Incredibly Strange Video

It's the first ever ISV Double Feature! When two movies gel together so very well, we're going to stuff them both into one episode for an XL discussion of their joint insanity. Case in point, Run and Kill and Fatal Termination, two essential Hong Kong CAT III films from the early 90's.

Run and Kill follows Fat Cheung, a man who gets perilously drunk one night and accidentally orders a hit on his wife. What begins as a somewhat dark comedy of errors quickly spirals into one of the bleakest films we've ever seen. And Fatal Termination is a police procedural about some Lebanese terrorists trying to move some guns, and the fearsome customs agent hellbent on screwing them over.

And just what is a CAT III film from Hong Kong in the early 90's? CAT III was a rating that was introduced in 1988 and was akin to the modern NC-17 MPAA rating. Crazy thing is, though, unlike the NC-17 rating being a death sentence to American films, Hong Kong filmmakers actually strived to make CAT III movies in the 90's and a surprisingly huge percentage of the films released in HK down that stretch were CAT III. HK audiences yearned for the most extreme cinema imaginable, and lots of filmmakers were more than happy to oblige them with some of the most ludicrous stuff ever captured on celluloid.

Nowadays, CAT III has become a retroactive genre of its own that encompasses the nastiest of the nasty HK cinema had to offer in the 90's, and so this week we're talking about two of the most notorious films from that period. Run and Kill features one of the most disturbing scenes in cinema history, and Fatal Termination boasts perhaps the most outrageous stunt sequence ever committed to film. A bold claim? Just wait and see. It's truly unbelievable.

In addition to taking a very, very deep dive into the history of CAT III cinema and the philosophical/political elements surrounding it, we also take a personal deep dive into just why we enjoy watching extreme/disturbing cinema, using psychological research to better understand ourselves and the mindset of anyone who's obsessed with incredibly strange cinema.

And we eventually find time to break down the actual films themselves and their visual language. It's a HUGE episode, so what are you waiting for? Let's get exceptionally weird with the world of HK CAT III cinema!

(Also, in the episode we both take the "Zuckerman-Kuhlman Personality Questionnaire" to determine our level of Sensation-Seeking personality. If you, too, would like to play along at home and take the questionnaire, you can do so here: https://www.psytoolkit.org/survey-library/zkpq-50-cc.html)

Run and Kill
Directed by Billy Tang
1993, Hong Kong

Fatal Termination
Directed by Andrew Kam Yueng-Wah
1990, Hong Kong

Incredibly Strange Video is produced and edited by Ryan Quinn and Cassie Kay. Follow us on Bluesky @isvpodcast.bsky.social for updates on the newest episodes!

Theme music:
The End by EVA
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0

All excerpts from the films discussed are used for educational and critical purposes only.

No generative AI is used in the production of this show. Keep the world human.

We hope you're ready to get your sexy German Expressionism on, because today we're talking about - not the remake of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari - but rather the full on direct sequel to the 1920 silent film. We answer important questions such as, "Did The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari need to be remade?", and "If so, should it have been at the hands of an avant garde adult film director with actors voguing the entire time?" In short, the answers are yes, and it's amazing.

This film picks up many years after the events of history's first horror film, and it's Dr. Caligari's granddaughter running the asylum now, with some help from her (now very old) zany assistant, Cesare. The new Dr. Caligari specializes in hypothalamus interfacing, which involves swapping the brain fluids from one person to another to swap their personalities. And with this foundation, the film launches into a bizarre, nightmarish exploration of sexual politics and the authoritarian attempts at control over gender identity.

It's a film that looks as though it was shot entirely inside an old ride-through haunted house, with absolutely wild set design and cinematography and wall-to-wall over-the-top performances. We feel as though this is the closest cousin we've ever seen to The Rocky Horror Picture Show and it might just deserve just as much acclaim and cult fandom as that groundbreaking film. It's a lost gem of pop-art insanity and we can't wait to break it all down with you.

Also, Cassie reveals a shocking admission about the original Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.

Dr. Caligari
Directed by Stephen Sayadian
1989, United States

Incredibly Strange Video is produced and edited by Ryan Quinn and Cassie Kay. Follow us on Bluesky @isvpodcast.bsky.social for updates on the newest episodes!

Theme music:
The End by EVA
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0

All excerpts from the films discussed are used for educational and critical purposes only.

No generative AI is used in the production of this show. Keep the world human.

We're back! We took a break while Ryan focused on another project, but now we've returned for more incredibly strange cinema, starting with a rare ski-slasher, in which a bunch of horny couples gather for a timeshare presentation at a winter villa and are slowly picked off one by one by a mysterious killer!

Iced is a film that until last year was stuck in VHS purgatory, released once and only once and considered to be a somewhat lost film until its new Vinegar Syndrome release. It also features a strange, dreamlike aesthetic on account of being shot on film but edited to tape, combining both mediums to (intentionally?) create a surreal, dreamlike experience.

On this episode we'll break down how this film is a precursor to modern horror film The Ritual and also summons pivotal scenes from Herman Melville's Moby Dick. We'll also explore how the real horror might not be the killer but rather the timeshare contract that the couples are being presented with during their hard-sell weekend away. As skiers ourselves, we also discuss the quality of the actual skiing in the film and what it means to have 'integrity as a skier'.

This film is a fever dream. It sells itself as a slasher but it's an hour and a half of dream logic and jumbled timelines, mixing visions of the past, present, and future indiscriminately. In our Thoughts From Letterboxd segment we contend with reviewers who think the whole affair is quite boring (on account of its minimal actual slashing), but we hope to make the case that this is must-see cinema for lovers of the bizarre.

Iced
Directed by Jeff Kwinty
1989, United States

Incredibly Strange Video is produced and edited by Ryan Quinn and Cassie Kay. Follow us on Bluesky @isvpodcast.bsky.social for updates on the newest episodes!

Theme music:
The End by EVA
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0

All excerpts from the films discussed are used for educational and critical purposes only.

No generative AI is used in the production of this show. Keep the world human.

Take the seminal surf movie Gidget from 1959, add in a bunch of slasher elements from the 80's, and use it all to deconstruct gender norms - that's Psycho Beach Party in a nutshell! This crazy stage-to-screen should-be-cult-classic is a must-see offbeat comedy for fans of incredibly strange cinema.

Chicklet Forrest is a sixteen year old tomboy who wants nothing to do with chasing boys and everything to do with chasing waves. It's not long before she joins up with a gang of local surfer guys in Malibu, and not long after that when some of them start washing up on the beach cut into pieces - and Chicklet and her split personalities are the prime suspects.

In our first episode of the new year, we dig into how this film parodies Gidget and in doing so takes for a lark the idea of "normalcy" that Hollywood so often tried to peddle to teens rolling up to the drive-in back in the 60's. It purports that under the surface of every Frankie Avalon movie, there was a repressed bubble of sexual deviancy and homosexuality just waiting to explode. And, so, this film lets it explode.

We also honor our dearly departed podcast cat, Trip, and welcome to the show our new podcast dog, Jiffy. Cassie proposes that many elements of Psycho Beach Party remind her of Akira Kurosawa's Ran. Ryan proposes everyone in Gidget was gay. We both embrace the new trend of being #cigfluencers and enjoy some nice, mild cigarettes during the show. Cassie explains the history of surfing. Ryan shares a spicy take on The Beach Boys explores how Gen Z has escaped 'The Royal Hays Code'. The line between Gidget and Psycho Beach Party becomes increasingly blurred as things progress.

Psycho Beach Party
Directed by Robert Lee King
2000, United States

Incredibly Strange Video is produced and edited by Ryan Quinn and Cassie Kay. Follow us on Bluesky @isvpodcast.bsky.social for updates on the newest episodes!

Theme music:
The End by EVA
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0

All excerpts from the films discussed are used for educational and critical purposes only.

No generative AI is used in the production of this show. Keep the world human.

What's spooky season without a certified slashic? And it doesn't get much more grindhouse than this - woefully maligned by most critics and audience reviewers alike, we're here to tell you this all but forgotten low-budget slasher is far more interesting and more intricately constructed than most would have you believe.

Terror at Tenkiller is a regional horror film from outside Tulsa, Oklahoma, shot in two weeks with a budget of $40,000. And while it doesn't fit into the traditional mold of 80's slasher films, that's precisely why we find it so interesting. Instead of hitting the narrative beats and conventional scares of something like Friday the 13th, this "people being murdered around a lake" flick channels techniques and narrative choices closer to the works of Robert Altman and David Lynch. In revealing its killer's identity in the first act, it also shifts its horror away from mystery and into the realm of dramatic irony, as everyone in the film so casually interacts with a bloodthirsty maniac.

It's a strange, surreal experience with surprisingly progressive writing, and since it was shot by a documentary filmmaker and not a horror-focused director, it also presents itself as a deep character study of its two female leads at a level most other slashers rarely accomplish.

Dreamlike, hypnotizing, and in our opinions endlessly intriguing, this film is a must-see for any fans of the slasher genre in search of something way outside of the norm. You can stream it on Arrow Player, Tubi, and Plex, or pick it up on its new Vinegar Syndrome Blu-Ray!

Happy Halloween, everyone!

Terror at Tenkiller
Directed by Ken Meyer
1986, United States

Incredibly Strange Video is produced and edited by Ryan Quinn and Cassie Kay. Follow us on Bluesky @isvpodcast.bsky.social for updates on the newest episodes!

Theme music:
The End by EVA
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0

All excerpts from the films discussed are used for educational and critical purposes only.

No generative AI is used in the production of this show. Keep the world human.

There's perhaps never been a more exciting movement in action filmmaking than the Hong Kong New Wave in the 1980's, and within that body of work perhaps no films more unique and unusual than the hopping vampire movies.

What are Hong Kong Hopping Vampires? Well, they're vampires from the Qing Dynasty who hunt for victims by...hopping. Feet together, arms out, one stiff hop after another. And this film - Encounters of the Spooky Kind - is the one that heralded in the entire craze with an unforgettable martial arts showdown between Sammo Hung as Bold Cheung and Yuen Biao as his Hopping Vampire foe.

And so in this episode we - along with cinematographer Ryan Kroboth, our friend Evan, and Dr. Connie Chen - explore just what the heck a hopping vampire is, why they exist, and furthermore how Sammo Hung and a host of other Hong Kong action filmmakers in the 80's were able to create the most insane stunts and fight sequences ever committed to film.

We're also getting into the weeds with how certain cinema lenses are used to achieve the signature "kung fu snap zoom" that fills this movie with dynamic frame adjustments, the history of Hong Kong cinema's Peking Opera tradition and the stuntmen/leading men who emerged from those schools, and of course discuss this film's unforgettable final frames and decide which side of the Letterboxd debate we fall on - is it extremely problematic or is it the best final "The End" freeze frame of all time?

So hop along with us as we continue through spooky season with, in our opinion, an essential film for the Halloween season, Encounters of the Spooky Kind!

Encounters of the Spooky Kind
Directed by Sammo Hung
1980, Hong Kong

Additional music credits:

"Yokai", "Dark Sakura", "Hannya", and "Yurei" by Kraosando

"Jing Diao" and "Xing Jie" by Jiangsu Song and Dance Ensemble

Incredibly Strange Video is produced and edited by Ryan Quinn and Cassie Kay. Follow us on Bluesky @isvpodcast.bsky.social for updates on the newest episodes!

Theme music:
The End by EVA
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0

All excerpts from the films discussed are used for educational and critical purposes only.

No generative AI is used in the production of this show. Keep the world human.

It's Spooky Season, and what better way to kick things off than with the spookiest film that ever did spook - Spookies!

To say that Spookies has a unique production history is an understatement - the film started shooting in 1984 and didn't hit US theaters until 1988, over which time it was in the hands of three different directors and two directors of photography and multiple teams of actors and crews. We're here to give you all the gory details of how this thing got smashed together, and we're also here to tell you...it all kinda works?

Because we love Spookies. It's a practical effects showcase, full of creative monsters and traps and kills, truly wall to wall lunacy behind every door in this elaborate haunted house film. Even the house the filmed it in has some crazy history, and you'll be gobsmacked to learn why the family who owned the old mansion in Rye, NY rented it out to the film crew in the first place.

For this monumental episode, we are joined by an all-star cast, and the biggest group we've ever had on Incredibly Strange Video. Cinematographer Ryan Kroboth is back with us again, and for the first time since The Hottie and the Nottie, our good friends Evan and Rachel join us once again to discuss important issues such as how this film might be making commentary on Reaganism and trickle-down economics, as well as exploring what it means to be in a "Federalist Papers flow state".

So tap play and let's get weird with one of the weirdest movies ever made.

Spookies
Directed by Brendan Faulkner, Thomas Doran, and Genie Joseph
1986, United States

Incredibly Strange Video is produced and edited by Ryan Quinn and Cassie Kay. Follow us on Bluesky @isvpodcast.bsky.social for updates on the newest episodes!

Theme music:
The End by EVA
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0

All excerpts from the films discussed are used for educational and critical purposes only.

No generative AI is used in the production of this show. Keep the world human.

It's the Season 1 finale! Instead of the Razzie awards, which poke fun at the worst movies of the year, we're hosting our first annual SNAZZY AWARDS! Over the next hours we'll be celebrating the best and boldest of the incredibly strange cinema we covered in our first season, revisiting the 29 films we discussed this year and choosing our picks for prestigious titles such as "Grossest Scene", "Best Gratuitous Nudity", "Best Explosion", and the highest honor of them all, "Excellence In Tastelessness"!

Which films will come out on top? Tap play to find out!

And thank you to everyone who has listened to Season 1!

Additional Music Credits:

Award show themes courtesy of Music For Video Library

"Ninja Theme" by Tennilkar Creations

Incredibly Strange Video is produced and edited by Ryan Quinn and Cassie Kay. Follow us on Bluesky @isvpodcast.bsky.social for updates on the newest episodes!

Theme music:
The End by EVA
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0

All excerpts from the films discussed are used for educational and critical purposes only.

No generative AI is used in the production of this show. Keep the world human.

"WE MADE YOU! WEEEEE MAAAAAADE YOOOOUUUUUU!"

Ahem, er yes, now that we've got that out of our system, let's gear up for the third and final installment of our BIG TRUCK TRILOGY. Master of horror Stephen King has left his mark across scary cinema for decades, but perhaps surprisingly, he only ever directed one film. And it's this one. And it's CRAZY.

Maximum Overdrive throws a simple premise at us in its opening moments - a comet passing by Earth possesses all of our machines, making them sentient and murderous. That's really all there is to it. From the word go, machines start chop chop chopping people up in increasingly creative and deranged ways, until we finally find ourselves trapped at the Dixie Boy truck stop with Gordon Bombay, Lisa Simpson, and Commissioner Gordon. And Commissioner Gordon has a ton of rocket launchers in the basement.

Sound amazing? It is amazing. Stephen King famously hates his one and only foray into the director's chair, but we're here to cut through the negativity like an electric carving knife sawing through a diner waitress' arm. Maximum Overdrive is a surprisingly dense and thought provoking movie with incredible stunt sequences, a killer soundtrack by freakin' AC/DC, and a genuinely iconic horror villain - The Goblin Truck!

So in this episode, we'll be talking about how this film makes some powerful statements about consumerism and how it's destroying humanity, extrapolating that into deeper meditations on how our increasingly digital lives have trapped us in a metaphorical truck stop, surrounded by mechanical vultures of our own making, just as the characters in the film find themselves stuck with no escape.

We'll also be digging into the hazy history of one of the film's most infamous scenes - you know, the one where a steamroller pulverizes a little league kid? Lots of folks remember that scene being a bit different when they saw it back in the 80's...but was it? Or is it just a case of the Mandela Effect at work?

There's a ton of wild stuff to dive into with this one, and as you'll hear us mention in the episode, if you want to see the original Green Goblin truck face live and in person, you can catch it this Halloween season at a spooky event near you! Check out thegoblinproject.com to find out where the restored prop is heading in October!

Oh! And hey! This is the second to last episode of Season 1! Woohoo! Thanks so much to everyone who has listened in so far! This has been such a fun project to launch and we're working on a special awards show style episode featuring all the films we've covered over the last year to wrap things up at the end of the month. So until then, keep it incredibly strange!

Maximum Overdrive
Directed by Stephen King
1986, United States

Additional music credits:

"Mississippi River" by Musicoman Free, @musicomanfree on YouTube and Instagram, "Drive Into the Night" by Harris Heller, and multiple AC/DC-style backing tracks by Rob Cavallo Music and Rock On Jam Tracks.

Incredibly Strange Video is produced and edited by Ryan Quinn and Cassie Kay. Follow us on Bluesky @isvpodcast.bsky.social for updates on the newest episodes!

Theme music:
The End by EVA
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0

All excerpts from the films discussed are used for educational and critical purposes only.

No generative AI is used in the production of this show. Keep the world human.

When 2 women, 18 wheels, and 16 gears are rollin'...move over! The two women in question are Annie Potts as Flatbed Annie and Kim Darby as Sweetie Pie, two lady truckers on the run from a relentless repo man (played by Harry Dean Stanton before he'd again play a repo man in, um, Repo Man) and menacing cocaine traffickers. Fred Willard and Joe Estevez are also hanging around the fringes of this obscure made-for-TV movie that has been relegated to general obscurity...until now!

Or at least whenever this podcast itself escapes obscurity itself. In any case, the ISV crew is approaching this film with one big question: Is this a feminist movie? At the bare minimum it is surprisingly respectful of its female leads, especially for a film made in 1979. They have agency, they aren't sexualized, and they grow together as platonic friends who are never shoehorned into a romantic relationship because that's what audiences might expect - but does it go further than that? Is this a long lost gem of feminism in film?

In addition to that discussion, Ryan and Cassie introduce a new segment called "Exploitation or Empowerment?", wherein Ryan offers up a scene for Cassie and she decides which way it swings in that (sometimes very fuzzy) dichotomy. And in the "Thoughts From Letterboxd" segment, they counter some negative reviews that claim the film is poorly constructed, by analyzing the cinematography and editing and how it comes together to create emotional impact from the very beginning of the film.

It's a unique spin on the 70's/80's trucker genre that you can stream for free on Tubi! So come hit the road and explore this forgotten road trip classic. Oh, and did we mention it's from the same director as Xanadu?

Flatbed Annie & Sweetie Pie: Lady Truckers
Directed by Robert Greenwald
1979, United States

Additional music by Infraction No Copyright Music

Incredibly Strange Video is produced and edited by Ryan Quinn and Cassie Kay. Follow us on Bluesky @isvpodcast.bsky.social for updates on the newest episodes!

Theme music:
The End by EVA
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0

All excerpts from the films discussed are used for educational and critical purposes only.

No generative AI is used in the production of this show. Keep the world human.