ComingSoon.net recently took advantage of the movie app Midnight Pulp, and found a whole slew of wonderfully strange genre fare for some of our more adventurous readers out there. Check out our list of 10 Great Weird Movies Available on Midnight Pulp below!
Midnight Pulp is free with ads, though there is also a premium version for $4.99 a month with more movies (a lot of R-rated stuff), a diverse cross-section of action, horror, exploitation, experimental, anime, foreign and generally offbeat programming. There’s a diverse cross section of quality programming, some of it familiar and some of it not. Click here to check out Midnight Pulp for yourself!
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Bad Taste
Lord of the Rings‘ Peter Jackson’s first foray into features lives up to its name and then some, featuring crazy gross-out gags created through ingenious special effects that defy the low low budget. Jackson himself plays two roles, and you can see the first inklings of one of the most successful filmmakers of all-time.
The Baby
Released the same year he made Magnum Force, Ted Post’s 1973 oddity follows a social worker who discovers a grown man who has been pathologically infantilized by his mother. The man literally still thinks and acts like a baby, sleeps in a crib, etc. This is a wild flick with a whopper of a twist ending you definitely won’t see coming.
Messiah of Evil
Aroung the same time they co-wrote the classic American Graffiti (but long before they made the infamous Howard the Duck), husband/wife team Willard Huyck & Gloria Katz made this cheapie horror flick. Despite its low budget trappings, this creepy story about a woman who travels to a strange town to find her missing father only to encounter a strange death cult is full of surreal moments that are genuinely jarring at times. A very underrated film, that also features classic character actors Elisha Cook Jr. and Royal Dano.
Horror Express
This Spanish-made cult classic is like Murder on the Orient Express mashed up with a Hammer Horror flick. Hammer vets Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing lead the charge as passengers aboard the Trans-Siberian Express from China to Moscow in 1906 as they deal with one of the weirdest monsters ever, an extraterrestrial that inhabits host bodies and leaves images of pre-historic earth in their eyes. Yeah. Telly Savalas is having a ball as a willful Cossack officer, and the movie is filled with a lot of fun miniature work of the train.
The Slayer
This film could almost be seen as a kind of precursor to the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise (right down to the burn victim dream monster), following an abstract artist named Kay plagued by nightmares of supernatural torment and death. Fearing her mental health, Kay’s friends take her on a vacation to an island which they discover upon landing is actually deserted. Trapped on the island by a hurricane, the group starts getting picked off one by one every time Kay falls asleep.
The Changeling
This classic shocker (which is poised for a big remake) stars George C. Scott in a bravura performance as a composer who moves into an eerie Victorian mansion after the tragic deaths of his wife and child. Once he moves in he begins experiencing supernatural phenomena. With chilling atmosphere, this is one of the most accomplished horror films of the 80’s.
Demon City Shinjuku
Before he became an anime legend directing Ninja Scroll, The Animatrix and Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, Yoshiaki Kawajiri helmed this darkly twisted OVA. It concerns a near-future Tokyo where an earthquake has made part of the city a demon-infested hell hole. Midnight Pulp also has Kawajiri’s Wicked City available!
Satan’s School For Girls
This 1973 made-for-TV movie (produced by Aaron Spelling!) is not as salacious as its title suggests. It’s actually a cracking gothic terror tale set at an all-girls academy where a young woman played by Pamela Franklin goes to look into the death of her sister. Roy Thinnes is terrific, and it also features a pre-Charlie’s Angels Kate Jackson!
Tideland
Terry Gilliam’s wildly misunderstood and underseen masterpiece is something in between Alice in Wonderland and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Jodelle Ferland stars as an imaginative young girl whose parents (Jeff Bridges and Jennifer Tilly) both overdose and she is left stranded in a remote farm house with some very strange neighbors across the way. This is a movie designed to be divisive and test your limits as a viewer in almost every way, especially via the juxtaposition of the genuinely innocent and the severely disturbing.
Creature
A year before Aliens came out, that films effects artists Dennis Skotak and Robert Skotak actually did the impressive effects for this Alien ripoff. Directed by William Malone and featuring a fun cast including Klaus Kinski, it’s heavy on spooky atmosphere and a must-see for Xenomorph fans. The version available on the service is actually the director’s cut titled “The Titan Find.”
