joke. It’s a whole subgenre! My article in PopMatters “makes the case for the recently-escaped-or-released-mental-patient narrative as its own subgenre, replete with a language of recurring themes, plot devices, and character archetypes.”

A few more titles from “…32 Films That Begin With Someone Leaving a Mental Institution (1904-2012)”:

Screengrab from William Castle’s Strait-Jacket (1964). See Classic Era (M-Z).

VHS cover for Daddy’s Deadly Darling a/k/a Pigs (dir. Marc Lawrence, 1972). See Horror (A-L).

from Outrageous! (dir. Richard Benner, 1977). See Comedy/Drama (M-Z).

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Clean, Shaven (dir. Lodge Kerrigan, 1993). See Horror (A-L).

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Master of the Downward Spiral, James Mason

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“To Gong or Not To Gong The Gong Show Movie?” by A. Loudermilk

How a major TV phenomenon inspired a flop film: PopMatters

See also Comedy/Drama (A-L)

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Harper Lee (1926-2016) with Mary Badham who played Scout in the classic adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird; also Jem (Phillip Alford) and Dill (John Megna)

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“F That!” Melissa Rauch provides vocals on her film The Bronze‘s end-credits theme, 2015

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The Babadook (2014) by director Jennifer Kent (pictured). See Horror (A-L).

Based on her short film Monster from 2005 (click below).

Monster

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The board game on the big screen, Clue (1985) with Eileen Brennan (Mrs. Peacock), Tim Curry (Wadsworth), Madeline Kahn (Mrs. White), Christopher Lloyd (Professor Plum), Michael McKean (Mr. Green), Martin Mull (Colonel Mustard), and Lesley Ann Warren (Miss Scarlet)

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“You’re as funny as a cry for help.” Obscure comedic actor Jody Gilbert to W.C. Fields in the memorable diner sketch in Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941). Look for her as well in Shadow of the Thin Man (also 1941), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), and Willard (1972).

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Diner Sketch

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Bryan Forbes’ stylish classic Seance on a Wet Afternoon (1964)

starring Kim Stanley and Richard Attenborough. See Classic Era (M-Z).

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Tammy (2014): See Comedy/Drama (M-L)

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Patricia Collinge in Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt (1943)

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Susan Tyrrell (1945-2012), a Saint of the Quirky

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The Boulting Brothers’ Twisted Nerve (1968). See Classic Era (M-Z).

Check out Bernard Hermann’s classic score: Twisted Nerve, Theme

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Housebound (2014)

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Click link below for this hoot of a music video for Miss Jeannie Holliman’s song “D.U.I. Blues”

included in the recommended documentary Mule Skinner Blues (2001). See Documentary (M-Z).

D.U.I. Blues

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Finding Vivian Maier (2013): See Documentary (A-L).

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Elsa Lanchester is a saint in the scheme of the Quirky, along with her husband Charles Laughton. She’s known most for playing the Bride in Bride of Frankenstein (1932), wife #4 in Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), Aunt Queenie in Bell, Book and Candle (1958), Katie Nanna in Mary Poppins (1964), the domineering mom in Willard (1971), and Jessica Marbles in Murder by Death (1976). My February 2014 article on Elsa Lanchester and songwriter Forman Brown focuses on their time with the queer and eccentric Turnabout Theatre. Read Online: Polari. Also see Turnabout: The Story of the Yale Puppeteers (1992, dir. Dan Bessie) in Documentary (M-Z).

Polari

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Philip Seymour Hoffman (1967-2014)

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Lady in a Cage (1964): From the grim but tripped-out opening credits sequence to Olivia de Havilland declaring “Stone age, here I come!”, this shocker still shocks with its aggressively dismal view of society.

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Zellner Brothers’ Kid-Thing (2013). See Comedy/Drama (A-L).

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The Mad Room (1969) directed by Bernard Girard,

a remake of Charles Vidor’s gothic-noir classic Ladies in Retirement (1941). See Classic Era (A-L).

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Algonquinite humorist Robert Benchley may not have originated the mockumentary but he was the first to popularize it. His many one-reelers are collected on DVD though hard to found. Try YouTube. Perhaps begin with “How to Sleep” (which one an Oscar) or “The Sex Life of the Polyp.” See entry on How To Sleep: Robert Benchley’s Miniatures in Classic Era (A-L).

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      Steve Buscemi b+w portrait by James Dimmock

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A fashion-focused montage of clips from the otherwise impossible to find German film It Is Not the Homosexual Who Is Perverse, But the Society in Which He Lives (1971); directed by Rosa von Praunheim

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It Is Not the Homosexual

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Christopher Guest as Corky St. Clair in Waiting for Guffman (1996) showing us his Remains of the Day lunchbox. Jennifer Coolidge, Patrick Cranshaw in Christopher Guest’s Best in Show (2000).

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Jimmy Stewart, Thelma Ritter

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From the Mike Leigh classic High Hopes (1988) with Philip Davis and Ruth Sheen; see Comedy/Drama (A-L)

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Roddy McDowall reads the stories of H.P. Lovecraft. Click link below to hear “The Outsider”

“The Outsider”

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A true and enduring cult classic documentary The Atomic Cafe (1982). See Documentary (A-L).

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For comics fans, a heroic tale: Miss Robin Hood (1952) starring Dame Margaret Rutherford and Richard Hearne. See Classic Era (M-Z).

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Bill and Coo (1948): Movie starring birds dressed as humans with a plot reflecting wartime fears and pushing patriotism; the tiny set won a special Academy Award

Bill and Coo (Full-length Movie)

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A French antiwar film I highly recommend, 1952’s Forbidden Games. Roger Ebert: “Movies like René Clement’s Forbidden Games cannot work unless they are allowed to be completely simple, without guile, transparent. Despite the scenes I have described, it is never a tear-jerker. It doesn’t try to create emotions, but to observe them. Paulette cannot speak for herself, and the movie doesn’t try to speak for her. That’s why it is so powerful: Her grief is never addressed, and with the help of a boy who loves her, she surrounds it with a game that no adult could possibly understand, or penetrate.”

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Pages from a Pop Culture Scrapbook I started in 1987

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My article in Polari on female impersonator Charles Pierce, the most famous Bette Davis impersonator in the world and supporting player in the film adaptation of Torch Song Trilogy (1988); there’s a link to Pierce’s one-person show, Legendary Ladies of the Silver Screen, at the bottom of the article

Polari

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Misleading poster for the nearly impossible to find 1967 thriller Our Mother’s House with Pamela Franklin and Dirk Bogarde. From Jack Clayton, the director of The Innocents (1961) and The Pumpkin Eater (1964). Links below to trailer and Georges Delerue’s theme.

Our Mother’s House (Trailer)

Our Mother’s House (Theme Song)

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Oscar-nom Agnes Moorehead should’ve won

for her immortal role in Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons (1942).

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Caglar Juan Singletary’s song-poem “Non-Violent TaeKwonDo Troopers,” featured in the much recommended documentary Off the Charts: The Song-Poem Story (2003). Link below; see also Documentary (M-Z).

Singletary’s Song-Poem

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Check out the quirky cast in Ernst Lubitsch’s classic The Shop Around the Corner (1940)

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About UK poet Stevie Smith (1978); see entry in Comedy/Drama (M-Z)

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Quirky actor of note: Dick Shawn gave voice to Snow Miser from A Year Without a Santa Claus (1974) and had memorable roles in movies like The Producers (1968) and the first Angel movie (1984). In 1987, he suffered a heart attack onstage while performing his act and died. He was 63-years-old. Check out my entries on Angel and his suicidal mockumentary Good-bye Cruel World (1983) in Comedy/Drama (A-L).

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Clarkworld (2009), documentary about beloved director Bob Clark, known most now for the holiday favorite A Christmas Story (1983, see Comedy/Drama A-L). Also check out: She-Man (1967, see Comedy/Drama M-Z), Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things (1972, see Horror A-L), Black Christmas (1974), and the Porky’s movies (1981, 1983). One of this website’s Saints of the Quirky, Clark and his son both died in a car accident in 2007.

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The Secret Garden (1949) with Brian Roper, Dean Stockwell, Margaret O’Brien

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Lucio Fulci classics

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Shirley Valentine (1989) “An hilarious” comedy-drama starring Pauline Collins (click image to enlarge)

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Went from a rather dry documentary, Kraftwerk and the Electronic Revolution (2008), to an Indonesian jungle-cannibal flick Savage Terror (1980) with opening theme song being, of all things, Kraftwerk’s “We Are the Robots.” Thank ye gods of psychotronic cinema for another unpredictable thrill!

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Moviegoers could see the ghosts even without the gimmick Ghost Viewer, of course, which allowed William Castle’s delightful 13 Ghosts (1960) to be aired on TV over the years. See Classic Era (M-Z).

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Linda Day‘s best role. She’d later become Linda Day George, married to her costar Christopher George (Gates of Hell), both very familiar (if not necessarily quirky) faces from the ’70s.

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from the House of Psychotic Women program playing at 92YTribeca

House of Psychotic Women a/k/a Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll (1974)

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A young Carol Kane, one of the Saints of Quirky Cinema:

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The much loved gay character Lindy (played by Antonio Fargas) added a queer kind of quirk to the cult classic Car Wash (1979). (See Comedy/Drama (A-L).) Censors cut Lindy out of the movie altogether when Car Wash aired on TV, robbing viewers of the movie’s most famous line, delivered with dignified sass:

Scene from Car Wash

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Ruth Gordon at four looking 40; Ruth Gordon by Al Hirschfield looking kid-like:

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Frequent butler, Eric Blore, here in Picadilly Jim (1936)

Watch clip with E.E. Horton and Eric Blore from Shall We Dance (1937)

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Thora Birch as Enid in Ghost World; Felissa Rose as Sleepaway Camp‘s Angela in a recent meme.

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Mother Jefferson rules! Played by Zara Cully who, alas, died three years into Norman Lear’s series The Jeffersons that immortalized her. Before her TV roles—and roles in films like The Liberation of L.B. Jones (1970), Sugar Hill (1974), Darktown Strutters (1975)—she was a longtime HBC prof known as “one of the world’s greatest elocutionists.”

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Judy Garland

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Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)

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Up in Smoke (1978)

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Una O’Connor as Minnie the Maid in Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

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Michael Redgrave and friend in the original horror anthology film Dead of Night (1945)

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Strangers in Good Company a/k/a The Company of Strangers (1990)

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Girl Stroke Boy (1971). See Comedy/Drama (M-Z).

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Revenge of Bigfoot (1979) starring Rory Calhoun, so obscure even I can’t find a copy: “An Indian moves in with a friendly rancher and a local bigot tries to run the Indian out of town. A bigfoot monster gets in his way.” (IMDb)

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Character actors on vinyl:

A Taste Of Hermione Baddeley and B.S. Pully’s Fairy Tales ‎(both 1961)

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Pedro Almodóvar’s High Heels (1991), starring Victoria Abril and Marisa Paredes, with Almodóvar center

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Spring Byington of Capra’s You Can’t Take It With You and Marjorie Main of Ma & Pa Kettle—lovable character actors and longtime partners; lived across the street from George Cukor but never attended his parties.

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The Baby (1973): A campy nightmare of female power. See Horror (A-L).

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I’m often mesmerized by “lesbian predator” films. Windows (1980) is certainly the vilest, though, equating lesbian and male rapist directly. Legendary cinematographer Gordon Willis directs, bringing Klute-like credibility, and actors are solid, but the writing/premise earned it multiple “Golden Raspberry” awards. New Yorker lambasted it: “Windows exists only in the perverted fantasies of men who hate lesbians so much they will concoct any idiocy in order to slander them.” For LGBTQ-cinema history fans only.

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ZaSu Pitts and Thelma Todd in On The Loose (1931)

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Thelma Todd and Patsy Kelly in Babes in the Goods (1934)

Two actors who can be found throughout the Classic Era sections are Patsy Kelly (Movie Struck a/k/a Pick a Star, My Son the Hero, Nobody’s Baby, Pigskin Parade, Road Show, Topper Returns) and Zasu Pitts (Dames, Life with Father, Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch, So’s Your Aunt Emma! a/k/a Meet the Mob). Both stars worked in comic duo-ship with Hal Roach star Thelma Todd, making well over two dozen shorts. Patsy Kelly was iconic enough to become the subject of a so-called Tijuana Bible. As for Zasu Pitts, her candy recipes were published posthumously as a book called Candy Hits by Zasu Pitts.

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Patsy Kelly as a Satanist in Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

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Paul Dano

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Nick and Nora Charles (William Powell and Myrna Loy) of the Thin Man film-series:

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Atari game version of David Cronenberg’s classic body-horror film Videodrome (1983) starring James Woods and Debbie Harry.

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My essay on stalker movies from a sissy point of view, at BRIGHT LIGHTS FILM JOURNAL:

“Last to Leave the Theater: Sissy Spectatorship of Stalker Movies and the ‘Final Girls’ Who Survive Them”

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 Aline MacMahon and Guy Kibbee in Babbit (1934)

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It Should Happen to You (1954) starring Judy Holliday as Gladys Glover. See Classic Era (A-L).

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WHAT IS PARACINEMA? WHAT IS PSYCHOTRONIC CINEMA?

Film Studies term PARACINEMA goes a long way to define the term PSYCHOTRONIC–coined as title of Michael Weldon’s film magazine and cult-adored movie guides. Notes on Jeffrey Sconce’s classic essay: “’Trashing’ The Academy: Taste, Excess and an Emerging Politics of Cinematic Style” (Screen 36:4 Winter 1995)

Click for Psychotronic.com

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Tugboat Annie (1933). See Classic Era (M-Z).

Quirky actor extraordinaire Marie Dressler incognito

Click here to see clip of Marie Dressler in Dangerous Females

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Thank you for visiting my website

Enjoy the individual reference sections  

Comedy/Drama;  Classic-Era Comedy/Drama;  Horror/Thriller/Psychodrama;  Documentary

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A test audience reacting to the chest burster scene in Alien, 1979

The marquee of the movie theater in my hometown in southern Illinois, and an old newspaper ad

Legal Notice: This is an online reference guide. All the writing is by me, A. Loudermilk. I do not, however, own copyrights for any of the images. They are offered in the spirit of education, film studies, and cultural criticism. If you own the copyright of a certain image and wish it removed, leave a comment below or email aloudermilk111@yahoo.com.

Classic Era Comedy/Drama: 154

Comedy/Drama: 183

Documentary: 143

Horror/Thriller/Psychodrama: 144

Total Number of Film Entries (all written by A. Loudermilk) as of September 2025: 624

ESTABLISHED 2012 : COPYRIGHT 2025

email me at aloudermilk111@yahoo.com

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