Weirdest films ever?

The Lobster (2015) is kind of surreal

Eraserhead (1977)

Swiss Army Man is where Daniel Radcliff plays a corpse. For pretty much the entire movie.

Enter the Void (2009): It's just like... a nearly three hour long fever dream drug trip.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998): A shorter drug trip with more action and laughs... take a trip (heh) with a man, his attorney, a suitcase, and some bats.

Fire and Ice (1983): A rotoscoped dark fantasy. Just all kinds of 80s weird rotoscope fun.

Martyrs (Original French Version - 2008): Some would argue it's torture porn.. which I guess I can't fully disagree with that, but it's more than that. I've never watched another movie that made me feel the way Martyrs did when it was over. Strong warning that this movie is heavy.

Pink Floyd – The Wall (1982): Technically a musical, but it's full of all the wonderful psychedelic (at times a bit creepy) weirdness that is peak Pink Floyd.

House is a great piece of low-budget '70s Japanese horror. It's surreal, funny, and scary. If you're in for something weird, it's a lot of fun.

Two movies that made me go wtf and huh?:

Under the Skin (2013)
The Tree of Life (2011)

I'm not vouching for these movies, but they certainly were weird.

There is actually another movie called 'The Holy Mountain' from 1973. That was literally the first entry I looked for because that is without a doubt one of the weirdest F'ing movies I've ever seen. Not sure if the 1973 version was a remake of the 1926 version or what (Wikipedia doesn't mention it), but the 1973 version is just bonkers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holy_Mountain_(1973_film)

In a similar way Crash (2004) confused me when it came out because in a relatively short time it seemed like it was an Oscar contender and people kept on talking about it in popular media, and I was like, "Wait... Crash, that movie about those weird people with the car crash sexual fetish? That came out awhile ago, why are people talking about this again?" Yeah... different movies.

City of Lost children. A French film, think Dark City meets Delicatessen.

Dead ringers. 1987 identical twin gynecologists and their descent into madness.
Crash 1996 very graphic showing of people who get sexual pleasure from pain and car crashes.
Really every single movie directed by David Cronenberg Is a marathon exercise in insanity and body horror. I can't say I've enjoyed his movies but nobody else does it quite like him.

Eden Log. Another French film that I can't recommend enough. This is my number one recommendation that I have never once seen come up on movie recommendation list. If you like Pandorum this will knock your argyle socks off.

Bad Taste (1987)

Peter Jacksons first movie. Poor guy got very little funding, so did everything on a budget.

This movie is so out there, I always wondered if the folks who gave him $300m to create three lord of the rings movies had ever seen this movie.

Sorry To Bother You (2018). Some major WTF moments in that one.

Being John Malkovich - An unemployed puppeteer gets a job as a file clerk where he discovers a hidden passageway into the mind of actor John Malkovich.

I don't like to use the word weird, I love movies that push the boundaries of set design, story, cinematography, music etc.

Other Gilliam films could be added to this list, Jabberwocky, Twelve Monkeys, Fisher King is probably the most normal Gilliam film but it still has its moments of "weirdness", the waltz'ing scene is gorgeous.

The Wachowskis Speed Racer is crazy as well, a ton of fun, but definitely a crazy film wuth some unbelievable visuals.

What Dreams May Come is not a weird film, it's beautiful but the art style used throughout certain portions of the film might make it a film of interest.

Dark City is an amazing sci-fi noir film with some really creepy elements abd fantastic world building (if you want to watch this film, watch the Directors Cut, not the theatrical cut unless you want the twist spoiled right as the film starts).

Paperhouse is another great film, about a girl who dreams of a world she draws in her waking life. The dream sequences are strangely disturbing probably due to the strangely minimalist set design (like the childish drawings).

There's probably a few others but I can't think of them just now but hopefully this'll give you a few films to watch.

Synechdoche, New York is an absolute mindfuck. It's about a stage director who receives a MacArthur grant allowing him to design his ultimate masterpiece. He constructs increasingly large and elaborate stages, blurring the lines between reality and film. It's completely bizarre, with increasing levels of meta. Just when you think it couldn't go bigger, it does. It's the ultimate self-indulgent, pretentious art piece, and it's aware of that, with the film itself being the top layer of meta.

You’ve got the Holy Mountain, The (1926) on the list but Holy Mountain, The (1973) is pretty darn weird too.

For a more recent one I watched White Noise (2022) and I was just wondering the whole time about it, because it didn't exactly pull me into the story going on, there was a lot of soapboxing monologues, but I couldn't actually bring myself to stop watching it.

Also Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (2022) both because it's self titled as such, and because it's a biopic but a parody of his own life which is both incredibly on brand for Al, and hilarious.

The weirdest film I've seen might be Interstate 60. It's a 2002 post-nineties road trip movie that feels like somebody wanted to write a soft-R version of The Phantom Tollbooth.

I mean it, the Pink Power Ranger is a walk-on who's searching for the "perfect fuck." There is no narrative meaning given to the perfect fuck; for all it matters to the story it could be the perfect song, or the perfect sunset, or the perfect use of the word fuck. Doesn't matter, writer/director Bob Gale seems to just want to say fuck. The whole film is like that.

What's unbelievable is the supporting cast. It's like somebody stole Robert Altman's phone list. Each "chapter" of the film is made of a shitty fable in which James Marsden gets a character-building lesson, and each lesson is delivered by a new guest star. Gary Oldman, Christopher Lloyd, Chris Cooper, Kurt Russell, Ann Margaret, The Pink Ranger, Amy Smart, Michael J. Fox. You get the feeling that all these people love Bob Gale and would sort of do anything for him, because there can be no other explanation for such a star studded cast here.

It isn't deliberately surreal in any way, it's just weird that it exists at all -- and seems to be sort of well-regarded. I don't think I'm just on the wrong side of history with this one, I think it's really THAT bad, which makes its reputation all the weirder.

The Cube (1969) made-for-TV movie by Jim Henson (The Labyrinth, Dark Crystal) about a man locked in a cube for mysterious reasons. The movie was commisioned to be about the TV medium, but is more inspired by the then sci-fi concept of Virtual Reality.

You could also add some Japanese Cyberpunk. Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989) is sorta the original, but 964 Pinocchio (1991) stand out for its prolonged puking scene.

For weird musicals, I can recommend The Happiness of the Katakuris (2001) and Forbidden Zone (1981) Lotsa youtube clips for that one, I really like the slightly sleezy Witch Egg

Symbol (2009) could easily be an episode from Funky Forest. It's that level of weirdness.

The Red Spectacles (1987) Japanese surrealist science fiction neo-noir. Long time since I've seen it, I remember it as very artsy.

Female Prisoner #701 Scorpion (1972) rape-revenge women-in-prison film stuffed with attempted feminism, weird symbolism and psychedelic cinematography.

Cosmic Zoom (1968) 8 minute animated short faithfully adapting a rather curious picture book. It is basically showing a zoom "from the farthest conceivable point of the universe to the tiniest particle of existence, an atom of a living human cell."

The Plumber (1979) While working on her thesis, a wife has her living space continously invaded by a guy claiming to be a plumber. Worse, he plays the guitar. trailer

La cabina (1972) Spanish short about a man trapped inside a phone booth.

• zardoz

• schitzopolis

I thought of three movies right away when I read this post, and two were mentioned elsewhere : Repo Man (https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0087995/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1) and Synecdoche, New York (https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0383028/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_q_Synec). The third, which I haven't seen mentioned yet is one of the more out there:

A Boy and His Dog (https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0072730/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_q_A%2520Boy%2520and%2520His%2520dog) is a post-nuclear-apocalypse story from 1975 about, well, a boy and his dog. They live in the nuclear wastes and just try to survive. I saw it before being exposed to the fallout game series, and if fallout new vegas had dogmeat as a companion, and were a bit grittier in terms of explicit human suffering, then it'd be a game adaptation of this film. It's short if I remember right, and has plenty of triggering moments, but it stuck with me for a while after my friend in college suggested I watch it.

I think anyone into movies should probably watch 1 Neil Breen film. I rec Double Down for the full experience, but any of them work.

To give context, after watching that movie, I appreciated the pacing and plot structure of The Room

Since most of the list is foreign to me, I can't use it as context to grasp your concept of weird/strange, but the first things that come to mind for me:

• Donnie Darko (1988). Totally whack took a second watching for me.
• Mulholland Drive (2001). Cult classic, and also totally whack.
• Less weird than the last two but also weird in its own way Melancholia (2011). You see the end at the start - another planet collides with Earth.

You've got Grizzly Man but Herzog has far weirder (although that last scene of Grizzly Man is harrowing)

I like Fitzcarraldo but all his early films, especially the stuff he did with Klaus Kinsky, are supremely weird and utterly wonderful.

Beau Is Afraid is a recent and excellent contestant. It's got all the desiderata: the world feels like an anxiety dream whose emotional logic outweighs continuity or plausibility.

eXistenZ (1999). Directed by David Cronenberg and stars Jude Law and Jennifer Jason Leigh. It's a really weird watch.

The Congress (2013) is a trip of a movie and is a mix of live action and animation. It's very, very strange but I really like it.

David Lynch’s Eraserhead

Sorry to Bother You (2018)

A Serbian Film

Ponyo and Howl's Moving Castle are up there for me.

Here's a few not mentioned, not sure if they're the weirdest films ever but pretty weird, each in their own way:

• The Taste of Tea (2004): Loved this movie.
• Top Secret (1984): Probably the weirdest of the weird 80's comedies I've seen, stands among Airplane and The Naked Gun.
• The Cremator (1969): Just unsettling.
• PlayTime (1967): Weird because it breaks so many assumptions about how a film is supposed to be structured and viewed.

After hours by scorsese is fun and has the right amount of weird. Thoroughly recommend.

Also Green knight is weird. I read up about the story afterwards and it's cool but damn I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

Came here and saw visitor q already on list.
So I'll say "Pink Flamingos" for my suggestion

Buñuel's Un Chien Andalou is pretty weird.

Also, at the risk of spamming this thread, I wrote a review for Freaks in @kfwyre's unfinished pop-up movie thread.

Lots of great titles already listed in this thread but I’ll add three more that came immediately to my mind.

The first is 2001: A Space Odyssey. It’s a well-known cinema classic but it definitely counts as weird. There are long scenes where nothing much seems to be happening, in near silence or with that unsettling acappella murmuring score. There are quiet moments pierced very suddenly with jarringly loud ones. The middle of the movie has a compelling narrative with some great visions of future tech; the effects are stunning too. And this is where we get HAL-9000 and his pod bay doors which everyone’s familiar with. But the beginning and end of the movie are like a bizarre snail-paced fever dream.

The second one is another ‘60s sci-fi space romp, Barbarella. I should watch it again, it’s been many years and I can’t sum up the plot by memory. It’s a psychedelic free-love hippies-in-space sort of thing. Expect excessive nudity and sex which basically are the solution to all conflicts in the movie. But the surprising thing for me was the big budget and impressive special effects. The zero-gravity shots are way better than they ought to be and elevate this one above pure schlock.

Lastly, Russian Ark is worth a watch. The whole thing is shot in a single take, one continuous shot that follows several characters through centuries of Russian history unfolding within the walls of a prestigious museum. I don’t think there’s any dialogue (again, it’s been years since I watched but I recall it being closer to pantomime). What’s impressive about it is the sheer scale of the production, with choreography for hundreds of cast members and no real flubs. It must have been a feat to organize this thing and have everything come together as smoothly as it did. The movie is dreamlike and mesmerizing, but quite weird.

Wrong by Quentin Dupieux must be the strangest thing I've watched.

Many probably know Quentin Dupieux from another movie he's made called Rubber, which is about a car tire on a killing spree.

Haha

from imdb import Cinemagoer
imdb = Cinemagoer()
for title in titles:
    first_result = imdb.search_movie(title)[0]
    id = first_result.movieID
    markdown = f'[{title}](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt{id}/)'
    print(markdown)

goes brrr:
Altered States (1980)
Aria (1987)
Bad Boy Bubby (1993)
Black Moon (1975)
Blood Tea and Red String (2006)
Blue Velvet (1986)
Boxing Helena (1993)
Brazil (1985)
Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The (1920)
Clerks. (1994)
Clerks II (2006)
Cowards Bend the Knee (2003)
Crash (1996)
Delicatessen (1991)
Dogtooth (2009)
Dreams That Money Can Buy (1947)
Elephant Man, The (1980)
Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970)
Fall, The (2006)
Faust (1994)
F for Fake (1973)
Freaks (1932)
Funky Forest - The First Contact (2005)
Gozu (2003)
Grizzly Man (2005)
Gummo (1997)
Holy Mountain, The (1926)
In My Skin (2002)
Kamikaze Girls (2004)
Kids (1995)
Last Wave, The (1977)
Li'l Quinquin
Liquid Sky (1982)
Lost Highway (1997)
Love Serenade (1996)
Lucio (2007)
M (1931)
Marat Sade (1967)
Meet the Feebles (1989)
Muriel's Wedding (1994)
Naked Lunch (1991)
Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
Rabbit a la Berlin (2009)
Rubber (2010)
Saragossa Manuscript, The (1965)
Sick - The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist (1997)
Slacker (1991)
Sonic Outlaws (1995)
Spectres of the Spectrum (1999)
Spirited Away (2001)
Stalker (1979)
Survive Style 5+ (2004)
Sweet Movie (1974)
Talk to Her (2002)
Thing, The (1982)
Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, The (2005)
Topo, El (1970)
Tribulation 99 - Alien Anomalies Under America (1992)
Trouble Every Day (2001)
Tuvalu (1999)
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010)
Videodrome (1983)
Visitor Q (2001)
Waking Life (2001)
Welcome to Woop Woop (1997)
WR - Mysteries of the Organism (1971)
You, the Living (2007)

Akira (1988) (Anime)
Baskin (2015) (Turkish)
Border (2018) (Swedish)
Innocents, The (2021) (Norwegian)
Mulholland Drive (2001)
Paprika (2006) (Anime)
Skinamarink (2022)

I'll mention it again: Big Trouble in Little China.

John Carpenter could have been a little more random but it would've been hard!

Since you have two Kevin Smith films up I'll add Tusk to that little list. He was doing a podcast with Scott Mosier and they read this crazy ad where the dude was offering up a room for rent, if you would dress up like a penguin he would let you have it at a discounted rate or free. I can't remember the full thing now, anyway that gave the guys the idea of a horror movie where a guy kidnaps a reporter and turns him into a human walrus..

By far the most insane film I've watched. I love it.

Now ones that are a little more sane -

The Man from Earth
Primer
John dies at the end (the books are fantastic)
Red State (Kevin Smith)
2:37 (Aussie Indy movie)
Brick

Oh and am honorary mention to the super indy file Bindlestiffs. By far the strangest thing I've ever watched and I don't know how I feel about it.

Terry Gilliam has produced some fairly weird stuff. Brazil is probably my favourite. It's about a kafkaesque future where rogue HVAC technicians go underground and illegally fix people's heating. A daydreaming bureaucrat goes down a rabbit hole where he gets involved with anarchists trying to fix a typo in a government document.

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen I've seen this but I think I fell asleep halfway through. I recall it being fairly weird though.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Pernassus I've never seen this, but I've been told it's both good and weird.

The Zero Theorem I've seen this, and I recall I quite enjoyed it, but I honestly couldn't tell you what it's about.

Repo Man is a cult classic about a punk kid who ends up working with repo men but the movie takes a sharp left turn near the end. This movie is dripping with 1980's punk aesthetic, which probably smells like sweat and cheap beer.

Bad Boy Bubby(1993)

It's already listed, but I wanted to provide a link.

And call it out again, because, to me, this is not only one of the weirdest disturbingly heart warming movies I have ever seen, but also one of the least known.

I can't remember the name, but it was basically a snuff film out of Russia, banned in several countries. Frickin' wild.

Others have beat me to the first couple weird moves that came to mind, but I remember Man Bites Dog being very weird.

I guess you'd call it a dark mockumentary. In it, a crew of filmmakers follow a charismatic but extremely violent serial killer, recording his horrific crimes for the documentary they're producing. It's in French with English subtitles.

My pick for weird film is The Greasy Strangler. I think it was trying to be deliberately weird, like some kind of throwback grindhouse movie, but it was still uncomfortably, sincerely weird for me (and I've seen a lot of movies on this thread):

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4381236/

I can’t believe this far down and nobody’s mentioned Pi (the symbol, I don’t have greek keyboard) by aaronofsky. 1999? Gematriac insanity.

Also is a hard to find but worth it for the innovative effects alone, Split (1988).

I don’t know if it’s weird as much as anomolistic, but Heavy Metal is probably worth a mention.

And then there’s the Lovecraft movies, From Beyond and Reanimator.

Nice list! I'm curious, what was it was about Muriel's Wedding and Clerks that you found strange?

My head space is pretty surreal so I love surreal films and have been a big Lynch fan since the 90s. Loved Eraserhead ("how do you feel about motherhood?" "Watch Eraserhead and you'll have my answer"). If you're into Asian films, I really loved Antiporno by Sion Sono. The male writer/director strangely captures a very feminist perspective, also touching on identity, sexuality and repression. Another film I really liked was Three...Extremes, containing three short films by three different east Asian directors. On its face, it just looks like a straightforward Asian horror film but the symbolism and themes in each story, most especially the third, are quite deep.

Surprised since there was a mention of Serbian Film that no one has mentioned Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom. The difference between the two is that Salò is actually a pretty great movie by a classic Italian director, despite the shocking imagery lol. Other strong contenders not mentioned yet are Watership Down, Angel's Egg, and Belladonna of Sadness (All pretty fantastic films as well, weirdness included)

I am surprised nobody has mentioned Kung Fu Hustle.

Came looking for Lair of the White Worm and didn't find it. So there's one for ya..

Mind Game (2004) is very odd, but good. It’s Japanese, however.

Cult classic Mind Game is an explosion of unconstrained animated expression. After a deadly encounter with yakuza, a loser with crush on his childhood girlfriend goes to heaven and back embarking on a psychedelic self-discovery experience.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_Game_(film)

No Primer (2004), A Scanner Darkly (2006) or Pi (1998)?

Tammy and the T-Rex (1994)

Killer Condom (1996)

ThanksKilling (2007)

Op you have some excellent movies on your list. Delicatessen being one of my favorites!

Some weird movies I know are:

Häxen - a 1920s "documentary" on witches
Mad God - a twisted but amazing stop motion film

I think one of the strangest (and actually the worst film I've ever seen) has to be The Langoliers (2001). It was supposed to be from Stephen King's 'Four Past Midnight'. But I read those short stories and The Langoliers film version wasn't it at all!

In a 3 hr runtime the action happens in the last 5 minutes. All in all it's a peculiar, very long and quite boring film.

A Zed and two Noughts

I can't explain why there are snails

My hard to figure out movie (or maybe better stated why it was ever made) is "Hair Spray"...I've watched it twice and still have no flipping clue why I watched it a second time or why it was a considered a "cult" movie....

Beyond The Infinite Two Minutes (2020)

I think the strangest I've seen is: The Sky Trembles and the Earth Is Afraid and the Two Eyes Are Not Brothers in a double feature with Mimosas. The Sky Trembles is a bizarre film starring Oliver Laxe who is the director of Mimosas, it begins on the set of Mimosas and then follows the director as he wanders off set and into a hallucinatory adventure.

Mimosas is an enjoyable film but following it up with The Sky Trembles is like watching the strangest making of ever.

Wizard People, Dear Reader
Ex-Drummer
Final Flesh
Mondo Cane
Southland Tales
The Wrong Ferarri: A Screwball Tragedy