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 KillDirected by Billy Tang1993, Hong KongFatal TerminationDirected by Andrew Kam Yueng-Wah1990, Hong KongIncredibly 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 EVACreative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0All 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. CaligariDirected by Stephen Sayadian1989, United StatesIncredibly 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 EVACreative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0All 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.IcedDirected by Jeff Kwinty1989, United StatesIncredibly 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 EVACreative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0All 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.