#18: Naked Lunch (1991)

The fusion of perhaps the strangest book ever written turned into cinema by perhaps the strangest director ever to make a movie (David Cronenberg of Videodrome fame) has bequeathed to us what essentially amounts to a Rorschach test of a movie, whose plot is every bit as open to interpretation as an ink blot spilled on a white card.  After an exterminator manages to become addicted to the chemical he uses to kill bugs, he accidentally kills his wife and becomes involved in a secret government plot (orchestrated by giant bugs) in an islamic part of a town in Africa.  He receives the good news from his bug agent.  Said agent is a wrinkly vagina with beetle wings.  Enough said.

#19: The Plague Dogs (1982)

Based on the book of the same name by Watership Down author Richard Adams, this animated feature is definitely number 1 on the "cartoons not to be shown to children" list.  Not all cartoons are made for kids and this one soundly proves it.  Rouf and Snitter are two dogs being experimented on by the military who have managed to escape.  They become fugitive, hunted to the bitter end, to purge the threat of the bubonic plague they've been intentionally infected with.  The fun is over after the first half hour or so.  After that, we're treated to the sight of the two accidentally blowing half a hunter's face off with a shotgun, and grotesquely consuming his corpse.  The end of the movie is so depressing that it cast a shadow on my entire day.  I'm 31. Do NOT rent this movie for your children.  You've been warned.

#20: Aguirre, The Wrath of God (1972)

Starting today, I will be posting a short review/summary of the top 20 must crazy, sad, fucked up, strange, or just plain bizarre movies.  A new movie will be posted every day until I reach No 1, at which point new content will have already been created.  So here we go,

This film is the most well-known of the creations of Werner Herzog, who may be recognizable to some of you as the father of Julien in Harmony Korine's "Julien Donkey Boy", and also as the narrator of "Grizzly Man".  The plot involves a troupe of Spanish Conquistadores in the 1500s searching for the fabled city of gold, El Dorado, in the Andes Mountains of South America.  The film starred the strange and volatile Klaus Kinski as the leader Aguirre.  The soundtrack of the movie is very surreal, and the movie features highly experimental camera techniques, as well as a final scene which features Kinski alone in a raft full of chickens after his entire party has now died, gliding down the river hoping to overthrow Pizarro.  Werner Herzog is one of the "weird director" prototypes, among others such as David Lynch, Harmony Korine, and Crispin Glover, and whose films have influenced the work of many of the makers of the movies on this list.

Plantin' Time

It's that time of the year folks, spring is here and it's time to officially start your gardenin'.

[Howto] germinate your seeds:

For starters, your seeds should be less than 2 years old.  You will need a starting medium, specifically a wet paper towel works very well, and a container that can retain moisture.  In our case a ziploc bag will work just fine.  The reason to use a soil-less starting medium is to insure that the seeds and seedlings are not killed by too much salt, which is usually found in soil or various soil-less mixes.  The key when using paper towel is to transfer the babies just after they have had a chance to break the hull of the seed and begin to form a stem. The perfect time to transplant is when the seeds have 2 visible leaves forming.  There are 3 key factors to germination: moisture, heat, and salinity.  Sunlight is not a key factor to germinating seeds due to the fact that you are attempting to imitate a wet underground environment. 

If you use this process you will be able to germinate nearly any seed, and save money on going to the plant store. 

So get out there and start plantin!